BAPTIZO

  • February 10, 2022
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BAPTIZO

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Category : Gospel , Words of Wisdom - Biblical Truth

Baptism is so crucial in our walk with Christ, yet its significance is widely misunderstood in the Church.  Many see it simply as an expression of our commitment to Christ, or just the next step in the religious order of things.  Baptism is so much deeper than that.  It is our obedient act in the physical, which is the proper response to what Jesus did in the spiritual.  We physically experience what Jesus accomplished spiritually – there is no separation between the two.  Jesus is the transformer, but if we have agreed to give our lives to Him, it requires a response from us.  He works in cooperation with us – not by Himself, apart from our agreement.  We are saved by grace through faith, and faith without works is dead, so simply believing in Jesus is not enough… even demons believe in Jesus!  Our belief requires an act of faith, otherwise it is dead and ineffectual in this physical realm that we live in.

Baptism may not be necessary for the salvation of our souls, but it has everything to do with the sanctification of our flesh.  When we are born again by the Spirit, He regenerates our souls and we are saved into eternal relationship with Him.  Even this requires a physical act of faith – we must confess it with our mouths(Rom. 10:9).  When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, this too requires a physical act of faith by asking for it.  The typical physical response to His baptism then is the manifestation of an unknown tongue – our prayer language.  Even if that doesn’t manifest right away, we will manifest a boldness to proclaim the gospel to others.  Baptism is our physical act of faith for the salvation of our flesh – it’s like our flesh is born again in the water.  We are being sanctified in our flesh, and the beginning of that process is water baptism, in which we identify with Christ crucifying our flesh on the cross, burying it in the grave and we receive His grace to make that act of faith a reality in the water.  We die to our flesh in the water and Jesus delivers us from it.  It is both a water grave and a water womb.  The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.  After Paul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was taken in by a disciple named Ananias.  Ananias laid hands on Paul for the recovery of his sight, and then said to him “And now why are you waiting?  Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord” – Acts 22:16.  This was not for a public display of Paul’s commitment to Christ.  This was to bring Paul’s flesh into alignment with the will of Christ.

Jesus too was water baptized, and He was baptized in the Holy Spirit on the same occasion.  This example and model was followed very closely by the early Church.  Salvation, water baptism and the baptism in the Holy Spirit were all part of the same package and done as closely as possible to each other.  When Jesus was baptized, He told John “for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” – Matthew 3:15.  Jesus was righteous and had no need of John’s baptism unto repentance, because He was born right the first time – in right standing with His Father and with the Holy Spirit dwelling in Him.  He was fulfilling the righteousness of the Old Covenant pattern and revealing what He would fulfill to initiate the New Covenant.  The Holy Spirit came upon Him and remained, unlike when the Holy Spirit would come upon some in the Old Testament to anoint them temporarily for a purpose.  The Holy Spirit remained on Jesus because He was the righteous temple of God.  Jesus instructed us as His disciples to baptize other disciples in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit(Mat. 28:19).  This is also a spiritual baptism…  In the Greek, the word ‘baptism’ is baptizo and means to immerse.  The word ‘name’ is onoma and means a person’s authority and character.  So we are to immerse disciples into the authority and character of our Triune God.  Notice that Jesus didn’t say to baptize them in the name of Yahweh and Yeshua and Holy Spirit…  The early Church baptized disciples into Christ, and that is what they said when they immersed.  So when they were baptizing disciples into Christ, they were immersing them into the authority and character of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The act of baptism began with the brazen laver that was between the brazen altar and the Tabernacle of Moses.  After sacrificing animals for atonement, and prior to entering the holy place, the priests were required to cleanse themselves, lest they die.  They would cleanse themselves in the brazen laver.  Interestingly, the laver was made with mirrors that the women had brought from their captivity in Egypt.  When the priest looked into the laver, he would see himself unclean and then washed by the water in the laver.  He would then no longer see a captive, but one who was cleansed and made free.  This is like us coming to our Lord unclean, but then washing ourselves in the water of the Word.  2 Corinthians 3:18 says But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.  We are no longer captives to Egypt(our unclean enemy and the flesh), but we have been washed clean and granted access into the holy place, even the Holy of holies!

Later in history, Jews began to use the Mikveh.  This is a pool used for ceremonial cleansing, and we can also see this in Jesus’ baptism.  The mikveh can be used for one to ceremonially cleanse before entering ministry, which is exactly what Jesus did.  A side note to that is that the Holy Spirit then came upon Him, and we don’t want to try to accomplish any type of ministry that the Holy Spirit is not a part of!  Modern baptism in the Church typically follows something similar to John’s baptism, but we are seeing God use baptism in many ways today, because as I mentioned earlier, it has everything to do with the sanctification of the flesh.  God has led the North Georgia Revival and others to use baptism as a contact point for Him to meet people in the water and minister whatever it is that He wants to minister to them – whether it be a baptism into Christ, a mikveh type of baptism, baptism for physical, mental and emotional or relational healing, deliverance or whatever the Lord has for them.  His Fire comes upon the water, and His Spirit is present, and it’s absolutely beautiful!  I believe that God is once again trying to show how important water baptism is to Him.  He is not simply trying to display His uniqueness in the various ways that revival shows up in the Church.  Throughout Church history, God has brought various revelations to His body to reveal another aspect of who He is to the body of Christ.  Unfortunately, it’s usually not received by all and our enemy tries to steal it away, and so we end up with many different denominations who have focuses on very specific aspects of God but miss the full revelation of who He is.  We can learn something about God from each and every denomination, which is why God wants to break down all denominational walls and unify His body.  He wants us to come together in the perfect bond of unity, which is Love(Col. 3:14).  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another – John 13:35.

Baptism is a beautiful thing.  Not only that, Jesus commanded it.  He said that if we love Him, we will keep His commandments(John 14:15), which simply put is to Love.  If we don’t obey Him, then we don’t truly love Him, and He is not our Lord.  The brazen laver and the mikveh were types and shadows of what Jesus would bring through the New Covenant.  He has washed us clean and made us new, and He gave us an example to follow in water baptism.  I pray that you experience the joy of your salvation – not just the salvation of your soul, but the joy of obeying Jesus and experiencing the sanctification of your flesh in a water grave and a water womb.  Salvation includes healing, deliverance, protection, wholeness, safety and soundness of mind.  I pray that you encounter His Spirit and experience His Fire like never before!  As my Pastor would say “DIE WELL”.

 

  • May 1, 2019
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Glory’s Hope!

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Category : Fun Things To Share , News

  • January 5, 2018
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Sanctification

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Category : Gospel , Uncategorized , Words of Wisdom - Biblical Truth

Our most innocent moment in life is when we are born.  At our birth, all that we are acquainted with is the One who breathed life into us and intimacy with our Mother – we’ve yet to be tainted by anything that the world may send our way…  Since the time of Adam and Eve, we are born into a fallen state, which is why Jesus said that we must be born again.  This is very apparent when we observe our children, as wonderful as they can be.  Jesus is the last Adam who has redeemed us from our fallen state if we choose to be born again by His Spirit.  I might write more about this another time, but all of creation is waiting for us to represent our Father and live the redeemed life, because Jesus has redeemed the entire world.  However, He gave the dominion back to us that we had relinquished to Satan in the garden, and He has left it up to us to believe Him, follow Him, represent Him and resurrect all that has fallen, by the power of His Spirit living in us.

Sanctification is what I am writing about today, and the revelation of the fact that it should be a joy to be sanctified.  We get to become like Jesus – not when we die, but in this life!  If we can’t be free from sin until we die, then death has become our savior instead of Jesus!  Jesus laid down His divinity and did all that He did as the son of man relying upon the same Holy Spirit whom He has sent to live in us.  He paid the ultimate price for us to never utter the words “that was Jesus, not me”, or “well, I’m not Jesus”.  Jesus’ life was an example to us of what our lives can look like if we submit to our Father and His will and leading.  This is how we resist the devil – we submit to our Father.  It’s a one-step program!  James 4:7 says “Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you”.  We don’t resist the devil in our own strength.  When we are submitted to God, the devil is resisted automatically, and we don’t even need to give him any attention.  In fact, Satan loves attention, and he is actually enlivened the more we give him attention and focus on him.  Father desires all of our affection and attention, and if He is for us it doesn’t matter who is against us!  I say all this because it pertains to our sanctification process.  We must be completely submitted and sold-out to God.

If we rest in the Lord and do all that we do from rest in Him, sanctification can be a joy.  It’s God doing the sanctifying, so all we need to do is spend time with Him and rest in Him.  Anything else is striving from our own strength.  If we are in Him, then we will do from our being, rather than be from our doing.  If you’re like me, you may get frustrated and impatient with the sanctification process.  We all want to be like Jesus right now!  I realize though that this frustration can come from a place of striving.  I don’t know why some people seem to be sanctified more quickly than others, but God wants to use every step in our sanctification to bring Him glory and reveal His goodness to others.  That’s a joyful thing!  As we testify to others about how God has transformed us, He uses it to draw them to Him.

God is not at all surprised by our mistakes, and if we acknowledge them, they exist no more.  It’s only when we hang on to them and allow guilt, shame and condemnation from the enemy to rule our minds that we distance ourselves from our Father.  This is why we are to be renewed in the spirit of our minds daily.  He is right there desiring for us to be fully convinced that we are forgiven, righteous and empowered by His grace to have victory over our failures and to be more and more sanctified as we keep our eyes fixed on Him.  Beating ourselves up over our failures becomes very self-focused and counter-productive to what Father desires to do in our hearts.  If He doesn’t see us that way, then neither should we.  In fact, it’s when we spend time with Him that we begin to see ourselves the way He does and He is able to transform our hearts into hearts of love and sanctify us.  We then have Father’s love in our hearts and are able to walk like Jesus and truly love those in the world around us.  Our sanctified hearts allow us to feel the same love for people that our Father does.  So I hope that we can all learn together how to simply enjoy the sanctification process and truly be joyful in every victory, as well as every learning experience(failure) – trusting and knowing that He is transforming us into His image and likeness of love.

  • October 1, 2017
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The VEIL

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Category : Gospel , Uncategorized , Words of Wisdom - Biblical Truth

When Jesus died, the veil in the temple was completely torn in two.  Some say that this veil was three feet thick!  The tearing of this physical veil represents the tearing of the spiritual veil between heaven and earth.  Jesus housed the Holy Spirit in His physical body – for all the fullness of the Godhead dwelled bodily in Christ Jesus, and you too have been brought to fullness in Him who is the Head over all power and authority – Colossians 2:9-10.  When His body was torn open, it was the tearing of the physical veil to release the Holy Spirit.  The water coming from His pierced side reveals this. There is no longer a separation between God and man!  Thank you Jesus!  Every person can be reconciled to the Father and have a relationship with Him like Jesus did.  The joy set before Jesus was realized, and He is receiving payment for the price He paid… a beautiful bride and body to dwell in and represent Him on the earth from that day forward.  It is available to all who will take up their cross, die to themselves and follow Jesus – Scripture reveals that this is what believing on the Lord Jesus Christ means.  Follow Him where?  Into a relationship with Father God through the indwelling of their Spirit in us!

Every covenant is sealed by blood, and God made a new covenant with man by the blood of Jesus Christ.  His precious blood was shed on Calvary, and the veil was torn between heaven and earth – the physical realm was now able to break into the spiritual realm.  There was also blood shed, a release of water and a veil torn at the birth of Jesus.  Mary was a virgin so the physical veil in her body(hymen) hadn’t been broken by a man from the outside.  Holy Spirit put the seed of God inside Mary so when Jesus was born, the Spirit of God tore Mary’s veil from the inside and broke into the physical realm through the birth of Jesus.  Now for the first time in the history of mankind, a man housed the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Of course when John later baptized Jesus, the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus and remained – this was His baptism in the Holy Spirit, which empowered Him to then go about and perform signs, wonders and miracles after defeating Satan’s temptations in the desert.  He did all that He did as a man fully dependent upon Holy Spirit, because Philippians 2:6-8 reveals that He willingly laid down His divinity while here on earth.

Notice that God came into the physical realm first and then made it possible for us to go into the spiritual realm.  Also note that man plants seeds in many ways, but always from the outside-in…  God plants seeds on the inside of us so that they will grow from the inside-out, transforming us into a beautiful, mature tree like Jesus.  Metaphorically, I believe Jesus was the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, and when he grew up as a man, the seed of God in Him was growing Him into a beautiful, fully mature fruit-bearing tree that all can eat of and taste and see the goodness of God.  When we partake of the fruit of Jesus, seeds of His light and truth are implanted in us to grow and mature into the same kind of tree so that others can taste and see God’s goodness through partaking of the Jesus we have to offer them through our humble, self-sacrificial lives.

Jesus told us to pray to our holy, heavenly Father “Your kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.  He wouldn’t have said this if it wasn’t possible.  We simply need to agree with our Father for His revealed will and it will happen.  The veil has been torn, and we can now go boldly before the throne of Grace.  There is no longer a separation between heaven and earth!  Though in earthly bodies, we are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus(Ephesians 2) – we have been given authority over the physical realm through Christ Jesus living in us by His Holy Spirit.  Be blessed today, and let’s live in the reality of heaven on earth by our Lord Jesus Christ who tore the veil forever!

  • August 24, 2017
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The WORD became flesh!

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Category : Gospel , Uncategorized , Words of Wisdom - Biblical Truth

The Word became flesh so that flesh could become the Word!  Jesus is the Word of God because He lived His life completely led by His Father through the Holy Spirit.  He walked perfectly as a man because He only did what His Father led Him to do – He was sustained and compelled by revelation from His Father.  Jesus said that He could only do what He saw His Father doing – John 5:19.

When we take communion, we eat of the body of Christ because His perfect body makes ours holy and whole – it represents our flesh becoming like His.  When Jesus hung on the cross, He was marred beyond recognition, worse than anyone before.  He was unrecognizable as a man because He had taken all the ugliness and false identity off of us and onto Himself – He took the ugliness of all the lies we had believed and exchanged them for His Truth, revealing our true identity as children of God created in His image and likeness.  This is how our flesh becomes the Word… Jesus sent His Spirit to live in those who believe Him and choose to follow His commands.  The Spirit then gives us His grace to empower us to walk in our new identity and be transformed into His image and likeness and become partakers of the divine nature with Christ – 2 Peter 1:4.  So when we drink the wine in communion we are remembering that the blood of Jesus has made us clean and a holy vessel able to house God Himself – we are partaking of the DNA of Jesus because we are now part of the family of God.  When we eat the bread, we are partaking of the Bread of Life and subjecting our flesh to the Word of God living in us by His Spirit.

In Matthew 16, Peter confesses to Jesus that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.  Jesus then calls Him blessed for getting this revelation from His Father and goes on to say that on this rock He would build His church.  Jesus is obviously the Rock, as He is the Cornerstone of the foundation of the church, but I believe the rock He is referring to here is the rock of revelation from our Father, which is inseparable from Jesus anyway since He is the Word(revelation of God) made flesh.  In Isaiah 55 God said that His Word will not return to Him void.  In other words, when it hits the mark in our surrendered hearts, it becomes a seed that will grow into a tree and bear much fruit.  Therefore, it will not return to God void or empty.

God’s revelation to us has always been the foundation of His church – it was through the prophets and the giving of the law; it was through Jesus, and it is still today through His Spirit leading and guiding us into all truth!

 

  • July 26, 2017
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The Kingdom!

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Category : Gospel , Words of Wisdom - Biblical Truth

Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you – Luke 17:21. He made it possible for every person to be a habitation for the Spirit of God! When Jesus was questioned by Pontius Pilate concerning whether or not it was true that He had claimed to be a king, as the Jews had accused Him of, He told Pilate that what he had spoken was right, but that His kingdom was not of this world – John 18.  In fact, it is not a kingdom of the physical world we see around us – it is a kingdom of the unseen spiritual world around us and in us. He longs to be the King of every person’s heart! He desires for us to walk in His kingdom by faith, rather than by sight – 2 Cor. 5:7.  When we read the book of Hebrews, we see that faith is actually obedience to the Holy Spirit. In other words, we are sheep who know our Shepherd King’s voice and follow Him, and a strangers voice we will not follow – John 10:27. It’s that still, small voice of His Spirit in us leading and guiding us into the best that He has for us and those whom He wants us to influence for His kingdom.

The word kingdom means the king’s domain…  Jesus’ domain is in the Spirit.  He also came to restore our dominion over the physical realm we live in.  Luke 19:10 says that “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  The reason He refers to Himself here as the Son of Man, rather than the Son of God is because He is dealing with things that relate to His human nature and the physical realm.  That which was lost was our identity as children of God and our dominion over the earth.  In the garden of Eden, which means “the place of His presence” Adam and Eve relinquished our dominion over to Satan and gave up the very image and nature that we were created in, taking on the sin nature of Satan and therefore being banished from intimate and eternal relationship with God in the place of His presence.  Jesus has restored everything to those who choose to follow Him!  As a man dependent upon the Holy Spirit(He willingly gave up His divine rights) He defeated Satan and won back our identity as children of God and our dominion over the physical realm we live in.  So because we agree with Jesus’ dominion over us and surrender our hearts to Him, we have dominion over our flesh and the physical world around us.  Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God – Romans 8:14.  God gave one Son to redeem many sons – Galatians 4.  This is what the kingdom of God is all about, and Jesus has commissioned us to advance His kingdom into all the earth, reconciling everyone to their Father so that we would all come to the understanding that we are hidden in Christ Jesus our King, whom God has seated us with in heavenly places(Ephesians 2:6) and made His enemies a footstool under His feet.

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