Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am home after returning from several weeks overseas. It is good to be home with family. We had a great Thanksgiving holiday, and I am catching up with my grandchildren. I will be heading to California tomorrow for some time with family there. I am looking forward to a month of family and holiday gatherings.
We are in the process of being manifest as the people of God in a fuller measure. It is the challenges of life that manifest the supernatural reality of being sons and daughters of God. The true test of grace is found in the process of tribulation, cheerful endurance, character change, and hope. That hope is the testimony of the work of grace proven in our lives. That grace is the manifest presence of God in or lives transforming us to become a testimony of sons and daughters of God who know that God is their friend.
When we see Jesus in our lives, the revelation we receive becomes the substance we become by the work of God’s amazing grace. I wrote in 2021 that a new gift of trust is being given to us that is unlike anything we have known before and that we would be tested in our trust. I believe that the strength of our trust can only be found in our ability to know God’s love for us. God is our friend, and His grace is always working in our lives to reveal Him in our lives. To know the trust that God desires for us to have, is to know Christ as the Rock of hope in our lives. He is the Rock that is solid and true. I am growing to know that He is the Rock of a friend, and He wants us to manifest a testimony of His friendship to our world. He wants our character to match the character of His truth as a Rock of our salvation.
What is it that makes Jesus the Rock? Is it His endurance or is it His unchanging Love. God is our friend and His love for us cannot be shaken. His steadfast love is seen through His willingness to give us life, His ability to empower us to become an expression of His love, and His partnership with us in all things to reveal His love through us to our world.
Luke 6:47-49 “Whoever comes to Me, and hears My sayings and does them, I will show you whom he is like: He is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently against that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded on the rock. But he who heard and did nothing is like a man who built a house on the earth without a foundation, against which the stream beat vehemently; and immediately it fell. And the ruin of that house was great.”
Foundations guarantee a future. When Christ is the foundation of our lives, the trials in our lives cannot prevail over the faithfulness of God in the foundation of our lives. The man who dug down to the rock, was the one who responded to the words of God in his life. In this story of two houses, both houses were built in the same geographical location. Both may have been the same design of house and even the same size of house. Perhaps they both were drawn with the same architectural floor plan. Both houses are likened unto people who God was speaking to and who were hearing what He had to say. The difference is that one responded by acting upon the words he heard while the other did not. Jesus says that the one who heard and responded to what he heard was like one who digs down to the rock and establishes a foundation for his house. The one who merely heard is like someone who built his house without any foundation at all.
If we just hear God’s words of love for us without responding with love for Him, we will fall short in becoming who we are meant to be. Our love for Him is seen in our responding relationship with Him. The response of acting upon what God is saying is a testimony to the process of setting a foundation for the house. Both houses in this story were faced with the violent storms of life, but only the house with the foundation set upon the rock was able to stand.
Deuteronomy 32:1-4 “Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, as raindrops on the tender herb, and as showers on the grass. For I proclaim the name of the LORD: Ascribe greatness to our God. He is the Rock, His work is perfect; for all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He.
In knowing Christ in us, we will become like Him in the place of our standing. As a Rock, He is One to be trusted and He will prove to be trustworthy in our lives. This is the testimony of God as our friend. The more we know that God is our friend, the more eager and willing we will be to respond to all that He says. We will become like Him in our character, nature, way, power and authority and we will stand as a place where God shines to our world.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Our Ministry Information Is:
House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
