Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Yesterday I was able to minister at Everyone’s Church in Mt. Vernon, Washington. God’s presence was there, faith was in the hearts of the people, and God revealed Himself as good in His family. I hope you also had a great weekend. God is surely creating a family testimony and a testimony of being God’s family in the earth.
God is inviting us to live in a place of partnership with Him and with one another in Christ. We are not merely servants of God. We are children of our Heavenly Father. Our purpose in the earth is one of being the family of God. Why does God want us to know partnership? Partnership is not merely about purpose; it is about love. But love is always filled with purpose. That purpose is a furtherance of God’s love that changes the world in which we live.
We often think of God’s purpose as a matter of power, but power alone doesn’t create the greatest purpose of God in the world. When Moses was sent to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt, God used the wicked Pharaoh for His purpose.
Exodus 9:16 But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.
God can use the wicked to proclaim His name to the earth because God is more powerful than those who oppose Him. God uses the wicked and the hard of heart to demonstrate His power, but what about us when we partner with Him as children of God? Our partnership with God and His partnership with us is not a matter of power. It is a matter of love and the testimony of love. God offers this partnership to anyone who seeks to know Him. I believe that God looks for those who seek to know Him to demonstrate His willingness to go to the place they live. I believe that Jesus demonstrated this when He encountered Zacchaeus as He passed through Jericho.
Luke 19:1 Then Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. 2 Now behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus who was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. 3 And he sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd, for he was of short stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him, for He was going to pass that way. 5 And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and saw him, and said to him, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” 6 So he made haste and came down, and received Him joyfully. 7 But when they saw it, they all complained, saying, “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner.”
In this story, the hunger of Zacchaeus to see who Jesus was stirred Jesus to go to His house that day. Jesus told Him to make haste and come down because Jesus wanted to stay at His house. This was more than a superficial visit. Jesus didn’t care that Zacchaeus was someone that the religious considered a sinner. Jesus saw Zacchaeus as a child of God. I believe this story reveals God’s desire for partnership with us in life. God wants to stay in our houses. He wants to live in our lives. God wants to live with us and us with Him. It is not our works that justify us, but our willingness to receive Jesus into our lives. God wants us to know the mystery of a connection to God.
Ephesians 3:8 To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; 10 to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, 11 according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in Him.
Reigning in life is not a matter of knowing what to do. It is not merely a matter of doing the right thing or making the right decision. It is a matter of being a place of God’s presence. It is the place of knowing the mystery of the fellowship of God and man in a partnership of intimacy, one with another. Jesus living in our house and we living in our Father’s house is the testimony of our dependency in life.
Revelation 3:20 “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 21 To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. 22 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”‘”
Several years ago, God told me that grace is the evidence that God lives in our house. He also told me that peace is the evidence that we live in God’s house. When God is in our lives, we increasingly change in life-receiving and life-giving ways. When we partner with God and live in His house, our access to the substance of all that He is and all that He has enables us to know the substance of heaven in our lives. Our aim should be for Jesus to live in our lives in an intimate way of eating and drinking the food and drink of grace and peace. It is through a partnership of love that we will reign in life.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
