Blog In Audio:
Greetings;
I believe that we are in a time of defining and refining the purposes of God in our lives. His purposes don’t change, but our means of walking in them and fulfilling them depend upon our willingness to embrace ways and means that involves things we have not seen, heard, or thought before. Things are not as they have been, and it is a great opportunity to discover God’s presence, plan, and purpose for the unfolding future of our lives and that which has been entrusted to us. We are having to refocus in the midst of the present world challenges. In light of this, I want to address our roles as leaders. We must trade our expectations for expectancy. We are all discovering things that we expected to be a certain way have been ambushed by the surprise of unknown elements. We can be moved to fear for lack of seeing God’s love as we have known it to be expressed in our everyday world. God’s love for us never changes, even when the circumstances of our lives change. Sometimes we get comfortable and we confuse the familiar circumstances of our world as the evidence of God’s love. The power of God’s love is the testimony of life in all things! It is in times like these that faith works best. Faith is the supernatural experience that comes from within. It is the result of hearing God’s voice in our hearts. It feels as life in the moment we hear, but then we have to embrace that moment to become the power of God’s grace working faith that inspires our souls.
1 Corinthians 2: 1 And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. 4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 6 However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” 10 But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. 11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. 16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.
God is revealing things by His Spirit to our lives if we are willing to listen. His wisdom will give us His testimony, while our own wisdom can only bind us to what we already know, or think we know. Our reality for today and our path forward to tomorrow are dependent upon a demonstration of God’s Spirit and power. Our faith is in the power of God. Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Wisdom enables us to see what we have not seen, hear what we have not heard, and to think what we have not thought before. We can trust that Holy Spirit is already working in us in heavenly expressions for the heavenly will of God in our time. We must stir up our spirits to embrace the wisdom of the Holy Spirit from within. It will appear to be foolish to our natural man, but if we willingly embrace what we have not known, we will become what we have not been able to become before. We will do what we have not been able to do before.
Hebrews 11:1-3 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
The word for worlds in this Scripture is aions or ages. These are not the worlds that God has made, but the ages of men that were transformed by God’s word to men. I believe the worlds spoken of here are the worlds of Abel, Noah, Abraham, and all the men and women who saw their worlds (ages) changed by hearing God, the One who loved them. God’s word to them was His rhema or personally spoken word to them. Their ages, their worlds, were framed by what God spoke to their hearts. What could have been a pile of rubble became the very building material set before them to see God’s love work in their lives. In order to frame our world, we must put our hope in God not in a changed world. We must trade our expectations for a spirit of expectancy in our hearts and respond to the voice of God from within.
Let’s not be hindered by our expectations, but let’s embrace an expectancy for what God is going to do and empower us to see and become is such a day as this. Leaders, stir up your spirit to activate the mind of Christ from within you. It is time for the testimony of God with a demonstration of His power to be revealed in this day. It is time for light, not darkness. Arise, and shine!
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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