I have benefited from many writers in my journey into the Kingdom of God. I think of C. Peter Wagner, Jack Deere, Dutch Sheets and lesser known people like Ron McGatlin and Kriston Couchy. Some of them I have heard in person. These and many others have benefited me by telling me something important about a life in Jesus. The capacity of any of them to share the life of heaven depends on the extent that they live in God’s Son.
But what they have said is the garnish, not the meal. The meal is Jesus. He is the bread of life, the vine and the wine, because He joins us to God and He is life itself. To live for God we must make Jesus our life. We need to know that people like David Yonggi Cho and Bill Johnson did not become who they were by drawing life from people like Yonggi Cho or Bill Johnson. They drew it directly from Jesus Himself. Doubtless they were influenced by men and women of God. Fortunate are they who have Godly mentors or mothers who pray the identity of heaven into their children. But the people who eat Jesus are the ones who share life itself because they feast their hearts on the source of all life.
‘Busy people often think they have a life. But those whose life is Jesus multiply Him in their labour with little effort.’
We need to get beyond arriving at venues with a herd of intercessors that we have gathered together to enforce an agenda that we ourselves have decided on ourselves with the support of ‘generalized words of prophecy’ that may well have come from the soul. Sit in His Presence. Be engulfed in Jesus and move out from there.
There is no plan for the progressing of cities into the knowledge of Jesus and His Kingdom other than Jesus Himself. Jesus is both a yeast and a tidal wave of transforming life. Put Jesus first and make Him your life. The religious spirit is happy to have people seeking unity rather than the person of Jesus Himself. It delays the Enemy’s demise and keeps people churning in religion rather than releasing rivers of life.
‘He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough’ Matt 13.33 NIV.
Jesus is unity and unity is what He multiplies. He will bring all things together in Himself.
‘And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together’ Col 1.17 ESV.
The pursuit of unity among God’s people will not produce unity. Unity of itself is just as unobtainable as is unconditional love independently of Jesus. Jesus produces unity and community. It is Jesus who knits us together as the one new man. He is the Body and the Kingdom. He is the Kingdom and He is the plan. Christ is all and in all or you are. Decide to live from Jesus rather than the things of Jesus. Then it will be He who builds His church – a church built without human hands but which will uncover the glory of the Son of God and His saving power for the world.
‘By abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace’ Eph 2.15 NIV.
‘And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ–everything in heaven and on earth’ Eph 1.10 NIV.
Excellent post! I had a dream that goes along with your posting.
I had a dream, in the dream, i saw a human body laying on the ground. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been anything special except that the body was completely flat because it had no bones in it. What the Lord showed me was that the bones are representative of people and it is people that make up the structure of the church. this is what what the Lord had showed me in Ezekiel 37, “the valley of dry bones”. In Ezekiel’s vision, the Lord took him and made him to set down in a valley. The valley is symbolic of death and despair. There were many bones in that valley they were both very dry because they had no covering and they were also scattered, meaning that they were not connected(no relationship). When the Lord asks Ezekiel ,”can these bones live” , Ezekiel knew that bones, were without life and hope of ever having life. Yet the Lord tells him to prophecy to the bones and say,”hear the word of the Lord”. The Lord, through the prophetic word spoken spoken by Ezekiel brought the disjointed bones together,however, bones cannot attach themselves to one another, they need ligaments(relationships) to hold them together. However, the ligaments themselves do not posses the strength to hold the bones together alone. So, wrapped around the ligaments is muscle(representative of leadership), which brings me to the skin, which is the covering(representative of the church),which brings me back to my latest dream about the body with no bones. Everything heretofore mentioned is needed by/for the skin(church) in order for it to take shape. The skin will adapt to the structure it is covering. Even though Ezekiel saw the body formed, he notes that there is no breath in them. As James says, the body without the spirit is dead, so was the case here in Ezekiels vision. It looked like a body but it had no life because the breath had not come into the body. Again he is told to prophecy to the 4 winds and command breath to come into the body and it is at this point that they stood on their feet and became an exceeding great army. The point here that I feel that the Lord is saying is that every part of the body is needed for it to function properly. The body(church) is to be a living organism, not organization, made up of billions of individual cells. Eph. 2:22 says that we are built together for a dwelling place for God by his Spirit. Lastly, Col2:19 says that it is He who puts us together in one peice, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.
Reblogged this on My Dreams and Visions and commented:
An excellent description of the body of Christ and how it is to function.
Excellent word: “The pursuit of unity among God’s people will not produce unity.” Very well said.