“The psychologist says to the
psychiatrist, ‘Oh, you have this dependant relationship,’ and he responds,
‘Yeah, but so do you.’
“But watch this dependency: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’
(Gal. 2:20)
“This life that we call the ‘Christian life’ (‘Christ who is our
life’) is a life of dependency. It’s the only life of dependency that really makes
any sense and it’s the true cling of dependency. Everything else is just trying
to counterfeit for the true, for the real.”
*****
In our makeup, in the way God made
us, is a part of us that’s designed to know Him, and when that part doesn’t
function, there’s an empty place.
God put in us a knowledge of
Him; a place for Him. Romans 1:20
says, “For the invisible things of him from the creation of
the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even
his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”
“You’ve got the information and
when you really BELIEVE it, it becomes the energy and the life and the
transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you,” explains Jordan.
“God says, ‘Get yourself out of the
way and I WILL love them through you, but it isn’t your love that’s the issue.
It’s MY love and, by the way, it’s my love for you.’
“When you get loved that way, and
you realize how you love that way, you begin to love back. And you begin to
think like He thinks.
“You begin to love the things He
loves, not because you have to; He just begins to love them through you and you
begin to think about them the way He thinks about them and you know what,
that’s what love is.
“All you are is the fruit-bearer
and He’s the fruit-producer. It’s an interesting thing about fruit. Fruit is
seasonal. It’s not always on the tree. But it’s constant. It comes back every
season.
*****
“In John 4, Jesus Christ informs
the woman at the well that it isn’t about religion and outward stuff. He says, ‘God
is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.’
“When the Bible says you’re going
to worship God and the essence of God, the idea is He’s a spirit. You’re not
going to know Him in the physical realm. So a fool, somebody who thinks that
all there is the physical, material world to relate to, says, ‘There is no God!’
“Because God is a spirit, in order
to be qualified to work with Him you have to connect with Him at that level. What
the New Covenant does is it brings us the spiritual qualification; the
spiritual status whereby we can work with God, who is a spirit. When you work
with Him, that’s where it ALL has to start.
“Paul says in Ephesians 3:16: ‘That
he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened
with might by his Spirit in the inner man.’
“That word ‘might’ Paul uses there
is the same word as the verse that says, ‘Through mighty signs and
wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round
about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.’
“You see, the powerful working of
the power of God in your life . . . Paul tells the Thessalonians to do the work
of faith with power, but that’s a spiritual power in your inner man. It’s not
moving cold fronts and snow storms kind of stuff. And it’s not coming in and
zapping you and making your hair stand up on end.
"There’s this inner
working of the power of God, but all of that is according to a plan
called ‘wisdom,’ and God’s essence works together with all that.
*****
“One of the things ‘right division’
does is it takes you out of all that superstitious nonsense business and helps
you to appreciate the wisdom of God. It isn’t about power.
“You’ve got these ‘word of faith’
preachers where it’s all about POWER—you make God move in your behalf and it
gets so confusing: ‘I’m suffering but I’m resisting. I’m claiming God’s healing
and, because I am, I’m resisting, but I’m still sick.’
“You know, it’s, ‘Resist the devil
and he’ll flee from you, but he’s still whacking me!' The preacher says, ‘Well,
you just keep resisting and that’s godly suffering.’ I’m thinking, ‘Godly
suffering! That’s a fool’s errand, is what that is! There’s nothing God-like
about that!’
“You know how many times in the
Bible when somebody would tell a demon to flee? If somebody says, ‘In the name
of Jesus Christ’ for a demon to flee, what would the demon do?
“He’s got no power against the
authority of the Lord Jesus Christ! I know, somebody says, ‘Well, over there in
Mark 5 he didn’t go right away.’ Yeah, but you got no idea in the world
anything about Mark 5, so don’t start telling me about that stuff.
“That demon didn’t want to leave
the land; he didn’t care anything about leaving the guy. He went in the pigs.
He might have thought that was a step up, I don’t know.
“There’s stuff going on in the Four
Gospels that people don’t have any idea about and yet they all talk about
‘spiritual power.’ What they’re all talking about is just superstitious
nonsense.
*****
“When you understand the essence of
God, then you understand Jesus Christ is God the Son, the second person of the
godhead, who took upon Him the essence of man--spirit, soul and body-- and
holds each together in one person.
"That’s our contact point and
that’s why God made Him to be sin for us that we might be made His
righteousness. Christ’s the point where the justice of God puts us and where
things are set right, and now we’re compatible with all the essence of God.
“I think about that and say,
‘WOW, whoa, what a thrilling thing it is; we now are spiritually qualified to
be used by God in his plans and his purposes in the universe!’
*****
“All of God’s attributes work
together in harmony and there are two essences that function together to make
God’s integrity, or His holiness.
“It’s made up of righteousness,
which is the standard of His integrity, and justice, which is the function of
His integrity.
“Righteousness is the perfect
rightness of God; His capacity as complete and total perfection in character.
His justice is always right—perfect rightness. His justice judges or blesses
people and takes action. If you don’t match His righteousness, then there’s
judgment. If you do, there’s blessing.
“Our point of contact with God,
when you think of His essences, is not His love; it’s His justice. We
think of God’s love like our love and it isn’t like our love. God’s love is the
motivator of His other essences and it’s the love of God that motivated the
justice of God to develop a plan.
“When you think of salvation,
justification and our redemption in Christ Jesus, and you begin to watch the
different essences of God work together, His love motivates God. It motivated
His omniscience; God’s all-knowingness.
“Omniscience is His wisdom. He has
perfect wisdom, so God’s love motivates His wisdom to devise a wise plan of
redemption and reconciliation and restoration. His justice is going to be
motivated to develop a plan whereby lost, sinful man can be restored. The plan
is called grace.”
(new article tomorrow)
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