Walking in Newness of Life
SESSION 5
In this session I want to kind of gather everything up and really talk about the practicalities of this newness of life. I want to mix in a lot of how we can see Jesus in ourselves and upgrade our understanding in terms of how God views us. You know, what has been changing, hopefully, for many of us is that our whole understanding of the nature of God is changing. If whatever you hear about God does not cause your heart to leap in joy and does not lead you into celebration, you might just want to check it out against Scripture, because we are celebrants.
One of the things that drew me to Jane and Tony is that we are all unashamed celebrants of Jesus, and I am an unashamed triumphalist. I believe in the life of Christ. I believe in who He is. I believe in His Majesty. I believe that He is awesome. I am looking for a life that is in line with His nature, and to have that life I need a mindset that is in line with His mindset.
The Father has never lost a battle. Jesus is undefeated, and the Holy Spirit always leads us in triumph. And we are joined to these famous characters!
So what we are doing is we are learning how to win. And we are learning how to win first of all in our thinking, because if you do not think like a winner you are going to be losing. So we are learning how to see the way God sees. It is so critical that you get a lens change. It is so critical that you see every situation – at least that your question is – Lord, how do You see this? I want to see it the way You see it – and do not react until you know something better, until you are seeing something better. When you see it better then you can respond, but if you are not seeing something better then you are probably going to react and that is not going to be clever.
There is a whole new language out there that we are learning, a whole new vocabulary that is coming our way. And we are learning how to step into this awesome, majestic place that absolutely transforms your personality. It changes everything about you. It makes you different, it pushes you into a lifestyle that overcomes and the more we practice this lifestyle the more effortless it becomes.
We change from being people who learn how to get victory, to people who learn how to overcome. It keeps on changing us until we come to the place where we are more than conquerors. What does that mean?
More than conquerors means the enemy looks at you and realizes, I cannot win this fight against her / against him, and so he does not show. So you are more than a conqueror because there are some fights you do not have to fight because the enemy thinks it is not worth the hassle. He is up against somebody who understands that God is limitless and the enemy has finite resources.
God gives you a new vocabulary to explore life in the new man.
God gives you a new vocabulary to explore life in the new man. You have to learn some new words, and there are two major words to describe what it means to be new in the New Testament. One of those words is “neos”.
“Neos” means “new”. It means “regenerated”. It symbolizes a new experience recently begun and still progressing. We are a NEOS man or woman. I have got a life that is a whole new experience for me; it is recently begun and it is ongoing.
The other word is “kainos”. It means “fresh, new in quality and character”. It symbolizes a lifestyle of a completely different nature to the old. Your new life could not be more opposite to the one that brought you here. It is heavenly, it is Christ-like, and it is glorious. It is glorious. If God is changing you from glory into glory, all change is glorious. What if God is making you glorious?
When Moses came down from the mountain his face shone. He was kind of different. People had to put a bag over his head just to talk to him. He was different. He stood out. He shone.
As we are progressing in this life - and life for us is from the inside to the outside, yeah? So there is a light that is turned on, on the inside because our heart is enlightened and so you begin to shine from the inside to the outside. What is in your spirit dominates your circumstances, because the life is in you. God is not out there for us anymore, He is in here. So we learn to look within for Christ. We are not looking out there for Him. He is in here – let your light shine before men.
We are living in that space between “neos” and “kainos”. Something is always new, something is always fresh. There is always a new experience and there is always an update to our identity in every situation.
Guys, this is a brilliant life. Do not make it ordinary. Make it what it is. Live it how it is. It is a brilliant life. It can only be lived brilliantly. It is an amazing life and it makes you amazing. At the very least, let us be amazed. Let us be astonished. Let us be overcome. Let us be in awe of who Jesus is for us.
Romans 6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, thank the Living God! So that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
That means glory is attached to you because of who Jesus is in you.
Romans 6:5 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.
That is an OMG moment. Feel free to have one.
Romans 6:6-7 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.
Can I get a hallelujah?! Alrighty!
Romans 6:8-11 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 consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
If I was in a black church now they would all be swinging from the chandeliers! You would have old ladies standing up and going, “WOOOOOO!” I love black churches; you always know where you are in a black church.
Here is the thing about Romans 6. The reason I read it so often is because it is such an incredible reminder of what is real and what is true. We can learn to identify our spirituality in Jesus and understand that I am buried with Him in death. I am united with Him in death. I am crucified with Him in death. I died with Him. I am dead.
We Can Do More
Now we are living in Him so we can consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. End of story. End of the old man. We keep that sucker in the grave and we do not dig him up. Just as Jesus was raised by the Glory of the Father so we, too, walk in newness (kainos) of life. Kainos of life. New in quality and character. We are of a completely different nature to the old. Think of yourselves as Heavenly, Christ-like, glorious - a citizen of Heaven living here on earth; with that mind-set, with that perception, with that language, with that capability. That is where we are going with this thing.
We cannot be half-hearted here. It is all the way in. All the way in! You know some of us are living with a sense of ‘I have wasted so many years’ but you know what I believe? You are here for such a time as this. I believe you can do more in these next years than you did in the previous 30 or 40 – we can do more.
We can do more from this place than we ever dreamed possible. We can do things that were never possible from the old mindset. We are going to be in the likeness of His resurrection – glorious, amazing, astonishing. It is not big-headed to say that – that is just normal thinking in the Kingdom.
Everyone in Heaven is going around right now knowing that they are glorious, knowing that they are amazing because they have proximity to all that is glorious and amazing. Well, we have proximity, too, because He is in us and we are in Him – check yourself out.
God is preoccupied with the new you.
He is preoccupied with the new you. That means He does not have time for anything else. He is not cleaning you up. He is not fixing you up because you are not a fixer-upper. You are a brand new house.
One of my wife’s favorite TV programs is – she likes watching programs about houses being renovated and all that stuff – and one of her favorite programs is “Love It or List It”. There are two people - one is a girl and she actually does up their old house to try and get them to stay, and the guy goes out and looks for a completely different house.
Dwelling Place of God
We are not in “Love It or List It”. God is not renovating us. He is not trying to improve what is there. He has found us a completely different house to live in. His name is Jesus and we are a dwelling place of God by the Spirit. You are a household of God yourself! You have a new house. I am just saying. Key number 2 is that God is preoccupied with the new man, and you must become preoccupied with the new man, too. It is the “kainos” man in Christ.
Romans 7:6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
What does that mean?
It means we are released from performance. We are released from earning our blessing and our favor. We are released to serve in “kainos” (newness) of Spirit. That means from a completely different nature to the old.
We are released into something Heavenly so we need not actually be living in something that is earthly – in our thinking, our perception, and our language. We are released to serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
That word “old” there is “palaios”, which means something that is worn out, useless and irrelevant. Worn out, useless and irrelevant. In Hebrews 8 it says that Jesus made a better covenant and so the old covenant is obsolete – worn out, useless, irrelevant. Obsolete. That is why it is important for us to be learning to live from a place of habitation, new covenant, not from a place of visitation, old covenant. That is why when you are listening to someone who is talking about your behavior and talking about you as a sinner, and making you sin-conscious, you are listening to someone who is living in the old covenant that has become worn out, useless and irrelevant, and they have not really touched base with the fullness of the new covenant, because the new covenant makes the old one obsolete. Out of date, useless, and irrelevant.
There is nothing more useless in our spirituality than trying to practice life in Christ from a visitation mind-set. That is like dumb, and dumber.
You cannot ever mix the old with the new.
Luke 5:36-39 And He was also telling them a parable: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and puts it on an old garment; otherwise he will both tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins. And no one, after drinking old wine wishes for new; for he says, ‘The old is good enough.’”
Old and New Do Not Mix
New and old do not mix. You cannot add a piece of Christ onto your old self. You cannot put the Holy Spirit into the old man without having major problems.
Here is the thing about new wine. It expands. The new life is expansive. If you put it into any kind of container, it is going to expand. The wine makers always put it into a certain kind of container that can aid the expansion process.
You cannot put new into old in the Kingdom. The Holy Spirit is fresh. He is powerful He is an Expansionist. He is enlarging. He is energizing.
Our old mindsets, practices, language and lifestyle cannot contain the Holy Spirit. He will break out of everything from our old lifestyle.
If you are living in an old mindset and trying to become new, you are going to become hugely stressed out. You are going to feel inadequate and insecure about the things of the Spirit.
It is what is happening right now across this country in places where they do not understand the newness of Christ. It is happening where they do not understand who Jesus really is. Many Christians have just stopped at a salvation experience and now they are hanging on, hoping for Heaven and glory for some point in the future. That is not Jesus!
When you start talking about the glorious nature of God and what it means to be in Christ, people rise up. Why? Because it stresses them out. Because they are living in the old and their whole thinking is Well, how can I bring that into this?
The answer is, you cannot. And the better answer is, You can only bring that new thing into an empty space because what was in that space is no longer there. That is why it is so important that you read Romans 6 and you celebrate the fact that you are dead. You celebrate the fact that you are raised up to newness of life. You are born again.
Born Again
Being born again means the old has gone and I am raised up to newness of life. Trying to put these two things together - trying to put the new with the old - is going to set up a conflict.
If you think about it, it’s like trying to make the best life possible in Egypt. Well, we are not going to go to the Promised Land, but when you get there could you send us a photograph so we can celebrate? Instagram it or something. Send us something. Facebook us so we can follow your journey and your life and we can vicariously celebrate through you, but we are actually going to stay here and try and make the best life possible in Egypt. That is a weird mindset.
You have got to get your thinking caps on.
We can never be double minded in our thought life.
We can never be double minded in our thought life. What you think about God is probably the most important thought you will ever have. You have got to figure out for yourself, and the Holy Spirit is a genius at this, who is God for me?
What is God really, really like?
For me, He is the Kindest Person I have ever known. He is the happiest person I know. He has the sunniest disposition. He is the epitome of Goodness. His Kindness is absolutely Majestic. He has a way of seeing things and thinking about things that utterly liberates you.
The Language of Heaven
There is something wonderful about seeing a situation the way that He sees it. It is like, really? You see it like that? When He begins to teach you the language of Heaven - it is learning a foreign language – you understand that? It is a foreign language, and we are all learning the language of Heaven, the language of possibilities, a language where nothing is too hard for Him. No situation can ever cope with the marvelous nature of God.
He is teaching us how to marvel. He is upgrading our praise and our worship. He is teaching us the language of superlatives. He is empowering us to be astonished and amazed. He is teaching us a life so far above and beyond anything we have ever known that it sets us free from the world around us and causes us to live in this world unbound. Absolutely free. It is like, the world around us, the practices of the world, do not touch us. But anyone we touch, something glorious can happen.
We are learning to be as amazing as He is. It is a lifestyle of being awestruck – that is the course that we are set on as Aglow. We are going to be a company of people - an apostolic company of people representing Heaven in a way that maybe no other apostolic network does. We are not picking up worldly systems and titles and all that nonsense.
We are representing a Kingdom and a Realm and we are imposing that Realm on the world around us in a way that is kind-hearted, loving, fresh, joyful and mesmerizing. We make no apology for being brilliant, or for being astonishing, because this is who Jesus is.
We cannot be double minded in our thought life. So what does that mean then?
Logic and Reason
It means that we have to make ourselves vulnerable to wisdom. It means that we understand that God did not invent logic, reason, rationale… the world did! He gave us wisdom, the world gives us philosophy. I like philosophy, but I love wisdom. I like thinking cleverly. I love thinking brilliantly.
I like logic and reason, but it only takes you so far. The problem with logic and reason is it is not spiritual. It is natural. It is the natural mind.
The natural mind is good, but it only gets you so far, and that is its problem. It is good. It is not amazing. It will do, but it is not good enough. Anyway, I think God is much too clever to be an intellectual!
I like intellectuals. My son is an intellectual. I learn different words every time I talk to him! I have to pack a dictionary when I go over to England. I am talking to Seth and I am like hang on a minute Seth, oh yeah…! I love the moments when Seth can lay aside that intellectualism and sometimes he looks at me and he says, Dad, tell me something wise. Show me some wisdom. And he understands. He loves being an intellectual but he said, You know, Dad, most of us are just posers! But when an intellectualist comes up against someone who has got wisdom there is a massive gulf in thinking.
I love logic and reason but you know the only time that God uses reason is when He says, Hey, come now, let us reason together, and then He says something weird like, Hey, come now, let us reason together, I can turn red stuff into white! Ok then! Come let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow. It is like, Come let us reason together, I do magic! I make red stuff white!
The rest of the time He says, Well, do not lean on your own understanding. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. Do not let your old mind loose on something that your new man does not appreciate.
Logic and rational mindsets cannot understand the fullness of the mind of God. They can grasp things to a certain extent, but you see God thinks spiritually. The Holy Spirit’s perception will move in apparent opposition to normal human processes. That is why God is able to do the things that He does. It is why Gideon has 32,000 men and he is outnumbered 4 to 1 and all he is saying to all the guys is, All you have got to do is kill four. Kill four each and we are cool.
All the sergeants are going to the marines and everything, Kill four, then coffee!
Got you, Sarg. Kill four. Starbucks! Got you!
Meanwhile God is nudging the angels thinking, Do you all think Gideon has got too many men? I know these boys. If by some weird thing they actually win this fight, they will be impossible to live with! They will all be going round high-fiving each other going, “Yeah, we are bad!’’
So He takes away 99% of Gideon’s army. Now he is outnumbered. He was outnumbered by four to one. Now he is outnumbered four hundred to one. God grins at him and says, Now you can go out and surround the enemy. Gideon is thinking, I could not have surrounded them with 32,000 men, how the heck do I surround them with 300? Math is not your strong point is it?
The Power of the One
God is seeing something different. Here is the thing with God. He does not mind us being outnumbered because He always makes up the difference. One person with God is always in the majority. All your life it is going to be about the power of the One with the one. One person walking with God is always in the majority. Newness of life.
This new regenerated spirituality cannot be put into our old carnal mindsets. Having a new mindset is absolutely critical for us.
When we try to put new life into an old construct we end up with religion. That to me is the definition of legalism. It is people trying to put this life of Christ into an old paradigm, into an old mindset, or into an old lifestyle. It is people trying to put the new covenant into old covenant practices or trying to bring this habitation into a visitational culture.
To make it work you need all these rules and so we end up with a completely different law of behavior - of performance, and everyone is cracking the whip. We have to do this and we have to do that.
We are trying to earn our favor by our own efforts. We are trying to clean up our behavior that God has already killed. We strive and we struggle to overcome ourselves, not realizing that we are dead and now fully alive in Christ. We are trying to make the best possible life possible in Egypt.
I love this in Luke 5:39 – this is Jesus being mischievous. And no one after drinking the old wine wishes for new for he says the old is good enough. He is making a point with a really clever play on words, because He does not use the traditional word for old which is “paleo”, which means antique and amazing.
So when you think of old wine, like I have got some bottles from the seventies and the eighties in my wine cellar, we bring them out on special occasions, and then we all decant them, and then we worship for a while. We manifest at the table, and then we worship for a while, and then we take a little sip and we are off and dreaming. Because the old wine tastes brilliant.
But Jesus is not using that word. He is not using the word “paleo”. He is using the word “palaios” which means useless, worn-out and irrelevant, or in this case, gone bad.
So He is talking about tradition. He is describing people who are satisfied with the old traditional system and who are reluctant to experience something new, so they are saying the old is better. He is not talking about wine-tasting right now. He is just being mischievous and clever and bright and brilliant. He is making a point by using a play on words.
A Christian tradition that is too rigid to accept the fullness of Jesus and the Holy Spirit will never experience the full Majesty and Beauty of the Lord in this life. It is impossible to put a new thing into an old thing. You cannot take a piece of Jesus and put it here in this old thing, without making something completely religious.
What He is saying is, He is talking about a people whose mindsets and practices are so old and irrelevant they cannot accept the mind of Christ. Newness of life will always expand every mindset, every tradition, every practice, until it cracks.
Everyone in Christ is a new “kainos” creation.
Remember what “kainos” is? It is new in quality and character. It is a completely different nature to the old. It is Heavenly, Christ-like, glorious. Old things have passed away.
The word “old” that is used there in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 is “archaios” and it means “what characterized a previous time”. Everything that characterized a previous time has passed away. It is not just talking about your old life in the flesh, but also talking about that old type of spirituality from the Old Covenant has passed away.
Everything that characterized what God did in that visitational culture has now passed away. Why? Because a habitational culture has now come.
Hebrews 8:6-7 But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as He is also a mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless there would have been no occasion sought for a second.
If the Old Covenant was really brilliant we would not need a new one!
Hebrews 8:8-12 For finding fault with them He says ‘behold, days are coming’ says the Lord ‘when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt for they did not continue in My covenant and I did not care for them’ says the Lord. ‘ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel, after those days’ says the Lord ‘I will put My laws into their minds I will write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be My people, and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother saying ‘know the Lord’ for all will know Me, from the least to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.’
When He said a New Covenant, He has made the first covenant obsolete. Whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
That is the challenge before us in American spirituality - there is a new reformation coming, and we are moving out of a visitational culture in Christ into a habitational Presence with the Living God. We are moving away from the old man and its old way of thinking and perception and language. We are teaching people how to be totally and completely new; “neos” and “kainos”! Fresh, invigorating, new in quality and experience, heavenly, Christ-like, glorious. All things are now “kainos”. All things are heavenly, all things are Christ-like, all things are glorious. You are a new creation. That means all things are “kainos” in you. All things in you are becoming heavenly, Christ-like and glorious.
That is why when Paul wrote Ephesians 4:20 he says this, You did not learn Christ in this way. You cannot learn Christ from a visitational culture. You can only properly learn Christ from a habitational culture. We need to be part of churches that are practicing a habitational lifestyle in Christ.
Abundant Life
That means we do not go to church, because we are the church! God did not say, “I have come that you might have meetings and have them more abundantly.” He said, I have come that you might have life and have that life in abundance. It is important for us that we are part of something that is practicing life abundant. It is vital for us. You cannot put new into old. You cannot put a piece of Christ onto an old garment.
Ephesians 4:20-22 But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit.
Are you not glad that you do not have to work on your stuff? You get to give it to Jesus! Are you not so glad that God is preoccupied with the new man, and He is saying to, “Consider yourself dead to that, just learn to be alive to Me and lay aside the old man and be renewed in the spirit of your mind because you need to switch your thinking from behavior to identity. Lay aside the old, be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new; be preoccupied with the new. Do not ever think outside of newness.”
behavior to identity.
The old you is dead. There is nothing to work on. All we are doing is changing from behavior to identity.
Who are you in Jesus? Who is Jesus for you?
The words ‘be renewed’ means to freshen up your thinking. Freshen up your thinking from Heaven, in Christ. We are going to have so much fun learning how to think differently, and helping and supporting one another. It is like when you hear someone say something and you think, “Hang on a minute. We need to have a better thought here. What is a better way of seeing that? What is a better way of thinking about that? What is a better way of saying that?”
We are learning not to think with our natural mind or our powers of memory or perception or judgment – we are putting on a “kainos” mind of spiritual appraisal and transforming vision, and we are learning to think relationally. What does this mean for my relationship with You? What is the upgrade between You and me right now? Relational thinking. Put on the “kainos” man which is in the likeness of Jesus.
It is not behavior that God is focused on; it is your identity in Jesus.Thank God we do not work on the old man. We are working on the new.
I cannot tell you how freeing and releasing and how exciting it is that in every situation I get to learn something new and amazing. It makes things exciting. There are times where I am like, “I have not had a problem for a week and I am kind of missing it – because I love the fact that problems are designed to each us how to be new.” They present us with a challenge to our “kainos” lifestyle. So now in our thinking, in the heavenly language our thinking is: a problem is designed to help me become new. I am going to get a fresh perception. I have not had this kind of problem before so it is going to be cool, because I am going to learn how to think something different.
Do not look at me like that. Do not look at me like, “Freak, go home!” Come on, you all know you want to be freaks as well. You know what is freakish, really? Trying to get something new out of something old. Trying to make that old thing fit something. It does not fit anything. The natural mind cannot cope with the lifestyle God wants to give you. The natural mind cannot cope with the lifestyle God wants to give you. Oh, write that down and Instagram me! Write that down.
It is true. It is really true. The natural mind cannot cope. The natural mind cannot handle the brilliance of Jesus.
So key number 6 - it is not behavior that God is focused on, it is your identity in Jesus. You do not become a new person by changing your behavior or by dealing with the old. You discover the person you already are in Jesus, and you start to act in line with who He is, because it is His life in us.
So, the process is this: rest in peace. RIP. Rest in peace. Your old man is dead. Rejoice that you are a new creation. Confess and declare who Jesus is for you. Put on the “neos” man and have the same mind in you. Put on that “neos” man. We are “kainos” people with a “neos” personality. We are always fresh, always invigorating, because we live between those two words, “neos” and “kainos”. We have this whole different personality. The quality of our life is now extraordinary. It is greater quality than we have ever had before and it means we are constantly being refreshed, renewed. We are invigorating people to be around because we have a language that just sparkles with possibility, so it makes us cool.
Put On the New Man
Colossians 3:9-10 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.
God is relentless about showing you Jesus. He is relentlessly preoccupied with the new man, and He is just going to show you who Jesus is for you now. He is going to use problems and difficulties to upgrade your relationship with Him first, and then tell you how He would think in this situation. He will tell you what He is seeing, and give you new language so you can:
- pray differently
- proclaim differently
- believe for something more outrageous.
Something that was impossible now becomes possible. You live in that space where the question in your heart is, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” What that means is, is there any situation that can stop God from being marvelous? Write that one down.
Is there any situation that could possibly stop God from being marvelous? You see what is happening in us? Hope is rising – not hope as the world sees it, hope as Heaven expresses it. It is a new language, a new terminology, and a new vocabulary. In Heaven, hope is expectation. It is a glorious expectation that makes you extremely confident.
I have this glorious expectation of God and I am so confident. Yeah, I am outnumbered, but I am living in the power of the One with the one. I am outnumbered but you know, all I need is Jesus. Put on the “neos” man. What it is saying is, “Put on your most regenerated self which you are becoming.”
So the question implied here is, “What is God teaching you now in your current circumstances?” Put it on, and keep putting it on until it stays on. That is what it means. That is what Colossians 3 is saying when it says, “Put on the new man. Put on what you are learning right now in Christ. Keep putting it on. Keep putting it on, until it stays on. Do not try it out once or twice. Practice it until it becomes first nature - until it becomes who you really are.
What are we learning right now? Let us just keep practicing it until we have got it down. And it becomes us and we become it, and we are different people. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.
What is God teaching you in your current circumstance? That is what you put on at this time, and you keep practicing it.
Elevation
Under pressure in life do not default to what you were doing poorly before. Again, under pressure in life do not default to what you were doing poorly before. When God begins to address an issue in your life He does so by elevating you. You have to accept the elevation.
A new height gives you new vision. You see more. You experience more.
What we are talking about here is, what if every circumstance in your life carried an upgrade with it - carried a circumstance with it? Because you are in Christ, that means you are learning life the way He knows it. You are learning how to do this thing from Heaven, not just from the world around you. We cannot take our experiences of the world and spiritualize them. It is the new language, the new mind-set, the new perception – it changes everything.
So if God is teaching you peace you cannot revert to anxiety and worry. And even worse than that, when you try to change your anxiety into something else – you cannot change a negative, you just have to replace it with a positive. God is not asking you to work on that anxiety. He is just saying, “No, work on your peace and anxiety will disappear.” You practice your peace and there is no place for being anxious.
New Man Brings Encounters with God
Put on the new you that is being renewed to a true knowledge. That means truth plus encounter leading to an ongoing experience. True knowledge is always about an experience. We cannot live in this world without encounters, and the life that God has given you in Christ is about having an encounter, experience driven, life.
God wants to encounter you and He wants you to encounter Him. He wants to experience your life and He wants you to experience His. Now He has experienced your life because this High Priest we have can sympathize with everything that is going on in our life. He can empathize with us. He understands us. Why? Because He has experienced our life, and now you get to experience His. You get to experience Majesty and Sovereignty, amazing perceptions, brilliant thinking, a glorious new language, a life that is more than a conqueror. You get to experience life in the incomparable Holy Spirit.
to an ongoing experience.
Your most recent encounter with the Truth, that is Jesus, is designed to make you like Him. What is the area in your life right now that God most wants to touch? There is no condemnation, no guilt, no shame, just a smile. God is looking at that area, and the Holy Spirit is rubbing His hands with glee, cracking His knuckles, smiling. Why? Because He has something to give you that will blow your mind, rock your world and knock your socks off. There is an upgrade coming. In every low place in your life there is elevation coming. It is why we enjoy every connection with the Holy Spirit because He is thrilling to be around. He is a genius. He loves His job. He is going to take the things of Jesus and reveal them to you, and when He points to a part of your life that is not working, He is coming with an upgrade. He is pointing to the site of your next miracle.
Love the Learning
What is the part of you that is being recently regenerated? What is the new vision and practice and perception of the Spirit? What is the new mindset that God wants to give you? This is great learning. Love the learning. These are great moments. We are designed to love everything. Love every bit of learning. You have some opposition? Love the learning of how to deal with it. You have a problem? Love the learning of how God deals with that. God wants to change a part of your life. Love the learning that comes with that.
Hey, I am getting an upgrade! Is it any different than, hey, we are getting new carpets? This will be great. Hey, I am getting a new car on Monday. Cannot wait! It is the same thing. It is exactly the same thing. Hey, I am getting the cooker I have always wanted. I am so excited! I am getting a 30’ flat screen TV. I am so pumped! God is touching an old part in our life and we are miserable going, “He is changing me.” Come on! “OMG! I have been wanting to get rid of that sucker for years. Yahoo!”
If you are going to be a “neos” man, you have to be exhilarated. If you are going to be a “kainos” man or woman in the Spirit, you have to be exhilarated with Jesus. Remember the outcome of all of this is you get to be amazed, astonished, and living in awe and wonder. That is where we are going, guys.
It is back to this vocabulary thing – find key wordsin Scripture and build your life around them.
The “neos” man is always saying there is a new experience to be had of Jesus. That is how we look at everything that comes into our life. “Brilliant, I have a new opportunity to have a new experience of Jesus now. OMG, am I lucky or what? Yes!”
2 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore we do not lose heart but though our outer man is decaying yet our inner man is being renewed, being made completely different on a daily basis.
The “kainos” life is about consistent upgrade leading to an ongoing transformation.
You have got to change your vocabulary. You have got to learn this foreign language of the Kingdom; otherwise we are bringing the language of the world into the church. That has been our undoing. Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. He brought a new language, a new vocabulary and began teaching.
You can do anything with this new language. You can do anything with this new life from the Kingdom. You can feed 5,000 people with a few fish sandwiches. You can do anything. You can go fishing, catch a fish, open its mouth and pay your taxes with whatever you find in there. I am so going to try that out one day.
Find key words in Scripture and build your life around them, like Romans 12:2.
Do not be conformed to this world, because a lot of what the world has to offer is useless and irrelevant to us, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you can prove what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable and perfect.
We are transformed when we adjust our moral and our spiritual vision and thinking to the mind of the Lord.
I love seeing things the way that He sees. It is thrilling to me, just to sit and to say, “Lord, show me how You see this. Show me how You think about this.” And when He drops that word into my spirit, it is like, “Oh my goodness, I need to get a coffee because I need to think about this now.” It is like, this is so fresh and brilliant and I know that, that thought is going to change who I am, and I want to make sure that it does. Otherwise, we are just collecting brilliant thoughts.
Hearers Only
There are some churches that have competitions, so when I go they collect all of the one-liners. They have a competition to see who can get the most one-liners out of my talk. Which is interesting, but what is equally as interesting is they are so busy collecting one-liners they do not actually live them.
I had to say to one church, “Can you stop this, because it is annoying to me.” It is not a compliment, not when you are not growing, not when I come back 12 months later and you are still the same, and now you want me to give you a new message when you did nothing with the old one?”
So I went back to one church and I preached exactly what I preached the last time I was there, and you know there were some people who did not know I was preaching the same message. After the first session one guy came up and said, “You know, I have heard this before.” And then another guy came up and said, “You are preaching the same message you did last year.”
I said, “Yeah, do you know why?”
He said, “Because you forgot?”
I said, “No, it is because you did not practice the one from last year. Now you are expecting a new word, but you did nothing with the old word. Sorry, there is no new word for you now until you practice the old one. The one I wanted to give this year is built on the one you should have practiced last year. But if you have not become that I cannot give you this.”
You know, we are not messing around with the Word of God. The problem is that people hear so many messages that we end up actually with a people group who have this unconscious contempt for the Word of God - because they do not put anything into practice because they think, “I will get a new message next Sunday.”
My question of the church generally is, “Can we really afford to have 52 life changing messages a year and no-one’s life changes?” We are not discipling people. We are not mentoring people. We are not training people. Then next year we give them another 52 messages. This is futile. No wonder we are in the mess that we are in. I am just saying.
What you think about God is the most important thing. How you view yourself in Jesus is critical. The Bible calls it being spiritually minded. It says being so spiritually minded is life and peace. Being spiritually minded means you understand how God sees you and you understand who you are in Him, and you are becoming that in your thinking and in your actions and your identity. Spiritually minded is not just about having spiritual thoughts every now and again. It is having a mindset that rules, a mind-set that governs your own life, that governs your choices, that governs the way you see and move around your world. That is what spiritually minded is, not having a great thought occasionally.
Here is another one of my favorites.
Titus 3:5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.
It is a cool thing to maintain your connection with mercy. Because there are going to be days where we are going to have the spirit of stupid upon us, and we are going to need some compassion from the Lord. There have been days when I have so kind of lost it, you know, and gone back to an old way of thinking, and I hear God laughing, and you know when you hear God laughing its mesmerizing, and so you start to smile and you say, “Why are You laughing?”
And He says, “Well, I am just laughing at you. You are so funny to Me! You know that old thinking does not work, yet here you are. Graham, that is like going into your fridge and eating a moldy piece of cheese that has been there for six months.”
“Errr, that’s a horrible thought.”
“No, that is a funny thought! That is you, you are that cheese. That is you. Come on, you are so much better than this!”
He has different ways of rebuking us. Rebuking to God is not always like, a finger up your nose kind of thing. Sometimes it is like, “Seriously? You think that? So, I am curious, tell me where that thought is actually going to lead you – what good is that thought doing to you? Is it making you happy? Is it making you victorious? Is it changing anything? So what are you doing with it? I am curious as to what you are going to do with that thought now.”
It makes me go, “Alright, alright, I know, I know.” And that is it. End of conversation.
Here is the thing about the Lord. He is not going to permit you to go back to something that was killing you.
No More Excuses
Do you know what the brilliant thing about this weekend is? You have no more excuses! You are done. You are toast. You cannot go back. Because now you know the truth, and now we can be joyfully responsible for that truth. You cannot go back. He is messing you up. That is the plan of the Holy Spirit - to mess you up so that you have to live in the Kingdom. You cannot live in the world. You can be in the world but not of it. He is messing you up, you see, through everything, because the Kingdom mindset is so much better.
The renewing of the Spirit is the gradual conforming of the saint to a new spiritual realm in which we now live as a citizen of Heaven here on earth.
Welcome to your new world. So if someone ever says to you, “What planet are you living on?”
You say, “It is not about a planet, it is about a whole new realm. I belong to a whole new realm and in this realm we see things differently, we think differently, we have this brilliant language and it empowers us like you would not believe.”
So let me close by saying this.
God is not demanding perfection.
He is requesting integrity and honesty.
Here is the reason why. We all have a story and a journey where we are working out who we are in God and who God is for us. We are learning how we can know Him and walk in His ways. You have a story, and that story is changing. Whatever is going on in your life right now is a chapter; it is not the whole book. We are changing that chapter. We are making sure that you get out of this chapter and you never have to repeat it. But beloved from this point on, your story is changing and you cannot be playing an extra in the movie of your life. You have to be the star of your own story. You cannot be playing a walk-on part.
Your journey is changing. How you travel is changing. The way you walk through this world is all going to change – your story and your journey.
God loves story and journey. He is inserting Himself into your story every day and He is always on this journey with you. He will go ahead of you because He wants you to know what is coming up. He will travel with you and He will go behind making sure we cut off any connections that are no longer useful or good for us.
God Knows
Here is the thing about the Lord. He knows that stories are messy affairs and journeys have an up and a down quality to them. It is not an adventure until something goes wrong. It is not an adventure until you are challenged by something bigger than you. So He understands that story and journey are messy affairs, and He knows you are going to get it wrong on days, and He knows you are going to default on days, and He knows that you could take two steps forward, three steps back, and so on. He knows all of that. He knows your frame. The glory of God’s love to us is seen in the mess that we can create and in the beauty of God’s good nature as He pursues us with His Loving Kindness.
God does not get mad at us if we mess up. Occasionally He is going to laugh at us. Mostly He is going to smile at us. Sometimes He is just going to shake His head and think, “I love this boy. I love this girl. I love being part of his/her life,” and He is going to do what a brilliant dad would do – pick you up, dust you down, and ask you what you have learned. “What have you learned? So you went back to the old. What did it tell you? See? It does not work, huh? Let us try something new.”
He is Patient. He is Kind. He is Gentle. He is Loving. He is Joyful. He is Peaceful. He is the easiest Person to be around, and of course, He is practicing the Fruit of the Spirit on you. Some days God is allocating patience to you, some days gentleness, most every day, joy, because He is Joyful. Joy is who God is -rejoicing is our response to who God is.
I love rejoicing in the fact that God is happy - that He is the happiest person I know.
Yeah, we are learning. We are going to be growing. It is going to be a bit messy, and God is going to pursue you with the Fruit of the Spirit because He is really keen to know, “What did you get from that? You went back to that old way of thinking. That is so funny. What did you learn? Did not work, huh? Made you stressed out? See, I have got loads of peace over here but you chose stress, seriously? Ok… Let us just make sure you understand the learning in that.”
And here is the thing; we grow best when we love the learning.
If we are going to be consistent in God’s love, and there are going to be times when we have to encounter Him in our own disarray. That is why we have a Comforter. The Holy Spirit comes in when you just made an absolute pig’s ear of this thing. The Holy Spirit comes in and comforts you. He does not berate you. He does not haul you over the coals. He does not embarrass you or humiliate you. He just has this way of looking at you and saying, “It is ok. Let Me bless you and let us just move on. You now know that that is never going to work, so that is good. Let us just move on.”
Sometimes that is all that God says. “Ok, let us just move on.” He will always be loving and kind. Loving kindness is one of His greatest attributes.
Let us enjoy the learning. Walking in newness of life as a “kainos” man or woman is an ongoing story or journey in the promise of being made in likeness of God. It is an adventure. Why not make it fun? If you have to go through it, why not enjoy it? Do not treat it as a pain. Do not treat it as a problem. It is not about, “Well, I have to go through this,” when the reality is and this is the attitude, “I get to go through this!” Not, “Tut, I have got to go through this.”
I was with a bunch of guys and we all had our planners out and we are all in ministry and we are all trying to find ways of finding some time to be together so we can hang out, and some of the guys were like, “Ah, I cannot do that. I have to go to New York.”
Other guys were saying, “Well, I cannot do that, I have to go to Corpus Christi.”
“I have got to go to Houston.”
So it came to my turn. I said, “I cannot do that because I get to go to Chicago!”
They look at me. I am thinking, “I do not want to have that attitude of ‘I have got to go to this or got to go to Europe.’ I am like, ‘I get to go to Denmark!’”
One guy was saying, “I have got a conference with a whole bunch of Baptists.” It is like, I get to go to the Baptists!
Here is the thing. It is a small thing, big change.
This is a great life we are embarking on. We are going to have a great story. We are going on a great journey, and we are doing it together as Aglow. And what that means is the reason we picked you all out, for GameChangers and for this, is because we believe you are GameChangers, and we believe you guys can change anybody’s life, but first we get to change our own.
What it means here is we chose you guys because this is a new petri dish and we are growing a new culture in Aglow, and you are it.
Seriously, look at me, focus. You are a new petri dish in Aglow. And we are growing a whole new culture that is going to absolutely revolutionize this organization. It is going to reinvent who we are, and it is going to reinvent our place in this world and it is going to make us formidable, powerful, embryonic, that wherever we go we are going to create life as Jesus knows it.
So right now you need to see yourselves as, “I am part of the petri dish in Aglow. I am growing a new culture. I have been chosen to start a new culture in Aglow where I live and I am going to make my Lighthouse, my Area, and my Region, formidable, powerful, and wonderful.”
