Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I believe that the present revolution is a revolution of life. There are counterfeit expressions in the midst of this revolution, but the true revolution at hand is one of becoming the people of God. This is not a time to return to the instructors of conscience or law, it is a time to embrace the greater testimony of God’s grace that transforms us all to be a diverse family, the family of God. The instructors of conscience alone can leave us vulnerable to creating a world according to our own opinions and desires. Those opinions and desires are often confused because of our own wounds and pains imposed upon us in an imperfect world. The instructors of law alone can leave us vulnerable to creating a world according to own interpretation of justice in a knowledge of what we believe we know to be right or wrong according to our own understanding. Our interpretation and application of the law are also tainted by the paradigms of our thinking influenced by imperfect situations in an imperfect world. These instructors cannot truly change our hearts and minds; they can only inspire us to falsely demand that others conform to the world that we create based largely upon the hurts and wounds of our own hearts. Grace is a more powerful teacher. Grace is the manifest presence of God working in our hearts and minds to create our world as God sees it should be. Only God’s grace can fully heal the bitter wounds of our hearts and minds through a now experience with Him in our lives. The source is God Himself, and He is a giver of life! It is a revolution of true authority where each and every one of us becomes who we uniquely meant to be for the sake of being a life-giving community. It is revolution of internal transformation that empowers us to find our true identity, testimony, and purpose in being the people of God in the earth. It is a revolution of becoming the life-giving authority of God for the sake of God’s glory!
Authority is the ability to give life to others and it is not about control or manipulation. Power and authority are not the same thing. One can have power without authority, but pure authority is a pure form of power to give life to others. Power alone will only take life and it can only create a world of dysfunction and death in various measures. We don’t understand authority, because we have traded authority for power in our quest for knowledge. Our quest for knowledge has most often been a quest to find our true identity, testimony, and purpose in life. We have looked in external sources to find what can only be found within. We look to the kingdoms of the world to discover who we are meant to be, but only the kingdom of God in our hearts can reveal to us the truth of who we really are. We tend to think that if we change the world around us it will change the turmoil in our hearts and turbulent perceptions of our minds. But God knows that it is the change of our hearts that will change the world around us. Our true quest is to find the knowledge of the heart, a knowing of God and one another in a deep understanding with intimate sharing. God desires to reveal His true value to us and the true value of who we are to one another. In this process, the bitter roots of knowledge according to natural sight are coming to the surface. They are coming to the surface so that we can find a healing in the power of Jesus name. The very thing that appears to be under attack in the nations is the very thing that God desires to heal. The exposure of the headships of legalism and lawlessness are not a new thing, they are an ancient thing being manifest in such a day as this. God doesn’t desire to eradicate authority; He desires to heal it. Each of us are uniquely created by God to bring life to our world. We were not only born to be loved by God; we were born to love others. We were born to live for the well-being of others by the power of God’s grace at work in and through our hearts.
The people of God are people transformed by the grace of God in a supernatural way. We are changed in a supernatural way by God’s Spirit within us. We are the redeemed and we sing the song of the redeemed in diversity, yet in the strength of born again unity. We are made of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. We are the people of God! It is not a diversity that is independent of authority. Law will produce conformity, a measure of death. Lawlessness will produce disconnection and independence that does not bear the fruit of the family tree. It only seeks the independence of the individual branch. God doesn’t want many trees; He wants one tree. He wants the tree of life to be the family tree that brings the life of God to the peoples of the world.
Revelation 5:9, 10 And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth.”
As I have stated in an earlier blog, I have an apple tree in my yard that is a prophetic symbol of the church that God desires in the earth. It is a grafted tree and it has six grafts of six different expressions of apples. They are red, yellow, green, and variations in their color of fruit. There are so many apples on my tree this year I am going to have to prop it up so that the branches don’t break from the weight of the fruit. This tree is growing out, but not up. God is calling us to a higher place that goes forward in momentum, not a tree that seeks to attain to some higher height of heaven. God wants us to be a tree that stretches out to produce fruit in unique and diverse ways. God wants to invade the earth with the influence of heaven’s grace. God is good and we must be people of hope. When we are people of hope we can be creative in ways to support what is growing on the tree. God will give us the keys to support what is growing. We are going to have to be different in our means of supporting what God is doing. Even as the branches grow out, a proper support system will need to be set in place that undergirds what is new and full of life. God is ready to bless the children, the maturing sons and daughters, and the fathers and mothers in the faith that will faithfully support what is happening. This is not a time to seek the things of the past. It is time to find what God is blessing today and to be the people of God in such a time as this.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
