Had a dream last night, 10/15/08. My friend was speaking to me about a spirit of gentleness and meekness. As he did I received revelation in my spirit in the dream! This is for the church. I believe it was not my friend, but the Spirit of the Lord speaking through my friend to my mind, heart and spirit His will. The knowledge of Christ permeates into every aspect of our life and being which includes dreams.
Monthly Archive for June, 2009
Recently, for whatever reason I was remembering an old friend of mine from high school. Yesterday, 06/29/09, I went to the YMCA to exercise. On my way out, I saw Michael. He smiled. I said to myself, “Yep, that’s Michael.” In the past, Michael and I were not neccessarily the best influence on each other. We did drugs and drinking together and got into trouble. Well, to be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. Before he even told me I knew something was different about him. Last night, I took a dvd he lent me and watched him give his testimony and preach. Yes, Michael is a preacher now. It blessed me very much to see him.
Rom. 15:29, “29 But I know that when I come to you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of Christ.”
The word know here in the Greek is εἶδον or eidon (ā’-don). Essentially, it means, “To know by perception after having seen.”
This is interesting because faith is about not seeing with physical eyes, but believing what you don’t see. It is about believing because of what has been revealed inside of you by hearing the quickened rhema word of God.
I believe brother Paul is not necessarily talking about faith, but something different. I believe he is talking about KNOWING. Here are two personal examples. First, I remember when I was 15 years old on a city bus. I asked the Lord to show me Who He was and is and He did. The next ten years or so I believed I was saved. Then about ten years ago or so I recall receiving revelation inside me that I AM SAVED. This was very different from believing I was saved by His faith through grace. All of a sudden I knew. There was no doubt. I just knew and I could not unknow it either. I knew it more than I was breathing in my fleshly body if that is possible. What is impossible for God?
The second example concerns my mother. At 13 years old, my mother died. My mother had already accepted Christ in her heart and I believed she was in glory with God. After I received Christ in my heart, I continued to believe this. Then after being in the word for a while the Lord began to show me He IS the Resurrection. The Word compounded on word, expounded, and grew by grace in me. Then one day I thought about my mother in heaven and this thought came to mind, “She is not dead, but alive!” Didn’t Jesus say this in Matt. 22:31-33, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”
So, now I know my mother is alive. I almost feel like she is still here somehow because I know this so strongly. I know that Christ is not dead. I know that He is a man and is alive. I know that He is with her and she is with him. Therefore, I know she is alive!
I believe Paul says, “I know” because faith is unto KNOWING in Christ. Imagine prior to praying for someone and even prior to praying you KNOW.
We bear God’s fruit and nature. One of these fruit of the Spirit is faith. What is God’s faith like? What does He put His faith into? He doesn’t because He knows!!! We are His offspring and we can know also.
Romans 10:3, “For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
A while back before discovering Blue Letter Bible, I would have not have the same understanding of this verse as I do today. This is the definition of the Greek word for submitted, hypotassō,
This word was a Greek military term meaning “to arrange [troop divisions] in a military fashion under the command of a leader”. In non-military use, it was “a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden”.
The “volunteering attitude of giving in” could be misconstrued without knowing this word is in passive voice. The passive voice definition says,
The passive voice represents the subject as being the recipient of the action. E.g., in the sentence, “The boy was hit by the ball,” the boy receives the action.
In this context, I am the recipient of the ability or will to submit, be obedient, or have a voluntary attitude. This contrasts from so many times I hear brethren say, “So, I gotta surrender.” The answer is no. 2 Cor. 7:10 talks about godly sorrow unto repentance. Repentance literally means “afterthought“.
I believe the Lord reveals Who He IS. The effect is salvation of our spirit, soul and body. After seeing the real Son of God, it has an afterthought effect. This effect is passive and supernatural. It creates obedience to the faith, Rom. 1:5. This obedience to the faith is His willingness in us.
I think we do.
Romans 8:38, “38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Brother Paul, does not say above we cannot separate ourselves from God. Prior to salvation, love is not love without choice of free-will. God in His perfect and good will according to His good pleasure chose me in His Son. I was always His choice. He is always my choice. If I am the only way to separate myself from God then glory! I’m not going anywhere Lord. I’m yours Father. I’m yours Lord Jesus. By grace, we have the mind of Christ. That means we also grow in His will and willingness. I am drowned into His death and immersed into His life by revelation of Him inside of me. I believe it is next to impossible to be separated from God and His immeasurable grace. To put it in finite mathematical terms, 1/∞, or x approaches zero. In the Spirit, naturally speaking, x approaches zero forever. They say that 1/∞ equals zero, but it really approaches zero. So, is 1/∞ equal to nothing? We can know by faith.
David says in Psalm 139:7-10 (NIV), “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?”
If my biological Father is my dad according to the flesh then how much more is the Father of our spirits our Father by His Son and the Spirit of adoption. The price of supernaturual spiritual adoption is Christ’s life, body and blood! Christ is the Son of God.
How does sin come about?
Sin is missing the demarcation of the law. Sin is not imputed when there is no law. A purged conscience does not have knowledge of the demarcation of the law. Now, grace, power, faith, hope and love empower and enable fulfillment of the law in us by His willingness. If the demarcation of the law is unknown then sin is dis-empowered.
Romans 8:15, “15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear”
If sin entices the flesh and comes to life it does so by the spirit of bondage to fear. Prior to Christ, sin is the manifestation of the spirit of bondage by fear. The knowledge of perfect love casts out fear. Now, we are in Christ and in the Spirit. If we are in Christ then we have the Spirit of power, love and a whole mind. With His love, faith, and grace in us we are unaware of the judgment, guilt, or penalty of the law or self-imposed law in our hearts.
Romans 8:7-11,” 7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 10 And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”
Paraphrase:
The carnal mind in its awareness of judgment of the self-imposed law in the heart, whose conscience is defiled, is not able to partake of the life of the Spirit. It is limited and blinded because of its ignorance of liberating truth and hardness of heart. Therefore, it is not in the Spirit by faith. In enmity, it separates itself from God’s life in His Son. It cannot please the Father by faith. God dwells, lives, resides, abides in us by the revelation of His Son according to hearing the Word of truth. If Christ is in me, the body is dead to the power of sin, but in the Spirit there is life because of His righteousness by faith and grace. If Christ dwells in me, the Father will also give life to my flesh and its members to exercise righteousness by His abiding Spirit in me.
Rom. 2:29, “But he [is] a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision [is that] of the heart, in the spirit, [and] not in the letter; whose praise [is] not of men, but of God.”
What is being removed from the heart in this spiritual circumcision?
Eze. 36:26 says, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”
1 Tim. 4:2 mentions “a conscience seared with a hot iron.” What is the hot iron? I think of when a cow gets branded. The brand leaves a hard callous scab. In Eph. 4:18, the word “blindness” means calloused. So, blindness is due to the hardening of the heart. The phrase, “Do not harden you heart to the voice of the Spirit” is mentioned several times in the letter to the Hebrews.
Eph. 4:18, “Having the understanding darkened (lit. “shadowed”), being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance (or lack of knowledge, lack of revelatory liberating truth) that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:”
I believe the “understanding” in question here in Eph. 4:18 is the understanding that we ultimately receive by faith, Heb. 11:3. If our spiritual understanding to Life, who is Christ, is being blocked off or alienated then we are spiritually dead in our spirit and soul.
What does Hebrew mean? Found a great answer here,
“Hebrew” is the anglicized form of the Hebrew word ‘ibri, which comes from the root word ayin-bet-resh, “to cross or pass over.” The word means something along the lines of “ones from the other side/beyond,” though the other side of what exactly isn’t clear — perhaps the Jordan River, or perhaps the Euphrates. The word is used in the Hebrew Bible primarily to differentiate the group of people who would come to be called Israelites from other people-groups, such as Egyptians or the Philistines. Since the word “Israelite” (in biblical Hebrew, ben yisrael) would be sufficient to denote ethnic difference, it may be the case that the term ‘ibri additionally signifies a class status, since it usually occurs in texts where the people so named are enslaved. When the people of Israel are not experiencing slavery in the Hebrew Bible, the most common term used is b’ney yisrael (literally, “sons/children of Israel”)
This reminds me of 1 Pet. 1:16, “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” Be set apart, separate. In this sanctification by the Holy Spirit one is set apart. As we are set apart, we grow into who we truly are in Christ. Our lives are hid in Him, Col. 3:3.
So, what is being removed from the heart in this spiritual circumcision?
I believe it is the cause of spiritual death, condemnation, separation from the Father, spiritual misidentification, curses, manifestations of the flesh, and so on.
So, what is the ’cause’ ? For Gentiles, like myself, it is the self-imposed law written on my heart, Rom. 2:15. This self-imposed law aliented me from the life of God in His Son Jesus.
Scripture reference:
Rom. 3:23-24, “23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…”
Does this statement make sense? If I don’t tithe, go to church, fast, read my bible, love my neighbor, sing, speak in tongues then I won’t be justified freely by His grace.
My answer is, “NO, it does not make any sense.” Now, some brethren might conjure I am implying you have a license to ‘miss the mark.’ What they are telling me is they are tired of being under the law and I should be under the law or whatever law is it written in their hearts with them. No, thank you. If I do or don’t do the the above things I mentioned how much more justified or righteous am I? That makes no sense either. What I am saying is I can do the things mentioned above and more by grace and His willingness in me. The just or righteous shall live by His faith in them.
So, I can just sit back and do nothing. Yes, but my response is, “Then did you really receive the revelation of Christ insomuch that the effect is to sit and do nothing?” Paul mentions in his letters “another gospel.” He also mentions the good news of grace. This is the true gospel that will deposit and diffuse His will in us. If His will is in me to be and do then anything I could do or do not does not matter because His willingness makes me righteous. It is His faith in me. Once again, the just shall live by faith. This faith creates an enabling ability of obedience or adherence to truth, Rom. 1:5. This adherence manifests as righteousness, but is so much more.
12/31/08
In Hebrews 4:12, the Aramaic N.T. says, “The (revelatory and unveiled) Word (Christ) is able to distinct soul and spirit.”
Prior to salvation, my spirit was dead in trespasses and sin. There was no distinction, no separation between my soul and spirit because neither were whole or sanctified. Both were dead.
Prior to salvation, I was aware of my fleshly body and soul, but not my spirit.
I BECOME AWARE OF WHO I AM. I become aware of my triune being. I was created in the image of my CREATOR: SPIRIT SOUL BODY. I become aware of what I am, my essence.
The revelation, light and truth of the Word or Logos is behind the veil, His Body, into the Holiest of Holies. And Paul said, “To reveal His Son in me” in Gal. 1:16. This revealing or revelation is inside of us beyond our intellect and understanding. This same Word, by revelation, sanctifies my conscience of dead works. My conscience is almost like a conduit between soul and spirit.
When Adam and his wife ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil their conscience was no longer unconscious of the knowledge of good and evil. Contrarily, it was conscious or aware of good and evil. Adam was unable to redeem himself or his wife from this condemnation from his conscience because he was not the Son of God. He was the first Adam. A living soul. The Last Adam, Christ, is a quickening Spirit able to enliven or impart His life by revelation. This life (His Life) is not aware or does not possess knowledge of the guilt and penalty of sin. He is righteousness and unable to be aware of such judgment. He was created in the likeness of sinful flesh, but was yet without sin. He is the judge. He is the Great Shepherd of our souls.
Hearing and hearing of the Word of faith by grace creates and sanctifies this conduit. He is the new man or Adam created in us again, Eph. 2:15. Part of the new man is his conscience. I believe the conscience is like a conduit to the highway to holiness mentioned in Isaiah. 35:8.
The dividing of the joints and marrow as Levitical priests performed on sacrifices reflects the power of the Word to expose, penetrate, and sanctify every part of our being.
