Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I hope you are all well. I am home again in Bellingham, and I am enjoying some days of Spring. It is not as warm as California, but we are moving toward warmer days in the Northwest. It was good to be in our home church of Alife yesterday and we celebrated by offering our firstfruits to God in an atmosphere of love, life, and the goodness of God. We are expecting God’s purposed harvest for our lives.
Before Jesus gave His life upon the cross of Calvary, He promised His disciples that He would give them His peace. He would give them God’s gift of mercy that would grant them the peace of God in their lives. That peace wouldn’t merely be an emotional comfort but the testimony of being one with God and God with them. There would be no separation between them and spiritual blessings of God in heaven.
John 14:27 “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. 28 You have heard Me say to you, ‘I am going away and coming back to you.’ If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said, I am going to the Father,’ for My Father is greater than I. 29 And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe.”
The promise of Jesus to His disciples was that He was going to come back to them. We know that He came back to them after He rose from the grave, but there was more to His promise to them than merely His physical appearance to them. His promise was that of coming to them in a way that He could be with them and in them. He was promising an abiding with Him that would be in the same way that Jesus was able to abide in God His Father and His Father in Him.
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”
Jesus was the vine of God’s Spirit. He was the vine of Christ and He was making a way for His disciples to become branches of Christ in Him. He was making a way for all people to know the salvation of being a living, growing, vine of God’s presence in the nations and generations of mankind. The life within those in Him and He in them would be the life of God’s Holy Spirit. Christ in them would be the hope of glory! That glory would be to bear the fruit of God that would bring life to their world. It would be the fruit of God’s character, nature, way, power, and life-giving authority.
John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.”
The salvation of Christ empowers us to be givers of life to our world. Fruit is what gives life to others. As part of the vine of God’s abiding, we become givers of God’s heavenly life to our world.
Jesus gave us all peace with God through His atoning blood upon our cross. He poured out the life of His perfect flesh to give us the life of His perfect Spirit. The blood of the New Covenant is different than the blood of the Old Covenant. The blood of the Old Covenant was the blood of the flesh because the life of the flesh is in the blood (Lev. 17:11, 14). When Jesus gave His life for us upon the cross, He gave every drop of the life of His flesh so we could be granted the life of His Spirit. The blood of the body of Christ is the presence of Holy Spirit flowing in and through our lives to our world. This is the power of God’s grace that is given freely to us because of God’s mercy given to us through the shed blood of Jesus as God’s give of love to us all.
Jesus confirmed His gift of mercy when He appeared to His disciples after His resurrection. The disciples were hiding in a locked room and Jesus appeared to them to confirm God’s gift of peace through His shed blood upon our cross. That mercy had granted them, and all of mankind, peace with God. It is through peace with God that we find His amazing grace working in and through our lives. This is the power of His salvation.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225
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Our Ministry Information Is:
House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
