If the Lord were to pull back the hedge and open our eyes to our failures and brokenness, there would be no one who could stand. The Lord knew that, so He came up with a plan to make sure that I could stand.
THE CROSS!!
TC
Unless you just receive and believe the completeness of Grace, you will always be exhausted fighting the accuser of your soul. The enemy will forever be trying to move you eyes off Grace and onto yourself. He’s an accuser. He will always be calling you out and pointing to every molecule of brokenness in your flesh. We will never measure up, so unless you receive and believe the free and complete work of Grace won for us on the cross, you will live worn out from the battle!! Jesus said , “take my yoke upon You.” His yoke is freedom!!
TC
At the Cross, Jesus took on Himself all the guilt and all the condemnation against us, and He leveled the playing field for all of us. Now, we all stand in His righteousness alone! He tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:16 that we are to see each other as a new creation and to no longer recognize each other by the fallen flesh. Pointing out our fleshly failures is just what the accuser of the brethren does against us. Unfortunately, he not only accuses us, he accuses others through our thoughts and words many times. If all you can see is your own failures or someone else’s failures, you’re viewing through the eyes of the flesh and not the Cross. If all you can do to feel better about yourself is continually confess your failures or continually beat yourself up, you’re not tapping into His ways. If you’re telling God what a loser you are and how you can’t believe you did that thing again, and then vow that you’ll never do it again, you’re not hearing the heart of God tell you that He is your righteouness and you are righteous before Him. Instead, you’re hearing the voice of the accuser! If all you can see in someone else is their failures and their weaknesses, it’s not from His heart. If you’re pointing out everything others do wrong, and you’re revealing your hurt feelings and disappointments, it’s not from the mind of Jesus. If you can’t believe they did that thing, you’re not hearing the voice of God over them. He doesn’t recognize them by their flesh, but by their identity as new creations. I really believe this unconditional love is going to be recognized as “that foreign kind of love”. If the world is looking for the Love of Jesus, they can only find it by our surrender to Him loving others through us with the same love He has for us!!!
Tetelestai is what Christ said on the cross. It means it is finished. He accomplished salvation for the world!! All who would come to Him are forever in union with Him. Now, it’s how well do I want to know Him!!!!
TC
We were created for love. Our greatest desire, which goes to the inmost recesses of our inmost being, is to be loved and to love. God is love!! Everything our soul longs for is found in Him!! In Him are all our fountains!! In Him, there is joy unspeakable and peace that surpasses understanding. In Him, there is acceptance and perfect forgiveness. The great lover of our souls is all that we need. When we lock eyes with Him, we find everything we have ever wanted!!!
TC
Jesus’s love for us is all encompassing, full of mercy, faithfulness, and loving kindness. He doesn’t let anything separate us from His love. It’s no wonder we love Him so much!
The two greatest commandments are to love the Lord your God and – the second is like unto it – love your neighbor as yourself. Scripture says that they will know us by our love. I believe the love of which He speaks is us walking in the revelation of God’s great boundless love for us. When you have revelation of His love, you will love yourself, and you will love others as you love yourself. It will be a love that’s patient, kind, putting others above yourself, not giving up on people, not walking away when someone blows it; always assuming the best in others, always faithful, and a forgiveness that does not take into account a wrong done. That’s how He loves us!!
I can promise you if you’re hearing voices of hurt feelings and accusations against your brother/sister, you are not hearing the Lord! If you’re growing weary of doing good and the voice you’re hearing is creating a rift between you and your brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s the enemy’s voice!!! Christ forever stands in our defense, so accusation can’t be His voice. He really has called us to treat others as we would want to be treated. I don’t know anyone who wants God to get mad at them, snap at them, say ugly things, or desert them.
The key here is to seek the Lord until you know His love for you. Go beyond what you have heard about Him, and seek Him until you know Him!!! When you truly see Him for who He is as love, it will bring radical transformation in how you love yourself and others!! It is really true that the only thing that will go with us into heaven is love!!
TC
I’m in union with the risen Christ Jesus. That means I’m in union with all that He is. I’m not just in union with His ability to not sin. I’m in union with His desire to not want to sin. This is such good news to me!!!! I don’t have to be in bondage to my emotions! I don’t have to live as an emotional basket case full of fear, anxiety, anger, frustration, lust, competition, rejection, self- rejection, or any other fallen diseased emotion. God didn’t just make it to where I can choose to not give into any of this, He also made a way for my emotions to be renewed and freed from the feelings of this sickness.
He tells all who are weary and heavy laden to come to Him. Don’t we see. This is the heavy burden, which are the effects of all emotional brokenness that affect our actions and responses in life. Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and ye shall have rest for your souls.” It’s His desire for all of our emotions to come into the experience of abundant life and fullness of joy!! In that place you find rest. That place is His presence!! He Said, “Come to me.” Come to His presence. The reason the enemy works so hard to keep us in bondage to guilt, shame, and feeling unworthy is to keep us from Him!!
TC
When Jesus went to the cross, He took me with Him. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him. When He rose again, I rose with Him. I am a new creation. I am now in Christ. All that He is now lives in me. All that He has is now mine. Where He sits, I sit! This is settled once and for all!!!
Now, it’s the journey of discovering what it means to be in Christ and to be in complete union with Him. As you encounter Him, you change because to encounter Him is to encounter grace. And grace is life changing!! You begin to walk out who you really are!! Make no mistake about it for anyone who encounters the presence of Christ (pure Grace) will never be the same!! Faith does not make this true. This truth gives life to your faith. The Christian life begins and ends with Jesus!!
The good news is so much better than we could have ever dreamed. One of the things that trips us up in our pursuit of God is our emotions. Our emotions are diseased and flawed because of the consequences of man’s fall. We all view life through the grid of our emotions, which causes us to trip up. Most people live their lives with a feeling of unworthiness and a sense that God is offended with them. Once and for all, we must settle the fact that God is not offended with us!! He settled that on the cross. He cancelled out our debts and set us free from the law of sin and death. He liberated us from the voice of condemnation and placed us in Himself. As a gift, He gave us His righteousness and seated us with Himself in the heavens surrounded by the glory of God. He threw the gate wide open and rolled out the welcome mat.
Now that we know that we are loved and spotless before Him, we can run to His throne for help with our crazy, hurt, and sick emotions. We can go boldly to Him with our lust, greed, anger, bitterness, fear or whatever else with which we struggle, and say, “Dad, we need help.” In that place, He will surround us with His glory – His love and His grace – and will transform our souls – our mind, will, and emotions.
He came to give us abundant life!! He came to give us joy unspeakable and full of Glory!!
I just think it’s amazing how we can so easily accept the fact that all humanity died when Adam sinned. We are born into sin because of one man’s sin. But even though scripture is very clear, we have a hard time believing in the finished work of Christ!! We died in Him. We were resurrected in Him. We were made new creations in Him. There is no sin or failure that can undo what the mighty power of God did on our behalf.
He didn’t just forgive us and give us a ticket to heaven, rather He changed our very nature and made us new creations in Christ. Yes there is still a sin principle in my flesh, but I am no longer under its death curse!! We are alive in Christ and there is nothing that can undo that!! Just as we all died through the sin of one, we also are made alive in the death, burial and resurrection of the one Jesus Christ!!!
The enemy is always trying to move us off that place of confidence before the Lord. He does it by accusing us! He works day and night throwing accusations at us trying to convince us that our identity is wrapped up in our failures and that we are not worthy to come before the Lord. In 20 years of ministry and 35 years of walking with the Lord, I can truly say that the number one thing that keeps us from going boldly before the throne is condemnation, which is expressed through guilt and shame. You see, it’s not our sins we commit, rather it’s the way we feel about ourselves after we blow it. The rejection we feel is the very essence of condemnation and guilt. Sometimes we just walk around feeling those emotions and don’t even know what we did. We must recognize that it’s the voice of the enemy throwing at us lie after lie about our identity! He is causing us to see ourselves through the grid of our failures, and not through our true identity, which is the righteousness of Christ.
We all love this scripture: Romans 8:1-2 ‘There is therefore (consequently) now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of Spirit of life in Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death. Therefore, He uses the truth of the word because no condemnation is a result of what Jesus did for us at the cross!! You can boldly come to Jesus with no fear of rejection-ever! You can come to Him for help. You can be honest with Him!! He will never condemn you.
It’s so cool He chose this word Condemnation which literally means the expression of disapproval. He doesn’t even LOOK at us with disapproval.-ever! When we look at Him, we are met by a tender compassionate gaze full of mercy and acceptance. It’s in that gaze that we are transformed. The woman at the well did not clean herself up before drinking from the living water. Actually, it was quite the opposite. In His heart to embrace her right where she lived, she was transformed forever. She willingly walked away from all her past life destroying the power of sin!! The enemy knows if we ever catch the awesome revelation of how loved and accepted we are, we will be a mighty force spreading revival all across this earth!!