The Ultimate Transformation

I have spent over 18 years working and ministering within the area of counseling, inner healing, and prayer ministry.  In those 18 years I have seen people in some of the worst places, most broken, and most desperate.  There would be some who would wander why I would spend this much time in the midst of such darkness and brokenness, truthfully I can't tell you all the reasons but I do know I get to see miracles.  I am not talking about necessarily miracles of multiplying food or even a lame man walking.  What I do get to see is the resurrection from the dead.

No I don't work as a Mortician or a Coroner.  Many would think it is just broken people that need to be fixed, instead it is much worse than that it is people who are like the walking dead.  That sure makes you want to come to counseling or ministry with me.  What I mean by that is the Holy Spirit recently spoke to me out of Ephesians 2:1-7 which describes the condition that God found us in before we were saved and it was "dead in our transgressions".  I was drawn to this passage but couldn't describe for you why but sensed the Holy Spirit had something for me in my life and then for others.  I have seen people so caught up in their addictions, their anger and unforgiveness, or their hopelessness that they experience life more like the living dead.  They have no joy, no peace, and little to no hope.

To offer a person like this a little help to fix their brokenness would be cruel, the fact is they need a whole new life.  Father in His mercy has recently exposed a lot of fear and intimidation in my life, which has been painful and uncomfortable.  Yet I now see that fear is really the absence of love and the absence of love is death (love=life).  God is not interested in helping me manage my fear, He is about bringing His perfect love which will cast out all fear.  The fear working and operating in my life brings about death, even if it is slowly.  It works in my relationships, it works to have me back away from risks of faith, it stifles creativity, under it's influence I choose self-protection rather than openness, and finally when it remains in my life it brings hopelessness.  Needless to say fear is integral to my old man who is married to sin, my orphan life.

In Ephesians 2:4-5 the Word says, "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,  even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),"  It is God's love that raised us from the dead and we were dead because of our transgressions.  In Romans 6 tells us that we were baptized with Christ (placed in Him) and not only crucified with Him, buried with Him, but then resurrected with Him.  God doesn't seem interested in fixing the brokenness of the Old Man but raising us to New Life.

The difficult part of living as a New Creation (New Life) is that we have not been this way before.  I am so familiar with the thoughts, lies, and ways of living of intimidation and fear that it is easy to go there.  Yet, living in this Old Man identity is death and does not have a destiny except to repeat what has been the past.  Fear produces a lot of stress in our lives and doctors say too much stress is a killer.  What I and others need is to see the New Creation that they are, specifically the man of courage vs. intimidation or free from addiction vs. the alcoholic they know so well.  We need people around us who not only believe in raising the dead but actually will speak to dead bones to live.  I really believe one powerful part of prophetic ministry is to reveal the New Man to people and thus their destiny.  Truly the Gospel is about the Ultimate Transformation.

Being Ultimately Transformed,
Bret