All Things Sacred

 All Things Sacred

The earth is the LORD’s, and all it contains,

The world, and those who dwell in it.

PSALM 24.1

There is no area of your life that is segregated from your union to God. Because you are in Him, everything is spiritual. The Lord owns everything.

One of the greatest deceptions that has ever slipped into our minds is the idea that there is a difference between secular and sacred. There is no such dualism. Everything is sacred because of Christ’s pervasive presence and He lives in you. The word sacred comes from the Latin word sacer, which denotes something uncommon because of its intimate association with the Divine.

You are one with God through Jesus Christ. Everything in your life is intimately associated with Him through your union with Him, thus making it sacred.

One man told me, “I like to keep my business life and my spiritual life separate from each other.” What a sad thing. Do we leave Christ at home when we go to work? Does He go to our business appointments with us, but do we then politely instruct Him to sit quietly in the background? Our union with Christ defines the sum total of our lives.

Cloud Talk

 Cloud Talk

The heavens declare the glory of God.

PSALM 19.1 

Our Father can speak to us in so many ways that are outside the box of religion. Clouds aren’t religious. The blue sky isn’t religious. God doesn’t communicate only through church-talk, but also through cloud-talk. These are only two of His many dialects.

The means by which God declares His love and presence are without limit. Many ancient saints understood themselves to be living in a “God-bathed” world. If you want to deeply experience intimacy with Him, it helps immeasurably to view the world in the same way. Our loving God reveals Himself in many ways. Jesus is whispering to you right now, every day, in a thousand ways, and many of them aren’t religious. We need only to be watching and aware.

Continual awareness of Christ in our daily lives is inseparable from a hunger to know Him. Ask Him to make Himself known to you, and then go through your day with your eyes and ears open. As He leads you into a growing awareness of His voice speaking in various ways, you will discover that heaven and earth are His platform, a platform from which He constantly declares His love for you.

The Fear Of Judgment

 The Fear of Judgment

She said to Elijah, “What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to me to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death!”

1 KINGS 17.18

When Elijah showed up at the house of a widow whose son was terribly sick, she became afraid when she saw the prophet. She imagined he had come to her because of her sins and that her son would now die as punishment. That’s how the Old Covenant mentality always works.

Perhaps you have been in legalistic environments that have left you with a mental attitude that anticipates judgment by God. You can relax. That day doesn’t exist for you. You are in Christ, and there is no condemnation to you.

Elijah actually acted as a type of Jesus in this instance. The woman’s son didn’t die. Instead, he was healed through the prophet’s ministry. Throughout the Old Testament Scriptures there are glimpses of grace like this.

Jesus didn’t come to visit retribution upon you. He came to rescue you and restore you to humanity’s original innocence before the Father. He accomplished that so that you never need to fear Him.

Your True Self

 Your True Self

The angel of the LORD appeared to him and said to him, “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.” Then Gideon said to him, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

JUDGES 6.12-13

Gideon was a small man in the smallest tribe of Israel. When God called him to lead the people in battle, his own sense of inadequacy flooded his thoughts and feelings. Note how the Angel of the Lord addressed him: “The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior.”

God sees things about you that you may not see or know about yourself. He saw Gideon’s true identity when the man himself didn’t see it at all. He knows the same about you. Believe what He says about you in Scripture. Embrace and act on the identity He has given you, regardless of whether you feel it or think it. What God says about you is true. You can base your actions on your true identity even when your emotions contradict the truth.

Healing In The Soul

 Healing in the Soul

When they had finished circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.”

JOSHUA 5.8-9

The whole time Israel wandered in the wilderness, her men had not kept the covenant sign of circumcision. Upon entering Canaan, they were circumcised in obedience to God. God had delivered them from their old life in Egypt. Their circumcision verified that, but they still needed to heal.

Your old life has been put to death. But don’t assume that everything connected with that lifestyle will instantly disappear. Although your spirit is now filled with the life of Jesus Christ, the soul must be gradually renewed, and that takes time. The soul is personality, consisting of your mind, will, and emotions. Part of the ongoing sanctification process that the Holy Spirit does in your life is to bring healing to your damaged emotions and to renew your mind to the truth of God’s Word. The grace walk is not a lifestyle of sinless perfection, but it is a place where God can gradually bring about the healing that we may need in our feelings and beliefs.

A New World

 A New World

You have not passed this way before.

JOSHUA 3.4

This may be one of the great understatements of the Bible. God’s people were about to enter a new world, one that was so unlike anything they had ever known that they couldn’t even imagine what it would be like. So it is with the person today who moves from the wilderness of religious legalism into the land of grace. To experience the reality of who we are in Christ is totally different from mere religious commitment. To compare living a religious lifestyle and experiencing a grace walk is to compare two different dimensions of living. They are more diametrically opposed than we can comprehend until we have crossed over from one to the other.

As you move further along in your own grace walk, remember that there is no place where legalistic religion and grace can intersect. Law and grace can never coexist together. You must move out of the wilderness of legalism into Canaan. To accept grace means to renounce legalism, a system of living in which you try to make spiritual progress or gain God’s blessings based on what you do. It is a major move but one that will transform your life.

Entering Canaan

 Entering Canaan

Moses My servant is dead; now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel.

JOSHUA 1.2

Moses wasn’t able to lead Israel into Canaan. It took Joshua to do that. This isn’t an incidental matter. Moses is remembered primarily as the one who brought God’s Law to the people. The name “Joshua” is the Hebrew equivalent of the name “Jesus.”

When God told Joshua that Moses was dead and that he was to lead the people across the Jordan into Canaan, His instructions convey an important message for us today. We will never experience the abundant life our Father wants us to know by following religious rules. Moses, who represents the rules-keeping system, is dead to us and us to him. Our leader is Joshua (Jesus). He alone is our guide into the awesome life God has given us.

Moses is dead. Don’t try to build your lifestyle around religious rules. The grace walk is a journey with Jesus. He will lead you from a lifestyle of struggling to get to where you want to be to the place of entering in by faith in Him alone.