Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am back at my home in Bellingham, Washington. It is good to be home. This is a week where we celebrate Thanksgiving in the U.S., and I am thankful to be a part of God’s family. I will celebrate with my own family, but I am also thankful for the family of God that I am a part of in Christ.
We are a dwelling place of God by His Holy Spirit. This is the good news granted to us all through our redemption to God through the shed blood of Jesus upon our cross at Calvary. We have been redeemed and now we can know the blessing of being sons and daughters of God in Christ. God’s presence in our lives doesn’t just give us His blessing, it empowers us to be a part of His life-giving purpose in and to our world. God’s presence in our lives gives us both His blessing and His purpose.
Without God’s presence, we cannot become. God’s purpose won’t give us His presence, but His presence will reveal His purpose. We each have a part in the calling of Christ, the inheritance (the testimony) of Christ, and the power (the purpose) of Christ. This is a season where you can find your identity, testimony, and purpose in Christ. There is an identity crisis in the nations and generations, but Holy Spirit is calling out to the nations that they would come and find the truth of their being in Christ. Our journey begins with knowing God in an intimate and powerful way.
Exodus 20:2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
This is the first commandment of ten commandments of God given in the Torah to the children of Israel. It is not a command from a controlling God who has some need to be honored. It is the strong appeal of a loving Father who wants all to know the freedom of life that only He can give. His is the only one who can bring us out of the darkness of disconnection from Him and bring us into the liberty of life that comes by knowing Him. No other god can give us life that empowers us to fully live in the freedom of God’s eternal reality of life.
God’s second commandment of the ten commandments reveals a key to becoming who we are meant to be in God. It has to do with responding to our Creator’s love to become an expression of His love as we are meant to be as a son or daughter of God. It is only through a relationship of love towards God that we can become who we are meant to be.
Exodus 20:4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”
God is not a jealous God because He needs something from us. He is jealous because He wants to give us all that He has for us to become who we should be in life. He gives life, breath, and all things. His desire is to be Himself towards us to give us all that we need to be who we are meant to be.
What, or who, gives us our identity, testimony, and purpose? Whatever or whoever we worship creates us. Each of us are a one and only son or daughter of God and we can only become who we are meant to be by our worship of the One who creates us. When we worship something other than Him, we become something different than who we are meant to be. This is idolatry. When we love some created thing more than we love the Creator, we become something less than who we are meant to be. To be the expression of God we are meant to be requires us to respond to God’s love with a love for Him that is greater than our love for any created thing. Creation cannot create us as we should be. Only our heavenly Father can define our true identity, testimony, and purpose in life.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Checks can be made payable to House of Bread Ministry and sent to:
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
