Greetings;
Today I am in Angola, Africa. I arrived this weekend and I am doing teaching and training on Properly Judging Prophetic Ministry, New Covenant, and Generational Leadership in various degrees and in various places. Yesterday was a great day on the morning radio, morning service in Sambizanga. Today I taught a group of pastors and leaders in the morning as well as this evening with another group. I am ready for a full week of training with pastors and evening training in Sambizanga.
How do we find satisfaction and how do we help others discover satisfaction in life? We were made in the likeness and image of our Father, God. God is a giver of life. He doesn’t need anything from us, He simply gives us life, breath, and all things. He makes us come alive in our hearts, He causes our lives to be an expression of Him, and He partners with us in all things in life.
Acts 17:24 “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.
This is the nature of God and we were created in His likeness and His image. This is true for men and women. Satisfaction can only be found when we become as He is, when we become givers of life. He is a giver of life and we can only find satisfaction in being givers of life too. Unless we embrace the nature of the source of our being we cannot find satisfaction in our being. When we seek to get things in life and to live for our own benefit we can never satisfy the call of destiny in our lives.
How can be become givers of life to our world? We must be disciples of Christ, not just disciples of some external expression of God in our midst. Christ in us is the hope of glory. Glory could be defined as being fully alive and fully you in every way. There is a glory of everything and everyone and to be who we were meant to be in the fullest state of life is a testimony of glory. There is a measure of glory in every season of our lives. We must find the glory of each season. We have been given a great gift. Christ in us is the hope of glory. It is through Christ in us that we can fulfill the commission give to us by Jesus. What is the commission given to us? The commission given by Jesus to His disciples concerning their world and the end of the Jewish age is the same applicable commission given to us in our worlds and the completion of our times.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
We know these verses as The Great Commission, but sometimes we make them so great we believe these words are only true for a few sent ones. Let me break these words down into some everyday practicalities. The first statement is that all authority had been given to Jesus as a man. He is Lord of lords and King of kings, but His accomplishment was not that of His deity, it was that of His humanity. He was a man full of grace and truth and He lived a human life never eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only of the tree of life. He did only that which He saw His Father doing. As a man, He was like His Father. He was a giver of life to His world. Authority is not about control. Authority is not the same as mere power. Authority never takes, it only gives. Authority is the ability to give life to another. We could read these words of Jesus to say: The ability to give life to any and every situation in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore and put all in your world under the influence of life.
The word world in these verses is the word ethnos. It means peoples. It is not just the cultures, races, peoples of the world, it is the peoples in each of our worlds. The people in my world are not the same as the people in your world and the people in your world are not the same as the people in my world. The ability to give life to any and every situation has been given to Jesus, thus He is able to give each of us as men or women the ability to influence our world with His life. We can influence our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, our extended family, our neighborhood, our friends, and even our enemies with life! Each of us has been given a life of relational connections and expanding spheres of influence. We are to be like Jesus. We are to be like our heavenly Father. We are to bring life to our worlds. Christ is us is the hope of glory. Christ in us empowers us to be disciples of Christ so we can disciple our ethnos – our peoples.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
