I pray this blog finds you all doing well….as many of you know I have been spending a tremendous amount of time engaging the Holy Spirit on the subject of religion…it seems to me (and you that know me well know i have strong feelings against religion) that religion is stealing everything from us that Christ called precious and magnificent….all His promises to us that are Supernatural have been dumbed down to reasonable and man obtainable processes by the institutuion of religion….as a result, we dont see the biblically promised outcomes in our lives we are quick to explain why with new theories that are not scripturally pure therefore driving us further from the Truth we are claiming to be striving towards…that is our problem…we have defaulted to so many devices, programs, and theories that we have lost the one thing we were promised…the Way, the Truth, the LIFE….I urge you today to put aside all the thoughts, routines, and religious processes that threatens the simplicity of your RELATIONSHIP with CHRIST…I am closing with a thought from Oswald Chambers found in “my utmost for His highest” dec 20th…
“The calling of a New Testament worker is to uncover sin and to reveal Jesus Christ as Saviour, consequently he cannot be poetical, he must be sternly surgical. We are sent by God to lift up Jesus Christ, not to give wonderfully beautiful discourses. We have to probe straight down as deeply as God has probed us, to be keen in sensing the Scriptures which bring the truth straight home and to apply them fearlessly.”
Basically, we cannot afford to be religious! Why? Because peoples lives hang in the balance…including our own….so may the God of perfection bless you and keep you. may He cause His countenance to replace your own, and may He afford you absolute restoration through your reception of His precious Son and the filling of His powerful Spirit.

I have been spending a lot of time in the book of Isaiah this past month and I discovered something through the prodding of the Holy Spirit…in Isaiah 11:1-5 I believe some amazingly stout things were projected for us… first off Isaiah speaks of the Messiah in verses 1 and 2…then in verse 3 and 4 he describes the way in which the Messiah under the covering of the Holy Spirit would operate…”He will delight in the fear of the Lord and He will NOT judge by what His eyes see, NOR make a decision by what His ears hear: but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and He will decide with fairness for the the afflicted of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, and faithfulness the belt about His waist.”

As I read the description of the way in which Christ would operate as He lived as a part of humanity I was stirred to this thought…HE BECAME LIKE ME, SO THAT I COULD BECOME LIKE HIM (1 john 4:17)….He did not come TO me, but came to display the fullness of God FOR me (john 1:18)…Jesus left the equality with God to become the equality of me (phil.2:5-8)…He became FLESH (john 1:14)….yet the Spirit of the Lord rested upon Him and the fear of the Lord was His delight so He was exalted above all in order to make way for us to become like Him (2 cor. 5:21)….He told His disciples in acts 1:5 “but you will be covered (baptized) with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” and continued in verse 8 “but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you”. Power to do what? well lets read on…He completes that thought by saying “and you shall be My witnesses”. Witnesses? Does that mean Jesus story tellers? Or is it looking religiously strict? No! I believe He was saying you will receive power in order to REPLICATE Me? YOU SHALL BE JUST LIKE ME. Christ has not called us to simply testify of Him, He has called us to be just like Him. That is the beauty of the both the grace and mercy found in the atonement of His death and resurrection. He came that He might give us life and life like His (john 10:10, eph. 2:1-22)!!

Please dont miss this…He constantly challenged His followers with statements like the one found in mark 8, “having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear?!” was Jesus really asking if the disciples were physically blind and deaf? No! He was saying why do you use your carnal senses without yielding them to the supernatural work of the Spirit?! Because when you do that you render yourselves unable to receive what I came to give you! What was being said was, “having eyes do you not perceive by the Spirit, and having ears are you not receiving understanding through the Spirit?”  In other words, you are not truly living!! Isaiah states, “He will not make judgement by what He sees, nor make a decision based on what He hears”!!!

We must be a blood purchased people who by practice have disciplined our senses to discern the supernatural life (Heb.5:14) that is offered by our Father through the Christ (John 10:10). Of course there is a great crowd of critics that would like to offer the notion that the work of the Spirit was for a period of time, specifically the time of the apostles, which I see as a theory that is really only consistent with the wiles of the Devil. Afterall, if God is the same today as He was yesterday, and will be forever…then so is His Spirit.

There are numerous accounts of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, not just the New Testament, and here is one of my favorites:        ”The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me (Isaiah), because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the of vengeance of our God and to comfort those who mourn…” Isaiah 61:1-2.

Sounds a lot like the same work that Jesus did under the covering of the Holy Spirit, and the same command given by Christ to those who would come to a saving knowledge and understanding of Him after Him. His Spirit is the gift we receive through Salvation. We have become the righteousness of Christ and have had the Spirit (the fullness of God) deposited within us (2 corinthians 5)!! So wouldn’t it make sense to now engage that same Spirit who was upon Christ, the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and power (Isaiah 11, Acts 1)?!  To delight in the fear of the Lord, and to not make judgements by what our eyes see (letting circumstances steal our focus upon Truth), nor make a single decision by what our ears hear (letting man’s theories and critics shape our view of the Christ)….but rather with discipline walk in right standing with God by living according to His Word and NOT according to our cultural christianity and religiosity. To give our senses to the work of the Lord through the Holy Spirit and judge by obedience and not by sight, to make decisions based on the Spirit’s promptings rather than the opinions offered by men!

I believe it is time for the true disciples of Christ to rise up and walk in righteousness and faithfulness…. with disciplined senses in the supernatural….disciplined to the promptings of the Lord’s Spirit…..Shalom