Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I have been addressing seven essential truths found in the foundation of Christ that a leader must lead, and believers must believe. I have presented the first two. As leaders we must lead others in embracing a lifestyle of repentance from dead works. This is repentance unto life. It is a gift of God’s grace working in our lives. The dead places in our hearts become empowered by the life of God and the desires of our hearts change. We know God’s love and our hearts and minds are changed by the Spirit of the Lord.
A second thing that leaders must lead, and believers must believe is a lifestyle of faith toward God. This is not faith towards the promises of God. It is faith toward God as the Promiser. The evidence of our faith is seen in works of love towards God that demonstrate our belief in Him. We believe Him, and we respond to His words of love in our lives. We live our lives as members of the body of Christ with no fear of death. God’s perfect love has cast out our fears and our lives are filled with works that testify of our identity in Christ’s body.
Today I want to address our need to embrace, and lead others in a lifestyle of being submerged in the Holy Spirit. Being submerged in Christ changes our lives and we become a testimony of that change, both inside and out. We live on daily words of His life and outward testimonies that reveal that our character, nature, way, power, and authority are being made new in Christ.
The writer of the book of Hebrews describes this truth as the doctrine of baptisms. It is not the doctrine about baptisms. It is the doctrine of baptisms. It is not what we believe about baptisms, but rather what happens when we are submerged in Christ’s anointing.
If we translate the word ‘doctrine’ we would say that it is ‘teaching’ or simply, ‘our way of life’. Holy Spirit teaches us by transforming our lives. The transformation that comes by the work of Holy Spirit in our lives causes the testimony of Christ within us to become an outward testimony of our lives. This is not a one-time experience in our lives. It is a testimony of baptisms, a testimony of many submersions in the anointing of Holy Spirit.
The word baptism means to be “submerged” or completely “immersed” in something. The doctrine of baptisms is the transformational teaching that comes into our lives when we are “submerged” or “immersed” into the anointing of the Holy Spirit and His grace of the Spirit of Understanding. How are we submerged in that anointing? We are submerged in that anointing when we live a lifestyle of responding to the One within us in outward ways. We become submerged as we respond to Holy Spirit and what is within us overflows from our hearts.
Holy Spirit takes what is of Jesus and the Father and reveals it to us (Jn. 16:14). He doesn’t reveal His teaching to us as ‘information’. He doesn’t come to ‘inform’ us of anything. He comes to change our lives! He comes to ‘transform’ us. He comes as the Spirit of Understanding to open up the eyes of our hearts to know the hope of Christ’s calling and the riches of His inheritance in us (Eph. 1:18). That is the kind of teacher He is! He is the facilitator of the covenant of grace. Grace is the power of the Holy Spirit’s presence that changes our lives! The Holy Spirit is the only teacher of the New Covenant.
1 Jn. 2:20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
1 Jn. 2:27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.
The way of life that comes by submersions speaks of the ability for the power of God inside of us to be visibly known in our lives. This happens when we willingly respond to the presence of Holy Spirit in us by giving expression to release what is within us out. The belief in our hearts becomes the outward testimony of our lives in supernatural and miraculous ways. The outward ways of our lives are changed by internal ways of God in our hearts. When we give expression to the daily internal words of God in our lives, the external testimony of our lives becomes a testimony of our new name in Christ.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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