THE GREATER FAST

How can we be a more transparent channel of Jesus’ Presence? We can cease living out of things that are not Him and live from Him. The concerns of the King and His Kingdom would be much facilitated if we lived in Jesus and allowed our work to be the result of a life rooted deeply in Him, rather than attempting to make Jesus some kind of addition to our weekly agenda. ‘Work’ for those fortunate enough to be involved in tasks that they find satisfying is ‘food, ’ which brings us to the matter of ‘fasting.’

Fasting has spiritual power because we forgo something that is a physical need for the sake of a spiritual gain – more of God and more of His life realised through us. But food is just a metaphor for many other life needs. We need to work and do all the things that are our day, like send the kids off to school, teach at school, collect the kids after school and buy the groceries. These things materially make up what we know as “our life.”

However the essence of being a spiritual man or woman in a physical world is to live from God’s Son into the world. When the things we do are a function of our life in Jesus our words, deeds, plans and projects are filled with His light and life. They produce freshness, novelty and delight. We are made more creative and we stimulate others to be more creative. We spread more love – love of people and love of life. We are the new creation.

Jesus lived totally in His Father and from His Father. As a result He did everything He was born to do. He was totally His own person because He was totally His Father’s Son. He totally accomplished the tasks for which He had been created because He and the Father were one. His work and His life was a function of His place in God.

Because of Jesus we now have a new and living way of being alive and new in every situation. Through the ministry and power of the Holy Spirit we are able to live in Jesus and He in us. Because Jesus is with us always and in all ways, we are able to live in Him as He lived in His Father. All the accomplishments of Jesus are ours. His blood washed us. The Spirit takes from what is His and gives it to us.

Paul declared that in God, the Godly man or woman lives, moves and has her being. She realises her self-worth and potential as she lives in the union with God that is hers. This is a union that has already been secured for her by Jesus and delivered by the Holy Spirit.  Those who like Mary, sit at Jesus’ feet are far more fruitful for the Kingdom of God, than those who like Martha hassle and hustle to produce sandwiches that Jesus did not ask for. Life for the performance addict is tense, terse and even if leafy, barren of fruit. But life for one who lives in Jesus is fruitful. It’s not a performance. It’s simply a life in God.

Jesus continually invites us to live in Him. These invitations are seeds. Will you receive this seed and clutch it to your heart? When they fall on the soil of a heart that believes they produce up to one hundred times what was planted. You will never be a barren fig tree if your life is planted in Jesus.

‘The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail’ Isa 58.11 NIV

‘Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him’ John 7.38.NIV.

 

Keith Allen, June 23, 2011

Bad fruit and the christian industry

If we are living in the letter and not totally in Jesus anything we begin will start with a bang and end in a whimper. This will be so no matter how exciting it currently appears.

Life in Jesus versus life in the knowledge of good an evil is the key issue of our time. The world and the church are blinded and paralised from gorging themselves on the stinking fruit and noxious gases from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We either eat Jesus or we eat the fruit of death.

Death came through Eve and death debilitates all who live through Adam. Life came through Jesus and belongs to all those who eat Him. Live in Adam and we are robbed of discernment and authority (see notes). Eat Jesus and the blind see and devils are cast out the Father never intended to leave His sons in this sate of paralysis and blindness. He sent a Person – the Righteousness from God.

Jesus as the Provider of eternal life. But He is also the Provider of life full stop. He’s the Provider of the life that the knowledge of good and evil took away. He’s the Branch from which flows resurrection life.

Where the knowledge of evil produces death, Jesus imparts life to the believer – life to the full and life without limit. Jesus rose from the grave and sits at the right hand of authority, not just to take us to heaven, but to restore TODAY the authoritative life that was lost to us by eating from the tree of death. TODAY if you hear His voice do not harden your heart. Receive TODAY’S impartation of life from Him who is LIFE IN ITSELF.

Jesus is the RESSURECTION AND THE LIFE. He is the antidote to death that comes from the tree of knowledge without life. In the letter anything you begin will fade and any new project can never remain fresh because it belongs to an inferior covenant.

Life in the Spirit is fresh and alive with light and colour. In Jesus today the religious dead really can live and the religious blind really can see because Jesus is the Spirit of life who un-does the surety of dullness and blindness that comes from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Through Jesus we live in the spirit of sight and the spirit if life. Ignited in the Presence of Jesus and living in Him we do not multiply activity or knowledge. In all we do we multiply freshness and life. Our clear sight and lack of confusion enables the religious blind to see and the lame to walk Jesus’ Presence speaks words of authority and power through us to impart life to the lost and defeat the Enemy. We are never dull, boring or tedious because we live in the resurrection life of the Spirit and not the letter.

‘And if [Because] the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you’ Romans 8.11 NIV.

Keith Allen, May 25, 2011

 

More than Yams on the Menu

A Tale of  three Believers

George Simpkins spent 15 years as a missionary in New Guinea. At the end of the that time he got to know the Holy Spirit, began to hear from God and recognize His voice. It was by knowing the Holy Spirit and being filled with His Presence that his intimacy with Jesus increased dramatically. In the Presence of God and with this Presence of Jesus in Him he not only got to know God. He began to know himself and understand things about himself that had been hidden before. He began to realize that God has not sent him to New Guinea. He has sent himself.

George had ‘his purpose’ revealed to him by the Spirit of Christ. He became personally directed by Jesus, rather than by those who like to speak of a ‘missional imperative.’

George is now in the throes of becoming who he really is and doing what Jesus means for him to be doing. Now when George does things he hits a bulls eye and produces much fruit because He goes where Jesus tells him to go. He moves about causing havoc to the Enemy and building the Kingdom of God instead of building kingdoms of churchianity. If George does go again to New Guinea or India or New Zealand, it will be because the Spirit of Christ sends him. Not because he sends himself.

Two years ago the February bushfires raged through the outer suburbs and villages of Melbourne. Many houses were destroyed and over 18o people died. Mavis Movvers, as a witness to Christianity put on her old boots and work clothes. She spent two weeks helping the disoriented and heart-broken people to make a new start on the rest of their lives. She helped people and spoke words of kindness to them. But so did many atheists and others who had no relationship with God whatsoever.

Like many of God’s people the closest Mavis ever got to God was to be engaged in acts of service. Not that this was valueless. But it was something that could have been done even if God did not exist. As well as this, such service was as much about Mavis as it was about Jesus. Mavis was attempting to ‘be a good Christian and do what good Christians are supposed to do.’ But Mavis did not remain like this. A change took place. Jesus revealed Himself to her as her life. One night in a dream He said to her, ‘Mavis, I want to come into you and fill you with Myself.’ She began incresingly to live in Him and from Him.

She heard about the Holy Spirit. Checked it out in the New Testament. She took Jesus command seriously not to leave her Jerusalem, wherever that might be, until she was filled with the Holy Spirit and equipped with power from on high. From that point on Mavis left off being a worker and became a daughter of God, with authority and power, quite unlike many of the woodenly religious around her. Now when she helped people the supernatural Spirit-life of Jesus flowed from her. Sometimes the Lord healed illness as Mavis laid hands on the sick and prayed in Jesus’ Name. She prayed healing over a man with a chronically sore back. The pain left and never returned.

Sometimes there was just a flow of life as Mavis spoke words of convicting power simply by being herself. She began to be led to needy people seemingly at random where conversations about Jesus ‘just happened.’ They happened because there was an open door to God in the person’s life due to circumstances. This was the Spirit of Christ speaking to the spirit of Mavis showing her what He wanted done.

Siegfried Kruger saw himself as a defender of the faith. He had a good brain, a quick tongue and a sharp wit. He could think on his feet and he knew His Bible. Jesus came to his church in the form of an outbreak of the Holy Spirit. People changed the songs they liked to sing. Some cried and repented of living in Christianity. Many began to praise Jesus and sing to Jesus personally. Many didn’t want to go home. They just wanted to be with the Lord and each  other – all of which irritated Bernard, who preferred the predictability of things ‘done decently and in order.’  “I wish they would stop all this talk about Jesus” he raged, “And get on with proper Christianity.”

But they didn’t stop talking about Jesus or raising their hands when they sang. So as an elder he decided to impose his own order and contrived to manipulate these people out of the church. He made an art of this practice and went from church to church helping the authorities get rid of similar kinds of people. In doing so he attempted to kill Jesus in those he expelled and bound Jesus in those who remained behind.

Siegfried did this until on one expedition he was struck down on a Melbourne train by a great while light that only he could see. Siegfried knew his Bible but he did not know God. Yet he was impelled to call out, ‘Who are you Lord?!’ Jesus, who had always had his eye on him because He had a special work for Him to do, quietly said, ‘I’m Jesus, who you are persecuting.’

You could have knocked Siegfried over with a feather. When he had recovered himself and regained his composure, he really was born again, rather than being one who talked about it. His physical blindness was followed by an ability to discern. He began to live in Jesus instead of in ‘Christian things.’

It was he who articulated the most brilliant and pithy expression of the new covenant that had ever been written: ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’

Strangely, for one who had been so bound by religion, he became the apostle of the free spirit. He set thousands of the religious free in spite of the opposition by the many who felt impelled to ‘add something to Christ.’ He set many free and Christ through Paul still does. This is no small feat, since many of the religious believe that ‘they are the way’ and that they already are free. ( How dare you speak to me like that you impertinent brat. Don’t you know I belong to the Christian Industry?)Which all goes to show that there are not limits on the power of God and those who walk in darkness really will see a great light.

‘The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned’ Matt 4.16 NIV.

‘For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light’ Eph 5.8 NIV.

Keith Allen, May 17, 2011

DON’T ABANDON HOPE – all ye of dubious faith

During my middle years as a teacher I taught at a government school blessed with a kindly deputy head master who had one theme. He enunciated it with decorum but without effect every assembly day: The need to tidy the grotty campus. It was this dutiful deputy principal who told the boys that it is better to have any faith than no faith at all.

Any faith? I have thought about this over the years. I’m not sure that I agree. Maybe ‘a faith’ does structure life somewhat while relieving us of the anxiety of living in a void. Perhaps one could overcome ‘voidism’ and the null feelings it invokes as a surfer and make a simple belief system from waves and weather. A more simple faith like that of an animal might be food good and hungry bad, or as a famous work put it,  ‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’ But if communism was a paradise it was a paradise that needed walls to keep people in paradise. Some faiths are lame. Others are toxic.

Cannibalism might be thought of as a faith. It was underpinned by the notion of victory over an enemy and ingesting his essence. These ideas may structure tribal life but the man sitting in the pot might well wish the cannibal had no faith at all. ‘Abandon faith all ye who chant about my ear!’ he shouteth as he blendeth with the yam stew.

Nazism of the World War Two years was a cruel and arrogant faith based on the survival of the fittest and racism. Was this better than no faith? The belief that might makes right is not far removed from the belief that greed is good; that wealth is a sign of merit and that lack of wealth is the badge of the undeserving. Pity that Jesus said the wealthy would struggle to enter the Kingdom of God. But then again the Kingdom of God consists of those who live in God and not in configurations of good and evil

It is, perhaps, impossible to have ‘no faith,’ since all of us are socialized into some kind of matrix that forms a structure to our lives. ‘Faiths’ have an effect. An identity based on the certainty that we are sons, born of God is quite a different identity that based on the assumption that we started in a primordial soup that was struck by lightning. Again the destiny of one who knows they are sons of the free woman is different to one who is a child of the slave woman. The former develops in an atmosphere of infinite largesse. The latter attempts to live in the taunt, ‘If you are a son of God.’

Some faiths are toxic. Other faiths are a lie. We are what we think. If what we think is a lie our group life will be a lie. Christian fundamentalist sects can be a sad example of a crippling faith – a tissue of lies producing crippled people. Cages of faith are made from lies and false ‘certainty’ constructed from the planks of bad doctrine. Carefully assembled from the tree of knowledge these penitentiaries provide false security and real bondage. Then people bow down to their bondage and say, ‘Behold our god.’ But Jesus says, ‘Live in Me and experience your freedom!’

‘It is man’s fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it’ Isa 44.15 NIV.

Toxic ‘faith’ makes people smaller than they would have been if they had no religion at all. This is why the agnostic or the atheist is sometimes of larger spirit than the scribe and teacher of the law. Why? He has not adopted limitation in the name of God. His soul and spirit are not constricted by a mean deity that is a projection of the religious self. Have you noticed that many idols are ugly? That’s because the self projected as ‘god’ is an unsightly and monstrous being.

On the other hand the righteousness sent from God is Jesus who gives the Spirit without limit to produce the sons of God. Largeness of spirit is the result of Christ in you!

Law bound versions of Christianity are not only contradictions in terms. Formed in the letter they kill. The letter kills human stature, nobility, Sonship and authority. The letter kills the image of Sonship in sons. The letter has us imagining we are glorious when we are actually nude. The letter stultifies and limits. The letter fades and jades  because the letter is the chief fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. But Jesus’ the living Word makes us sons. Christ for us and Christ in us is our right to the tree of life and entrance into the city of God.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.

No Christian group planted in the letter can flourish, even if it is Spirit-filled. As Galatians asserts the Spirit is extinguished by the law. It is seed cast on rocky soil. It will wilt like wheat planted on cotton wool in a saucer.  It will produce communities who live under a glass ceiling. The people under this old covenant covering will grope about in the twilight of a glass darkly. But in Jesus we see light. In Jesus we are the children of the free woman with an infinite inheritance as the sons and daughters of God.

‘But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away’ 2 Cor 3.16 NIV.

‘For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit’ John 3.34 NIV.

God is a Spirit. Jesus is a Spirit. ‘In Him all things hold together and find their purpose.’ Every physical and sentient thing finds its real nature in Jesus who created and redeemed the earth. Your order, righteousness and purpose is realized as your being is found in Jesus. All things are being brought together to function according to their proper nature in Jesus. Jesus, the Person is the law of the Spirit of life. Live, move and have your being in Jesus.

‘For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen’ Romans 11.36 NIV.

Keith Allen, May 15, 2011