P 2540 Our new life is OURS – right now!

Learning to walk in the Spirit is not like learning French! There will never be a better time to begin than … right here right now. We cannot achieve unity with Christ Himself in our own flesh, which is why we must choose to die daily. This means that we need to get used to saying NO to our flesh and YES to His ways, and those choices are often minute by minute. His new life in us = the Holy Spirit + our choices + follow through.

That new life will be activated inside our own personal relationship with Him – the daily, moment by moment fellowship we share together … Every day we need to break bread with Christ. That means we take His Word, pray over it, ask for help to understand it personally, and then we deliberately go and obey Him.

Other people can’t give us this, it is something that we must choose to prioritise for ourselves, with the Lord’s help. Today our world concentrates on getting what it wants by its own means. Remember, mankind was organised and clever enough to build the tower of Babel. I urge you not to give into being hurried, or pushed when it comes to reading His book. The church itself has wanted to push God’s people into a pure devotion to God that can only be gained by personal spiritual investment.

Father God reveals Himself through His word, intimately and personally. This is because our new life in Christ is about faith… and our relationship with Him, our obedience, is the stepping out in faith place! The only person who can walk that way IS ME. The way it works can be explained to us, but if we do not personally start taking faith steps, as He leads us, then we will end up back in the flesh. And sadly, the flesh will not profit us. Our flesh’s end-game is the glorifying of MAN. We will stop enjoying God and start ticking boxes.

The Lord gives us revelations because these interactions are part of intimacy – that’s why your revelation may not benefit me at some particular moment in my life. Because … He’s speaking to you! Whenever God shares His secrets with us, He is sharing Himself! Not every prophecy spoken in church is for the whole church – first and foremost it is for the speaker to digest and gain fresh insight and understanding for themselves. Otherwise it can be just another fresh load of instructions loaded onto backs that are already breaking!

Father God has always meant for us to discover Him afresh, every single morning, it is like the manna the Israelites gathered every day. In that time when we shut out the world, and listen to the things He speaks to us through His Word as if He were speaking them to us personally. Otherwise we simply end up following rules and hoping that will do. The flesh cannot give birth to the things of the Spirit. We need to seek Him, and go after the things He is revealing to us. It is meant to be a happy engagement between us and Him as He patiently teaches us His Ways.  

At the same time, we cannot tack Him onto, or into, our already established lives – He is now our life. ‘For me to live IS Christ to die is gain.’ Just as the Lord chose us, and called us to be His people, in the same manner we need to choose, prefer, and defer to Him. This means we will deliberately eliminate the things He points out to us – with the Holy Spirit’s help. Our flesh will lie to us. It will tell us we can’t do thus or thus because … we are too weak, too sick, too busy, too preoccupied with the business/busyness of this world. Sadly, if we are not aware, we can get so busy maintaining our little lives, and our own agendas, that we leave the Lord out and relegate Him as an add-on.

However, whatever our attitudes or thoughts, the truth is — we are now dead. So we have no other agenda but His. This is why we need to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. That personal cross is illustrated by the things in this life that will pull at us and demand our attention to the point where Christ becomes secondary – instead of primary. It can be people, or occupations, or leisure past-times. To walk by faith we will have to fight fear, guilt or blame to prioritise Christ. “But the]Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counsellor, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will help you remember everything that I have told you.” John 14:26. He is always on STANDBY!

Sometimes I think, we have what we believe backwards. We fight for healing, or freedom in order to better serve Christ, but if the Lord is not building that house, then we are labouring in vain. It is not that God wants us to be sick, or infirm or in prison! It is that He does not want sickness etc to occupy all our thoughts. We can end up wasting our allotted time chasing answers to human problems when Jesus Christ Himself proved that HIS PRESENCE IS THE ANSWER. Wherever He went sickness, demons, infirmity left. EVERY SINGLE TIME. His new life is now ours, right here, right now.🙌