Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Yesterday I was very blessed to speak at my home church – Alife. It was good to be home and to see how God is working in our local community. I am looking forward to some home time. I have several training projects that I am working on, as well as the finals of a new book.
How do we bring life to our world by the life of Christ within us? We must be disciples of Christ, not just disciples of some external expression of God in our midst. Christ in us is the hope of glory. Glory could be defined as being fully alive and fully you in every way. There is a glory of everything and everyone and to be who we were meant to be in the fullest state of life is a testimony of glory. Our heavenly Father is a giver of life and as His sons and daughters we are to be givers of life to our world. This is the glory of God.
There is a measure of glory in every season of our lives. We must find the glory of each season. We have been given a great gift. Christ in us is the hope of glory. It is through Christ in us that we can fulfill the commission given to us by Jesus. What is the commission given to us? The commission given by Jesus to His disciples concerning their world and the end of the Jewish age is the same applicable commission given to us in our worlds and the completion of our times.
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
We know these verses as The Great Commission, but sometimes we make them so great we believe these words are only true for a few sent ones. Let me break these words down into some everyday practicalities. The first statement is that all authority had been given to Jesus as a man. He is Lord of lords and King of kings, but His accomplishment was not that of His deity, it was that of His humanity. He was a man full of grace and truth and He lived a human life never eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but only of the tree of life. He did only that which He saw His Father doing. As a man, He was like His Father. He was a giver of life to His world. Authority is not about control. Authority is not the same as mere power. Authority never takes, it only gives. Authority is the ability to give life to another. We could read these words of Jesus to say: The ability to give life to any and every situation in heaven and on earth has been given to me, go therefore and put all in your world under the influence of life.
The word world in these verses is the word ethnos. It means peoples. It is not just the cultures, races, or peoples of the world, it is the peoples in each of our worlds. The people in my world are not the same as the people in your world and the people in your world are not the same as the people in my world. The ability to give life to any and every situation has been given to Jesus, thus He is able to give each of us as men or women the ability to influence our world with His life. We can influence our spouse, our children, our grandchildren, our extended family, our neighborhood, our friends, and even our enemies with life! Each of us has been given a life of relational connections and expanding spheres of influence. We are to be like Jesus. We are to be like our heavenly Father. We are to bring life to our worlds. Christ in us is the hope of glory. Christ in us empowers us to be disciples of Christ so we can disciple our ethnos – our peoples.
We are to be disciples of Christ to disciple the nations, or more specifically – the peoples in our world. Who do we influence in life? Who is in our measure of influence? To be givers of life we must cultivate our inner relationship with Christ within us. Christ in us is the hope of glory. The God-connection in our spirits is the source of becoming a disciple of Christ. The ability to give life to any and every situation in life has been given to Jesus as a man, the firstborn from the dead. It is by His life within us that we can bring life to our world.
We are to baptize those in our world in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is the fullness of the identity of God. I believe in water baptism and that water baptism is a perfect demonstration of a life of works that speak of our faith toward God. In water baptism we publicly demonstrate that we died in Christ, we were buried in Christ, we rose from the dead in Christ, and the life that we now live we live by faith in Christ. We are no longer members of our old bodies of flesh, but we are members of the body of Christ. We have been submerged into the identity of the body of Christ. I believe these words of the commission of Jesus pertain to this, but even more so they are words telling us to live to empower others to be submerged into the identity of the fullness of God in this life. This is the only place where satisfaction can be found.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
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