Response to Covid-19!

Simple truth….

When He died – YOU died
When He was buried – YOU were buried
When He rose – YOU rose
When He ascended – YOU ascended
AND where He is seated – YOU are seated!!

SPOILER ALERT — where He is seated there is no Covid-19!!! Likewise where YOU are seated is NO Covid-19!!

GOOD NEWS – Romans 6:11 we ARE (right now – present tense in this life!) dead to sin and alive to God!
Sickness and disease WERE the result of sin and death

THEREFORE – YOU are dead to sickness and disease… YOU are dead to Covid-19 AND alive to God… alive (right now – present tense in this life!) with His life and health flowing through you!! As He is SO ARE YOU IN THIS WORLD!

KEY – Just believe it and say no! NO to sickness and disease! NO to Covid-19!!

What Grace Communicates…

My 21-year-old daughter had to write an essay for one of her classes.  It is so beautifully written (and no that isn’t mom bias!!) that I thought I would share it with all of you.  Enjoy!

THE RADICAL LOVE OF JESUS – WHAT GRACE COMMUNICATES

The most significant transforming truth I’ve come to understand this past year and a half has been the radical love of God. It’s a simple reality that I’ve claimed to know and encounter and yet something I’ve realized is that I knew absolutely nothing about the radical love of our Jesus. We often take the spotlight off of how radical it is and make it about ourselves. We make it about our sin, and our separation, and our need for a bridge back to God. But the crushing reality the Holy Spirit brought me to is that the cross was never about my lack or separation. It was always about a bold display of love. A love that cries out “YES!” to His people, “THIS IS WHO YOU ARE TO ME. THIS IS WHO YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.” Never once was it about a wrath with which I have been taught that my God was bubbling. 

As long as I can remember, I saw the cross as a place where God poured out His judgment, His anger. But how can my God be both consumed by love and also wrath? The two oppose entirely one another! I have been taught that sin was so offensive to this holy, all-powerful God that He could not enter or be near it. How ridiculous is that? How can an all-powerful, strong God not be near something as little as my sin- when Romans describes sin as just ‘missing the mark’! How can such a loving God be offended by my merely missing the mark? That sounds like a sensitive man, a man who isn’t strong at all. I’ve come to learn that isn’t God whatsoever. My earthly father is never offended when I miss it! He embraces me even more, pouring the truth of who I actually am into me. I can’t imagine how much more my heavenly Father does that to me! Not only is He not offended by sin, but I also go as far as to say that He doesn’t even care about it. And I say that because the truth is: He cares about our hearts. The law, the cross- it was all to point out that our hearts were far from Him after the garden, but His was never far from us.

The garden has become one of my favorite stories. Holy Spirit has completely shifted my view of it! I had been so used to hearing an angry God call out to Adam after he had ‘sinned,’ “WHERE ARE YOU?!” When what happened was Adam hid, and a loving, tender Father cried out, “My son? Where have you gone? You are far from me!” All Adam did was miss the mark of his original design! In my relearning of this story, I found the word ‘sin’ isn’t even in it. The word used in the garden story is ‘disobeyed’ which is the word shemah in Hebrew. It’s ‘to listen.’ Nowhere in this story is God angry towards any ‘sin.’ In fact, He is overwhelmed by a passionate, zealous love that says, “I WILL NOT LOSE YOU TO YOURSELF BECAUSE YOU FAILED TO LISTEN.” The Father never separated Himself from humanity out of anger or disgust toward his son’s now presumed ‘unholiness.’ God sought humanity out! God went looking for Adam because the view of the son had not changed. What changed was our view of the Father. Here is where we see a passionate love story unfold.

When I came to these conclusions, my theology as a whole was on tilt. How then did the law, the wild stories from the Old Testament fit in with all this??? For if my God is the ‘same yesterday, today and forever,’ how could He be angry in the beginning stories of the Bible and pure love after a day of judgment toward His son? He couldn’t. So I had to go searching out what wrath and anger meant because those are words used in scripture! Here began my journey of grace- my journey of actually understanding the radical love of Jesus.

As I was reading up on this, seeking out, essentially, who God is- I discovered the meaning behind the word ‘wrath.’ I found the word used most often in the New Testament is the word orge, which means, ‘any strong passion.’ It’s the origin of the English words, ‘orgy’ and ‘orgasm.’ I would say those are definitely not words having to do with anger! I would even say the latter has to do with a response of overflowing love towards another person! I read a book by a man named Steve McVey called Beyond an Angry God. In his book, he describes ‘wrath’ like this: 

‘If a small child picked up a snake and his dad ran toward him screaming, grabbed him up and was slapping his hand, the child would perceive it as anger but in actuality, what he would be experiencing would be “fierce love.”‘

I discovered that the word wrath or orge is a violent love towards anything that harms us- such as sin and death. I called my mom, absolutely undone by everything I was learning. I felt as though I had no idea what the actual purpose of the life of Christ was until this very moment. She shared with me that the root word of orge is orego. It means ‘to stretch oneself out to touch or grasp something.’ This is what Jesus did toward us! The radical love of Jesus stretched Himself out (on the cross) to grasp us! Another meaning of orego is, “to yearn after, to desire, to stretch toward (to pull towards). “The Father in His love for us, desired us and stretched toward us (through Jesus), pulling us to Himself.”

Writing all of this has me wholly undone yet again. I find myself in tears as the reality of the garden married to the reality of the cross comes to settle within my heart. I have come to know the heart of the radical love of Jesus. It’s Hebrews 12:9, “His jealousy over us burns like fire.” It’s Hebrews 2:6, “Somewhere in the scriptures it is written, “What is it about the human species that God cannot get them out of his mind? What does he see in the son of man, that so captivates his gaze?” It’s God leaving the garden with Adam. It’s the radical, “YES! YOU ARE MINE!” of the cross! It’s the law fulfilling the emptiness within itself- crying out for an example of how to actually reach God and thus leading us to the realization we never lost the relationship with Him! 

This long journey has offended my mind and my theology. This truth has unraveled me completely! I feel like Paul, “Overwhelmed by what grace communicates, I bow my knees in awe before the Father.” (Eph. 3:14 Mirror Bible) My heart cry is now, “The secret is out! His cherished love dream now unfolds in front of our very eyes.” (Eph. 1:9 Mirror Bible) Grace communicates my origin. Grace communicates that I am the very dream of the Creator. Grace communicates I never lost right standing with God. Grace is not an excuse for me to do as I please but causes my heart to shemah- to listen and respond to all He is and says. This is grace. This is the radical love of Jesus.

Mankind never had a sin nature

Mankind has only ever had ONE nature… the nature of God (Elohim – Father, Son, and Spirit). We weren’t born with a “sin nature” and then miraculously when we believed in Jesus, He took that nature out and gave us His nature! Although for years, that is what I believed and taught!!

Genesis 1:27: So God (Elohim – Father, Son & Holy Spirit) created man in His own image, in the image of God (Elohim – Father, Son, & Spirit) created He him; male and female He created them.

ALL mankind, male and female, were created in the image and likeness of God — in the NATURE of Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

Genesis 2:7: Then the LORD God (Yahweh Elohim) formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the Breath of Lives (plural indicating Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and the man became a living being.

He (or really THEY – the Godhead, Elohim) breathed Their divine breath, breathed ALL that they are, Their very nature INTO man. One nature – God’s nature IN man!

Yes, man sinned… and still sins. But not because of a “sin nature!” We have only ever had the nature of the Father, Son, & Spirit. From the garden until today the problem hasn’t been a “sin nature” but rather man believing that he is something other than image and likeness, or the nature of God. And then his behavior flows out of who he believes himself to be. Just like God’s actions flow out of who He is… for example, He is love therefore He loves. David said it like this in 119:68: You are good and do good. 

Proverbs 23:7 says that as a man thinks in his heart so is he! The word thinks is the word sha’ar in Hebrew meaning to reason, to calculate, to estimate. It also means gatekeeper!

Adam didn’t pass on a sin nature to mankind. If that were true then Cain wouldn’t have had the choice to use his authority over sin. He would’ve simply been yielding to an inherent nature of sin But God said to Cain in Genesis 4:7 “…. sin lies at the door. And it’s desire is for you AND YOU SHOULD RULE (HAVE DOMINION) OVER IT!”

He did NOT say to Cain, “I wish you could rule over it Cain.” Or “I wish you had dominion like Adam once had, but unfortunately, now all you have is the sin nature that your father passed onto you.” NO! He reminded Cain that he indeed had authority over sin. In other words sin was not inherent in him! He reminded him of his true nature… likeness and image of God, with dominion and authority over sin.

Cain was the GATEKEEPER of his heart, of his entire being… He had the power to choose to walk in the nature of God or yield to a distorted image of himself (sin).

Wake up to who you’ve ALWAYS been — nature of Father, Son, & Holy Spirit, Their likeness and image, with dominion over ALL the works of Their hands and ALL things under your feet!! You don’t have nor have you ever had a sin nature! You are crowned with glory and honor!

My take on John 8 – woman caught in adultery

Instead of seeing the face of God and feeling His breath of life, the Pharisees were staunch in their wrong beliefs… in the God that Moses presented in the law. Believing God was like them, demanding wrath and justice instead of mercy and love.

So they brought a woman that they caught in adultery and threw her at Jesus’ feet demanding her death because their societal justice (law) required it. But the Father, expressing Himself in and through the Son, simply looked at both the woman and her accusers with eyes of compassion and love and began to draw in the dust.

I don’t believe He was stalling for time, nor was He writing the sins of the accusers as some have suggested. But in writing in the dust He was declaring Jeremiah’s words to them.

We may not have made the connection to Jeremiah 17 when we read John 8, but the Jews of His day would have seen Him writing in the dust and asking who is without sin and they would’ve made the connection.

They would realized that they were not without “sin.” They had forsaken Him (Jer. 17:13)… that they had abandoned Him in their understanding and had departed from Him. They had turned away from Him and served “other gods.” It says of them in Jeremiah that they “shall be ashamed.”

These scribes and Pharisees who were used to honor and respect from all, probably felt great shame as they realized they weren’t as “sinless” as they thought they were and probably with a tremendous feeling of defeat…. Feeling the sting of self-condemnation, they dropped their stones and walked away.

But He wasn’t pointing out their shortcomings by writing in the dust. He IS love, and all He can pour forth is love. He IS a life-giving spirit, and all He can release is life. These Pharisees and Scribes were His very own! He loved them and desired that they walk in abundant life.

When He would say things to them that we think were harsh rebukes of disapproval and judgment, things like “Woe, to you hypocrites,” it was the cry of the Father. In Greek, it is a word uttered in grief. In Hebrew it is the word oy which means a lamentation (a passionate expression of grief; weeping), it is a crying out after; and its ROOT is to crave or much desire or long after; to covet.

And a hypocrite means an actor, a pretender; one who decides, speaks and acts under a false part; — one who is walking in a mistaken identity… not walking in their true nature, who they were created to be.

When He spoke to them, it was always with a passionate longing after them. It was rooted in His desire for them to walk in who He created them to be. Instead of hearing “judgment” and “disapproval” we are to hear with ears of LOVE. Love that says “this is not who you are so come back to the knowledge of who you always have been IN Me — image and likeness of God.”

Jesus writing in the dust was a declaration that this One standing before them, He IS Yahweh, the Hope of Israel and the Fountain of Living Water (Jeremiah 17:13). Jesus was declaring to them and to her the end from the beginning. Saying to them that I AM He who was with God and is God. I AM He who was and is ONE with Father and Spirit….and one with you!!!

Although Scripture doesn’t say it (and it’s pure speculation or imagination on my part), I can see Jesus writing the names of everyone standing there in the dust, just like Jeremiah said. And then the Breath of Life, Himself, gently blowing into the dust breathing life once again on the names of those who had forsaken Him because they had lost their way. Reminding them that He had once breathed into that dust and formed a divine one filled with all of the fullness of God. Formed in Hebrew means completed and connected. Man has always been complete and a connection of heaven and earth… of the realm of spirit in this earth realm.

And this Yahweh would heal them and save them (Jeremiah 17:14) from perishing…. From a living a life of non-existence. He would not leave them in the dust realm! Yes, they had turned away from Him because of Adam’s transgression… forgetting who God was and who they were. But His plans would stand firm, His will before the foundation of the world would be done. They had been created by Him in the very image and likeness of Elohim, and they would once again remember they are gods and live out of that divinity.

Giving An Account to God

I love when the Spirit of God breathes life on a Scripture dispelling all condemnation that we’ve previously had when we read it. I’m captivated by this verse!

Romans 14:12 (Amp.): And so each of us shall give an account of himself [give an answer in reference to judgment] to God.

Give an account of himself….. The Amplified Bible says “give an answer in reference to judgment to God”

What is our answer in reference to judgment? John 5:22 The Father judges no one but assigned ALL judgment to the Son. And John 12:32 And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all (judgment) unto me.

We’re not giving an account of all the things we did that were wrong OR right! That’s an Old Covenant mentality!!

What is the account we give to God? His account of us! Made in His image and likeness with ALL dominion over ALL things. Holy, righteous, justified, redeemed, complete, perfect, eternal, divine ones.

The God Account!!

This is why I love looking at Bible verses in the original language….
 So then each of us concerning himself must give an account to God.
~ Romans 14:12 KJV
Greek doesn’t officially say TO God it says THE God (Elohim – Godhead) — some ancient manuscripts don’t have “to God” in this verse.
Let’s tweak this verse a bit to be more Christ centered…..So then, each of us concerning himself must give the Elohim (God) account!
I love that – the God account!!
Account is logos which is lego which means the expressed thoughts of the Father; Jesus is the Logos; In Hebrew it is davar which means to speak things into order;
Concerning is peri which means all around; encompassing every side; covering all the basis;
and give also means to utter, to yield, to receive;
So — Robin’s paraphrase: We will say, we will yield to, we will receive, and we will allow concerning everything about us, concerning every area of our lives what the Father has spoken regarding us in Christ..… the Elohim account!!
What is the Elohim account of your life? Who are you IN CHRIST?
Healed, prosperous, righteous, holy, perfect, complete, victorious, etc…… The Elohim Account!!
We’re not giving an account TO God…. we’re allowing His account of us to be how we see ourselves and others!
Romans 4:12 in The Mirror Bible: Thus the logic of God will find its personal expression in every person.

Woe unto you…..

When Jesus said “WOE” to the Pharisees and the religious leaders of His day, it wasn’t a stern warning to them or a harsh rebuke. In Greek it is a word uttered in grief. In Hebrew it is the word oy which means a lamentation (a passionate expression of grief; weeping), it is a crying out after.. and it’s ROOT is to crave or greatly desire or long after; to covet.

Then He called them hypocrites which means an actor, a pretender; one who decides, speaks and acts under a false part; — one who is walking in a false identity… not walking in their true nature, who they were created to be.

Try reading those verses and hear Jesus’ cry to them… His passionate longing after them… His desire for them to walk in who He created them to be.

Instead of hearing “judgment” and “disapproval” hear with ears of LOVE. Love that says “this is not who you are, come back to the knowledge of who you always have been IN Me — image and likeness of God”

#divinenature #identity

Redeemed

Redeemed…..Re-deemed, once again deemed to be lords over the earth! It was never lost…except in our understanding, in our minds (Col 1:21)!!!

Father deemed (judged, considered, viewed, esteemed, etc.) you in His image and likeness to rule and reign. Deemed you as divine like Him….Psalm 82:6 “I have said you are gods”

Jesus RE-DEEMED what Abba had originality deemed…crowned us with! We never lost our crown!

SAVED!!

2 Timothy 1:9: “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus BEFORE THE WORLD BEGAN”

The Greek word saved is sozo — it means to live saved; to live protected; to live in divine health; to do well; to be whole;

It’s not something we get — saved is who we are

We are to live saved… to live whole…. to live life from our divinity!

v. 10 says: But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel

Jesus brought the truth of our life and immortality to light through the Gospel…. He enlightened it, He shed light on what had always been true about us – our salvation before the foundation of the world

He shed light on the truth that we were in God’s plans safe, protected, healed, well, whole — SAVED — before God said let there be light!!