Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Last week my family and I had a challenging test. Our one year old granddaughter ended up in the hospital with an unusual virus. Thank you to all who prayed for her. She came home on Friday night and seems to be moving past here dilemma. God is good and I am so glad that He is near to us when we call upon Him.
Today I am in Colorado Springs, Colorado where I will be teaching through the week on New Covenant Realities. The students here are part of the G42 Leadership Academy, which has been based in Mijas, Spain for the past several years. The COVID virus has made us all have to make some adjustments, but adjustments can be made and purpose can be fulfilled when we seek God’s creativity in doing so. I am looking forward to a great, God-filled week.
Being a part of the body of Christ is an awesome thing. It is a great blessing and it is also a serious destiny with a great purpose. We can only find our true destiny in being a member of the body of Christ that is joined to other members that constitute a corporate dwelling place of God by His Spirit. In the world, people are taught to live for themselves. They are taught to live for their own personal dreams and visions. In Christ, our personal dreams and visions are always connected to other members of the body of Christ. God in His word says that He loves Jacob, but He loves the dwelling place Zion even more. I believe that Jacob represents our individual desire to love and seek God. God loves each of us individually and He wants us to find His life to the fullest as individual sons and daughters of God. I believe Zion is our corporate connection as the dwelling place of God in the earth. God also wants us to find our divine connection with one another to fulfill a greater purpose in the earth than we can do alone.
Psalms 87:2 The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. 3 Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God! Selah
We are each called by God to be a part of a corporate expression of God’s will in the earth. We are not our own, we belong to Jesus and to one another. Whatever promise God gives to each of us, He gives to the corporate expression of us. Whatever promise He gives to us as the corporate expression of His house, belongs to each one of us as a part of that house. It is the testimony of a family name, a family inheritance, and a family destiny. The promises of God are given to the corporate house, not just the individuals in the house. Together we are the people of God. Jacob was a God-seeker, but he had to be transformed to Israel to become a people. Jacob is a person, but the gate of heaven is Zion. The gate of heaven is a city. The church is a city. The church is Zion and God in His fullness dwells there.
Hebrews 10:23 Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, 25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
These verses are the ingredients of our coming together as the corporate place of God’s dwelling. We come together to consider one another. We come together to hold fast to our confession of being a living member of the body of Christ. We come together to stir up love and to stir up good works in one another. As the presence of God increases in the earth, our coming together should increase also. As we come together we can expect to see more of God’s presence. These are the ingredients of the pure water that sprinkles each of us as members of the body of Christ.
Hebrews 10:22 …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.
As I wrote last week, 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 be creative in how we draw near to one another. We must live by faith and not by natural sight. This is not a time to isolate our hearts from one another. This is not a time to live in fear or to live for ourselves alone. To the extent of whatever is possible, we must seek to connect to one another. Even though my granddaughter was in a hospital last week and I could not be present, I was present with her every moment in my heart and mind. I purposely chose to be present in whatever way was possible. We should do the same with one another in our corporate connections of the body of Christ. If it is possible to physically reconnect we should do so with eagerness. If it is not, we should connect by whatever means is possible. This is how we apply the washing of the water. The blood of Jesus has sprinkled our hearts to give us each a clear conscience as a son or daughter of God. The demonstration and confession of our lives towards God and one another reveals who we really are. We are the body of Christ! For this reason we must consider one another in every day of our lives. We see ourselves as members of the body of Christ and we present our bodies as living sacrifices for this cause. This is the confession of our faith. We seek to stir up love and good works in one another by whatever means is possible. The Day of the Lord is an eternal increasing Day. It is the testimony of true light and we are children of the Day and not the night. We must live as children of the Day joined to Christ as His light in all things.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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