Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am in Redding, California. Bonnie and I have been here this past week having a great visit with our son Aaron and his family. It has been a blessing being with them. It will be especially hard to say goodbye to our grandson and granddaughter again. A few more days of blessing still.
As I have previously written, Jesus coming to us as the Son of Man was God’s first appearing to us for the reconciliation of our hearts to God. Sin never stopped God from seeing humanity for who they were meant to be, it only stopped humanity from seeing God for who He really is. He is a loving Father who has always desired for us to know Him as our friend. His is a giver of life and His gift of life to and in us empowers us to be givers of life to our world.
The firstfruit recipients of both His first coming and a coming again were His human disciples. Before His death upon the cross, He assured them of both the purpose of His death and His promise to come to them again in a way that was not naturally possible without the power and glory of the grace of God. He had revealed to them that He was a spacious place of God’s presence and purpose, and He was making a way for them to be a dwelling place of God by His Spirit. They too would be spacious places of His presence and purpose in their world. Greater things they would do because He would go to the Father and come to them again in the Spirit of the Father and the Son.
John 14:1 “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And where I go you know, and the way you know.”
The place that Jesus would prepare for them would not just be a place in heaven someday, but a heavenly place in their world. It would include the greater glory to come beyond this world, but it would prove to empower them to be a testimony of God’s love in and to their world. His words to His disciples apply to us as well, but He was specifically addressing those who had become His friends while He lived as a man in their world.
John 14:16 “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— 17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.”
Jesus told His disciples that He would leave them, but He also told them they would see Him again for He would come to them again. His coming to them again was not just the significant testimony of His resurrection from the tomb, but in His presence not only with them but in them by the testimony of the Holy Spirit who would be given as a Helper. Holy Spirit would be God in them and with them for His salvation in all things.
John 14:19 “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. 20 At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21 He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Jesus told His disciples that they would see Him because He would be in them. They would also know an intimacy of living in Him as members of the body of Christ. Jesus would manifest Himself to them by the presence of Holy Spirit within them.
John 14:25 “These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. 26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”
These same truths are for us today. Jesus wants us all to know the gift of God’s judgment that came to us by His first coming as a man of flesh. That judgment was one of mercy and eternal life for all who believe. God’s judgment is better than any judgment of law that can be found in the tree of the knowledge of good or evil. That judgment is more powerful than the judgment of sin. It is a greater judgment than any other judgment because it is the only judgment that gives us life. The letter of the law will kill but only God’s Spirit will give us life.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
