Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am home in Bellingham. It was good to be home with my home church after being gone for a couple of weeks. Pastor Jonathan gave us further insight into conversion and the need to let go of the expectations of the past for an expectancy of God today. Giving your shame to God, produces a changed mind and perspective that leads to wholeness, an unhindered connection to Jesus. We need to live in a face-to-face relationship with Jesus each and every day.
Through Jesus Christ we have been given the gift of Holy Spirit in our lives. His manifest presence in our lives is the testimony of Christ in us, the hope of glory. He is the internal Messenger that transforms our lives to become an expression of God’s message to our world. God is the word, but we are expressions of His word in bodily form as sons and daughters of God each uniquely revealing the likeness and the image of God to our world. God in the form of Holy Spirit is the internal connection with Jesus and God our Father. Holy Spirit empowers our spirits to cry out to God, Abba Father! We are sons and daughters of God and God has always desired that we would know the reality of who we really are. It is only by being sons and daughters of God that we can truly know who God is. He is not merely a God of great power; He is a loving Father that gives us our true identity to fulfill our true purpose in life. It is only by the internal knowing of Holy Spirit in our lives that we can experience that true passion and purpose of being sons and daughters of God.
Malachi 3:8 “Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. 9 You are cursed with a curse, for you have robbed Me, even this whole nation.”
These verses reveal the downfall of living as Old Covenant servants, not fully connected to God in our hearts. Tithes and offers cannot make us sons and daughters of God but being sons and daughters of God is the only thing that empower true tithes and offerings to God. I’m not just talking about money. I am talking about the giving of the substance of our lives. Tithe is a right response to God and true offerings are acting as God acts in all things. These are merely actions that demonstrate the fruit of our hearts connected to God. These are really a testimony of becoming like God in our character, nature, way, power, and authority. These things are really about learning to be like God. God doesn’t want us to do things for Him; He wants us to be people who act like Him. Holy Spirit is in our lives to restore the testimony of the family of God in the earth.
The first mentions of tithes were in the life of Abram and later in the life of Jacob. In both cases, tithe was an action done as a response to God giving something on His part to Abram or to Jacob. In the life of Abram, his tithe was a response to God’s gifts of bread and wine in his life. The One who would transform him to become Abraham gave him heavenly bread and heavenly wine as a testimony of the substance that would prove to be the food for the substance of who Abram would become. Abram responded to God by giving him a tenth, a tithe, of what he had in his possession at the time. In the life of Jacob, his experience of seeing his own life with full access to all that God is and all that God has as being the gate of heaven in the earth invoked a response to God on his part.
What is the significance of the tithe, or a tenth? The number 10 is a symbolism of a judgment of love, as in 10 commandments express a love for God and love for others. It is a symbolism that involves action, but it is a level of relationship that can only be expressed in a place of corporate connection. It can only be expressed in the place of God’s house upon the earth. It must be expressed to the place of God’s standing pillar upon the earth, because it is a response to the calling, the inheritance, and the purpose of God in the earth. It has nothing to do with law. No law was written at the time of Abram and Jacob in history. No Torah was written yet. No ten commandments were etched in stone. These things had not been expressed in written form upon the earth, but only existed in the truth of creation. These tithe responses had nothing to do with any commandment. It had nothing to do with any sacrifice. It had nothing to do with any offering. Both Abram and Jacob’s actions were fully and completely based upon a revelation of being a place in the earth that is the entrance of heavenly blessings from the possessor of heaven and earth. It was a confirmation that the place that Jacob found himself in was the gate of heaven. It was in this place that the influence of heaven was given access to the earth. Both Abram and Jacob’s actions presented a testimony of revelation from their hearts in knowing who God is and who they were destined to be because of God in their lives. If these things were true in the shadow of that which was in the Old Covenant, how much more are these things true by the power of the Holy Spirit within us in the New?
(From the stories of Abram in Genesis 14:18-21 and Jacob in Genesis 28:10-22).
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Thank you to all who have been able to contribute to our mission. Your support is helping us reach the nations and the generations with a message and impartation of New Covenant Life and Grace.
Please continue to pray for us and contribute when you can.
Thanks Again – Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225
