Freedom in Christ
SESSION 1
Holy Spirit, we do not ask You to come because You never leave. All we ask is that we would be more and more aware of Your Presence.
Thank You that we live with a God who never leaves us or forsakes us, who loves being with us, who loves the way that He sees us, loves to talk to us, loves to open up our hearts, loves to open up the future. We want to thank You, Lord, that You are not remotely supernatural.
It is perfectly normal for You to raise the dead, heal the sick, and to talk to people about the future. It is perfectly normal for You to interfere with everything. We love You for it. We just want to be more God conscious. We want to be more aware of You. We do not want to miss the signs of Your Presence. We want to learn to see. We want to learn to hear. We want to learn to partner with You because You are amazing.
You are astonishing to us. You do fill our hearts with wonder and we are learning the grace of constantly being amazed. My prayer, Lord, for all of us is that we would never lose the sense of wonder about You and that we would always be amazed at Jesus. Holy Spirit, You are so welcome.
Come and do what You do best. Breathe on us. Brood over us. Touch us. Connect with us. Comfort us and take the things of Jesus and make them real to our spirit that we may be captivated by the Word and that we may come to embody that Word as a lifestyle. We ask it for Jesus’ sake because that is what He deserves, a group of people like that, so we ask it in His Name and for His Glory. Amen.
We are here to not just have our lives changed but to learn how to change somebody else’s life with the truth. Let me begin our time together by saying what I feel a LifeChanger is.
A LifeChanger Is...
A LifeChanger is a person dedicated to the pursuit of the fullness of truth in Jesus. Let’s not settle for anything less than the fullness of who He is actually in our lives. LifeChangers see freedom as territory – as a territory to be explored, as a land of promise to possess for themselves and on the behalf of other people. LifeChangers possess a profound joy in walking in newness of life. They will only entertain the lifestyle of one who is raised up in Christ. We do not want to be living below the line of His privilege in us.
LifeChangers occupy a place of Grace in such a powerful way that their perception of things, their mindset about those things, and their language about those things are constantly upgraded to the same place of favor and relationship that exists between the Father and the Son. That level of oneness. That level of unity.
A LifeChanger is someone whose lifestyle in the Spirit creates freedom for others. They create empowerment and growth for all people with whom they are connected – family, friends, enemies – no difference. LifeChangers have no excuses only a divine focus for being in Christ. We are consumed by that focus – obsessed by it in a really healthy way.
Romans 6:3-11 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so in exactly the same way consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The cross sets us free from our old lifestyle of sin and selfishness. When Jesus hung on the cross, He said, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) “It is finished! I have killed off the old. Everything is going to be new from this point. We have finally done away with sin.”
Let’s look at the language in Romans 6. It is all in the past tense. You have been. You have been. You have become. Who was crucified. You are done away with. You have died. You are no longer this. Consider yourself to be dead.
In the perception of God your old life hasalready met its demise and it is finished.
Revelation 13:8 Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world.
What does that mean? It means before Genesis 1:1. Before the foundation of the world was laid, there was a conversation in Heaven. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at a round table having a coffee, chatting. “Let’s do something extraordinary! Let’s do something absolutely outrageous! Let’s create a world and let’s make some people. We will put them on that planet and We will teach them how to become like Us.”
They are nodding and smiling at each other and thinking, “This is cool. All right, but here is the thing, We do not want them to be robots or clones – because They knew about robots before anyone else did. We want them to have a free will because We want them to love Us voluntarily so We will give them a free will.”
Then the question was, “What do We do for the people that do not choose Us? What do We do for the people who do not like Us? Who do not want anything to do with Us and even believe that God is a figment of someone’s imagination? What do We do with people who create their own religion and call it atheism? What do We do for the people who do not choose Us? How do We love them? How do We include them in what We want in Our grand design? We should make everyone like Us.”
It is at that point that the decision is made by Jesus that He would step into the time space world at a given point in history and that He would become a sacrificial Lamb that would take away the sins of the world so that everybody that was far away from God could be brought near. They made the decision for Jesus to step in and die for the sins of humanity.
So They are thinking, “Ok, so the potential is there for everyone to get to know Us, so how do We do that? How do We take all those people who have lived for years in sin and selfishness and negativity and all of that, how do We get them from that place to become like Us? How do We change them when they are already steeped in this behavior – how do We actually change this whole thing?”
It is at this point that the Father is thinking, “Hum. This is going to be a little tricky. Well, you know, I would love to be involved, but I have worlds to create still.” Jesus catches on really quick and says, “You know, My job is to die for the sins of humanity and I have to go to hell and all that kind of stuff, so I will be kind of busy.”
Everyone is looking sideways at the Holy Spirit who is thinking, “Hang on a minute! I do not want that job! Forget that! You mean that I now actually have to take that old stuff away from them and teach them how to come out of it and how to move and how to change? That is a horrible job! I do not want this job! That is like real work. I do not want that job. We are going to have to think this through again.”
They are all sitting there thinking and suddenly Jesus says, “I know! Why don’t We not work on their behavior? Why don’t We not work on their old lifestyle? What if We just killed it? What if We kill everyone and start again with them?” What does that look like? “What if when I die, We put everybody on the cross with Me so that when I die, they die and when I go into the grave, they go into the grave and when I get raised up to newness of life, so do they! Then all We have is a new man to work with because the old man is dead.
Why don’t We not cleanse them? Why don’t We just kill them? When I die, they die. When I am buried, they are buried. When I am raised from the dead, they are raised in newness of life. We will teach them how their old man is dead and We are not even remotely concerned about it. All We are concerned about is the new man that has been raised from the dead. What if We give them all permission to consider themselves dead?
And why don’t We just get used to smiling at them and saying, ‘You are dead to that. Didn’t We kill that? We killed that, right? Yeah, We killed that. You are dead to that. No, We are not working on that. We are working on this. Thank you very much for that prayer, but We are not working on your old you, because We do not like working with corpses. We are not grave robbers or anything like that. We put you in the grave. We do not want you resurrecting yourself. Thanks for the offer, but no.’”
He that is dead is free. He that is DEAD is FREE. Consider yourself to be dead.
On that basis, They are considering that They have just restored the whole thing to cool. We just made it absolutely cool to be in Christ.
He died as you.
Jesus did not just die for you, He died as you.
Here is the thing about the Father which is one of the reasons why He is not a schizophrenic, with all due apology and blessing for all schizophrenics everywhere – especially in the Church. He is not in two minds about this. He knows you are dead. He saw you die.
The question before us is, are we going to believe what God believes about us? He believes you are dead. He is not working on an old you. He is working on a new you.
Romans 6:6 Our old self was crucified with Him in order that – in other words, in accordance with a strict laid down purpose, our body of sin might be done away with.
God is not dealing with your sin. He has already dealt with it. He is actually dealing with your righteousness. He is not intent on stopping you from sinning. He is intent on teaching you how to be righteous and how to be holy. He is not dealing with something that He has already dealt with. He is dealing with newness of life.
He is dealing with you as one who is raised from the dead – as one who has newness of life. He says to us, “You are a new creation. All the old things have passed away and everything has become new and all those things are from God.”
When we think about our flesh or our old man, we have to use the past tense just in the same way that scripture does. Same language. Same perception of God.
Death is the starting point to life. Turn to your neighbor and say, “You are dead.” Turn to the person on the other side and say, “Do not play dead. Stay dead.”
You are either present/past in your focus or present/future.
What does that mean? It means if you are present/past there are things from your past that are still affecting you in the present. So you are present/past. Your focus is back there.
If you are present/future, it is because you have an understanding of who you are now in the present and you know who you are becoming next in the future. You are learning to live present/future not present/past. That means that all of us have something brilliant to look forward to all the time. That means that every situation that we encounter is teaching us how to look forward to what God is doing and to who God is for us.
Let’s look at the language in Romans 6.
Romans 6:4 You are raised from the dead so that we too might walk in newness of life.
In our placement in Christ, newness is all that we have. There is no old. It has all been done away with. There is only a new you to discover. So how does God see you? What does He see when He looks at you? He is not seeing something old because He has already killed that off so He is seeing something new and different about you. What we are learning is how to become that person in Jesus and we have the incomparable Holy Spirit to teach us how to do all of that.
Romans 6:5 We have become – that is present - and we shall also be - that is future, we are a present/future people – knowing who we are now and exploring and discovering who we are becoming next as we learn to grow up into all things in Jesus.
Romans 6:7 Death is the entry point to future freedom. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. If we have died with Him we believe that we shall also live with Him.
So if you know that when Christ died, you died, then when you died with Him, now, you can also live with Him. Living with Him is the focus of the Holy Spirit in your life. God is not killing you a second time or a third or a 473rd time or 12,791st time. He killed you once and for all. You are dead.
He is teaching you how to walk in newness of life. He is not dealing with your sin. He is establishing your righteousness. He is teaching you how to walk in the image of Christ day after day.
What He is saying is this, “If you will learn – if you will partner with Me in learning how to be alive to Me, if you are alive to Me, you are automatically dead to yourself.” Death to self is not an action, it is a consequence. It is a consequence of being alive. If you are alive to God, you will be dead to self. If you are God conscious, you will not be sin conscious. He is not sin conscious, because He has dealt with sin. That is how you know that God is not an evangelical or a Pentecostal or a charismatic or any of those silly labels that we put on ourselves.
He knows you are dead. He watched you die. He is not dealing with sin in your life. He dealt with it in Jesus. He is dealing with your holiness. He is teaching you how to be made in His image – that is Holy, that is Precious, that is Beloved as one who is alive from the dead.
He only has one focus for you and it is really important that we come under that focus wholeheartedly and learn to love ourselves as God loves us. We must learn to become the Beloved of God, become lovers of God and learn how to receive the gift of life in Christ every single day.
If we died with Him we believe that we shall also live with Him. The life He lives now, He lives to God and so do we. You are learning how to be God conscious. You are learning how to live in the Presence of God, how to practice the Presence of God, and you are learning that no situation in your life is below God’s capability to do something majestic.
When the Bible says, “Is anything too hard for God?” the literal translation of that verse is, “Is there anything in your life that can prevent God from being wonderful and marvelous?” That is the real meaning of it. Can there be any situation in your life that could stop God from being majestic or marvelous?
When we are walking in newness of life that is the thinking that we connect with day after day, situation after situation.
It is the language of God that gives us confidence and certainty.It is not the language that you make up to create confidence in yourself, it is the language of God towards you that gives you confidence and it creates this certainty in your life. We consider ourselves to be set free in our thinking and to live confidently in that freedom by practicing it as a life style every day. We are using the language of God.
He loves it when we quote Him. He loves it when we say, “But You said. But You said.” That is the one thing that will put a smile on His face if He is not smiling at that moment – the very fact that you are quoting Him back to Him and feeling the confidence rising up in you because you are quoting the very words of God that create life in you. When you speak them back to God, life jumps in your circumstances. That is what confession does. It causes the embodiment of who God is for you to rise up tangibly in your circumstances.
Notice the present/past statement and the present/future one in this scripture.
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live [present-past] I am so relieved to be dead. Christ lives in me and the life I am now living, I live believing in Jesus and what He did for me.
I John 3:14 We have passed out of death into life.
John 14: 19 Because I live, you shall live also.
Romans 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him, freely give us all things?
Colossians 3:1-3 Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
We Are Not of This World
It is in the Bible. Right there in black and white. Seek the life above, not the life below; that is what we are learning. We are learning that now because we are in Christ, we are not earth-bound in our thinking. We are not subject even to the world in which we live. We are subject to a Kingdom. We are subject to a realm. We are subject to a domain that is not of this world. Seek the things which are above, not the things that are down here because down here, nobody has anything to teach you about how to live in Christ. There is no earthly wisdom that can help you to be spiritual in Jesus. Seek the things which are above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. Why? Because you are a citizen of Heaven now living here on earth. You are in Christ and Christ is in you. That makes you a completely different proposition.
Visitation Culture Vs. Habitational Culture
You are a new creation. Never seen in the world before Jesus because everyone before Christ had a visitational relationship with God. God could come on them and He could lift off them. If they sinned, He would lift off them.
not the life below.
When you look in the structure in the Old Testament, it is a visitational culture and it is full of God coming and full of God going. Full of God coming on people and lifting off people. Visitational culture.
There have been two creations here: one before Christ and one after Christ. That is why the Bible says, “You have to be born again.” Right? Because only those who are born again can enter this lifestyle. By being born again, you have become a new creation because you now are a habitation of God by the Spirit. So, there is not a visitational culture now. We are in a habitational culture because God is on the inside of us. He never leaves us nor forsakes us because He and Christ have made Their abode in us and They have given us the Holy Spirit to teach us how to abide, how to stay in the place that God has given us.
So question: Why is the church attempting to live in Christ by using a visitational culture? Even our language about revival is visitational.
The truth is, when you learn to live in Christ, you are your own revival. You create one. Revival is not an event. It cannot be an event. Revival is a lifestyle. When you look at all the revivalists, they were all extraordinary people practicing an extraordinary relationship with Jesus. They were like Gulliver in Lilliput. They were giants surrounded by pygmies who did not know that they could be a giant also.
You are a habitational culture. That is what God is building in you. You are in Christ. God is in you. He is with you. He is full of you. It is impossible for Him to leave you. You cannot be separated from His love. You are joined to Him whether you like it or not. When He looks at you, He does not see anything wrong with you because everything that was wrong about you, He put it on Christ on the cross and He killed it. And He was not messing around, and He was not doing anything symbolic. He was genuinely killing you off, because none of them wanted the job of restoring you.
Living in Newness of Life
They are so happy that you are dead. Now you have only got one life to live and that is the newness of life that is in Jesus. Why would He be dealing with your sin when He has already dealt with it in Christ? When He says that He has done away with the body of sin, God is not in two minds about this. He is focused. He knew exactly what we did and He planned for it before the foundation of the world.
You are dead and your life is hidden now with Christ, in God, which means you are kind of double wrapped. You are a double portion. The Holy Spirit’s job is to help you to stay in the place that God has put you.
To stay in Christ, learn how to abide in Jesus.
Be alive to God.
Be God-conscience.
Practice newness of life.
Have your righteousness established.
Become holy, because you have been given the Holy Spirit.
You see, when God looks at you, He does not see anything wrong with you. He only sees what is missing from your current experience of Him, and He is totally committed to give you that encounter. So, when the Holy Spirit puts His finger on a part in your life that is not working, there is no condemnation, there is no guilt, there is no shame, because Jesus died for all of those, too. What He is doing, He is pointing to the site of your next upgrade. He is pointing to the site of your next miracle. He is saying, “Let Us get to work on that first. And remember, you need to know that this is dead so We are not changing that, We are just replacing it with something better. So, why don’t you give that to Me and I will give you something new in Jesus. Give that to Me…no give it to Me…focus…look in My eye…you give that to Me. We are not working on it, thank you, but no. You give that to Me and I will give you this. We are not working on that.”
Ephesians 4:20-24 Lay aside the old self... be renewed in the spirit of your mind... and put on the new self.
He does not want you working on the old you; He wants you to set it aside because it is dead. [God says] “Now I do not want you to work on it, I want you to lay it aside. Be renewed in the spirit of you mind; think about this the way that I think about it, and put on this new man, which We are giving you.”
We are learning progressively how to become more and more new: how to respond in newness, how to walk in newness, how to be new. Every situation is about being new. It is about every situation empowering you to look at your circumstance in that profoundly exciting manner because every circumstance is about one thing – it is about you discovering who you are now in Jesus because of this situation. Every situation now is about you becoming a new person. So, to get through this situation, you have to pick up some more newness.
God is teaching you all of the time. “It is just Me and you. You are new and I am teaching you how to be even newer. I am teaching you – you are living in Me – I am teaching you how to be a habitation of God by the Spirit. And I am going to give you the Genius of Heaven. It is called the Holy Spirit who knows everything about everything, who searches all of the deep things of God so that He can talk to us and teach His Majesty and how to marvel. The Holy Spirit has a search engine a million times bigger than Google. He searches everything. One of His prime jobs is to teach you amazement, astonishment, and wonder as a way of life.
The very least that we can do in wonder is just go, “Ahh, I am so relieved to be dead. This is so cool. I am walking in newness of life. I get to see this situation in a way that I have never seen it before. I get to see it through the habitational me, because the visitational me is dead. I am not waiting around for God to do something. I know that God is in my life doing stuff.”
Newness of Life Changes Everything
It changes the way that we pray. It changes the way that we stand before God. It changes the way that we come to God. It changes the way that we see life because we are learning that newness of life means we get to see this thing the way You see it because You are in us and we are in You. That means that what we are learning is Your perception, Your mindset, Your language, and it all makes up newness of life.
Seek the life above, not below. Set your thinking to come from God. You are dead and this new life is concealed in this secret place that you have in Jesus. We walk in Christ powerfully when we believe what God believes about us.
Look at the language again in Romans 6:3-11 Do you not know…therefore you have…certainly we shall…knowing this you are freed from sin…we believe that…knowing that…even so consider yourself. It is a language of absolute alignment and agreement with how God sees you.
When He looks at you, He does not see anything wrong with you because He happily killed it all off. Now He just sees what is missing in your relationship with Him. He is totally committed to giving you that. No condemnation. No guilt. No shame. No struggle. Death is the end of struggle. It is dead. It is freed from struggle. Now we are learning how to rest in peace. If you are ever going to get a tattoo; do an R.I.P. somewhere on your body. Rest in Peace.
We have the joy, the absolute pleasure and the astonishment, and the wonder, and the amazement of learning how to be alive to God. All these certainties have present/future consequences. There is a radical language for an amazing lifestyle that God wants to teach you and the Holy Spirit is your Helper in learning Heavenly language.
When I came to America, I had to learn to speak English all over again. I had to learn to say weird things like “all y’all” and pr‘ah’cess instead of pr‘oh’cess. When we come in to the Kingdom, there is a new language to learn, and it is God-speak. He has a way of seeing new things about you and speaking about you and to you that is extraordinary. When you hear the language that God uses about you - the scripture is so rich in that language.
Coming Alive to Righteousness
We are going to explore some of that richness of language together this weekend. You see, Jesus sets us free, and the language of the Spirit keeps us free to explore who we really are as believers. Our focus, therefore, must be on what comes to us as a result of us being dead to all the problems of the old man. We should be absolutely relieved, “I do not have to work on that stuff. I can just set it aside because this is what God is working on.” The antidote to any sin is the righteousness of God. And, so, He is teaching you righteousness.
When we read the scriptures about righteousness and holiness, now you have to read it the way that God wrote it, so when you hear a verse like, Be holy even as I am holy, legalists will say it says, BE HOLY EVEN AS I AM HOLY! But I think this is how Jesus wrote it, this is the language that He uses.
First of all, He is going to be looking at you right in the face, [whisper] Be holy even as I am holy. Why? Because righteousness is a gift. It is a gift. It is not something you earn. It is not something you conjure up by your own efforts. It is a gift! [Whisper] Be holy……….even as I am holy. It is a gift. (Graham is demonstrating God as though God is pouring out His holiness on us as He speaks that scripture on us. It is more like holiness is something we receive from God and just be……not something we work up.)
What if, in newness of life, the plan of God is to make you astonished and amazed so that you do not know whether to laugh or cry, sing or dance, stand in awe, fall flat on the floor? What if the plan of God is to create this amazing race of people, this amazing new creation, by teaching you what all of Heaven practices, which is astonishment? To be astonished.
In the world, if something sounds too good to be true, the wisdom of the world says, “someone is about to be conned.” I knew that was too good to be true. But in the Kingdom, if it is not too good to be true, it is not God. If it is not wonderful, if it is not marvelous, if it is not brilliant, if it is not astonishing, it is not Jesus. He does not do anything ordinary.
All of His focus on you is to teach you to be made in His image. All of your focus on Him is to learn how to grow up into all things in Christ.
Romans 6:11 Consider yourselves to be dead.
What is He doing? He is closing the door on your past and saying, “No point in going back there, because everything is dead. This is who you are right now; you are in Me learning how to walk in Me, learning how to discover Me, learning how to become new like Me, learning how to be righteous, learning how to be holy, learning how to think the way I think, see the way I see, speak the way I speak. You are learning to be a habitation of God, a dwelling place of God by the Spirit.”
When He says, Consider yourselves to be dead, and learn how to be alive in Me, the word “consider” means:
Think carefully about the fact that you are dead.
Believe it to be true.
Take it into account in all of your life circumstances.
Pay attention to it.
Place great importance on it.
Take an inventory of who you are in Jesus.
Have a specific perception and do not change it.
Do not be double-minded.
Out of it, develop an expectation about who God is for you so that your thinking becomes like His.
Whatever you are seeing, whatever you are discovering, whatever God is promising, take Him for granted.
When God grants you something take Him for granted, because He loves it when you do.
God gives you permission to step into His perception,
to step into His thinking about you, so that in that place He
can create a lifestyle centered on who you are becoming in Him.
Kills Means Dead!
Just remember this one thing; you cannot give life to something that God has killed.
John 1:29 Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He does not bring them back.
You cannot get rid of a negative by focusing on it. You are in Christ now; there are no negatives in your world. That is why we are making war on negatives in our thinking, in our perception and in our language, because Jesus did not just die for your sin, He died for all of the consequences of it, which is negativity, cynicism, pessimism, sarcasm. All negative thinking and language and perception - He died to all of those. You are dead to those, too. And we are learning to make war on negativity because it is part of the mind of Christ that now belongs to us.
Practice Being Alive to God
We are practicing being alive to God relentlessly.
There can be no awareness of your old self because that is illegitimate behavior because your old self is dead. You are not allowed to have a perception and you are not allowed to make excuses. You are not allowed to see other people negatively because all negativity is dead.
Your real power is created from your awareness of God.
What are we learning? We are learning astonishment. We are learning how to be relentlessly kind, gentle, merciful, gracious, positive about people around us, even our enemies, especially our enemies. You get more air miles if you love your enemies. Anyone can love a friend, right? But to love someone who hates you, bonus air miles on that one!
Your real power is created from your awareness of God. That is what being “alive to God” means. All of our focus is toward Him in every circumstance of life. We keep moving forward. We keep moving deeper into who He is for us. We become relentless in pressing in to Him.
Let me read you this:
Philippians 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Here is the thing; you cannot possess anything in Christ that He does not already possess in you. What that means is that Jesus comes with things for you to possess. What if every day, what if every situation, what if every circumstance, God is giving you something that He wants you to have and that circumstance is about that? [God speaking] “I have allowed in My wisdom what I could easily prevent by My power. I have allowed this situation because I want to give you something.”
What if there cannot be any situation in your life that does not involve a gift from God? Whether it is the gift of righteousness, whether it is the gift of peace, whether it is the gift of love, or holiness, or power, or wisdom, or whatever…what if there cannot possibly be a situation in your life where you cannot receive something from God since you are in Christ? The very fact that you are in Christ means a life in Christ is geared to receive because God has a language of promise. He loves to promise us things. He has so many promises over every one of us. We are all probably going to have to be 100 just to realize and then practice them.
What if there are more promises than your life can actually, reasonably hold? What if that is what fullness is? What if that is what abundance is? So much that you do not know what to do with it all. So abundant, so full, so rich that you have got too much. You are just going to have to give it away.
What if once a month you have to have some big garage sale in the Spirit because you have got so much stuff hanging around, you have got to give it away because you want some new stuff? What if that is why the Lord says, “Give and it can be given to you. Listen, I want to give you more. How about you give away what I gave you, then I can give you more because I am giving that in you partnering with Me and teaching you how to live in abundance.”
What if you could give your way out of a poverty mindset?
A poverty mindset has nothing to do with finances. A poverty mindset is about living with meager possibilities. When God has something rich to give you, do not be poor. Jesus made Himself poor so that we can become rich. There is a richness of thinking, of perception, of language that puts you in a place above your circumstances, not below them. Welcome to life in Jesus. This is what it means to be alive to God. You are alive to all of the possibilities and you are so struck that you spend most of your time astonished and, your language changes. When we talk to each other, it is like, “OMG, you will never guess what God said to me today! And I am learning this…”
We are like the early church - you read the Gospels. If you have a concordance at home, look up the word marvel, and it will take you straight to the Gospels. Everyone was marveling about Jesus. Everyone was gaga around Jesus, like Homer Simpson with chicken, “Ahh chicken!” It is like, they are amazed, they marveled at what He said. They marveled at what He did. It was, “This is God and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
You look in the book of Acts and everyone had a sense of wonder. Everyone was in awe and astonishment. Why? We are all practicing what it means to be a new person in Jesus. And we are all dancing on our own grave every day so relieved that I do not have to deal with that sucker because he is dead! Stone dead! Welcome to the good news!
Philippians 3:12-14 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Identity is the Key to Transformation
Your new man is focused on Jesus. You are a habitation of God by the Spirit. Your old man is dead. God is not dealing with it. He is not dealing with your behavior. He is establishing your identity. Identity is the key to transformation. That is a present-future attitude. I press on so that I can lay hold of what God has for me. Forget the past; I am reaching forward to what lies ahead. I am so excited about my life.
I will try and say that in English. I am so excited about my life! I love everything in it. I do not mind the warfare because it is not like I am going to lose. I do not mind the problems because I get to convert them into possibilities. There are no problems in Heaven; therefore, if it does not exist in Heaven, it cannot exist in earth. Listen, if it is not intended, it cannot be allowed. If God did not intend it, it cannot be allowed. Put that in your Christmas cracker.
Pressing on towards the goal of Jesus – let us have the same attitude.
It is brilliant to be alive from the dead. We will keep on moving away from the past and away from what is dead until we get into a place that we cannot even remember what that corpse looks like. We are so in this new place, we are exploring, realizing that freedom is a territory to explore, and we are wide-eyed with wonder about everything.
What if the only way you can live in Jesus is to be astonished? Let us just have the grace to be amazed. To be absolutely amazed. Every day we are shaking our heads in wonder. We are having ‘OMG’ moments all of the time. “Oh, my goodness. I am hearing the Lord say this.” And there is this flow of encouragement. It is like a river. That current is so strong it pulls you into a whole different place. The Holy Spirit is so astonishingly brilliant at what He does - He pulls you into a place. Let us allow that to happen.
LifeChanger!
You have upgrades in your thinking, your perception, and your language that are going to be absolutely, profoundly enjoyable. And when He grabs a hold of you, and when you stand in it and experience the life that is in it, and you embrace that as a lifestyle - you become a LifeChanger. No one is safe from the blessing. No one is safe from your revelation. No one is safe from the Presence of God that you will be manifesting.
To be alive to God means fully engaging with Christ in you. Let me read you something else from the Bible.
2 Corinthians 13:4 For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you.
This is what I like about being alive to God, the power of God is being – when you live in Christ and practice life in that place – the power of God is directed towards you. So, you cannot not inherit. You cannot not receive something. Do you understand what I mean? When you practice being God-conscience and alive to God by the power of the Spirit, something has to flow towards you because all of Heaven is attracted to Jesus in you. What does that mean? You are a magnet for blessing. You are a magnet for favor because Heaven comes to Jesus in you.
All of Heaven is attracted to Jesus in you. You are a new creation, all the old is passed away, everything has become new and all of those things are of God. They will come to you because Jesus is in you. That is good news.
It means we are engaging with that reality. In the end, I can be as weak as I like as long as I am weak in Christ. As long as I stand in Christ, God is directing blessings towards me. He is directing life towards me. Why? Because God will always give to Jesus. Come on, you have got to think about it.
There is something in you that pulls things out of Heaven. That is what it means to be alive to God. You can pull things out of Heaven because God is directing life towards you. More life than you can handle; always more than you can handle. What if it is your destiny to be overwhelmed by Jesus every given day? To be overwhelmed, to be comprehensively overwhelmed. What if that is what fullness means? What if that is the consequence of abundance? That you are constantly overwhelmed so that your mind is saturated by the gifts of God, by the Presence of God. You cannot live in Christ and be ordinary. It is just – I think that is my definition of an impossibility. You cannot be in Christ and be ordinary. You are extraordinary by definition.
We learn best about ourselves in pursuit of Him. It is our God discovery that opens up our life to the beauty of His Presence. He has got to overwhelm you. What if this life in Jesus, what if God directing life to you is a bigger event than Moses on the mountain? What if it is a bigger event? We do not know that it is not. What if it is?
What does it mean to be a habitation of God, to be a living stone in the temple of God, to be part of the household of God, to be part of that city set on a hill, to be the Bride of Christ, absolutely beloved? When we discover how He values us, and what He has accomplished on our behalf, we cease to be deficient in ourselves, and He becomes our sufficiency.
You know, the truth is, we only remain prisoners because we are ignorant of our freedom. I just punched you in the solar plexus. But I did it so nicely.
When we identify with Him, we see ourselves as He sees us. Let me say that again, please. When He looks at you, He does not see anything wrong with you, because He dealt with all of that. He only sees what is missing from your experience and He is totally committed to giving you that encounter. That means it does not matter whether we are doing well or doing badly, we have always got something to look forward to.
It is important to have a big picture of God and allow the Holy Spirit to help you to color it in using your everyday life situations.
What if there is no circumstance that can separate you from the love of God? And, if there is no circumstance that can separate you from the love of God, there is no circumstance that can separate you from the power of God. This plan of redemption and restoration, it is taking place every single day in every single scenario.
What if the ultimate reality is that everything in your life is designed to make you vulnerable to the goodness of God? What would it look like for you to be vulnerable to Majesty?
This is a conversation the Lord and I have been having for the last four years. His question to me four years ago was, “Graham, what would it take for you to believe that I am unceasingly magnificent toward you?” I did not have a clue. In fact, I stood there like a fish - my mouth just working but nothing coming out. I cannot even wrap my mind around that. And He said, “Well, how about we wrap My mind around that? What if I help you with that?” And we are having this conversation constantly. What would it take for you to believe that I am unceasingly magnificent towards you?
or from the power of God.
I am grappling with the immensity of this, and it is doing my head in which is really good because I am getting a new head out of it. I am getting a whole new way of thinking out of it. My perception is changing, my lens is changed, my language is starting to change. I am finding it really difficult to think of things as problems because I am so convinced that they are really possibilities dressed up.
Let me read you something from Colossians 1:25-27
Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God, that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
You and Glory
What if glory has to happen in your life? What if something glorious has to happen just because Christ is in you? What if glory is attracted to you? The Bible says that God will not give His glory to another; but, we are not another. We are the Bride of Christ. We are not another. We are someone that He has created to share glory with. The riches of the glory that is inheritance in the Saints – Christ in you is an expectation of something spectacular. What about that for a mindset?
Heaven’s Sound
What if you are so much more powerful that you believe? What if you are so much more amazing than you have ever seen? What if being alive to God opens you up to what Heaven is like? What if being alive to God opens up the Kingdom in such a way that the Kingdom comes and drowns out the world and you hear the sound of Heaven - and the sound of the world, that noise, is drowned out - and you only hear that sound which you are created to hear because you are walking in newness of life?
You were created to hear it when you were born again. You were born again to interact with Heaven, to hear that sound, to receive revelation, to receive grace, to receive holiness, to receive righteousness - that is who you really, really are. We are practicing being alive to God and that is what we do. That is our business – revelation and astonishment.
We experience God’s glory as He expresses who He is for us and we begin to discover who we are in Him.
What if every single day there is something new to discover? What if you are at the end of your life, and the one thing you pass on to your kids is about 100 journals full of all the stuff that you wrote about Jesus, full of all the things that you saw, full of the things.
What if you had just one journal about marveling? Today I marveled at this – God did this today, it was absolutely marvelous. There are so many marvelous things going on, I am starting to become marvelous myself.
God Initiates
He is the initiator who loves to initiate new things in our lives. What does God want to initiate in you today? What does He want to open you up to see about yourself and about Him? What wonder does He want to put into your heart today? What astonishment, what amazement is yours today?
It is just a lens change. It is just a mindset change. It is just a language change. It is just where you change. It is where transformation comes and comes to stay. Nothing is impossible to you because Christ is in you, and He gives you such an expectation of something glorious happening.
God’s Relentless Kindness
In my relationship with God, part of the glory that fills my heart on this reflects on what I know by experience of the kindness of God. My first-ever testimony of God beyond the salvation experience was about the kindness of God. That God is the kindest person I have ever known. I do not know anybody kinder than God, and He has been relentlessly kind to me. Now, for 18 years, I have been receiving the kindness of God in such tangible ways that I want to have a radiant understanding of who He is.
I am realizing that He is beautiful, that He is wonderful, that He is astonishing, that He is marvelous. Everything about Him radiates His goodness and we are getting overpowered, we are getting overwhelmed.
What if that is your natural state in Christ - to be overwhelmed? Dear Lord, would you just love to be overwhelmed every single day of your life by who He is? What if that is possible because you are born again now and we are not spending all of our time dealing with stupid old stuff because it is dead? But, now we are free to pursue who we really are in God, who God wants to be for us.
What does He want to be for you? What is He initiating?
I am learning about joy and peace and rest because they are all attributes of who He is, and all of those things are what He wants to be for us. He wants you to be like Him. That means you laugh too much. That means nothing fazes you. It is impossible for you not to be at peace. He is saying, “Hey, My peace I give you. Not as the world gives. My peace I give you. You do not have to be anxious ever.”
Anxiety, stunningly enough, is not a Fruit of the Spirit. It belongs to the old guy that is dead. So does panic and fear and worry. You are a new creation. Peace is a way of life. Laughter is a way of life. Love is a way of life, not just an expression of God. It is a lifestyle.
What that means is there will never be a day in your life when God is not creating something. So often we miss it because we are not practicing with the help of the Holy Spirit how to be alive to God. The Holy Spirit is so alive to Jesus.
John 16:14 says, He takes all the things of Jesus and discloses them to us.
The Holy Spirit is so enamored of Jesus that He will talk to you about Jesus 24/7. Even your busiest days, even on my busiest days, I hear the Holy Spirit tell me something about Jesus. It captures my heart, and that means I have to call a time out on myself so that I can write it down. So that I can meditate on that, so that some aspect of wonder can touch my heart and my spirit.
1 Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
Come Alive in Christ
Everything in your life is about you coming alive in Jesus. That life that He gives you is vigorous, it is animated, it is strong, it is active, it is inspired, it is refreshing, it is alert, it is active, it is revived, it is restored, it is stimulating, and it is full of life, teaming with life.
In Christ, God is creating life day after day.
Being alive to God comes out of our being built into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.
Ephesians 2:10 We are not trying to change ourselves, but instead are recognizing that we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.
It is God who works in us both to will and to do the same desire in us that He has for us. He works that transformation for His own good pleasure. He works in you because He loves to work in you. He loves His involvement with you. He does not care whether it is a good day or a bad day, He loves His involvement with you. He does not care whether you are getting it and living it, or whether you have got a spirit of stupid on you, it does not matter; He still will be involved with you.
In Christ, there are no good days and no bad days. There are only days of grace and grace is the empowering Presence of God that enables you to become the person that He sees when He looks at you.
We partner with God because we are His fellow workers. Being alive to God is always about engagement and involvement with Him in everything. We are God’s fields and He is growing something in us. We are God’s building and He is constructing His own abode within us.
As you practice the delight of engaging with Him, what are you coming alive to in your circumstances? What is growing in you? What expectation and confidence is being built in you? That is your freedom in Christ.
We are on this road. We all live on the street called astonishment. We are on this amazing journey. We live in this city called wonderful. We are learning to have a sense of wonder about who God is. We are not in two minds about ourselves. Thank God I am dead and I am alive to Him in Christ! And, I am learning what that life looks like.
Let us pray.
Father, thank You. Holy Spirit, You are so utterly amazing in Your pursuit of Jesus and Your pursuit of us. That You exist to get us and Christ in the same space so that we see who He is for us, we see who we are in Him, and You mesh us together in such a way that our whole personality changes and we are transformed into the image of God. It is not just a job to You, it is Your passion, and You love it. You love teaching us, “Consider yourself to be dead to sin and I will teach you how to be alive to God.” Father, we bless You for this incredible salvation. And, Lord, we embrace this newness of life that we are a new man because the old one is dead, that we are truly born again into Christ. We have this incredible Holy Spirit to teach us how to live there, stay there, operate from there, and become that citizen of Heaven here on earth. Father, we bless You in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
