Audio Version of Blog:
Greetings;
It was great to be home and minister at my ALife family yesterday. It is a blessing to be a part of a community of people who love God, love each other, and are willing to go the distance through the testings of life for the sake of fulfilling their calling, inheritance, and destiny as a written letter of Christ. It was good to see old faces and some new one’s as well. I believe this is a new season of God’s manifest presence as we become a further testimony of what God is writing by His Holy Spirit in our midst.
Family is God’s way of filling the earth with His glory. It is not just about family naturally, but the spiritual family of God as an expression of His heavenly community upon the earth. There are various roles in family and various levels of covenant. A husband and wife are the testimony of the headship of family and is the highest level of covenant in the earth. Husbands and wives become fathers and mothers and they live for the glory of children and children’s children. Covenant partners bear the fruit of covenant to the successive generations of family. In a family each member supplies life to one another. They are committed to one another in doing their share for the life of the family name and testimony of the family community.
Ephesians 4:14 …that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15 but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— 16 from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
We are members of one another, fulfilling the needs of others. We live for the well-being of one another and for the glory of God in all things. As a community of Christ, we support and value the function of one another. The family of God includes, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, and other expressions of community. It is a place of divine calling and placement for a God-ordained purpose in the earth.
Family is the foundation of love. God is love. It is not just something He does. He is the essence of love. Since God is love, for us to be empowered to love one another we need a revelation of God’s love in our lives. Love is a revelation, not a command. It is something that comes by divine revelation of God’s goodness in our own lives. When we know how much God loves us, we are empowered from within to love one another. As community expressions of Christ’s calling, inheritance, and purpose we must discover the grace for becoming all that God has in mind for us as His family in the earth. That grace is embraced by love, an environment where faith can be found to enter into the grace that creates true family as a mystery of God’s grace working among us. Love is not merely an emotion or an action we demonstrate towards one another, it is the substance of our commitment to the family, its calling, its inheritance, and its destiny in all things.
We live for the Father and the future generations. It is in our thinking and the way we do things. Family is more important than ministry, it is the very reason that we do minister. God has not called us to some spiritual ministry, He has called us to be expressions of His family in the earth. The apostle Paul understood this principle when he wrote to the church of Corinth and reminded them of the important things for them as a spiritual letter and a testimony of Christ’s community in the earth.
1 Corinthians 4:14 I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children I warn you. 15 For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. 16 Therefore I urge you, imitate me. 17 For this reason I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church.
Paul saw himself as a spiritual father to the community and he reminded them that the greatest calling was that of relationship and not ministry. Timothy was a spiritual son of Paul and it was not for some spiritual gift and anointing of ministry that Paul sent him to the church of Corinth. Timothy was a spiritual son to Paul, and he carried the testimony of the message given to Paul in increasing the character, nature, way, power, and authority of the family inheritance in and through those within Paul’s measure of rule. We are each part of something bigger than one individual. We are part of a family calling, a family inheritance, and a family purpose.
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
