The Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ
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SESSION 5
You know truth to tell this is one of the best learning experiences that any prophet could ever have. I think this is the best gig in the world right now because I am a builder. It feels like to me that all the 40 years I’ve been in ministry, I have been building, but to be working with such a grand bunch of people and turning this big ship of 17 million people into a fleet of ships that can circumnavigate the world and bring the Kingdom of Heaven down into earth. This has to be the biggest and best building gig in the world so I am stoked. The learning that I’m getting, the things that God is pressing me into because of Aglow, because of where we’re going, because of who you are, that to me is a fabulous experience. I’ve never had an experience equal to this in my whole life. So I feel like everything I have been doing has been moving to this point where I think God is trusting me with one of the biggest gigs on the planet, so I am pretty stoked.
The truth is that life in Jesus is an absolute privilege. Life in ministry is like privileged to the power of a million. Just to walk with Jesus one-on-one is a massive, massive privilege. To be trusted by Him to speak to others is just huge. It is important for us therefore that we do not live below the line of our privilege, but that we live above it, which is really what GameChangers is all about. It is all about saying the world needs to see your inheritance in Christ. The world needs to benefit from your inheritance in Christ.
You know I did a teaching series about the favor of God and it was probably one of the most comprehensive teaching series on that issue of favor because I feel like the Lord is saying to us “For goodness sake, come on, at least try and bankrupt Me, at least make an effort to bankrupt Me. I dare you. Take Me for everything I have because it is all yours anyway. You are an heir of God and you are a joint heir of Christ.
What if there are more resources stacked up against your life than you could possibly use in two lifetimes? What if? What really is fullness and abundance all about? You think God is scared of every one of His children taking Him for granted? He will be delighted if you did.
When God grants you something it is implicit in the permission that you take Him for granted. And I think if there is any one thing that upsets God more than anything else it will be that we don’t take Him for granted. You’re still breathing out there right?
You owe it to Jesus to squeeze every last drop of resources out of Heaven that have been allocated to you. You owe it to Christ to live in His fullness. He became poor that we could become rich. Not rich for ourselves, but rich on behalf of the people that we are called to. The world needs to see your inheritance at work. They need to be able to taste and see that God is good. They do not need a people group with a poverty mentality representing a God of abundance. That does not make sense.
Joint-heir With Christ
A part of being a GameChanger is that you at least know how to get your needs met. The reality is that we must move into our inheritance. We must start to explore in real terms what it means to be a joint-heir with Christ, and an heir of God. At the very least it means that we live in a way that means we are not subject to a credit crunch.
If there is ever an opportunity right now for us to show the world who Jesus is, it is by being generous and by living above the line of our privilege and coming into our inheritance when the whole world is trying to make ends meet. This is our moment.
I think the credit crunch was invented for us to rise up and occupy, to at least explore what being a joint-heir with Christ really is all about. It does translate to cash and property and wealth. Right now we have an opportunity to not just show the world what it is like to be in Jesus as a joint-heir, we have an opportunity to bankrupt hell, to take the wealth of the wicked, and to use it for acts of righteousness. We are getting opportunities right now to rob the enemy blind.
What if he is the only one in the spiritual world on a budget, because you know that God is not. There are no finance meetings in Heaven. There are no accountants in Heaven. They have all got different jobs. They are all probably musicians or something. Heaven is not broke. Let’s ask for stuff.
Do not ever – when it comes to finances – do not ever pray like a widow. Pray like a bride.
Now a woman who is absolutely loved knows she can always get something out of the old boy. It is true. It used to be when my credit card went missing I contacted the police and the bank. Now I just look in Theresa’s handbag. No I am just kidding. She does not have to look in my wallet. I buy her stuff all the time because I like it.
Here is the sum of what GameChangers means. At the base level, it means cash. It means property. It means businesses. It means wealth. It means riches. It means benevolence. It means that the neighbors around you can become a joint-heir with Christ vicariously just because you live next to them. It means that no one is safe from a blessing. It means we can victimize the whole world with the favor of God.
We must take favor for a spin. Explore it. Favor is territory because favor enables you to do this. Favor empowers you to do things.
Now the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set us free – free from all restraints. The only restraints upon us are righteousness, holiness, integrity, humility, and they are all brilliant. A part from that we are a free-thinking, free people who are expressing that freedom to other people.
The whole idea of religion inside the body of Christ is it takes people’s freedom away. It captures, it does not captivate you – it does not captivate you in Christ. It captures you into a religious system that has no intention of you being free, because it captures you so that you can pay their bills. It does not set you free to explore your identity and your destiny.
I have no doubt that some of the things, some of the consternations and the things that we have come up against in ourselves this weekend are that we have been bumping up against our freedom all weekend long. And we are thinking to ourselves, really? This is mine? I can do this? I can be this? I can think like this? I can see like this? I can have this language? Really? This is all mine? This belongs to me? This is my inheritance? Are you kidding?
We are bumping up against our freedoms, but we are also bumping up against our traditions. So there is a little healthy conflict in all of us right now. Why? Because we are exploring this land, and in a small way, it is a little like the 12 going out into Canaan to spy out the land. Yes, there are incredible properties and farms and vineyards, and the fruit is amazing, and the cattle are all sleek and fat, but there are giants.
This is our inheritance, but we have to take it from someone. What we are fighting, make no mistake, what we are fighting in the Western church is a very strong religious spirit that wants us to stay captive to something. When you go back into your homes and your churches, you are going to have to find ways of keeping this freedom, maybe in the face of people who do not quite want you to be that free.
So you are going to have to learn how to abide in that climate. Then you are going to have to learn how to keep your game changed, and then change the game of other people.
Let me tell you now, this is not going to be easy for some of us. Some of us may well end up being thrown out of churches. You are nobody if you are not being persecuted. If you have not been thrown out of church before, you need to grow up in Jesus. Jesus paid a price to give you your freedom; you are going to pay a price to keep it. It is a good price, though. Whatever the cost is, it is good. We can bear it because of what we are receiving and who we are becoming.
GameChangers
We are a brand new creation, all the old is passed away, behold new things have come and all these things are from God. 2 Corinthians 5
You are a part of a race of people in the earth never seen before Jesus. You are also the first fruits of a whole new move in Aglow.
I want you to have that sense about yourself. It is important that you have that sense about yourself, that you are the chosen, not the frozen chosen, you are the chosen. You are the first fruits of a whole new move of Aglow in this country.
In your region, you are the first fruits of a move of God and as that, as the chosen first members, as the first born, if you like in something, you have a responsibility. I want you to feel that, too.
You have a responsibility to rise up in your personal freedom and occupy it as fully as possible. Then you have a responsibility to your regional director to become the game-changing force in that region to change the game, to change the environment of Aglow, to change the atmosphere in your region, to bring it up, and to raise the water level. You have that responsibility. And we chose you because we thought you could bare that responsibility.
We are excited by who you are and who you are becoming. We are going to be happy seeing those assignments coming in. Please don’t do all 5 and then send them. As soon as you finish one, send it in because I don’t know how many people are here, 260? About 250. We do not want to have 1250 assignments land on our desks all at once so have mercy on us. Because are going to find ways of doing this whole thing. It is going to be interesting. It is going to be exciting. It is going to be a new thing for us. I am so stoked for what we are doing this weekend. Make no mistake, we are super excited.
This is the start of really changing the ship of Aglow into maybe a navy, a fleet. This is the start of something apostolic. That does not mean that everybody is an apostle. What it means, though, is we are part of a brand new enterprise that is going to change the face of who we are and how we present ourselves in the nations.
When you have a promise, you automatically have the fulfillment.
I want to read you this passage of scripture that the Lord has me read to Him very often, and then we talk about it, and I just find different things in His heart when I read it. I love reading scripture aloud to the Lord. And I know He wrote it, but I think He likes my accent. He does not have one, of course.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ would be to the praise of His glory.
Ephesians 1:3-12
Do you ever feel sometimes that you just want to kiss the Bible? Man! That Book undoes me more than anything in my whole life.
This is our relationship in Him, in the Spirit, that we are holy and blameless before Him. We are adopted as sons to Himself. We have to experience the glory of His grace. We are accepted in the Beloved. We have redemption and forgiveness so that we are wealthy in grace because it is lavished on us.
Grace
You know you have not experienced real grace until you have been absolutely overwhelmed by it; overwhelmed to the point of tears, speechless at the wonder of it. There are some things in Christ that should make us inarticulate in wonder, lost, no words, needing to speak in tongues, just to release something in us. I think the gift of tongues is given to us because we are supposed to be so astonished, so amazed, that we become inarticulate in our wonder of God. He knows that something is building up inside of us, and we need to release it, so He wants to give us a Heavenly language. The beauty of that Heavenly language is that the enemy cannot understand it, so bonus.
It is for us to understand there is a spirit of revelation on our lives that is here, so that we would know the fullness of His kind intention. He is the most intentional person I have ever met in my entire life. The kind intention of His will is absolutely enormous, so huge you can get lost in it. You lose your bearings because the goodness of God is so huge you cannot see the end from the beginning. You do not know where the height is, or the depth is, or the length and breadth of it. You are just lost somewhere in the middle of it.
Everything in our life must be linked to experiences that contain fullness. You have a responsibility to the world around you to be full, to abound, to be over flowing so that wherever you are, people are living in the over flow. They taste and see that the Lord is good even if you are not even engaged with them.
Being in Christ means we cannot be challenged by the enemy, wicked people, or difficult circumstances. We can only be challenged by the Goodness of God.
Peter was so full when the sun was up, his shadow healed people. Come on; think about that for a minute. Peter was so filled with the Spirit, when the sun was shining, his shadow contained His fullness. Doesn’t that amaze you? It absolutely amazes me.
There is a place in our life where we must sum up all our life’s situations in the context of who Jesus is for us. Majesty is not an option. It is a necessity. We have a massive inheritance that must be spent in this life. Everything in Heaven must be applied to everything on earth. All that He is doing and all that we are becoming is to the praise of His glory. So in the end the highest form of praise is not what we sing, it is what we live. The highest point of adoration becomes who we are in the earth, how we are known in the earth, how we are understanding that we are known in Heaven. We embrace that Heaven-to-earth lifestyle and mindset and the earth begins to know us differently, and they begin to associate us with Heaven.
And so the cry goes up, “the people who are changing the world have come here also.” There is an expectation in the earth.
Miracles are needed now more than any other time in the world’s history. Signs and wonders are needed now more than any other time in the world’s history. Healing is required now more than any other time in the world’s history. So we must fight this “cessationists” gospel that says that the Gifts of the Spirit are not meant for today. It is a religious devil. It is the doctrine of demons, and we owe it to Jesus to fight it.
The best way to fight it is indirectly through our own lives. We do not need to go up against it. We do not need a civil war in the church. We do not need to label people, but we must fight that spirit.
The only way to fight it is that you become a place where people can taste and see that God is good. That your lifestyle, that your belief, your faith, your trust in the fullness and abundance of God leads you to keep on saying, “Hey if you are sick, I would like to pray for you.” We have an expectation of glory coming down into our midst, that wherever we go, people know stuff happens around those people.
I love the fact that we have Jesus in Heaven interceding and releasing everything we need for life and godliness. I love the fact that the Holy Spirit is here on earth and He is interceding. And I love the fact that two members of the God-head are both praying so we have prayer going on in stereo.
We are the third part of a three-fold cord and we are learning to pray with God not towards Him. We are learning to pray with the answer not to find one. Prayer in its basic form is finding out what Jesus is praying for and praying the same thing.
We are learning that relationship is everything in the Kingdom, everything.
The law of life in Christ says,
as He is in Heaven, so are we in this world 1 John 4:17
Jesus manifested a Heaven-to-earth lifestyle and perspective, and He practiced abiding. He never moved out of fullness of Presence. So what does that mean for us now that we have Christ living in us? It means we have something to live up to, so we must live above the line of our privilege, not beneath it.
What does it look like for us to operate in the fullness of Christ and to see all things through His eyes? I think that is a real part of the five-fold ministry giftings – that we are giving people wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus, so that they understand who Jesus is for them, and who they can become in Him.
The greatest gift you can give to any man, woman, or child is freedom. Church leaders need to be the best givers of freedom in the world. We give freedom away to people and we teach them responsibility to the Holy Spirit.
Paul said to the Philippians church that our citizenship is in Heaven. We are practicing a culture that comes from Heaven into our world through the indwelling power of Christ and the fullness of the Holy Spirit. We are practicing a Heaven-to-earth lifestyle, mentality, viewpoint, focus, and language.
What you see about yourself in the Spirit, you get to become.
Everything we are doing is taking the things from Heaven and releasing them here on earth, because that is what Jesus came to give us – a whole new covenant, a whole new way of doing things.
He came saying,
you have heard it said, but now I say. He came saying about the Old Testament, you have had all the law and the prophets until John, and now I am here. He came saying all the law and the prophets are enshrined in the first two commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor, whoever you happen to be standing or sitting next to at any given point during your day, love your neighbor as you want to be loved yourself. On this hangs all the law and all the prophets.
And there are no rules outside of love. We are governed by love, which means, you know when you look at the definition we gave yesterday, we are governed by the definition of love and what it really is.
I love the fact that slowly but surely over these last few sessions we have been robbing you blind of your negativity. We are the negativity thieves. We are stealing negativity out of the earth because the body of Christ is the most brilliant, free-thinking, amazingly perceptive people with this gorgeous language of possibility. All things are possible. Let’s pray. It is who we are. It is our gift to the world, is our relationship with Jesus and the fullness of what that really means. A new creation walking in newness of life. Jesus gave us the keys of the Kingdom in Matthew 16 so we could bind on earth what has already been bound in Heaven and we could loose on earth all that Heaven is releasing. We get to interact with Heaven here on earth. That is our relationship with God.
Just as a light bulb requires both a negative and a positive charge in order to produce light, so He has designed our circumstances so that His revelation can use negativity to turn on the light of our understanding and allow us to shine in Him. Negative circumstances with no revelation keeps us in the dark. It keeps us in the dark about God’s purpose and the kind intention of His will.
So we are learning, we are going to practice. The law of the Spirit of life means we see everything as He does. As He is, so are we. On earth as it is in Heaven. All of Heaven is attracted to Jesus in you. We are seated with Him in Heavenly places. All our perspectives are drawn from a new dimension and we are learning to live an ascended lifestyle.
The world is waiting to see the real true people of God emerge. A people who have no religious dimension. Come on. No religious dimension. We are not demented in Jesus; we are joyfully submitted to all that Heaven is. All of life in Jesus is created to rule but we rule by love not by fear or by shame or by judgment or by anger, we rule by love.
The law of life in Christ is always in agreement with the Father. That means you cannot have a perception of yourself that partners with the flesh. That is illegal behavior. Your thinking must lead you into the “yes and amen” of Christ. If something does not exist in Heaven, how about not letting it exist in you? That is why we are asking questions saying, are there negatives in Heaven? Is there frustration in Heaven? Are there problems in Heaven? Because if the answer is no to all of those, then they do not belong here in our experience of life.
That means when those experiences come knocking, when they open the door, they are going to find Jesus. It means we get to turn everything upside down and inside out. It means we are the GameChangers, we change everything that comes against us, and we change it into something else.
So if your old man is truly dead, what does new-man thinking look like? That is what we are exploring.
Scriptures says, thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. I am an unashamed triumphalist. I believe in 2 Corinthians 2:14 thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ.
Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through Jesus.
1 Corinthians 15:57
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
Romans 8:37
Whatever is born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.
1 John 5:4
In this world you will have tribulations, but cheer up, I’ve overcome the world.
John 16:33
Every negative circumstance, therefore, is designed to teach us how to fight from victory not towards it. It is designed to teach us to learn the art of consistent overcoming in our lifestyle. We cannot engage with majesty and overcoming if we have a mindset that is self-defeating. You cannot win if you make allowances for losing. When we look at Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith, we must see majesty and victory. That majesty and victory must combine in our encounter and our experience of Him.
Laws of the Spirit of Life in Christ
So here are some of the laws of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that I am practicing right now.
- I am practicing turning every negative thought into a positive one and dealing with that.
- I am practicing this, if I am in Christ, so are all my circumstances. That is a yahoo moment! If I am in Christ, so are all my circumstances. What do they look like now?
- I have been practicing for years – rest is a weapon. I use my peace to afflict the enemy. I can get peace in my circumstances, but I wanted to take it a step further. I wanted to afflict the enemy with my peace. I want him to regret the day he ever messed with me.
Jesus came promising us two things, favor and vengeance. In the favor of God, we get delivered from all the things that have traumatized, humiliated us, wounded us, held us down, betrayed us. Then when we get healed of those things, God then sends us to people who are currently afflicted, but by all the things that we are now set free from. When we go to them with our testimony, it includes the healing of someone that you testified to. When people say to me, I am not sure what my ministry is, my question is, what is your testimony of Jesus?
Your testimony is the beginning of your ministry; and when you create in others the same freedom that God has given you, that is revenge – that is you getting revenge on the enemy!
When I grew up, my dad hated me. I have no idea why. I was one of six kids, not allowed to be with the rest of the family. I had to stay in my bedroom because he did not want to see me in the house. I was not allowed to speak at all in the home. The only words I was allowed to say were yes, no, please, and thank you. I grew up never having a conversation with people. So I do not know whether I am an introvert by environment or inclination. It pretty much does not matter to me.
So I grew up not being allowed to speak. What does God do? He gives me a speaking ministry that takes me all over the world. I have spoken to, I do not know, probably millions of people. You don’t think this isn’t my vengeance – creating a whole new echelon of GameChangers in a world-wide movement? You don’t think I am getting some healthy revenge right now? You don’t think the enemy is maybe a hundred thousand times regretting having messed with me in my previous incarnation as a non-believer? I am here saying, this is what vengeance looks like. Rest is a weapon.
- Everything you use for God, you use it automatically against the enemy. It is the law of life in Christ.
- One of the other laws in life of Christ is a problem can never be there without a promise and provision also being present. Every problem comes with a promise and a provision attached to it. Why? Because you are a citizen of Heaven. God takes that seriously. He will not allow a negative to be in your life without a provision and a promise from Him also being present.
So what I am saying to you is, what if it is impossible for you to have a problem without a promise and a provision attached? What would that look like? That means that then when you get a problem, you are excited. Come on, think it through, you are excited, right? OMG I have a problem. Brilliant! This is going to be amazing. What do you do? You call your best friend because you want to share.
“Hey something great just happened. Hey John, how is it going? It is Graham. Did you see that game last night? Man alive, the last two minutes, could you believe it? No wonder I love this team. They never give up. Hey listen man, I am calling because something amazing happened today. Yeah, I got this problem. Hey, it looks really big. Yeah, I am super excited – like I am beside myself. It is like, here I am and there I am right next to me and we are both manifesting. I knew something was up because the Holy Spirit showed up pretty early, you know, and you know what He is like, Mr. Excitable. So I knew He was up to something and this problem came. Yeah, yeah, it looks really big.
I am thinking, you know if I am really careful, I could make it last a couple of months. Yeah, yeah. Well, I have not really opened it yet. I have been too busy drooling. Yeah, it is like, I am looking and I am thinking, my Lord, if the problem is that big, how much bigger is the promise and then how much bigger than the promise is the provision? So I am feeling like, you know, the provision right now that I am imagining is dwarfing the size of the problem, and I have only had it for like 40 minutes. Yeah, it is amazing. I am so super excited I wanted you to know. So how you doing anyway? You do not have a problem? Well, hang in there man. One is bound to come, right? Dude you know that God is faithful. Yeah, it will come, man, it will come, do not fret. Do not fret, it will come.
Hey listen, do you want to share this one with me? No, it would be cool. Come over and we will kind of work on it together and whatever blessing you get, that will be great, yeah. But, hey, listen, man, when your problem comes, I will be expecting a phone call, right? Just saying. So how long before you can come over? Forty minutes, brilliant. Hey are you passing St. Arbucks? Will you get me a coffee? Brilliant! Okay, I will see you in a few.”
What are we doing? We are excited. What if we can take fellowship to a whole different level? What if we are going to have fellowship around our promises and our provisions? Because we do not call them problems – because technically, there are not any problems, there are just massive possibilities. What if it is designed to open you up to a bigger possibility from Heaven than you imagined? Yeah?
You understand what we are doing here? We are going to have to fight off all our conditioning from the world around us. Yeah? That is why we are saying it is so important that you absolutely have an intention to kill negativity stone dead – because it is dead. It belongs to the old man. You are walking in newness of life, you see things differently. You think about things differently. You are talking about stuff very differently. “I do not have a problem, I have an exciting possibility. This is going to be great. What if it is going to be so much fun?”
We are discovering the blessing and the purposes of God. You know that God is going to take you right to the cliff edge, right? Right to the edge and then probably on some days He is going to push you off, and then you are going to learn how to fly, or He is going to catch you. Right? He will take you right to the edge.
Here is the thing, God has to take you to the edge of something. He has to take you out of your comfort zone. Come on! Why on earth do you think He gave you a Comforter in the first place? It is because He plans to take you out of your comfort zone. That means you are going to bump up against some fears just so that you can lose them. Yeah? Yeah. It is just furious fun right now just watching all the cogs going around in your head.
I love this event. I do not want it to stop. It is like we are teaching trouble makers how to make more trouble.
Isn’t it glorious that there are no problems in Heaven, only possibilities? Imagine the implications on your mindset, your perception, your language. People around you are not going to thank you for introducing them to this.
Here is the thing, some people do not want to be set free. They have learned how to be helpless and they would like to stay that way. They do not want to learn how to think. They want you to tell them what to think.
God is not doing that with us. He is teaching us how to think. We think with the mind of Christ. We think brilliantly.
One of the laws of life in Christ says that frustration tells you where your upgrade is located.
Frustration is a sign post. Follow the sign. It is like, frustration, here is your sign. Somewhere there is an upgrade in your location. Go find it. It is like frustrated, why am I frustrated? What is not happening? What needs to happen? I am going looking for that.
There is a possibility around here somewhere. I am looking for it. Not there. You will find it probably right next to Jesus.
If you rejoice and give thinks, in rejoicing and thanksgiving, you always locate the Presence. Wherever the Presence is, there is a gift. It is not rocket science. That is why we always rejoice and give thanks more than we pray.
Prayer is part of the celebration sandwich if you read 1 Thessalonians 5, “Rejoice in the Lord always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks.” Yeah? So when you rejoice, your locater gets turned on and you can locate the Presence of God. You can locate the things that He brings with Him. That is pretty fun.
Another of the laws of life in Christ Jesus is, if you have a prophecy, you have an outcome.
So an outcome means what? It means you are going to survive the process. When David faced Goliath, he had an outcome beyond Goliath. Because the prophecy over his life was, “you are going to be king in Israel.” He is not king right now, he cannot die. He has an outcome beyond Goliath. So when he ran towards Goliath, he was not remotely concerned about Goliath, he was running towards his outcome. He is running towards being king.
David realized that the giant was a short cut. He realized that the giant was a doorway to territory that God wanted him to occupy. He ran towards Goliath because he was running towards something beyond the problem. That is a great mindset right there.
We look at big problems; we look at giants differently. When you look at a giant, you are going to get a mixed message. The devil is going to tell you, “He is too big for you. He is too strong. You are not big enough. You are not good enough. You are not strong enough. Really, compared to him, you are a grasshopper.”
Some people swallow that line hook, line, and sinker. You get mixed messages. The devil is going to tell you one thing; the Holy Spirit is going to tell you another. He is going to say to you, “Great, see that giant? Look at how big he is. Isn’t it great? By the time We are finished on this level, you are going to be his size and he is going to be your present size. You are going to be so much bigger than that, you are going to dwarf him. He is going to be dwarfed by you. That is what I am making you into, by the time we are finished with him. That is the very least I am making you into. So, eat your spinach, Popeye, The Holy Spirit says, "We can take him down.”
Caleb comes back, 10 spies come back saying, “We felt like grasshoppers.” Caleb came back saying, “Dude there are giants there. This is going to be amazing! It is like, God is with us. They are going to be our prey.” Can you imagine that? This is incredible. No wonder God says, “I like that boy. He is a man of a different spirit. I like him. He is a keeper. Keep that boy around for a while, because he is a lot of fun to have around.”
You know, God takes absolute delight in people who love the truth and want to embody it. He is walking to and fro throughout the earth looking for those people on whose behalf He can show Himself strong. He is looking for people who want to be like Him. Listen, the Lord does not want to bail you out of anything. He wants to grow you up in everything. There are no bail outs in Heaven. He is investing in you, and you know He wants a return on His investment.
The first time I saw this my eyes popped out of my head. I needed someone to pop them back in and pray healing over me. It is in Genesis 18:17, the Lord is talking about Abraham. It is his normal Wednesday morning and the Lord shows up with a couple of angels, you know like He does, drops in for coffee. He is chatting with a couple of angels and Abraham just stood there. Imagine that there are four of them. There are three in the group chatting and there is Abraham about a half step away and he is listening and they are talking about him. And this is what the Lord says, it’s Genesis 18:17,
Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed?
The most powerful word there is the word “since” because he is going to become this, he needs to see this. You see, when you start living up to the fullness of your inheritance words, and practicing your partnership over your prophetic words – when you start to enter into that process of partnering with the Holy Spirit, then He begins to deal with you differently.
People who are not partnering with God – He has to speak with them on this level. Right? Because He has to lift them up because they are still babies wanting their needs met.
Grace is the empowering Presence of God that enables you to
become the person that God sees when He looks at you.
People who are partnering with God in their identity are moving towards their inheritance. That means they are becoming fully mature sons, so He wants to speak to you in this way. So He comes along with a couple of angels and says, “Abraham has these promises over his life, which he is moving towards, so I declare to him what I want to do now since he is going to become this.” In other words, God wants to invest something in you now because of your future. I know, exactly. It’s an “oh boy” moment. OMG.
What does that mean? It means never under estimate the willingness of God to ramp up your blessing – to increase you. At every opportunity, you show Him one sign, He is going to increase you. You show one sign of becoming something, He is going to push more stuff your way. Why? Because it fascinates Him. It absolutely fascinates Him.
Paul said, I have no greater joy than to see all my children growing in truth. Where did he get that from? He got it from the Father. The Father is looking for people. Who is living in the truth? Who is practicing the truth? He is like, “I have discovered one thing about God that He is useless at – He cannot deny Himself.” When He sees people, you know, living in harmony, He has to come down because it is so unusual. He has to come down and have a look at it. When He sees somebody living and practicing the truth, He is fascinated.
It is like all of Heaven is cheering for you right now. I am serious. All of Heaven has been cheering for this event for months. All of Heaven. There is a cloud of witnesses looking on and people are cheering for you right now. “Come on! Come on! Wake up! Come on, come on, come on, come on! Yes! More, more!” Heaven is saying, “More! Give her more, give her more, give her more. She needs more. Give her more, come on!” All of Heaven is cheering for you right now!
Did you ever stop to consider that Heaven is looking for something on the earth? What are they looking for? They are looking for you. They are so looking for you and your city is looking for you. Your region is looking for you. The unsaved are looking for you. When they are looking for a miracle? What are they looking for? They are looking for the sons of God in the earth. They are looking for the people of God – people living in their identity, people living in their inheritance, people who have some substance in their life to give away.
All of Heaven is cheering for you right now.
There is such a wealth. There is an embarrassment of encouragement from Heaven into our lives. That is why we need to be Heavenly minded because when you are Heavenly minded you are massively encouraged.
When you are living in the fullness of the Spirit, He is the most encouraging individual I have ever met anywhere. He is Mister Encouragement. He is the most exciting, exuberant personality I have ever met. The Holy Spirt, He is a genius. He will absolutely flat out tell you “I am a genius. I am the genius of Heaven here on earth. I am here to make everything work. I am here to disclose to you everything that belongs to you. I am here to make sure that you get it so when you are travelling in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, you are travelling with maximum encouragement.”
All of Heaven is cheering for you right now. And you know, because of this weekend, the prayers of Jesus will now change over you. You understand that, right? Because when you are children, having had your needs met, He is praying one thing. But when you start to move towards your inheritance, His prayers can change.
Let me tell you, He is going to be pretty happy about that. He now has different things to pray and, you know what, so do you. You have different things to pray now. Your prayer language, your prayer life is going to go to a whole different level. His intercession over you is just about to change. He is so excited. We get to pray prayers off the next shelf. That is going to be so much fun for Jesus.
I am expecting a bonus from this weekend, Lord. I am telling you. Actually, this is my bonus right here, right in this room. Can you imagine it? All of Heaven is cheering for you right now – that you are so going to come into something in Jesus.
The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is actually getting rid of negativity, mediocrity, inferiority, and intimidation. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is getting rid of all of those things and taking you to a place where everything is possible. Your eyes are being opened and you are thinking with a whole different level of perception and language. What now is possible? Now we have to take our faith for a spin. Yeah.
The great thing about faith is it works by love. The more loved you are, the easier it is to believe. The more you are loved by God, the more faith is simple. The more faith is easy because faith works by love. Yeah.
So this is a great moment. This is actually, I think, this is a historic moment for us as an organization in the earth. We are changing history right here, right now and we are doing it by design. We did not fall into this thing – we thought our way in to it. We are pursuing something in God, and something opened up, and we saw the territory. We saw the space in front of us; we stepped into it. We could see the territory, it belongs to us and we are learning how to occupy it.
But this is a historic moment, so maybe in a hundred years’ time when someone writes the further history of Aglow, what if some of you are going to be named in that history? I guess my question is who do you want to be? Do you want to be one of those people telling stories about, ‘yeah I knew the 250 first responders. I knew the first 250 history-makers in Aglow. I know those guys. We had one of them to speak.’
Do you want to be the one telling stories about somebody else or do you want to be the one person that everybody else is telling stories about? How about Gideon’s 300? Those guys probably never bought a cup of coffee for the rest of their lives. People taking them out to dinner. You were one of them. They all had little badges with 300 on it. I was one of the 300, you know. If they are anything, like America, there will be a million people with a 300 badge on.
People in Aglow are going to tell stories about this company. The stories of this company here are going to go all around the world. You could be part of the legend of Aglow. We chose you hoping you would become a legacy, hoping you would become legendary, in the story of this ministry.
We get to change the history of what we started out 45 odd years ago. We are making history. Why? We are turning a people group loose. God help us. We are turning a people group loose that have some real quality and real substance in their life. People that we feel confident are going to rise, not to the task, but rise to the challenge of the goodness of God.
Understanding some of the laws of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is really important. It is important for us. We are learning to bring the future into today. That means we have got a handle on who we are right now. We have got another handle on who we are becoming. When you know who you are now, and you know who you are becoming, the gap between your present and your future gets shorter – you move faster through the terrain.
We are going to be redeeming time in our own lives. There is an acceleration going to come upon us, because everything in the Spirit is accumulative. You know, the more you get, the more God wants to give you. The more you receive, the more you give. The more you get, the more you receive. The more you give, the more you receive. The more you give, the more you get. So we grow by what we give away.
Just one time I want to be in a bunch of people where I do not have to say this: there are unclaimed upgrades all over this room. Just one time in my life, Jesus, I want to be with a bunch of people, and I am looking around thinking, these guys are so full, there is nothing left in Heaven. It is all down here. There are no unclaimed upgrades. In other words, God has wanted to give us things, but we have not claimed them often. I want to be with a bunch of people where that is no longer true. You are up-to-date with all of your upgrades. Wouldn’t that be amazing? It would be astonishing for me. I think I might have to, like, go to Heaven for a break or something.
- Never deal with a situation on the same level that it appears. Always take it to a higher place in your thinking.
A friend of mine was a test pilot for the RAF, the Royal Air Force. He tested all their new planes, you know, the prototype of something. It would not be the finished article; it would just be the unvarnished plane. It would not be painted, the insides of the plane – there would be wires everywhere. It was an experimental air craft, so no frills whatsoever. His job was to take it as high as he could take it in the atmosphere and see what it was capable of – to see when it started to kind of shake and things fell off.
He was on a particular test flight and he gets up to like 28,000 feet and he levels off for a while. He is in contact with ground control and they are saying, “This works and that works and so on, and there is no shuddering and the pedals work.”
The way you came into salvation is the way that salvation is sustained.
Everything is going fine, and then suddenly, he looks down and he sees a rat the size of a tomcat by his feet and it is chewing on the cables. This is a pivotal moment, so he gets back to ground control, “Houston, I have a problem. There is a big rat in the cock pit and it is nibbling – it is chewing through some of the cables.” He was told to try and land as fast as possible, but he is miles away from the airport. He is thinking, “This is going to take me, how long will it take me to get back? This could be too long.”
This one old guy who used to be a test pilot gets on the microphone and says, “Son, put your oxygen mask on and take this plane as high as you can go until there is no oxygen left in the cabin and the thing will die.” His solution was, take it to a high place. Take it up to a high place. That is exactly what happened. He took it beyond its spec. He took it up to over 50,000 feet, and the rat starved of oxygen and died, and he landed the plane safely. They have a picture of this rat in their control room.
Never deal with a problem on the level that it appears. You are brilliant thinkers now. You have got to take that thing to a higher level and see what God will call it. Whatever God calls it, that is what you call it. You see, all problems, when the enemy presents you with a difficulty, the oxygen that keeps that difficulty alive and growing is your fear, your worry, your anxiety, your panic, your doubt, and your mistrust. That is the oxygen that makes problems appear bigger than they are and it keeps that thing alive.
When you take it to a higher place, in praise, in worship, in thanksgiving, in rejoicing, that is why James said, Count it all joy – because if you count this as joyful, you deny that problem any breath. It cannot have a hold on you because Heaven has a hold on you. That is what rejoicing is for.
All negative emotions are food to the enemy. They are encouragement to the enemy. That is why I am saying that complaining, moaning, whining, and so on, it is the worship language of hell. All negative emotions feed the enemy and they encourage him. That is why rejoicing and thanksgiving is so vital to us.
It is important that we are checking out our language with the friends around us. Is my language okay about this? And sometimes, you know, we need to lovingly confront one another. “You know, Rick, you have better language inside of you to express this situation. What would it be?” Not calling him out – calling him up.
It is really good for us to say to people, is my language okay about this? You know, and in our companies, our language needs to be brilliant. It is important for us that we get to speak into each other’s speech. Check out your language. Is it okay? Check out your thinking. Am I thinking the best thing I can think right now, because all negative emotions massively encourage the enemy? So at least we want to deny him that possibility.
Never deal with a problem on the same level that it appears.
What am I doing right now? I am giving ideas to you to change your game. Right? I am giving you all these possibilities of how your game can change. I am giving you some tools to change your circumstances, and to revel in those changes. Loose the law of life of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus to bring things from Heaven into earthly situations and put them to work.
You have a language that is not of this world. Thank the living God!
- Every negative circumstance is designed to teach you how to overcome. So, you are getting another lesson in overcoming, yahoo. Do not be weary in overcoming, be exhilarated!
One of the things you are going to need to watch and this is why we need to upgrade our rejoicing and our thanksgiving, because it increases your stamina. Anybody who is moaning or complaining or seeing the worst, you know that they have no stamina for the fight because they are allowing themselves to be debilitated by their own language.
The reason the Bible talks about praise and worship and thanksgiving and rejoicing is because this is the oxygen of Heaven. This is the food of Heaven. This is the energy pill of Heaven. This is your shot in the arm. You can tell people who have leveled off in their worship by their everyday language. They may be good worshipers, but they may not have grown beyond where they have been the last few years.
Good worshipers usually can pull it together in a service. But are they doing it in life? That is the issue. We can become good worshipers in a service, because we save it up. We turn it all loose in an hour long worship service or something, but worship is for life, not for meetings. So we are listening to people.
I am constantly listening to people, what is their language? We are going to be checking you out! We are so going to be checking you out. But you know what? You are going to be checking yourself out. Real friendships check one another. It’s like monkeys looking for lice. Just put a whole new thought in your head, right? Now time out. If I was using Heavenly language I would have said this, it’s like monkeys grooming one another, but you are still checking for head lice right? Checking each other out.
You are going to be able to tell Aglow people all over the world. When they have stood in an elevator they are just checking each other out. If you are ever standing by yourself and suddenly someone flicks your neck, an Aglow person just walked past. I apologize. I just put that thought into your head.
All of Heaven is attracted to Jesus in you.
Good friends help each other to become brilliant. It is called fellowship. We check each other out for language. If you have somebody who it is easier for them to complain than to rejoice, they probably have not upgraded their worship for a while.
All negative circumstances are designed to teach us how to overcome.
We need the stamina that comes from an upgraded worship life. It gives you stamina. It keeps you going. It gives you energy. We owe it to Jesus to be excited, to be astonished, and to be amazed. Why? Because that is the oxygen of Heaven. It gives us strength. It is like vitamins. It gives you strength. It gives you power. It keeps you moving forward.
God is looking for people like that because He is always looking to give more of Heaven. One thing we all need to understand is that Heaven is not a storage facility. God does not want your upgrades being stacked in Heaven. He wants them stacked in your life, and in your home, and in your circumstances. He expects you to receive something into each situation that empowers you to become something that enables you to experience what it means to be a joint heir – what it means that you take – you receive your inheritance. It means that God is investing in you. It means, therefore, you have resources to do the thing that you need to do.
You know, if we get a million people in Aglow all thinking at a new level, all praying at a new level for resources, something has to break loose in the atmosphere over this ministry. You know, the reality is we need property and wealth in every single nation. We need the riches of Heaven to come down and help us do the things that we do.
We do not want to be in the place where we are having to budget. We want to be in the place of having a surplus and we cannot give it away fast enough. It is a whole new day for us.
We are making history in so many different levels – and all through the law of the Spirit of life that is in Christ Jesus. We are waking up to fullness and abundance. No weapon fashioned against you can prosper, because this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. The key to overcoming for us is our own happiness. Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer – hey, cheer up – I have overcome the world.”
This is not going to be as daunting as you think, but the way to face the world is cheerfully. Okay bring it up. It does not matter what the odds are. We are still going to win. Sometimes in a fight the whole essence, the significance of Majesty is that you get to see Heaven move at times. You get to be the one that sees horses and chariots of fire and you realize that there are more with us than there are with them. That is Majesty! If you want to become a man or a woman of a different spirit, you need to see Majesty at work. You need to love it, and you need to joyfully submit yourself to it.
Let me just finish by reading you something from the Bible. This is Paul’s letter to Philemon.
And in verse 4 he says,
I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have towards the Lord Jesus, and towards all the saints. And I pray that the fellowship of your faith may become effective through the acknowledging of every good thing which is in you for Christ’s sake.
We are waking up to everything that God has already put in us in Jesus. You are not on your own. There are four of you in your life.
in Christ.
I used to have a T-shirt in the early days of my prophetic ministry, when everyone was thinking, prophecy? Prophet? Seriously? Big head. I used to have T-shirt that said, “I hear voices and they are all happy.” I was interviewed once on TV, and the guy says, “So are you saying that you hear voices?” I said, “Dude, everyone hears voices. The issue is which voices are you listening to? Yeah, I hear voices. I have a relationship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and They are all speaking, so, yeah, I hear voices. Which voices are you listening to?” And he looked at me panicked and he went, “Well, I am not really sure.” I said, “Well that is the difference between you and me. I know the voices that I am listening to. And I know what They are saying to me. And I know who They are, and I know how They operate. Yeah, I hear voices and I am proud of it. So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”
You have to. Everything becomes effective when you acknowledge every good thing that is in you in Christ.
That’s what this weekend has been all about. It’s been a proud moment for Jane and I to do this event. We had been looking forward to it for ages. We are looking forward to seeing what comes out of it. We are going to be so stoked to see you guys growing up, becoming joint heirs with Jesus, taking on board your inheritance, thinking from a whole different level, having the levels of perception that just open you up to Heaven in every opportunity and having a language that is so beautiful, so gorgeous with power and possibility and Presence.
It is going to be amazing to see what happens. It has been a privilege for us to be here with you. And we want you to feel a sense of privilege about your place in Aglow in America and in Aglow around the world. Because this message, this weekend’s talks are going to go around the world of Aglow and some of you guys will be taking them. So your assignments better be good.
Let’s pray. Father, we collectively, as brothers and sisters, we wish to thank You. We wish to thank You for allowing Jesus to come and die on our behalf so that we would never have the struggles of our old nature ever again, and that we could be made absolutely new people. We could become a new creation. Lord, that is mind-blowing stuff to us still.
My prayer is, would You marinate us from this point on in the truth, that we only have one option and one option only, and that is to acknowledge every good thing which is in us in Christ, and to do that as a way of life? I pray that all of us would at least practice some of the laws of the Spirit of life in Christ that we have heard today – that we will also invent new laws of life in Jesus as we will be exploring our inheritance. As joint heirs in Christ, we will see more, we will think better, we will talk more amazingly and we will become the people that You always wanted before the foundation of the world – let us make men and women in Our image.
Father, we feel the joyful burden of the Lord settling onto our hearts and our minds, and there is a holy determination in our hearts to want to take the road towards discovering what it really means to be made in the image of God. We want the peace of thinking like You think. We want the joy of seeing what You see. We want the language of expressing the goodness and the kindness of God. We want to grow up into Christ in all things. So, Father, our prayer today, be it unto me according to Your word, for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.
