How God fulfills His promise to Abraham

If you’re the slightest bit confused about how the New Covenant of grace in Christ is related to the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenants, I highly recommend a short book by Chad Mansbridge titled, He Qualifies You! It’s a book you can read in one sitting and it succinctly clears up any covenant confusion you might have.  In the book, Mansbridge makes the clear distinction between the covenant that God made with Abraham, which was based on pedigree, and the covenant He made with Moses, which was based on performance. Then he shows how the New Covenant is based on Jesus’ pedigree and performance. Once you understand these distinctions, you’ll never be tempted to be under legalistic bondage again.

Leaving legalism for Christ

One thing I’ve found in over 40 years with Jesus is that legalistic people never think they are legalistic. I know I didn’t, and still don’t, even though I still detect some residual legalism in my own life from time to time. But when you understand the underlying premise of legalism, you’ll begin to see where it pops up in your own life.

The power of grace

When we try to follow the Law and Christ, we’ve drifted away from the gospel, making it powerless. This is clearly Paul’s message in Galatians. In fact, he goes so far as to say they are cursed for doing so (see Gal.1:6-9).  This is confusing for many devoted believers because they often confuse “grace-only” with license to sin, but this is no more true than that being legalistic gives you license to sin.

The Fellowship of God

You and I have been invited into the Great Fellowship of God! It’s the same fellowship of love the Father and the Son have enjoyed from before the foundation of the cosmos (John 17:24-26).  Today is Pentecost, which is when God poured out His Spirit on all flesh and began to make His home in us (Acts 2:1-21). Pentecost is also the same day that God overturned the curse of the Law. When the Law was given, 3,000 people perished for committing idolatry (Exod.32; 32:28); when the Holy Spirit was given, 3,000 people were saved (Acts 2:41). So, it’s appropriate today that I talk about what we’ve been invited into in Christ.

The (real) antidote to deception

I’ve said many times now, one of the reasons we need to train our souls for rest is because if we don’t, we end up running on the hamster wheel of trying to attain things we’ve already been given as a free gift. We empower the lies we still believe that keep us from knowing who we really are. We end up only imitating the life of Christ instead of actually living from it.

Abiding in Love (activation)

As we saw last time, learning how to remain in God’s love is the same thing as training our soul to live from heaven to earth. His perfecting love casts out all fear, makes us fruitful, and undefeatable!  We also asked ourselves, if these things are true (and they are!), then why don’t we avail ourselves to this glorious adventure in God? I will look at this question and offer a practical activation.

Training your soul to live from heaven to earth

I asked the question last time, do we know who we are in Christ? Do we see ourselves as Jesus in this world? (1 John 4:17) We looked at some hindrances to believing this. While our spirit is perfect in heaven in Christ, our soul is out of sync with this reality. Of course, the next question is, how do we bring our souls into sync with our true heavenly selves?

Tell me, who are YOU!

All of heaven knows who you are, and all of hell also knows who you are. The only question they both have is this: Do you know who you are? (Think Who song, “Who are you, who, who, are you…tell me who are you!”)  Sadly, many beloved Christians walk through their life mostly ignorant of their true identity, living like orphans instead of beloved sons and daughters of their Father in heaven, acting as if they didn’t die with Christ and get raised as Him.

Knowing His works and knowing His ways

What’s most significant to me about the current move of God is that He’s transitioning us from knowing His works to knowing His ways. I’ve talked a lot in the past about how we’re leaving the transactional gospel for a relational one. And when we do make this transition, everything changes—our prayers, our worship, and our lives. We longer treat God like an ATM machine, or even see ourselves by what we do for God, but by what He’s doing in and through us as we walk with Him. In the three realms (refer to post “Introduction to the three realms” for explanation), both the lower two realms are focused on the works of God. In the highest, heavenly realm, the focus is on knowing His ways.

The source code of heaven is Love

When we pull back the veil, we find that everything in heaven operates, at its most fundamental level, on God’s other-centered, self-giving love. This is important because living from heaven allows backward-compatibility, like the latest software upgrade. What I mean is, anyone who learns to train their soul to walk in this heavenly reality can also operate in any lower realm with grace and patience and love.