The Cross Is The Antidote For Offence

 

Offence is a common experience for most of us. Our response to offence is what makes the difference to how we will manage our lives. If we give in to offence then it will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Offence is the devil's strategy to upset people from achieving their destiny. Like failure, it will keep you from moving forward. We all are quilty  of offending others by word or deed. Offence works both ways. It affects the offender and the one offended. The offender feels guilty for causing the offence to another. The offended feels ashamed and put down. In both cases, offence has caused an insult to our soul. Our thoughts and feelings have been assaulted. We see the other person as one to avoid and demean and insult. What is the way out of this cycle of offence?

 

Jesus is a good example of one who suffered offence all His life. He came as the Saviour of mankind but suffered because of our sin. On the Cross, He took upon Himself the blame and the shame that we feel. While on earth, He did not retaliate because He knew who really was the offender. The devil uses people to offend because that is his job description. The devil was thrown out of Heaven and in response he was hell bent on causing offence through man as a way to pay God back. God took it upon Himself to save us from the offence. Jesus paid the price by going to the Cross and carrying our offences upon Himself. Now we are free from the hurt of offences as we embrace His salvation full and free.

 

Offence is causing so much damage in the body of Christ. The devil is targeting leaders since they are on the front line. How a leader copes with offences will determine how he will lead his flock. Many drop out of ministry because they have given in to the offences from people close to them. The devil's strategy is to divide and rule. He has done this well over the centuries. Now is the time to reverse this trend and give the devil a hard time. We must send the offences we experience to the Cross and leave them there. We must rise up and use the experience to turn our offence into the joy of suffering for Jesus’ sake. He said we would face suffering but also joy. Most of all, we will experience the power of His resurrection. So let go of any offences and let God take over and we will see revival come to our land.

Predestination Or Destination. You Still Have To Make A Choice.

 

The Apostle Paul says that we were predestined to belong to Father God before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4, 5). This can mean that some of us were destined through God's choice to be in heaven with Him. Yet Jesus said He is the only Way to the Father {John14:6}. Do these statements conflict with each other? The first statement appears to imply that we have no choice while the other implies we do have a choice. However if some are predestined to go to heaven but the choice is ours, then it makes sense that both are right. God wants none to perish and all to be saved but the choice is ours. Do we choose to acknowledge His Son as Saviour and Lord or not?. 

 

There are Christian leaders including the Pope that have said that there are more ways to God than only through Jesus. They say that since we were predestined that there is no need to evangelise. These sound like anti-Christ statements. How confusing is it for a leader to make such statements and deceive the elect? We need to discern what spirit is behind these statements, otherwise the devil will divide us by using deception. Jesus is clear when He states that He is the only Way to the Father (John 14:6). Any other way is no way to the Father. Other ways maybe to a god but not Father God.

 

During these days we need to discern the truth from the lies. There is so much fake news that people are lost or confused as to who to believe. This is the plan of the devil for he wants to keep people blind to the Truth. This is an opportune time for the good news of the Gospel to be proclaimed clearly and directly to the populace. People are looking for direction in a hopeless world. The direction is clear. Choose today whom you will serve. I and my household have decided to serve the Lord.

We Operate From Above. We Implement From Below.

 

We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus as born-again believers (Eph 2:6). This is our privilege.  Whether we recognise this or believe this is a different matter. There are many truths but truth does not become fact till we believe and receive that truth. Jesus came as the Truth but few believed in Him. In fact they crucified the Truth. Why did they do this? They did this because their own version of truth did not accord with His Truth. We are guilty of doing the same thing today when we reject the Truth. The truth is that we are seated in heavenly places in Christ but we behave as if we don't. Why this discrepancy?

 

The truth has been compromised by our earthly masters. Many have sort to understand spiritual truths through their own fallen intellects. This is more understandable for earthlings. In this process, we have lost the truth and exchanged it for lies. This is why we see so many divisions in the body of Christ. We need to come back to the original purpose and mission of the church. The church is on earth to rule and reign. We have instead given our authority over to the evil one who has infiltrated the church. The church now is asleep, but sleeping with the devil. How did we get here?

 

This has been the story from the beginning. Truth has always been challenged and the weak have given into the challenge and compromised the truth. It is easier to compromise than stand firm. We see this being acted out in society. The world is degenerating into the way it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah but the church sits and watches. How long will this go on for? It will go on for as long as the church does not wake up and take action. We need to stand on what God has said and die for it. Until we are prepared to do this, we risk going down to hell with the devil. His destiny is assured and he is determined to take as many as possible with him. It is time to arise and defeat the enemy in our territory through fasting and prayer and action. Pray that many will heed the call to action in these troubled times.

The Seed Is To Sow. The Fruit Is To Know

 

We are all familiar with seed time and harvest. There is a time to sow and a time to reap. What seed are we sowing? We will bear the fruit according to the seed we are sowing. This is a principle of the Kingdom of God. When we sow seeds of discontent then we will reap discontent. If we sow seeds of love then we will reap the fruit of love. We can apply this principle in all areas of our life. When we work, we can expect to get paid. When we pray we can expect to receive answers to our prayers. When we share we can expect to see brotherly love and joy as fruit.

 

Jesus came to restore our relationship with the Father. His main mission was to destroy the works of the devil. He did this by overcoming death through His death and resurrection. God was satisfied with the sacrifice of His Son. Now we can enjoy fellowship with the Father through Jesus. The Holy Spirit is our helper who was sent to keep us on the right path. Without Him we would struggle in our own efforts to reach God. Now He talks with us and walks with us and tells us we are His own. This is relationship.

 

Now we can bear fruit that is from our relationship with the Father. The Father reveals His love to us and we cherish His fellowship. Just as Jesus was one with His Father so also we are one with Him. Through Jesus, we are restored to the original design. We are a new creation. The old has passed away and the new has come. What a glorious salvation we enjoy in Him. This salvation is eternal, for the Father has promised us eternal life in His Son. Our fruit now is an outcome of our relationship with the Father, which is a love relationship, where we come to truly know Him. Love will beget love. We will be judged by our fruit. Let us walk in the light as He is in the light and we will have fellowship with one another and make His heart glad.

We Are One In The Spirit, We Are One In The Lord.

There is a song we used to sing which was very popular during the Charismatic Movement: “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and they will know we are Christians by our love.”  This is true and should be the way we are, but the fact is far from the truth. What we see is petty divisions that keep us divided rather than united. Why is this so? The devil majors in division and we are ignorant of his tactics. He divides and rules. It is high time the church sees this and unites under one Holy Spirit. There will be those who will continue to follow a different spirit. Just like the wheat and the tares, we should let them be. It is time for the true followers of Jesus Christ to unite and defeat the enemy of our souls.

 

The only way we can unite is to follow the Holy Spirit. He will unite us by giving us a language of the Spirit. In the Spirit we will be of one mind. When we are of one mind then all that matters is to please Him and glorify His Name, Jesus. Nothing else will matter. Like the first church we will lay down our lives for one another. We will be looking out for each other and serving one another. There won't be power struggles and all will acknowledge Jesus as Lord. Only the Holy Spirit can do this. I have experienced this in small groups. Jesus ministered to thousands but His small group of twelve turned the world upside down. The same can apply today. A united group can do wonders in spreading the good news and see the world turned right side up. At present, the world is on a downward trajectory to destruction.

 

Will we unite or let things take their course? I pray that we will unite, for there is no other way to see His Kingdom come. This is the opportune time to unite as we face chaos and destruction all over the world. The Corona virus was sent to destroy. We can now unite in Jesus as the antidote to the virus. Let us give the devil a headache. What he meant for destruction can be turned around for revival. Will you join me in uniting with Jesus as Lord and let His Holy Spirit unite us to overcome?

Reach Out To See The Manifestation Of Miracles

 

The gifts  and fruits of the Spirit are given to serve others. Food was multiplied by Jesus to feed the crowds. The supernatural manifests itself when we reach out to serve. This is the principle of the Kingdom of God. On earth, we have been programmed to hold on to what we have. Greed and lust for power keep us bound to the flesh and its desires. God's Kingdom turns everything upside down. The earthly person looks inward, but the Godly person looks outward. Therefore, the way to break through is to do the opposite of what you would naturally think and do. This is what leads to transformation.

 

Transformation is the work of the Spirit. God wants us to take a step of faith and trust Him when we obey Him. The flesh will rebel and force you to resist. The devil will sow thoughts of poverty and lack. We need to choose whom we will obey. This is the challenge we will face daily in our life. In the Spirit it is easy to do but in the flesh it will be a strain. Therefore, the way to transformation is to be filled by the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit. God has made it easy for us but our flesh desires to work and not rest. To rest is to trust. 

 

Trust is what faith is all about. It is a risk we have to take, but when we look back we realise that all we have is from Him. We may deceive ourselves but God is our Provider. The sooner we realise this, the easier it will be to give and bless others. Join me in shifting from a poverty mentality to an abundance mentality and be blessed. God says test me and see if I am faithful to do that which I have said. This is the way for the Kingdom of God to grow on earth as it is in Heaven. God blesses a cheerful giver.

I AM Lives In You

 

Jesus said He would come and live in us when we receive Him as our Lord and Saviour. How is this possible when He has ascended and lives at the right hand of the Father? God is spirit and can be present in more than one place. We cannot limit God by our human understanding. God operates in many dimensions. It is impossible for us with our finite minds to comprehend the awesome God we serve. He is the Creator of the Universe and we are His creation. How can the created being question the Creator? Jesus said He abides in us and we abide in Him (e.g., John 6:56). In fact, the Three-in-One God resides in us: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

 

We need to believe in our heart that Jesus is risen from the dead. Many question whether He really rose from the dead. The gospel is powerless if He did not rise from the dead. Jesus resurrected Lazarus after he was dead for four days. The same Jesus lives in us. He can raise us from the dead when we operate as if we are dead. There are parts of us that are dying, especially our physical bodies. Some battle with a loss of function due to a stroke or an accident. The I AM today can give life to these parts. If we believe He is alive then anything is possible. 

 

One word from the Lord can bring life. Jesus sent His word and healed them. The centurion came to Jesus and said his servant would be healed if He would speak the word of healing (Matt 8:8). The centurion was lauded for his faith. Today Jesus lives within us, so how much more can we expect Him to heal us. Believe that His presence within us can and will heal us. Let Him take over. Let go of areas where we have limited Him by our thinking. Now think how the great I AM in us can do anything to restore us to our original design.

Change From Operating In Cronos Time To Kairos Time

 

Time is a dimension that we are familiar with and our clocks remind us of that. Everything is ordered based on time. We set our clocks to wake us up at a certain time. Time controls us so that we don't get to work late or miss appointments. Some work places fine you if you are late for work. The time we operate in is called Cronos time. Time also has an end just as it has a beginning. We all will die one day when our time is up. However there is another time in which God operates.

 

God operates in Kairos time as He is beyond space and time. He is eternal, meaning He is outside time, since He has no beginning and no end. His time is always an eternal now. When we shift to His time then we operate in an eternal now. This shift means we can expect answers in His time and not ours. This will also change how and when we can expect answers to our prayers. Since God operates outside time, His time is now. This should raise our expectancy in prayer to expect the impossible now. 

 

Faith enables us to connect with God for He is our hope. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for ...” (Heb 11:1). This means that our faith is the substance that makes what we pray for tangible. When we pray for healing we can expect to be healed. When we ask for money we can expect money to come into our bank accounts. Faith is the evidence of things not seen in Kairos time. Expect your faith to deliver now the tangible answers you have been praying for. Do not limit yourself by Cronos time. God answers to faith as He is the one who asks us to trust Him by faith. Try it and see the difference to your prayers.

I Am A Spirit Man In An Earthly Suit.

 

Most of us are conscious of our earthly suit that we glamorise daily as we look in the mirror. We spend a lot of money and time shaping it up to look good. We are conscious of our weight and looks and plastic surgery aids in defining our looks. What we see sometimes is not the real person but a make up of many sorts. The real person is behind the covering of clothes and make up. The outward man deceives us from getting in touch with the real me. In the world the external impression is important. Yet we know that this will not last. One day we will all grow old and ugly. We try and delay this fact through many ways till tragedy strikes and we have to accept the fact we are old.

 

Some of us are aware of the spirit man within us. Our Creator created us all with a spirit, soul and body. We neglect the soul and spirit by spending too much time on the earthly suit. Some of us are psychologically minded and aware of a self beyond what we see. We are aware of our thoughts and emotions. We try and improve ourselves and train to be more human. This is good and many are becoming increasingly aware of our mental state. Mental illness is accepted now as a disorder like a physical disorder. Yet the stigma is still there because we are seen as weak if we share our struggle with our thoughts and emotions.

 

God is Spirit and He wants to commune with us. He does this through our spirit man. There is a whole world of the spirit that most of us reject because we do not see it. We want to sense our world because this is what makes sense and everything else is nonsense. Some of us have had our eyes opened to know that there is a spirit world and God is real. Jesus came to make us aware of His Father in Heaven so that we could also know Him. Now we realise that there is more to life than the earthly suit we live in. We are spirit beings on an earthly journey. God has come alive in us Christians and we live in the Spirit and walk by the Spirit. This is now the new reality. The old has passed away and the new has come. Come to Jesus and be saved and live in the new reality of life in the Spirit.

Who Is The Boss Of Your Life?

 

This is the question that will mark us for eternity. Jesus is Lord of all or not at all. There is no in-between position. In heaven, it is black or white. There is no grey position. In this world we live in, all is compromise. This is called a politically correct or socially acceptable position. We have to choose whose side we are on. There is no compromise in Jesus. His calling is clear. He came to be our Lord as well as our Saviour. He said, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). Is there any compromise in this call?

 

However, when we look at Christians around us, it is difficult to separate those who follow Jesus from those who are of the world. In ethics and behaviour, Christians tend to follow the world rather than the other way round. Who has compromised with whom? Let your yes be yes and your no be no. There is no compromise in this. We only need to compromise to accommodate something lesser than what is expected. God gave us the Ten Commandments as instructions for good behaviour. We have broken every one of them. Now we can see the results in society of this failure.

 

What is the solution? We know that we are in the flesh and that the flesh is the enemy of our spirit. The spirit desires to do what is good but the flesh resists. Jesus came to be our Saviour and release us from the control of our flesh. He gave His life as a sacrifice for our sin. Now He asks us to make Him Lord of our life. This is not a one time decision. It is a daily taking up our cross and following Him. Why do we see many who having started well have now fallen and rejected Him? The flesh had taken over and deceived them and they compromised. The devil and the flesh conspire to work against us in our walk in the Spirit. When we confess Jesus as Lord then He takes over and fights our battles.

 

Today, don't look back. He says we are a new creation in Him (2 Cor 5:17). We must believe His words and follow Him. This is the only way to be victorious and stay the course to the end. We need to assume a warrior mentality and fight the good fight to the end. The Church needs to rise up and fight the present system of compromise and be light and salt. The battle is on but we know the end from the beginning. We win if we stay the course. Jesus won the battle on the Cross for us. He went all the way even to the point of saying to His Father, “not my will but Thine be done”. We too must surrender our will and let Him be Lord.

Jesus Will Change Your Disorder Into Order.

Jesus came with the primary purpose to destroy the works of the devil. The main mission of the devil is to steal, kill and destroy. He does this through all the negativity we see in society today. He works through our negativity, namely negative thoughts and emotions, in order to steal, kill and destroy. He plants the seed of disorder in us when we give into temptation through pride, greed and envy. We give him a right to enter us and use us for his nefarious activities. What we see in society is a lot of good but also a lot of disorder and disease. God does not send disease and disorder. However the god of this world, Satan, does. This is why Jesus had to die to redeem mankind from the curse of the law. 

To redeem is to set free. Jesus’ death provided the just sacrifice for the sin of man. Sin causes a lot of disorder and disease. The root of all sickness and disease is sin whether it be generational sin or personal sin. The consequences of sin all lead to death. Jesus came to reverse this curse of death and give us eternal life, which begins now and not after we die. This sounds a simple solution to the sin problem. Yet just as sin entered through a simple act of eating the forbidden fruit so also the crucifixion of Jesus was God's solution to redeem mankind through one act.

What will we do? Reject Him or receive Him and His salvation free of charge? Many still reject Him and choose to labour under the law. The devil deludes us into thinking that we can be redeemed through good works. The Bible says that our good works are like filthy rags to God. We can choose today to be free and have our disorders reversed through the blood of Jesus. I chose Jesus and now I enjoy His salvation and believe He is reversing my disorders  and setting me free.