Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
What a great close to 2019. Yesterday, Pastor Jonathan presented words that the members of our church community are hearing in regard to what is going to happen in 2020. It is time to release what was to be able to embrace what is needed for today!
God doesn’t want us to live our lives with a view of Him as a controlling Sovereign Master. He wants us to know Him as our Father. Surely, He is powerful, but His connection to us and our connection to Him is not because of His power, it is because of His intimate love. He is powerful enough to break any chain in our lives or destroy any bondage, but His objective is to give us life in all things. Life is the true testimony of honor. God gives us life, breath and all things. This is His honor to us as His children. What about our honor towards Him? If we are children of God, we should grow in His character, nature, way, power, and authority. He wants us to live in a way that honors Him as sons and daughters honor their father. His last prophetic words in the Old Covenant were words that promised the answer would come in a way that would change our lives on the inside and the out. He promised to send a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap. The refiners fire is the internal transformation that comes by the work of Holy Spirit in our lives. Jesus made it possible for the life of the Holy Spirit to be an internal reality in our lives by living as a man with the Holy Spirit’s inspiration as a son of God, though He was also a son of man. The fuller’s soap is the external cleansing of our lives by the testimony of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. He removes all of the stains of human carnality and sin from our lives. Jesus took on our testimony of defilement to give us our true testimony of holiness as sons and daughters of God in Christ. Jesus, the once for all sacrifice for all mankind, has made a way for us to be grafted into a family tree of life. That tree produces the fruit of life that changes the world.
God wants to heal our responses to Him as well as empower us to do actions in this world that reveal who He is. When we act as sons and daughters of God in our character, nature, way, power, and authority; we exhibit who our heavenly Father is in earthly ways. The Holy Spirit has come into our lives so that we will not only believe whom our heavenly Father is, but we will also believe who we are in Christ. Our relationship with God as our Father empowers us to be transformed on the inside and out. God desires an intimate relationship with us. He wants us to know His love and to respond to His love, not just in a way that empowers us to know His love, but to be transformed by His love to become His true sons and daughters. As we respond to Him, His presence fills us up from heaven within our hearts and heavenly blessings overflow with visible blessings from heaven in our lives. It is His presence in our lives, but it requires a response from us as God’s children. We respond to the gift of the Holy Spirit (the Messenger) with the substance of our hearts and lives. The Holy Spirit has come to establish an open heaven in our lives so that the blessings of God will come to overflowing. God’s manifest presence has come into our hearts and He is overflowing with the blessings of heaven.
Malachi 3:10 …“And try Me now in this,” Says the LORD of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it.”
There is an open heaven! Christ’s presence in our lives is subduing the enemies of God and the enemies of who God intended us to be in our lives. Sometimes the enemy is our own thinking. God wants to change our thinking so we will become the blessing He has always known us to be. When we are who are, the enemy will be destroyed, and the earth will yield its true blessing for us to fulfill the purpose of our Heavenly Father in our earthly journey. The testing of God is not a test to prove whether He is real or not or whether He will provide or not. The test is a test of depending upon Him and depending upon knowing who we are.
Malachi 3:11 “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field,” Says the LORD of hosts”
It is God’s manifest presence in our lives that destroys the devourer in our lives. We must be willing to let go of the things that are an enemy to God. We do this by receiving the Messenger of God in our hearts. The Messenger is the Holy Spirit, the one who purifies our hearts with fire and transforms our outward testimony like fuller’s soap. As this happens, the nations will recognize who we are. We are children of God!
Malachi 3:12 “And all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land,” Says the LORD of hosts.”
The Holy Spirit in our hearts is the voice that cries out “Abba, Father” from within. Christ in us is the testimony of being children of God. Christ in us empowers us to desire God our Father. This was what was missing in the day of Malachi the prophet. The priests could not see the need for serving God because they viewed Him as a hard taskmaster and not a heavenly Father who loves His children. There service to Him was for their own personal pride and need. Our service to God cannot be for our own righteousness or as a means of meeting our personal needs. Our service must be the overflowing responses and actions of sons and daughters of God who know they have a Father who loves them. They know that to live for the family purpose in all things is for the glory of the family name!
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Thank you to all who have been able to contribute to our mission. Tickets have been purchased for ministry in New Mexico, Texas, Angola Africa, and Portugal. We are set through March 2nd. Please continue to pray for us and contribute when you can. We plan to move into 2020 with full purpose and a focus of bringing New Covenant life and grace to the nations.
Thanks Again – Ted J. Hanson
Donations can be made at the link on the home site of:
Checks can be made payable to House of Bread Ministry and sent to:
House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225
