Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
As leaders, we are called to activate, facilitate, and release God’s people to each be a life-giving source of heavenly influence to their world around them. To do this we must lead by example and experience in allowing God to fill us with life and in being givers of life to the world around us in ways that can be experienced by others. God doesn’t just want to satisfy the thirst of us as believers. He wants us to take on His nature in being givers of life to the world. Jesus said if we come to Him and drink, from inside of us will flow rivers of life-giving water.
John 7:37 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
I believe that the God wants us to become like Him. He wants us to know Him in His love and life and He wants us to become givers of life and love to others. God wants us to know a relationship of vulnerability, transparency, trust and partnership with Him and others in all things. When we embraced Christ, we embraced a paradise relationship with God, but we need to be able to expand that relationship to others. That paradise relationship was really an awareness of being lost without God, but increasingly saved in our thinking, reasoning, imagination, emotions, and desires in all things. This is the increasing salvation of our souls. This is important for all believers to know, but especially for those who lead God’s people. We need to understand the truth of being a member in the body of Christ – a co-reigning partner with co-reigning members in partnership with God in all things.
We must remember where we were and would be without God in our lives. Our lives without God are lives of barrenness. We end up looking for our needs to be met from a dry and barren despairing place in our hearts. When we first experienced God, He breathed into us the breath of life. His Spirit came into our spirit.
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
By no means was the earth a paradise in the original creation. This was also true in our beginning place of knowing God, and it is still true in the place outside of our direct connection with God in our hearts. In the beginning, there was a place among the dust of the field where God planted a garden. It was there that He put the man He had formed from the dust. It was in a place called Eden. Eden means desirable place. The place of desire. It was in the East. When we wake up in the morning, we see the sun and the sun gives us a testimony of a new day. It is full of promise and expectation. The East signifies a new day. In reality the earth turns towards the sun, but the experience is a sunrise and a new day. The experience is not about our turning towards God, but one of God in our lives – even as the sun fills the day. When we turn towards God, He can touch us. When we allow Him to touch us, He can breathe His life into our being. This is how it was for me 47 years ago when I received the Spirit of God into my heart. The very next morning I woke up and I found that in the midst of my barrenness God had planted a garden. It was a desirable place. I woke up and I was smiling. I could not stop smiling. I told everyone I knew about Jesus. I was popular for all the wrong reasons, but my popularity gave me a basis to share my faith. I told them passionately about Jesus. I found myself in Paradise! There were living trees around me! There was life everywhere! God was allowing me to experience His goodness and His presence in my life. It is important to abide in that realty. How can we lead others if we are not abiding in that place the God desires most?
As I have stated, the name Eden means, desirable place. In the garden man was to have a relationship with God where he could be sent forth in a life of being fruitful, multiplying, filling, subduing and having dominion. In the garden man experienced an administration of God’s influence where he could eat of all good things and of the tree of life for eternity, but man chose a tree of information instead of intimacy. He chose the tree of the knowledge of good and the knowledge of evil. He chose independence, rather than a dependency upon God in all things. We need life, more than we need knowledge. We need one another more than we need the power to judge one another. We need to be people of mercy and grace for a destiny of giving mercy and reigning by grace in all things. We need to stay close in our relationship with God by His Holy Spirit.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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