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New Wine for New Wineskins January 2006 |
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The 4D Life - Part Two
THE 4D LIFE
PART TWO
4D FAITH RELEASES 4D POWER
1 Samuel 22: 1 – 2
1 David therefore departed from there and escaped to the cave of
Adullam. So when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they
went down there to him. 2And everyone who was in distress, everyone who
was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him. So he
became captain over them. And there were about four hundred men with
him.
What attracted these people to David? The anointing! The
anointing attracts those who are in DISTRESS – experiencing anxiety,
mental suffering, anguish, those who are in DEBT – with an obligation
to repay something to someone else, and those who are DISCONTENTED –
restlessly unhappy, dissatisfied.
These guys represent REAL PEOPLE who live REAL LIVES in the REAL WORLD
and in the reality of REAL PROBLEMS. But they also represent
those who have an awareness that the only REAL ANSWER to REAL PROBLEMS
that we experience in the REAL WORLD is the ANOINTING – God’s
supernatural ability to OVERCOME!
Remember – all human beings see things in 3D – three dimensions – width, depth, and length.
If you are in DISTRESS – anxiety, mental suffering, anguish – you are
often in a situation that presents you with the feeling that your
circumstances are insurmountable – that the distance from where you are
to where you want to be seems so wide that you cannot make it!
If you are in DEBT – an obligation to repay something to someone else –
then sometimes in these days of refinancing and consolidation it seems
that the only way to go is down – until you are in so deep that there
appears to be no natural way out!
Yet these guys became known as “David’s Mighty Men” – you can read about some of their exploits and achievements in 2 Samuel 23.
They were involved in supernatural feats of courage and achieved
victory in ways that would have been impossible unless they were hooked
up with God’s anointing!
We saw last time how the anointing that was upon Jesus attracted crowds
of 3D people who had an encounter with 4D love that transformed their
lives.
We saw that when we first encountered Jesus and were born again we
experienced the breadth and the length and the depth of his love.
Ephesians 3: 14 – 21
14For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, 15from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
16that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be
strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted
and grounded in love, 18may be able to comprehend with all the saints
what is the width and length and depth and height-- 19to know the love
of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the
fullness of God. 20Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in
us, 21to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations,
forever and ever. Amen.
There is a fourth dimension to God’s love – height – that is the key to
our experiencing the fullness of God’s will and provision for our lives
and also to our continued ministering out of that fullness!
What is the all that is referred to here in Ephesians 3? It is
the all that we can do out of our own natural resources. When we
have done all that we can do or know how to do – then God can come –
and in his supernatural ability he can do the exceedingly abundantly
above our all! When God enters the picture all the natural limits
are off! We need revelation of the height – how much more God is
able to do in our lives when we acknowledge his Lordship and who he is
– ALMIGHTY GOD!
When the Holy Spirit came upon the church on the Day of Pentecost the
church was birthed into a new dimension and empowered to live in the
fourth dimension of the supernatural! Things were never supposed to be
the same again for those who made the transition from 3D life to 4D
love!
It was time for the exceedingly abundantly above all!
The Holy Spirit is the key to everything that God that God is able to
do on the earth. The Holy Spirit is our link with the Anointed
One and his anointing! When we are born again and receive the
Holy Spirit we are immediately connected with Jesus Christ and all the
power and resources of heaven. We become the means through which
God’s purposes will be accomplished in the earth.
Sadly, our thinking has become so secularised and “earthbound” we have
placed limits upon God’s supernatural ability to bring radical
transformation in the circumstances of our daily lives and experience!
When we become new creations in Christ Jesus our human spirit is
renewed and restored and we receive the Holy Spirit as our connection
between our renewed spirit and the Christ who sits at the right hand of
God the Father – the Christ who has sat us down with him in heavenly
places! This is why it is essential that we live out of our
spirit and that we receive more and more revelation of the HEIGHT of
God’s love!
John 14: 12 – 14
12"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works
that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do,
because I go to My Father. 13And whatever you ask in My name, that I
will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14If you ask
anything in My name, I will do it.
The problem has been that we have been trying to do what Jesus did
instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us into what He is doing in
our generation!
The tragedy is that we have so abandoned the power of the Holy Spirit
and the true life-transforming power of the full gospel that we are
ready to jump onto political bandwagons and try and change the world by
employing carnal weapons! If a man’s heart is changed then his
politics will change – but you will never change a man’s heart by
changing his politics!
The Holy Spirit has been given to us to connect us with heaven so that
we can receive revelation of the HEIGHT of God’s love and experience
the awesome power of God to bring supernatural deliverance in our 3D
world of distress, debt, and discontent!
Remember – God is not like us and he certainly doesn’t need our
pathetic attempts to sort out the world in his name and on his
behalf! We need him to enter our world and release his power and
reveal his glory! It is through the church that God is to be
glorified. His plan is God the Father, through God the Holy
Spirit, displaying God the Son through the human vehicle of the
church! The church doing what Jesus is doing – what he has always
been doing – saving, healing, and delivering people in the exceedingly
abundantly above all that is released through a people who have
revelation of the HEIGHT of God’s love!
Are you aware of what Jesus is doing in our world right now? Or
are you so locked into 3D religion that you can’t believe that God is
not in danger of losing the battle with the powers of darkness and that
the church is actually advancing and growing at an exponential rate and
the kingdoms of this world are being swept aside as the kingdom of God
comes in the power of the Holy Spirit as he brings a manifestation of
Jesus Christ – the Anointed One with His anointing!
Christianity taking over planet?
What is the fastest-growing religion on Earth? Most news reports suggest it is Islam.
But a new book makes a compelling case it is a new, or, perhaps, old
form of biblically inspired evangelical Christianity that is sweeping
through places like China, Africa, India and Southeast Asia.
In "Megashift" author Jim Rutz coins a new phrase to define this
fast-growing segment of the population. He calls them "core apostolics"
– or "the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of
God."
Rutz makes the point that Christianity is overlooked as the
fastest-growing faith in the world because most surveys look at the
traditional Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church
while ignoring Christian believers who have no part of either.
He says there are 707 million "switched-on disciples" who fit into this
new category and that this "church" is exploding in growth.
"The growing core of Christianity crosses theological lines and
includes 707 million born-again people who are increasing by 8 percent
a year," he says.
So fast is this group growing that, under current trends, according to
Rutz, the entire world will be composed of such believers by the year
2032.
"There will be pockets of resistance and unforeseen breakthroughs,"
writes Rutz. "Still, at the rate we're growing now, to be comically
precise, there would be more Christians than people by the autumn of
2032, about 8.2 billion."
According to the author, until 1960, Western evangelicals outnumbered
non-Western evangelicals – mostly Latinos, blacks and Asians – by two
to one. As of 2000, non-Western evangelicals outnumbered Westerners by
four to one. He says by 2010, the ratio will be seven to one.
"There are now more missionaries sent from non-Western nations than Western nations," he writes.
This trend, says Rutz, has been missed by Westerners because the explosive growth is elsewhere.
Hundreds of millions of these Christians are simply not associated with
the institutional churches at all. They meet in homes. They meet
underground. They meet in caves. They meet, he says, in secret.
And what is driving this movement? Miracles, he says.
"Megashift” attempts to document myriad healings and other powerful
answers to the sincere prayers of this new category of believer,
including, believe it or not, hundreds of dramatic cases of
resurrections – not near-death experiences, but real resurrections of
actual corpses.
"When I was a kid in Sunday school, I was really impressed that 3,000
people were saved on the Day of Pentecost," he writes. "I thought,
'Wow, that'll never happen again!"
But, Rutz says, it now happens around the globe every 25 minutes.
"By tomorrow, there will be 175,000 more Christians than there are today," he writes.
The essence of Rutz's book is about how Western Christians can tap into what he sees as a mighty work of God on Earth.
"Very few people realize the nature of life on Earth is going through a
major change," he writes. "We are seeing a megashift in the basic
direction of human history. Until our time, the ancient war between
good and evil was hardly better than a stalemate. Now all has changed.
The Creator whose epic story flows through the pages of Scripture has
begun to dissolve the strongholds of evil. This new drama is being
played out every hour around the globe, accompanied sometimes by
mind-bending miracles."
Do you want in on this? Then there is only ONE WAY! The power of the Holy Spirit!
Acts 1: 6 – 8
6Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying,
"Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" 7And He
said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the
Father has put in His own authority. 8But you shall receive power when
the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
God’s heart right now is for the church to walk in the fullness of the
power that he has made available and to be his witnesses in the earth!
Remember the definition of a 4D being!
A 4D being would be a god to us. It would see everything in our world.
It could effortlessly remove things before your very eyes, giving you
the impression that the objects simply disappeared. The 4D being can
also see inside any 3D object or life form, and if necessary remove
anything from inside. The being can look inside our intestines, or
remove a tumour from our brain without ever cutting through the skin.
This is our God – who longs to demonstrate his ability to deliver 3D people into a new dimension of victory!
Ephesians 2: 4 – 7
4But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which
He loved us, 5even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6and raised us up
together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus, 7that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of
His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Our spirit has been made alive and we have been raised up into a brand
new place of relationship with our heavenly Father.
Most of us have some level of revelation regarding where God has taken
us from – the length, breadth, and depth of his love – but few of us
have the revelation that we need of where he has brought us to – the
height of his love!
1 John 4: 16 - 19
16we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is
love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.17Love
has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the
day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18There is
no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves
torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19We love
Him because He first loved us.
Take some time and meditate on that information – it will transform
your life and empower you to walk in a brand new level of faith and
revelation!
Why would God want to take us so high? Because he can! Why
would he want to take us into a place of righteousness where sin loses
its dominion over us? Because he can! Why would he want to
take us into divine health where sickness bounces off us? Because
he can! Why would he want to bring us into a place of peace and
freedom from fear and anxiety? Because he can!
Every decent parent wants to do all that they can for their children!
Luke 11: 13
13If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask Him!"
How much more! Why? Because he can! He can do the
exceedingly abundantly above all that we can do! He not
only can do it – he will do it for all those who dare to believe!
Jesus demonstrated God’s willingness to enter our 3D world and bring
deliverance from sin, sickness, bondage, and even death!
John 3: 16 – 17
16For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting
life. 17For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the
world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
John 20: 30 – 31
30And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His
disciples, which are not written in this book; 31but these are written
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that
believing you may have life in His name.
What life? 4D life! What Jesus did he is still doing for all who will simply believe and receive!
1 John 4: 12 – 19
12No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God
abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13By this we know
that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His
Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son
as Saviour of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of
God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have known and believed
the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love
abides in God, and God in him. 17Love has been perfected among us in
this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He
is, so are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love; but perfect
love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears
has not been made perfect in love. 19We love Him because He first loved
us.
It is time for the church to get revelation of the height of God’s
love! To know where he has taken us to, and the place from where
he desires us to minister to others and bring them to!
It all starts with the revelation of GOD’S LOVE! That is the foundation for faith that works!
Do you want to be involved in what he is doing right now in this
world? Do you want to see God enter the 3D world around you – in
your family, your workplace, your community – and bring deliverance?
Let’s pray for an increased revelation of the breadth, length, depth,
and the HEIGHT of God’s love so that we can begin to experience the
exceeding abundantly above all and so that God can once again be
glorified in the church!
Start reading through the gospels again – over and over – until you get
fresh revelation of why God sent Jesus and why the Holy Spirit has come
upon us to continue Jesus’ ministry!
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