Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Today I am on my way to Bulgaria. I will be there for the next two weeks. I am looking forward to being with people I love and seeing God pour out His powerful love. I know that it will be a great time. Our Father will be glorified!
Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. The Father desires sons and daughters; He doesn’t merely want servants. He is more interested in loving us than empowering us with knowledge for right actions or sacrifices in life. It is only as sons and daughters that we can truly know the Father’s love. For this reason, God became the Son of Man to reveal our destiny as children of God.
When we see Jesus, we see the Father. The Father values love, life, and celebration in the context of family. He desires relationship above anything else. The Father wants us to know His love, but His love is authentic. It’s not a matter of right sacrifices. It is a matter of right relationship. Jesus made a whip to drive out the moneychangers from the Temple. This too was a testimony of the Father’s love.
John 2:13 Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. 15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. 16 And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” 17 Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.”
God loves us as we are and He wants us to come to Him just as we are. Our honesty and authentic intimacy cannot be purchased. It comes from within our hearts in all sincerity. In this story, Jesus didn’t react to what they were doing. He strategically acted. He took time to make a whip and then He strategically drove the money changers from the temple.
The feast of Passover was not about right objects for sacrifices. It was a celebration the Father’s deliverance and salvation that is given to us through a demonstration of His love. We love God because He first loved us by giving a sacrifice of life for our eternal life with Him. The money changers were making His Father’s house a house of merchandise. The zeal for His Father’s house consumed Jesus. That zeal was not for right works, but for right relationship. God’s house is a house of prayer. It is a house of intimate relationship with God and one another.
Matthew 21:12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.'” 14 Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.
Prayer is a face-to-face relationship with God. It is a heart-to-heart connection to our heavenly Father. Jesus testified that He was a Temple of God’s Spirit. The Father wants each of us to be a dwelling place of His Spirit. When we are a house of God’s presence, we are a house of prayer. When we are a house of love, a house of prayer, the blind and the lame experience the healing love of the Father. It is not simply a house of miracles, but a dwelling place of the Father’s powerful love.
God will deal with things in our lives that prevent us from knowing Him intimately and in sincerity. We can trust the dealings of God because He is our Father and He wants to abide with us and us with Him in truth.
John 2:19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body. 22 Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
Jesus revealed the Father by being a dwelling place of God’s Spirit. Holy Spirit dwelling within Him testified that He was the temple of the Father’s love—the Father’s presence. When we are a dwelling place of God’s Spirit, we become a testimony of the Father’s love.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
