Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
We are now into July, and I am enjoying some great summer weather at home. Yesterday I was blessed to minister at Everyone’s Church in Mt. Vernon, Washington. I hope you all had a great weekend as well.
Our view of God is affected by the administration of our lives. What is it that governs our thoughts and actions in life. If we embrace an Old Covenant administration, our thoughts are governed by an information of good and evil. We measure ourselves and our lives by what is good and what is evil – what is right and what is wrong. This administration ends up in the pride of a self-empowered life. We begin to think that the most important thing in life is to be right. We end up judging what we believe to be wrong, and we measure ourselves and others by what we perceive to be right and what we perceive to be wrong. When our thoughts and lives are motivated by a knowledge of good and evil we make works our priority and we lose the true trust that can only come through intimacy with God in Christ. Serving God is not meant to be an attempt to be good. Knowing God is a revelation of being loved by God. When we know God’s love, we live to love Him. This is a greater testimony than merely serving God to be good, do good things, and live a good life. What we believe can determine what we do, but who we believe will determine who we can become.
When the knowledge of good and evil is the motivation of our lives, we seek to know God through what we can know. We cannot know God through information about Him. We can only know God through an encounter with Him and a path of walking with Him in life. A revelation of God will give us interpretation of the Scripture, an interpretation of the Scripture won’t give us a revelation of God. All Scripture must be seen through a lens of life and not mere information. A knowledge of good and evil will not give us an understanding of God, but an understanding of God will empower us to choose what is good. Intimacy with God will give us a revelation of Scripture. Intimacy with Scripture will not give us a revelation of God.
We were not born to serve God. We were born to be loved by God. The human journey of looking for love in the wrong places left us dead in our sins. Our disconnection from God left a hole in our hearts that could only be satisfied through a reconnection with God in our hearts. To know God for who He is can only be realized when we are born again in our hearts to know His Spirit within us. Being sons and daughters of God is only possible as members of the body of Christ. Jesus was the firstborn of mankind in a relationship with God as their Father.
Hebrews 10:5 Therefore, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. 6 In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You had no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—In the volume of the book it is written of Me—To do Your will, O God.’” 8 Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), 9 then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God.” He takes away the first that He may establish the second. 10 By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Sacrifices and offerings cannot substitute a spirit-to-Spirit connection with God in our hearts. Jesus made it so we could be born again to love God as our Father as He loved God as His Father. Our connection to God is as sons and daughters, not mere servants of His will. Being sons and daughters of God enables us to be holy as He is holy. Being sons and daughters of God empowers us to live our lives for His kingdom and His will to be done.
Luke 11:2 So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus freed us for the Old Covenant tree of self and made us a part of the body of Christ. Only the body of Christ can fulfill the will of God in life.
2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; 15 and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. 16 Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
We are new creations in Christ and our lives are a testimony of Christ. We are sons and daughters of God and His Holy Spirit is in us. Being members of the body of Christ empowers us to live our lives as a testimony of being loved by Him.
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
