Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
It was great to be back together yesterday in church. Pastors Jonathan and Danie gave a great word in regard to a shift for great hope. Jesus was in the house and life was happening. It is great to be a part of the Body of Christ. We are expecting sunshine all week here in Bellingham and I am expecting for the Son to shine in my heart all week in a supernatural way. It is great being connected – Spirit to spirit!
Today I am writing to encourage us all to apply ourselves to what God is doing in this present season of the Church. The Church is not an organization or a religious structure. It is the term given to our corporate connection to one another in Christ and it refers to our purpose together in bringing the influence of God’s kingdom in our world and our corporate purpose in fulfilling our Father’s will in our sphere of influence in this world. We have been in a natural season of isolation and separation. I have found that great resistance accompanies great destiny. We can expect a supernatural connection to God and one another when the circumstance of our world tries to dictate the opposite. Our destiny in not one of surface connection by a means of information. Our destiny is one of intimacy in Christ. It is a place of corporate connection with a common fellowship of the Holy Spirit. We each enjoy a personal relationship with God, but God has called us to a greater destiny than merely our own personal intimacy with God in Christ. He has called us to a corporate connection in Christ. The writer of Hebrews refers to the body of Christ as the true holy of holies. The holy of holies is a place of corporate connection as the many membered body of Christ where each member exhibits the manifest life of Christ and we as members give and receive that life to become something greater than we can be alone.
Hebrews 10:19 Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, 21 and having a High Priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Jesus was God in flesh as a testimony for each of us to be people motivated by the Spirit of God joined to our own spirits in this world. As individuals we are a house for the Spirit of God. It is Christ in each of us that is the hope of glory for each of us. That glory is the guarantee of increasing life in this world and into eternity beyond this world. We are also members of the body of Christ. This gives us each a role to play in the corporate expression of Christ in a greater way. This is the Church, the one thing that God is building in this world to overcome the gates of hell. Those gates of hell are the influencing places of death and darkness in our world. As the body of Christ, the Church, we are the influence of the light of Christ to our world. Jesus lived His life as the one true body of Christ in order to make it possible for us to be joined to Him as bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh in this world. Jesus is the head of the body and the body is the fullness of Him in this world. The true veil that was torn when Jesus sacrificed His life upon the cross was not the veil of the physical holy of holies of the temple in Jerusalem. The true veil was that of His flesh so we could find an entrance into a body of life. The body that we have been given access to is the body of Christ. The body of Christ is the house of God. Through Jesus we have ended our old life of flesh and entered into a body of faith in Christ. Being joined together in the body of Christ is what gives us our true identity in Christ. The pure water is the testimony of water that can sanctify us in this world. It is the water that contains the ashes of the red heifer; thus, it washes us to declare who we really are in Christ. These things were symbolic of the testimony we find by the power of God’s words to our hearts and minds that sanctify us to reign in life as God desires.
In the Old Covenant Torah/Temple system, there was a sacrifice of a Red Heifer. That heifer was spotless, without blemish or defect of any kind. It was only a shadow and symbol of what was to come to us from heaven. It was not the thing that God desired, only a copy of something that God desired to bring into the earth. Some are looking for a day of the restoration of this sacrifice in some form in the nation of Israel, but I believe that this sacrifice is already complete in Christ and the fruit of that sacrifice is rising up in the earth. The red heifer is but a symbol of a spotless body for the service of God in Christ. I believe that heifer was symbolic of the body of Christ, the womb of God in the earth joined to Jesus the head in all things for the glory of the Father and the testimony of Jesus name.
It is a supernatural miracle to be a part of the body of Christ. Before we could become the body of Christ, Jesus had to come as the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person in human form. He was both the head and body of Christ for the new creation of a human race destined to become the brightness of the Fathers glory and express image of His person in the earth. Like the first Adam, the eternal Last Adam of Jesus contained a spiritual rib for the formation of the body of Christ in the earth. The body of Christ is the eternal Eve joined with the eternal Adam to fill the earth with the glory of God. This testimony is so glorious that even the heavens and the earth are shaking for the manifestation of this true glory. It is eternal in that it is destined to make both heaven and earth as one for the glory of God.
There are resisting forces to the greatness of who we are as the body of Christ, but great resistance can only prove to demonstrate the overcoming grace of the corporate dwelling place of God in His Spirit. We must seek to join together so that no part is lacking in the corporate purpose of Christ. Greater days are before us! Greater days are at hand.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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