Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I hope you are all well and that your week and weekend were filled with God’s presence and life. I was blessed to be at Everyone’s Church in Mt. Vernon, Washington yesterday. It was good to see some faces I have missed, though it is nicer to view them without masks. We had a good encounter with Holy Spirit and God’s word.
We are in a season of the influence of the grace of the Spirit of knowing. This is not a grace for knowledge as in information. It is a knowledge of intimacy. It is knowing of God and a knowing of one another. It is knowing of the heart. It is a grace for unity through diversity. Though we are diverse in our individuality, together we become a community of diversity for a greater testimony of the likeness and the image of our heavenly Father made known in the earth. We can expect that weapons will be formed against this, but the Spirit of Christ in the body of Christ is greater than any spirit in the world. God is going to bring about the attributes of the grace of the Spirit of Knowing. Those attributes are ones of brotherly love, as the sent Spirit to the church of Philadelphia is a testimony of brotherly love. Jesus is in our midst to reveal true holiness. He is in our midst to cause what is true to be made known. He is in our midst to demonstrate the judgments of God’s mercy on our behalf because of a willingness to embrace the corrections and the directions of God in our midst. Our hearts are being opened to hunger for and seek out God in our lives in a seven day per week, twenty-four hour per day reality. Like King David, we are going to discover God in every moment of time, not merely the events of time. God is opening legitimate doors and closing illegitimate ones. We are being tested in our strength to keep God’s word and in our willingness to confess His name. Lies and liars are being exposed and God is going to confirm those He loves. Perseverance is a testimony of our day! This is perseverance in our love for God and for one another in a day of testing. The overcoming grace of the Spirit of Knowing, the sixth attribute of the sevenfold Holy Spirit, is empowering us to be a place where God rests in the earth. Resting in God and God resting in us is a hallmark of this present grace from heaven. God is going to change our thinking through a transformation of the beliefs of our hearts. We will live for God and for the community of God; a community that lives with and for a vision of peace that is only found in Christ. A testimony of being new is going to fill our hearts and minds in a knowing of God though our lives that empowers a freewill to live for the wellbeing of others.
The community of God is dependent upon being the temple of God’s Holy Spirit. The temple is not dependent upon the community. The community is dependent upon the temple. The temple of the Holy Spirit will activate, facilitate, and release the community of Christ. Build a temple and you will build the city. Build the city and you may never build the temple. If we try to create some expression of Christ community without the manifest presence of Christ, we will only form a human copy of what we perceive to be Christ-like. Only by a manifestation of Christ in us, the Holy Spirit who comes in the name of Jesus, can we become the true community of Christ. The place of life forevermore, eternal life, is the place where heaven touches the earth. This is the place where the anointing oil on the top of the head of Jesus the eternal High Priest who stands forever as the head of the body of Christ in heaven runs down upon the body of Christ and spills over unto the earth. Christ is the manifest presence of Holy Spirit in and upon the body of Christ. It is not merely the human spirit that is in all people, it is the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit that God desires to be in and upon all people. The door is open in heaven, but human hearts upon the earth must open to Him to become the place of His habitation upon the earth. This is the testimony of being the temple of God.
Psalms 133:1-3 Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commanded the blessing — Life forevermore.
In the Old Testament King Cyrus made a decree to build the temple of God and that decree was in reality a decree to build the city of God (Ezra 1:2; Dan. 9:25). The city of God had to be built because the temple was built (including the law and proper offerings). The word sent to build the city was the physical manifestation of the temple. The temple was the word gone forth. Build a temple and there will be a city. It is just like our Christian walk. If the Spirit who comes in the name of Jesus is in our hearts, if there is a temple, then the work of the city (Christian community life) can be completed. Once the Spirit of Jesus is in our hearts, we are new creations, but it is yet to be further manifested in our lives. God spoke the word to call us, but it didn’t become ‘the word sent forth’ until we received the Spirit that comes in the name of Jesus into our hearts. We had to become a house for His Spirit to dwell in and we had to receive His Spirit to dwell in us to write His law upon our hearts and minds. That law is not the Torah law of the Old Covenant, but the testimony of the Father’s love. We had to become proper ‘burnt offerings’ through the one offering Jesus Christ (Rom. 12:1 – members of the body of Christ). Christian community doesn’t make us the testimony of Christ. Doing good and nice things doesn’t make us the community of Christ. Surly Christ in us will empower us to be good and to do good things, but the glory of good is not our goal. It is the glory of God! Christ in us empowers us to become the testimony of a Christ-like community.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Thank you Pastor Ted for this message. The morning began with watching “God rays” coming down upon the morning dew. We were seeing rainbows in the dew sparkling the promises of of God. I thought: It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion. The dew of Hermon is a unique dew found nowhere else in the earth: “It is a soft mist that comes from the Mediterranean during the summer, when the heat is greatest, and the country is burnt up with the terrible sunshine. It is attracted by the inland heights, and condensed in copious moisture upon their sides, and creeps down upon the plains, reviving and refreshing every green thing. It comes first of all to Mount Hermon, and helps to keep up its unchanging robe of snow, and to fill its springs, and feed its cedars, and then it flows down and makes the corn to grow green in the valleys, and the vines to swell out their purple grapes in the vineyards, and the lilies to unfold their crimson radiance in the fields” (Bible Hub). The dew of His mercy refreshes the soul and represents the Living Waters of His Spirit.
This morning I just happened to be reading Zechariah 4 and found, “This is the place where the anointing oil on the top of the head of Jesus the eternal High Priest who stands forever as the head of the body of Christ in heaven runs down upon the body of Christ and spills over unto the earth” to penetrate my being. Just before that the Lord led me to Matthew 1 speaking about the lineage of Jesus from the tribe of Judah. I suddenly checked my email and found a message from my dear brother Peter with a photo of a Lion medallion he had made several years ago. This spoke to my heart in terms of my identity engrafted into the lineage of Judah–a Royal Priest–set apart anointed of God, crowed with the light of eternity, now a temple of God, a Holy Nation in the spirit of Knowing–I am His temple in my place in the Body–my identity in Christ in the knowledge of Him, in the KNOWING.
Blessings,
Sally Bowen