Greetings,
Wow! What a great week! We started our training process with Christ Life Training and then we had a fantastic weekend with the great folks of Canada in Castlegar, British Columbia. God was good and life was in the house! The Helper was in us, with us, and upon us for a blessed experience of life!
John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. 8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: 9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me; 10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more; 11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
God is Spirit and we were born to be loved by Him. We were created to have a close relationship with God and that relationship is one of spirit to Spirit. It is a place of connection between our inner man and God. It is a connection with God’s Spirit and our spirit. God speaks to our spirits and then our spirits flood our souls with life producing thoughts, reasoning, desires, emotions, and imaginations. It is by this that our souls become empowered as the throne of our lives to inspire actions that testify of the life of Christ within us. We used to practice being disconnected from God, but Holy Spirit convicted us of our sin. Our sin was our disconnection from the One who loves us. Holy Spirit drew our spirits close to God and revealed to us that we had been reconciled to God by Jesus Christ. The blood that Jesus shed gave us access to the true source of life. Holy Spirit in our lives is the blood of the New Covenant. He is the source of life within us. Just as the life of the flesh was in the blood, the life of our spirit is only found in the Spirit of God. This is the power of Christ within us. This is why Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin. He convicts of sin only to welcome each and every one to find the true life within. Having been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus Christ, we should now live our lives empowered by the life of Christ within us.
Our connection with Holy Spirit in our hearts inspires righteousness in our lives. Being loved by God inspires us to be right and to do right things in life. God does not just forgive, He is forgiveness. It is the substance of who He is, that is why He forgives. He loves, because He is love. Love is His character, nature, and way. He wants us to be like Him. He wants us to become the substance of love, forgiveness, mercy, grace, and all that He is. This is righteousness. Holy Spirit transforms our lives from within and inspires the manifestation of the character of Christ in our lives. The more we indulge in Holy Spirit, the more we have a sense of what gives life. We are drawn into the place of transformation that causes us to be the substance of life. Some days we will feel like we are not being real, but we are practicians. Holy Spirit is transforming us from within and what is partly real becomes fully real in the process of our relationship with Him.
Righteousness is about a relationship. We don’t judge anyone according to the flesh anymore. We make this judgment, Jesus died once for all, thus all have died. The life we live now is one of being a new creation in Christ. Holy Spirit is helping us and we will be able to become righteous even as our righteousness if found by faith in Christ.
Holy Spirit also convicts of judgment. He convicts the world of sin so that people in the world will believe in God. He convicts of righteousness so we will continue in a relationship with Jesus, though we cannot naturally see Him. It is our relationship with God our Father that empowers our relationship with one another. Holy Spirit is in our lives to inspire a relationship with God the Son, God the Father and with one another.
Holy Spirit convicts of judgment because the ruler of the world is judged. This is not a judgement of condemnation to us. It is enforcing the condemnation of the enemy. One judgment was pronounced upon us and that was a judgment of mercy. The judgment of the devil and all of the enemy is that he has no more power over us if we willingly choose to embrace the judgment of God’s mercy in our lives. We have to boldly come to the throne of God’s grace where we reach out and receive the mercy given to us and then we look around to find the specific grace needed to overcome the enemy in every situation of our lives. We have already been judged and our judgement was mercy. Things that destroy our lives can only live in our lives if they have a legal right to live there. God’s mercy frees us from the strongholds of the enemy.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
