Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am going to continue in my theme of grants from God in our lives. These are gifts that come to us by the power of God’s grace. They are realities that we receive as a result of the manifest presence of God in our lives. Leaders must set an example in receiving these gifts.
God grants us the gifts of salvation, a changed and enlarged heart, deliverance from the hand of our enemies, and an ability to be bold in speaking God’s word accompanied by God’s healing power, signs, and wonders.
Now let me address another grant given to us by God. A foundation of our faith in Christ is a changed mind. This is a changed way of thinking. This is not merely a discipline of our thoughts by an administration of law. It is not a control of our thoughts. It is a revolution in our thinking. It is a change in the source of our thoughts by the power of a new internal desire. It is a grant of repentance to life. It is not a grant of repentance from evil. This was the testimony in the beginning of the church when those who had no understanding of God began to supernaturally experience Him in their lives.
Acts 11:18 When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God, saying, “Then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life.”
When the apostles heard the evidence of Holy Spirit in the lives these Gentiles, they understood that God had made them alive in their hearts to God. It was a grant from God – a gift of God’s grace that transforms the hearts of those who receive the Spirit of the Lord. The expressions of Holy Spirit in the lives of these new believers were that of a supernatural love for God and a confession empowered by a new desire by the power of Jesus as Lord from within.
Every leader must embrace and lead others to live in an empowerment of repentance from dead works. This is not a repentance from evil. It is a repentance from being dead. It is a gift from God, not a discipline of the flesh. It is an empowerment of the Spirit of the Lord in our lives. The Spirit of the Lord gives us a desire empowered by being loved by God! Repentance is a gift, or granted to us by God when we embrace His love in our hearts.
This gift of repentance unto life is not just a one-time experience in our lives. It is a way of life. It is an increasing transformation of our hearts and minds by the Spirit of the Lord in our hearts. It is an experience of God’s love that changes us. That internal experience gives us a new testimony that is evident by changed actions in our way of thinking and being in life.
When we seek external things to find love, to find our identity, it is because we lack an internal revelation of being loved by God. Receiving the love of God in our hearts makes us come alive to God in our hearts. The dry places of our hearts become empowered to be a watered garden of God’s presence. Paradise is restored in our lives – a place of knowing God, living with Him, and walking with Him in life. It is the desirable place of knowing God and it frees us from being dead in our hearts. Leaders must lead others by example in being loved by God in their hearts and no longer living in the shadows of illegitimate life sources that only leave us dead to repeatedly do dead works that never produce the fruit of life. It is not a repentance of condemnation and shame. It is a repentance unto life! It is knowing the truth of God’s love in our hearts. We were born to be loved by God! He loves us and He gives us the desires of our hearts! Those desires given to us by Him change our lives forever and it is a continually growing reality in our lives. This is not a one-time experience of turning to God in our hearts, but a daily turning to Him so the light of His life gives desires that come from being loved by God.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
