Living in Abundance

I believe the time for sons and daughters of God to live in His fullness and abundance is upon us.  The earth is groaning, we are groaning inwardly, and the Holy Spirit is groaning for the revelation of the sons of God.  A people that are filled and flooded with God (His love, His light, His truth).

Yet about 6-7 years ago I found myself in a desert.  It was a desert financially (provision) where we were in ministry and living on support.  It was coming to December and we had no money in our support account, I didn't know what to do but cry out to God.  I was discouraged, frustrated, and honestly didn't see how we were going to get out of this situation.  I had struggled to raise support and was personally out of resources to see the provision come in.  As our family went away for a weekend, I spent much of the time seeking the Lord and listening to messages about breaking free in the area of finances.  It was in the middle of this desert that Father challenged my orphan thinking and prompted me to trust Him by giving in famine.

I was going into the Nature Center at Rock Mountain National Park and after hearing the message about asking God for seed I found a quarter on the ground.  My wife laughed and I really had very little faith that God would work but decided I didn't have anything to lose.  I actually put the quarter in the offering plate at church.  In the next 18 months-2 years we sowed seeds (many) of $100 on 6 different occasions.  After understanding the Word of God about sowing and harvest, especially in famine we saw a harvest of $1,000 each of these times (all from different sources).  I had prayed that God would make me a sower (to His Spirit), rather than being only focused on my own need.  Abundance followed a deep desert, where we were lead out of the desert by partnering with Him in trust to follow His way.  Our ministry since that time has always been funded, we have not been in lack but actually have had an abundance.

I share this because I am encouraging you in your desert and mine.  I am currently in a desert season of intimacy with Father, where I am experiencing everything but the fullness of His love for which I have cried out.  I started a ministry lead by His Spirit that is all about knowing the Father's Love and being filled as a son or daughter.  Father clearly spoke to us about starting the ministry, even gave us confirmation through a prophetic voice, and Father gave His blessing by setting up 3 spiritual mentors to affirm us unprompted.  Yet, I find lies of hopelessness, unbelief, lack of trust, and lack of faith in my soul are overwhelming me.  As I search for a safe place of rest in Father's embrace, I seem to run into more anxiety, insecurity, poverty of spirit, sleeplessness, and overall sense of lack of love.  In sharing the previous testimony I am encouraging myself in the Lord, that He is perfectly positioning me for breakthrough into a place of abundance, fullness, and rest.  Faith sees differently than the circumstances that our soul reports.  Faith sees in the Spirit and looks to the ways of God that I may know Him.  Joshua and Caleb reported a faith-filled report about the Promise Land based on believing God's promise despite the giants, the other 10 spies gave reports of unbelief and no hope.  In the same way our soul sometimes seems to give all the reports of unbelief and hopelessness, yet His Spirit in us through our spirit rises up to give a faith-filled report based on God being faithful to His Word.

How many of us as believers fail the test of the wilderness, which means walking by faith and dependence, by seeking counterfeit affections to relieve the pain of lack?  I believe since Jesus overcame the wilderness and we are in Him that God has made a way for us to have victory in coming through the desert.

In His Fullness,
Bret

Being a People of Promise

I am discovering one of God's secret weapons is the Promises of God.  I say secret but I believe mainly to the enemy but also secret to much of the Body of Christ because we don't know how to fully use this weapon for advancement.  There are over 750 promises of God in the New Testament, which represent approximately 240 unique promises.  Holy Spirit revealed to me that these promises are like a doorway into a whole new dimension of living.  2 Peter 1:3-4 says, "seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.  For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is inthe world by lust."

Amazingly the Word of God tells us that all the Promises of God are "yes" and "amen" (so be it in my life).  I believe that every difficulty, problem, or issue that we face in life, God has provided a Promise to address that very trouble.  These Promises of God must be mined for the gold that is in them, so the revelation contained within comes forth into our lives.  After hearing so many sermons, teachings, and information about the Bible I believe we become familiar with the Word but can often miss the substance.  It is the gold in these Promises which transforms our heart, our way of seeing, and finally our way of living.

In order to experience the New Nature that God has given us "in Christ" we must see God's nature and then become partakers of His divine nature (as said in 2 Peter 1).  I think of a cow with it's four stomachs that chews it's cud to digest the grass slowly till it goes all the way through it's system.  I believe it is time for the Body of Christ to get the full benefit of the Promises of God, which through revelation will transform our heart, soul, and body into the image of Christ.

We mine these promises by meditating on them, asking the Holy Spirit to bring revelation, to change my heart, my viewpoint, my mindset, and finally to bring the manifestation of the promise into my life.  God has given you access to all the Promises of God "in Christ" which are the bread of God for us but it is the revelation of God that comes from these promises which feed us.

People of Promise,
Bret

Increasing Dimensions of Father's Love

When we leave the world of religious performance, deciding that this world does not contain the truth nor the love we long for then we dive into the world of intimacy.  Intimacy (in-to-me-see) requires that we be known and we be willing to expose areas of our heart and life that we may have long been hiding.  An area that Father has recently revealed to me is self-hatred which is the underlying issue of a critical spirit.  I found that I have a critical spirit, which more easily sees the issues, problems, and faults in others because I see the faults deep within myself.  I grew up with the experience of acceptance being a rare reality to experience and only when you did things right.  Needless to say I didn't always do things right and if I didn't I lived in fear that I would do things wrong.  I did what those who experience the weight of the Law often do, they give up and just begin to hide.

As we recently talked in a Leader's Lunch about the coming Revival, I was struck by the reality that Revival is a direct assault on religious performance.  People in the Body can maintain a certain religious performance standard, until all of the sudden you have groups of people coming into the church who don't fit the standard.  We believe we want Revival and thus new people born into the Kingdom but they will not fit our accepted standard.  What if you have people in church who are actively engaged in a homosexual lifestyle, others who are doing drugs, and still others who are involved in occult type practises?  These people have all recently come to Jesus.  I realize that I have dreamed more of Revival, then faced the reality of what it would be like for me personally and for others.

Unfortunately, I have a very active inner Pharisee or church police that tends to raise objections to behavior that I believe is not acceptable.  In my heart I know that these people are accepted by Jesus because of His grace just like I am but truthfully I have looked for acceptance by fitting into the religious culture at times.  This is where self-hatred for how I don't fit or ways that I am not acceptable is hidden underneath.  I would like to contend, that the ways we believe we are not acceptable are ways we don't measure up to the Law of God or more likely the Law in our own minds.  We are not focusing on the New Creation I am "in Christ" but the Old nature which is dead and buried.  Could it be that bringing in new people (even "sinners") that don't measure up to the religious standard is a great way for Father to get the Body cleansed of her religious mindsets of judgments, criticism, performance, and self-hatred.

If we can love ourselves because Jesus loves the most unacceptable parts of us, then we will love our neighbor.  Jesus said it, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Meaning that I will love my neighbor with the same quality of love I have towards the worst parts of myself.

Accepted in the Beloved,
Bret

The Old Self is Dead: Fact, Faith, or Feeling?

The Holy Spirit was again reminding me of the reality of Romans 6:6 which says, "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin."  In being totally honest with you this has often seemed more like a fantasy that I would like to believe than the facts according to God and the Good News of the gospel.  The reason is that I see so much evidence in my life of the old self being alive, I see passivity causing my wife to be overloaded, feelings of anxiety causing me to ignore the voice of God, experiencing being overwhelmed by life, and then becoming self-centered.  All of this points to the reality that the Old Self enslaved to sin is very much alive and well, yet these are not the facts but evidence that my soul mounts up to contradict the fact of God's Word and what my spirit says.  True Biblical faith is not an energy or power that we must like New Age attempts to but it is a discovery of what I already have "in Christ".

The Old Self (or Orphan Life) was formed by living on this fallen earth with all the influences and hurts of sin.  The only way Father could bring us into right relationship with Himself was to deal with this old nature once and for all by uniting us to the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension with Christ.  It is not only the truth that the Old Self is dead but it is also a fact.  Father is not looking to improve this Old Self, make it behave, or expect in any way that it has life.  Death is the only solution for the Old Self and the one that brings us ultimate deliverance.  In Romans 6:4 the Word says, "...we too might walk in newness of life."  This means Holy Spirit is always leading you in living in newness of life, not seeking to change, improve, or mold the old orphan life.  Your old self is dead!  Dead!!!  Dead!!!  Dead!!!  One of the most deceptive realities is since much of our believing is about our old self, we often have a lot of feelings emanating from the belief in the old self so we conclude the old self is alive.  Deception is very deceiving.

Even though I continually see evidence from my own life and soul that the old self is really what I am living, I choose to believe the Word of God.  I believe the greatest battle in the Christian life is really about who am I.  This follows the most important question:  Who is God?  When Father is revealed through Jesus Christ (exact representation of the Father), then we can see who we are in Him.  Holy Spirit is continually working on growing, expanding, and increasing the fruitfulness of the New Creation we are "in Christ".  This means our spirit man (or woman) united to Christ is what is growing to overcome the Sumo Wrestler of the soul.  Just as in the video attached to this blog, the Sumo seems daunting, huge, and like he is no match for the smaller fighter (MMA fighter- our spirit).  Yet watch what actually happened.  Truly the New Creation you are "in Christ" is so much more powerful than the soul.  The world has fed us the lie that our soul (mind, will, and emotions) is the ruler of our life (better known as the flesh).

New Creation in Christ,
Bret