New Wine for New Wineskins June 2016


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restoringtheroar02Restoring The Roar (Part 5)


1  Thessalonians 5: 23

23 Now may the God of peace sanctify you (make you holy) in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

 

Proverbs 18: 14

The strong spirit of a man sustains him in bodily pain or trouble, but a weak and broken spirit who can raise up or bear

We have been declaring that 2016 is the year of the righteous roar.

It is time for people who know who they are in Christ, and who Christ is in them, to release the authority that is the mark of their identity.

A lion’s roar is not what makes it a lion, a lion roars because it is a lion. The roar is part of its identity, part of what identifies it as a lion.

The roar we have on the inside of us is not what makes us a child of God. We have that roar because we are a child of God. It is a mark of our identity, part of what identifies us as a child of God.

We were born again with that roar.

Galatians 4: 6

6 And because you [really] are [His] sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba! Father!”

When a lion roars it is saying, “I am here, this is my territory, get out of here.

 Acts 17: 26

26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

Wherever we are is our territory, where we have responsibility. Our roar clears out the opposition and connects us with the how much more of our heavenly Father’s provision, the good things of the Holy Spirit.

1 Peter 5: 8 – 9

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. 9 Resist him, steadfast in the faith.

 Your enemy wants you to think that you should be afraid of him, that this world is his territory. If he can succeed in moving you from your spirit to your soul, and from faith to fear, then you are fair game for him. He will either paralyse you through fear, or fear will motivate you to resort to an attempt at self-preservation, and so any chance of you being a threat to his bogus little kingdom is swallowed up. But the reality is that we have a roar on the inside of us that causes our enemy to fear. It is a roar that proclaims that I know that I am who my Father says I am, I know that I can do what my Father says I can do, and I know that I can have what my Father says I can have. That is how Jesus dealt with the enemy and the same spirit roar is on the inside of us.

There is no excuse or reason why we shouldn’t and every reason why we should go after everything that our heavenly Father has promised in his word, and to truly live by faith that is activated, energised, expressed and put to work by the revelation of the awesome reality of our Father’s love for us. That is why it is time to move from the powerless attitude of passive acceptance to active and aggressive expectancy.

We have been robbed of so much by religious tradition and experience based doctrine. I have said many times that almost immediately after we were born again into intimate relationship with our heavenly Father we were removed from his arms by the church and raised in religion.

The Lord spoke to me years ago and he said, “Little by little I have been delivering you from the religion of your forefathers and bringing you into more intimate relationship with the God of your forefathers.

Sometimes it shocks me when I think how little I have left in common with the old time religion of my forefathers, and yet I know that I am still holding fast to the God of my forefathers.

When I was growing up in church I don’t ever remember anyone telling us in any kind of life-impacting way that the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in us. That revelation alone should be sufficient to move us from passive acceptance to active and aggressive expectancy.

This month New Wine Church will be 25 years old.  When the church was only a few months old in September 1991 the Lord called me up Ben Bragar, the highest point in our community. I had my three and a half year old son David in one hand, and my guitar in the other hand. It was a beautiful day with cloudless blue sky.  When we reached the summit the Lord said to look around, to the north, the south, the east, and the west. He said, “I am giving you this land, go in and possess it.

I picked up my guitar and we started singing, “Hosanna, hosannna, hosanna in the highest….”

A string broke on the guitar, and I kept on playing with five strings. We carried right on singing,  “Lord we lift up your name, with our hearts full of praise, hosanna in the highest….Glory, glory, glory to the King of kings…..

I was so excited that day that I thought one broken guitar string was as bad as the opposition could get. I was so full of what I had heard the Lord say.  “I am giving you this land…” I was in complete agreement with that promise. Then we came back down and soon discovered that the opposition to our taking possession of the land we were promised went way beyond a broken guitar string.

When the Lord promises you something you should never be surprised if everyone else isn’t as excited about it as you are.
Everything that God does begins in the spirit, and so the opposition will originate in the spiritual realm. What we need to remember is the reality that the Spirit in us is greater than any other spirit that might oppose us. In fact, our enemy knows that we are undefeatable as long as we remain in the spirit, which is why he works so hard to bring us down and engage us in the soul realm.  He knows that is the only way that he has a chance of defeating us.

Many years ago I condensed what I had learned from the word of God regarding our position in Christ into what I call the immutables.  They are unchangeable and unalterable, and they are not up for argument or debate. Here they are:

I am no longer a sinner trying to get righteous but I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, with power and authority to resist sin in Jesus name.

That is a result of my heavenly Father’s unconditional love.

Colossians 1: 21 – 23

 21 This includes you who were once far away from God. You were his enemies, separated from him by your evil thoughts and actions. 22 Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault.
23 But you must continue to believe this truth and stand firmly in it. Don’t drift away from the assurance you received when you heard the Good News. The Good News has been preached all over the world, and I, Paul, have been appointed as God’s servant to proclaim it.

There is no room for fear because there is no fear in love. I have not been given a spirit of fear but of love, power, and a sound mind.

I am no longer the sick trying to get healed, but I am the healed with power and authority in Jesus name to resist sickness and deny it access to my body.

That is a result of my heavenly Father’s unconditional love. There is no room for fear because there is no fear in love.

 I am no longer the oppressed trying to get delivered, but I am the delivered with power and authority in Jesus name to resist every manner of oppression.

That is a result of my heavenly Father’s unconditional love. There is no room for fear because there is no fear in love.

I am no longer the poor trying to prosper, but I am the prosperous with power and authority in Jesus name to resist poverty.

That is a result of my heavenly Father’s unconditional love. There is no room for fear because there is no fear in love.

It is written, and so I know who I am, I know what I can do, and I know what I can have.

Jesus dealt with all of that in his wilderness encounter with the enemy. Then he went to his old place of worship in the power of the Spirit. He read from the scroll of Isaiah, and then he closed the book.  He said this is a now word from today. And the opposition began. But he consistently and successfully resisted all opposition and ultimately defeated the opposition once and for all with the three simple words, “It is finished! ” He then sealed that victory forever by rising from the dead, as proclaimed by the two women who returned from his empty tomb declaring, “He is risen!

You don’t ever have to enter into extended dialogue with the devil.  In fact, you never need more than three words to resist the devil and send him on his way.

IT IS WRITTEN….IT IS FINISHED….GOD LOVES ME….I AM RIGHTEOUS….I AM HEALED…..I AM DELIVERED….I AM PROSPEROUS…..JESUS IS LORD…..

It is time to release the roar on the inside of you…..

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