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New Wine for New Wineskins April 2006 |
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The 4D Life - Part Five
PURITY = 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!
What was so special about the anointing upon David? He was a
worshipper! Worshippers attract the anointing and the anointing
attracts others because those who are anointed worshippers have a
supernatural confidence in God’s ability to protect and to provide!
These 3D guys – real people in the real world experiencing real problems:
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.
- became known as “David’s Mighty Men” because the anointing that was
on David got on them and enabled them to do supernatural feats of
strength and courage! (2 Samuel 23)
Only the anointing – God’s supernatural power – can take your 3D mess and turn it into your 4D testimony!
Listen to what Jesus said about the anointing:
Luke 4: 18 – 19
18"The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me
to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD."
The Spirit of the LORD! Who is the LORD? He is the one who
has revealed himself to be all that you will ever need him to be – he
is the 4D answer to all of your 3D problems! When you see LORD in
the scripture it is God’s covenant name, and it reveals all that he
will be for you when you simply believe!
Are you living under sin’s condemnation? Then He is Jehovah
Tsidkenu – the LORD your righteousness! He can remove your sin
and clothe you in his righteousness! How? Because you are
3D but he is 4D – and he will do it simply because he loves you and
because he can!
Are you bound by sickness? Then He is Jehovah Rapha – the LORD
who heals you! He can remove your sickness and restore you
completely to perfect health! How? Because you are 3D and he is
4D – and he will do it simply because he loves you and because he can!
Are you in financial difficulties? Then He is Jehovah Jireh – the
LORD your provider! He can remove your debt and supply all of
your needs in abundance! How? Because you are 3D and he is
4D – and he will do it simply because he loves you and because he can!
It was the anointing upon Jesus that attracted people to him – because
the anointing that was upon him was supernatural and released those to
whom he ministered into the 4D experience of the exceedingly abundantly
above all of God!
Acts 10: 38
38God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power,
who went about doing good (bestowing benefits) and healing all who were
oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.
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.
Remember – all human beings see things in 3D – three dimensions –
width, depth, and length. That is why so many can see no way out
of their problems. But God has another dimension that he wants to
bring us into – where he can reveal his supernatural ability to
overcome in our 3D world.
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.
When you start getting revelation of not only where he has taken you
from, but also where he has taken you to – you will begin to experience
the exceedingly abundantly above of God – above the all that you
yourself are capable of in your own strength or ability!
John 4: 23 – 24
23But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will
worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such
to worship Him. 24God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship
in spirit and truth.
We have already seen how the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus gave this
revelation had her shame transformed into her testimony – a testimony
that was effective in reaching her whole city with the good news of
salvation, healing, and deliverance! Although this woman was a
social reject and moral misfit and was the epitome of dysfunctionality,
she left this worship encounter with her Lord and Saviour and went
straight out into effective evangelism!
Jesus had found someone who was willing to acknowledge who she was in
the light of who HE IS – the 4D answer to every 3D mess! If you
can acknowledge your shame you can receive your deliverance! If
you spend your whole life measuring yourself against other 3D
characters you will probably consider yourself to be as good as the
next guy, and better than some! But when you have an encounter
with the 4D God it brings everything back into perspective! He
exposes where you’re really at – but the awesome thing is that when
Jesus enters your situation he doesn’t come to condemn but to
save!
Don’t fall into the same mistake as Adam and Eve and try and shift the
blame for your sin onto someone else. Please catch this – because
they never accepted personal responsibility for their sin all God could
do for them was cover them. It doesn’t say they were sorry for their
sin – only for the consequences! And so, all through the Old Covenant
atonement (or covering) was provided for sin. But now – in the
New Covenant – if we will accept personal responsibility for our sin we
will receive redemption and reconciliation, which is not just a
covering for sin but deliverance from sin!
Jesus comes to lift you out of your 3D mess and into a 4D relationship
with him where your life is transformed and lived at a new level in a
new dimension of the spirit!
We need more revelation of where he has taken us to – the height of his
love! God desires to do the exceedingly abundantly above all in and
through our lives simply because he loves us and because he can!
This is what produces a testimony that is effective in penetrating the
lives of 3D people with a 4D solution that gets their attention!
The Samaritan woman went straight from her worship encounter into
effective evangelism that brought change to her whole city! This
is what is happening in other parts of the world, and this is what must
happen here! Remember – the place of worship is the place of
protection and provision. Our corporate gatherings should be
times of worship in spirit and truth where we open ourselves up
completely to the Lord – receive the seed of his word – and go forth
and multiply!
Some time ago I spent several days feeling like there was poison in
my body. One night I woke up with a high temperature and my heart
racing. I was speaking
in tongues and the Holy Spirit speaking to me. I asked the Lord
what was going on and he said that my body was being purged and that
His Body was being purged – from the pollutions that have infected true
worship. God showed me that the love of self has been the root of
the pollution of worship in spirit and truth producing selfish
ambition, self-seeking, and self-will. In John 15 Jesus said that
every branch in him that is bearing fruit is purged (Greek – cleansed
of impurity) so that it will bear more fruit. The Holy Spirit
showed me at one point that the body was being delivered from the
influence of Jezebel – that wicked spirit that seeks to marry kingdom
culture to the world in order to compromise the kingdom and bring it
under her control.
2 Timothy 3: 1 – 5
1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2For
men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3unloving,
unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of
good, 4traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God, 5having a form of godliness but denying its power. And
from such people turn away!
This represents 3D religion without 4D power – what a tragedy! Turn away to
what? Back to 4D power! We need to understand that we
cannot be the church of Jesus Christ if there is no 4D power!
During my “purging” experience one of the things God reminded me of was
the fact that he had anointed me to bring deliverance to 3D people!
Remember – spiritual worship is a decisive dedication. It is a
decision to dedicate our whole lives to God – “I will worship the Lord
my God, and serve him only” – regardless of my circumstances or how I
feel. Worship – the highest expression of love – must always be a
decision before it is an emotion!
When we become worshippers we are restored to God’s order and original
design – spirit, soul, and body – and so love is always a decision that
begins in our spirit before it becomes the emotion of love that is a
fruit of the Holy Spirit and manifests in our soul.
DECISIONS determine your DIRECTION and DIRECTION determines your DESTINY!
Jesus made a DECISION to come into this world to seek and to save the
lost! And so he was never critical or judgemental of anyone who
came to him to have their 3D needs met! He never allowed his
emotions to come out from under submission to the DECISION he had made
in his spirit, and so he never had an emotional response that got in
the way of how he dealt with those he ministered to. He never
allowed his feelings about people’s sins or circumstances to control
his attitudes towards them because – for him – LOVE was a DECISION that
had already been taken and determined his DIRECTION to go and seek the
lost so that his DESTINY as Saviour of the world would be accomplished
and fulfilled!
The Pharisees religion couldn’t cope with Jesus loving sinners and
throwaway people. Religion – which is the devil’s counterfeit for
a 4D relationship in the Spirit and for the anointing – substituting
self-righteous works and attitudes for God’s supernatural power – will
always leave a vacuum that will be filled with religious spirits!
The Pharisees were always following Jesus around – but they didn’t come
to worship, and they didn’t come to receive his words. They came
to try and hear something that they could use to accuse him and
eventually put him to death for!
They were so convinced that their 3D understanding of the 2D letter of
the law was right that even though Jesus was the Word walking around in
4D reality they wanted to argue with him! Apply that revelation
to some of the issues that people get all worked up about today and you
might begin to draw different conclusions! The problem was that
these guys were well acquainted with the letter of the law but they had
no understanding of the spirit of the law! Remember – even James and
John were not immune from operating out of a wrong spirit thinking that
Jesus would be well impressed with their idea! No wonder John was
the guy that that remind us to always test the spirits.
1 John 4: 1
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether
they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the
world.
We need to know that the Spirit of the LORD is upon us and for what purpose!
2 Corinthians 3: 6
6He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the
letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives
life.
The Pharisees wanted to take their interpretation of the law and kill
Jesus who was the Living Word being demonstrated before their eyes
doing good to those who were locked into 3D prisons of sin, sickness,
and bondage!
As long as the word of God is merely letters on a page – 2D – then you
as a 3D being can take these words and manipulate them any way you like
to say just about whatever you want! But these words were never
intended to be just letters on a page! They are the living word
of the living God and they only become effective as the Holy Spirit
makes them alive in us – causing us to enter the fourth dimension of
life in the Spirit!
Hebrews 8: 10
10For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and
write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be
My people.
When God’s word becomes alive in us we can no longer manipulate it in
order to live our 3D lives any way we choose, or to justify our sinful
actions, or to support our pride, our prejudice, or our pre-conceived
ideas that are often nothing more than the fruit of our personal pain –
because his word changes us and delivers us out from the old 3D
existence and releases us into the 4D life of the overcomer!
The Holy Spirit has been convicting me of the failure of many of us as
Pentecostal/charismatic believers to allow the word of God concerning
miracles – healings and deliverance – to become anything more than 2D
principles or concepts that we subscribe to intellectually and debate
about with believers from other backgrounds, but never seem to have
made alive in us and through us!
Whatever it takes for that to happen needs to be the goal of our
lives. Personally, I believe that it will take the decisive
dedication of our lives as worshippers in spirit and truth – as we
separate in our hearts from all that has polluted our worship and flow
out from our encounters with the Living God into effective evangelism
where the Lord works with us confirming our testimony with the
accompanying signs!
Even Jesus’ disciples had a problem with him speaking to the Samaritan
woman, but Jesus used this encounter to teach them a principle of 4D
evangelism – “LIFT UP YOUR EYES!” You need revelation of the
length, the width, the depth, and the height of God’s love!
Jesus’ 4D LOVE closed the wide gap that existed between the Jews and
the Samaritans, covered the distance between the letter and the spirit
of the law, and went deep into the moral bankruptcy of this woman’s
existence, so that he could lift her out of her shame and take her into
the pursuit of the high calling of God as an anointed evangelist who
would be responsible for bringing many to salvation, healing, and
deliverance!
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