Greetings;
Today I am posting a section from my book, The Now Covenant. This book is available in print and e-book on Amazon and also available in audiobook form through the links at the close of this post.
Audio:
The Old Covenant was not merely a means of bringing us to the New Covenant. It was a shadow of the very thing that was always intended to be in Christ. God always wanted a covenant of intimacy with mankind. I believe that failure is perhaps the way to know who God really is. Perhaps Paradise is not a place where everything works, but rather a place where everything is dependent upon God. When we depend on God all things work out, and all things can even become as a Paradise. I have discovered in my many decades of knowing God that it is not what I know about Him that counts. It is what I have become of Him that matters in life. When it comes to forgiveness, it is not the theology of forgiveness that counts, it is the substance of forgiveness that I have become that matters. How can I say I am a substance of forgiveness unless I come face-to-face with unforgiveness in my life? How can I say I really am something unless I come face-to-face with what I am not? So, if we were created in the likeness and the image of God, do you suppose it is possible we had to become what God is not so that we could become the substance of what He truly is? Forgiveness is not just the result of the waving of a magic wand in life. It is a measurable substance of what we have become when coming to the face of what it is not. Forgiveness is only proven to be real when it is faced with unforgiveness, and it does not change. I believe that the Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood so that everyone in the neighborhood who is flesh could become a testimony of the Word.
The Word is expression. It includes things that are audible, visible, emotional, and any substance that can be felt or experienced by the atmosphere in which we live. Something is coming off of us that is affecting the world we live in. I believe that something came off of God when He created man, thus what He created became an expression of Him. Mankind is the substance of God in the core of their creation. Humanity’s commission is not merely to tell people about God, but to reveal Him to the world in which they live. None of us are Him, but we are expressions of Him to reveal who He is to the world. We are His word. We are expressions of Him. God wants the fullness of that. He wants men and women who reveal the substance of who He is. The woman is not the helper of the man, but the helpmate with the man meant to be part of a partnership that reveals God to the world. God’s likeness is both masculine and feminine. The closest thing to God in the planet is human DNA and He wants that expression to be continually new. He wants that expression to be a NOW expression of Him. He doesn’t just want us to go around with bumper stickers on our automobiles that say, ‘what would Jesus do’, He wants us to be expressions of what Jesus is doing. He wants us to be expressions of our heavenly Father in every aspect of our lives. The Old Covenant was a way of coming to the place of New Covenant. It was the way of revealing our failure so we could become the truth of God in Christ.
It is only in the New Covenant that God can truly be the teacher of mankind. God does not teach us through the power of information. He teaches us by the power of transformation. The Scripture is not the teacher of men. The Holy Spirit is the teacher of men, and He teaches us by submerging our hearts in Him. When we are submerged in love, we become love. When we are submerged in forgiveness, we become forgiveness. His way of changing our way of life, our doctrine, is to submerge us in the substance of His presence. His teaching is the power of transformation, not the power of information. The Old Covenant was a covenant of information, but the New Covenant is a covenant of transformation from within. The Spirit of the Lord empowers the desires of our hearts. He gives us the desires of His will. The Spirit of Wisdom empowers our actions to be acts of faith toward God. We love Him so we choose to demonstrate our love with actions motivated by faith in our hearts. The Spirit of Understanding submerges us in the presence of all that God is and we are given a testimony that comes by being transformed in Him. The Spirit of Counsel reveals who we really are. It testifies of our Father in heaven, and we become the light, even as our heavenly Father is light. The Spirit of Might awakens our hearts to know who we are in Christ. We are empowered from within, and we are confessed by God as the sent ones of His resurrection life to the world. Our hearts are awake towards His purpose in our lives for the sake of others. The Spirit of Knowing empowers us to truly love. We make decisions for others based upon who we are, not what we reason they deserve or do not deserve. We see ourselves as living bread for the world and as a cup of life for the nations. The Spirit of the Fear of the Lord causes us to reign in life, because His manifest presence in us enables us to reign in all things. The testimony of His inheritance becomes the legacy we leave for others to walk in. These are the testimonies of New Covenant life in Christ.
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House of Bread Ministry
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