NEW: Audio Version
Greetings;
I just finished a great weekend in the Netherlands with Bob Nichols and David Fredriksz. We ministered at a family retreat with a church here that is part of the RIM network. God did some wonderful things and people’s lives were impacted and changed by the power of and the love of God. Thank you, God for all you did these past few days. It was a family retreat with all of the dynamics of family. There were fathers, mothers, lots of children, single people, men and women who were young and old. Our topic was being a family of families. What does it mean to be the family of God? What are the key ingredients to becoming the family of God? What is the fabric of being a family?
Family is about relationships, not ministry. When a man and a woman enter into the intimate covenant of marriage, the fruit of their love for one another is the testimony of being a family. God’s way of things is family. Husbands and wives are anointed to give life to one another and as dads and moms, they are anointed to minister life to their children. Who they are determines the testimony of their ministry. They are not called to some ministry or task of spiritual service. They are called to minister to those in their family. This is spiritual in all of its dynamics and spiritual in all of its ways. They are commissioned and sent by God for this purpose. God desires healthy families that express who He is in the earth, even as it is in heaven. God’s way of things is family. He is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His very being is the nature of the source of identity, inheritance, and purpose in all things. This is who He is as the Father. He is the source of all things! He is the means by which we are born and born again. This is God as the Holy Spirit. Like a Mother, the Holy Spirit broods over and births all things. He is a comforter and comes alongside of us to help us in knowing who God is. God is the expression of identity, inheritance, and purpose made known to the world. This is God as the Son. The Son is the Word, or the expression of God in all things. He is the source, the means to bring life to birth from the source, and He is the expression of the source in all things. In this, God is relational. He is a Trinity.
The dynamic of the Trinity is the dynamic of plurality. Plurality is the diverse nature of that which is masculine, that which is feminine, and the testimony of the two made one is seen in the nature of God. These are the foundational ingredients of family. God is not God without the attributes of giving and receiving. Relationship is not something He does; it is something He is. Therefore, everything He does is relational. Submission is part of the nature of God. Relationship is the nature of God. Life-giving has to also be life-receiving in its nature. This is the fabric of family.
When God created mankind, He created them in His likeness and His image. That likeness and image was one of family. He created a man and a woman with a mandate to be a family in the earth that would fill the earth with families that fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God.
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
These verses reveal that the joining of a man and a woman together is the means by which God commission’s men to fulfill the mandate in the earth. The mandate is not merely a task of purpose, but the fruit of relationship. That mandate is to be fruitful, multiply, fill, subdue, and have dominion. The wife is not joined to the husband to fulfill the purposes of the husband. The wife is joined to the husband to fulfill the purposes of God the Father in the earth. The means by which this purpose is fulfilled is through a love of the man and the woman towards God and towards one another. This is the testimony of human kind. This is the testimony of Adam and Eve as the identity, inheritance, and purpose of God in the earth. Family is God’s way of life. The fruit of the love of family is the multiplication of family that produces family.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Thank you to all who give their support in prayer and finances. We are reaching the nations with New Covenant Life and Grace!
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House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225
Thank You So Much – Ted J. Hanson
