SOME FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK OF ACTS If He is your Father, all you need to do is to become acquainted with Him. Cultivate a son consciousness. I remember when I first began to think of Him as my own Father. I had been in the ministry quite a number of years, but I never read a book that majored the Father fact. The moment that one begins to realize that the great God of the Universe is his own Father, and that he is the Fathers child, and that he has a sons place in the Fathers heart, he has a sons rights and responsibilities, life is different. When this truth first came to my heart, I was thrilled through and through. He was no longer God. He was my own Father. And then I began to remember scriptures. The Spirit brought one after another to me. John 14:23: If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. I never realized it meant that He would actually live with me. The Lo, I am with you alway, had been just a figure of speech. Now it became a reality. And I remember when Jesus said, When He the spirit of reality is come, He will guide you into all reality. And He began to guide me into the reality of sonship. He had never been very real in my life. And I had never understood John 16:15: All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you. Now I can understand for the first time the oneness of Jesus and the Father when He said, All that the Father has is mine. Then I knew all that the Father had was mine, too. Just as the son says, That is our farm, speaking of his fathers farm. The Father and the Son are one. It is that family oneness, that vital oneness between the Father and His child. And the Spirit now began to lead me into the reality of my oneness with Jesus and with the Father. The prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter of John then began to be a reality. John 17:21: That they may be one even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee : that they also may be in us. We are to be made one with the Father and Jesus. The Fathers interests, the Fathers work, the Fathers word is to be one with me. When Jesus said: He hath not left me alone, He is always with me, I could take that as my own. When Jesus said: I know my Father, then I knew that I might become acquainted with my Father. For the Spirit of reality was going to guide me into the reality of this sonship. Cant you see that this belongs to every one of us? That it is the end of the age-old fight for faith? Why, faith becomes as normal and natural as it is in a beautiful family. Those children are not faith conscious. They are love conscious. They are father conscious. They are son conscious. You can understand now the vital need of the hearts consciousness of this holy relationship. It was the beginning of people going to Heaven. Up to this time men had gone to paradise when they died. Now John 14:1-6 becomes the new slogan of the heart. Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself ; that where I am there ye may be also.. And whither I go, ye know the way. Thomas saith unto him, Lord we know not whither thou goest; how know we the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. Notice in my Fathers house. Now our hearts can understand it. In my Fathers home there are many dwelling places. There is plenty of room for me. Jesus said : I go to prepare a place for you. That place will be presided over by the Father. It will be a love home for the children of love. I am sure we are going to know each other. We are going to meet those who have passed on before us. What a family reunion ! If the heart can only take this truth in, it will rob life of its terror. For the real terror of life is what happens after death. But Jesus brought a new conception of heaven. No human religion has a heaven home or a heaven faith but Christianity. There is no one truth that Jesus brought that has given greater joy to the human heart than His heaven teaching. At the very beginning of His public ministry, He spoke of Heaven as His Home, and of God as His Father. He said: I came out from the Father. I came into the world. I shall leave the world and go unto my Father. He takes the terror out of death; He takes the fear out of life. For there is a Heaven home. He introduced the New Law of the New Covenant. John 13:34-35: A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. This was to supersede the Old Covenant Law. He had commanded them to love in the Old Covenant Law, but they could not do it. Now He recreated them with His own nature which is love, so that it became natural for men to love now. I John 4:7-8, Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God, and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God ; for God is love. The new Greek word Agapa that Jesus evidently coined is used here. Everyone who has this love is begotten of God. Isnt that a remarkable statement? Only those who have Agapa are born of God. I John 3:14, We know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brethren. And now He says so clearly : He that loveth not, knoweth not God, because God is love. That is the test of the New Birth. That is the new thing, the mightiest thing that ever came into the human life. You see it is Eternal Life, the nature of the Father, that has made us love. We are begotten of love. Selfishness reigns in the human heart naturally. Selfishness is deposed, dethroned. And a new nature, the love nature of God takes its place. It was the Beginning of the Body of Christ. This strong new organism is a spiritual thing. Its Head is seated at the Right Hand of the Majesty on High. We have become united with Him in a spirit union. He likens it to the vine and the branch. Paul in I Corinthians 12: likens it to the physical body. But one truth outshines everything else in that mythical union; it is our utter oneness with Him and with one another. We are actually one with Him. We died with Him, were buried with Him, suffered with Him, were justified with Him, made alive with Him, conquered Satan with Him, were raised from the dead with Him, and now we are seated with Him. We reign in life with Him. We actually belong to royalty. We are as much a part of Jesus as He and the Father are a part of each other. His very substance and being is in us. I wonder what would happen to us if we meditated about our oneness with Christ, our union with the Body of Christ. I Cor. 12:12-30 should be read over and over again. We cannot take space to quote it. It was the beginning of men having a hope of immortality for their bodies. The physical body is now mortal, because of the fall. Now every person who receives eternal life has the promise of immortality for his body when Jesus returns. Then our bodies will never die again. We will live in them throughout eternity. They will be glorified bodies. No sickness or disease can ever touch them. I suppose that was the reason God forbade the Jews to mark or cut their bodies. That is the reason He tells us in I Cor. 6:19 that our bodies are holy, sacred to God, and we are to glorify God in them. Romans 12:1-2: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. And be not fashioned according to this world : but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. We are to offer up our bodies as living sacrifices. He says that our bodies are for the Lord. And know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ and that your bodies are not your own. They have been bought with a price. What a study that would make to go through the entire Word and find out how sacred the human body is to the Father and how sacred it should be to us. It was the beginning of the believers victory over Satan. Satan had been mans master through all the ages since the Fall. He was now to taste the bitterness of being subordinated to the Man whom he had subjugated to sin. Jesus has given man a legal right to use His Name which has all authority over Satan. How fearless it makes one when he knows the power and the authority of the Name of Jesus. Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, I will give to you. Satan is the only hindering power to prayer. We can brush him aside and take our rights in the matchless Name. When a mother knows that it is an evil spirit that has come into the child which makes it disobedient, she can drive it out with that precious Name. When any evil habit lays hold of us, that Name brings deliverance. Man, this New Man, is Gods Master Man. The Beginning of the Love Way Jesus introduced a new way of Life, a new way of living. He gave us the ability to live this new way. We were to be subordinated to the love life that belongs to the New Creation. We are to walk in love, think love and do love. It is going to solve the home problem. There will be no more quarreling and breaking of fellowship. No more wrecking the homes and lives and turning children over to be reared by other people. It is going to be a new kind of living. Selfishness seeks its own happiness. That is the reason that a mother can become a cigarette fiend and blast the babys nervous system before it is born. She can hang around the cocktail parlors and listen to vile stories and neglect her children and her home. She does not have the new kind of life. This new thing that Jesus brought has glorified motherhood, made babies and wifehood sacred. It seeketh not its own? It never goes to a divorce court. It does not wrangle over property. It seeks only the good of another, rather than its own. It is the Jesus life. It is the Jesus way in our every day walk. It is bringing Jesus into vital contact with the world in every phase of our walk. It is the New Law that is to govern marriage and homes. The old Jewish law of marriage was based upon the fact that man was spiritually dead. The new law is based upon the fact that man has been made a New Creation, created in Christ. What Happened From The Cross To The Throne Kindly share this post
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 09:00:00 +0000