For many will come in My name, saying, “I am the Christ, and will deceive many.” Matthew 25:4

Last night God spoke to me about the mistaken identity concerning Christ Jesus. 

He told me believers have to accept Jesus at face value. You cannot filter the truths of God to satisfy your expectations. 

Many believers and leaders in the Body of Christ define Jesus in a manner to make Him appealing but they leave out His complete personality.

Jesus is controversial, unpredictable and outspoken.

Jesus is radical at times and does not think or act like you. He is not motivated by human logic.

Jesus bears the wrath of God over sin. You are accountable to Him for your every action. 

Jesus is very jealous and His jealousy is like a consuming fire. He wants all you and will not tolerate sharing you with other gods or idols. 

The Old Testament God is the same as the New Testament God. The character of God never changes. Think about Jesus as created in the perfect image of God.  

The hypocrisy of Christianity is teaching a stereotyped view of Jesus and denying the reality of the character of God.

Jesus is a God of retribution. He blesses and He curses. 

Jesus can strike down a human being or destroy a nation in a moment. 

The Old Testament is filled with the richness of God working through all kinds of people in difficult situations. You witness the brazen nature of God which at times seems cruel and harsh. 

We are living in a time of apostasy in the Body of Christ. The decay is widespread and touches all believers. We have deprecated the person of Jesus Christ. 

The judgments of God are spreading all over the world. This has been caused by our desultory attitude towards God. We don’t take Him seriously.

Jesus wants you to accept Him for who He is without compromise. Your hope is to live in the blood of Christ confessing your sins and with an open heart to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was before Abraham. He is a complete picture of God from the very beginning of creation. 

Come to Jesus with trembling fear and respect. Seek out His will with a vigilant attitude.

Jesus can do for you what you can never do for yourself!

“And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” Revelation 5:6

Jesus is ubiquitous which means He is omnipresent. He sees everything in your life and around the globe. Nothing is hidden from Him. And, He knows you better than you know yourself.

This supernatural vision comes from the seven Spirits of God. They are the eyes of Jesus and they go everywhere.

Jesus also dispatches powerful angels to look over you and protect you from evil.

Most importantly for a believer, Jesus lives inside you in the essence of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is omniscient and knows every detail of your past, present and future.

Jesus has established a powerful safety net to protect you from evil. He offers a strong refuge that does not exist in the world. This refuge cannot be penetrated by evil forces.

Unfortunately, most believers do not fully draw upon this safety net. They rely on their own wisdom and get tangled up in their own issues forgetting about the eyes of Jesus. 

God is committed to helping you but you must seek Him out through prayer and listen for His voice.

Begin each day with a prayer committing your works to God and ask the Holy Spirit to give you supernatural wisdom and protection. 

Take God seriously. He wants to be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your pathway.

 

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8

Last night God told me to create a narrative dealing with the subject “Walk in the Spirit as I am in the Spirit”. 

Jesus told me that He is analogous with the Holy Spirit and this is how you can interact directly with Him. 

Jesus lives in Heaven. He is not approachable to you in person.

If you want a relationship with the Living Christ you have to be born of the Spirit. The Spirit lives in all believers and gives you the ability to live with Jesus.

The wind (Holy Spirit) blows where it wishes and you can hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. You are like a boat floating in the sea under the control of the wind and the waves. 

As a believer you are sealed with the Holy Spirit and He will take you where He desires. The Holy Spirit compares spiritual life to the spiritual reality of Christ. 

The deception of Christianity is the belief you must find Jesus through religion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

You are born again when you make a declaration to live for Jesus above all else. This causes you to be born of the Spirit and Water.

The Spirit begins the work of transforming you into a new creature in Christ Jesus and the Water makes you clean in the eyes of Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is the gateway to living with Jesus. Invite the Holy Spirit to have authority over your life and you will see Jesus every day of your life. 

“The Father and I are one” John 10:30

The passion of Jesus is to live in perfect oneness and obedience to His Father.

The character of Jesus is built on unconditional love. He is motivated to save souls and set believers free from the bondage of sin.

He is an intercessor for the Body of Christ. The work of the Cross is eternal and never ending.

Jesus is engaged in a war between light and darkness. This war is ongoing and will not end until Jesus comes back to claim His church. 

Jesus conducts this warfare through powerful angels and the Holy Spirit laboring through Christ followers. The goal is to bring down strongholds and set believers free to live with God.

The passion of Jesus is for believers to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jesus wants you to worship Him in Spirit and Truth. 

Jesus wants all of you and is not willing to share you with other gods or idols. 

Jesus asks you to listen for His voice and respond with obedience to His instructions.

Jesus requires you to walk by faith believing in His promises.

To love in a manner like Jesus you must treat others with respect and esteem them above yourself.

The passion of Christ for you today is to commit your works to God and pray for His thoughts to be established within you. 

Jesus desires for you to invite the Holy Spirit to have authority over your thoughts and decision making. 

Jesus lives in you and desires to share His supernatural attributes with you. Ask Jesus to fill you with strength, wisdom, protection and the joy of the Lord. 

The Christ follower is a fountain of Living Water touching those living in darkness.

“Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” Ephesians 4:13

The role of Christ is to build a church where we all are united by faith in the promises of God. 

We do not live by what we see with our eyes but by what God is doing in the invisible.

The Holy Spirit teaches believers the knowledge of God and how to walk in oneness with Jesus. 

The gift of salvation is the work of God to transform you into the perfect likeness of Jesus. 

We are an imperfect people operating with the perfect stature of Christ. We are measured by Jesus against His standards of virtue.

The goal is to be spiritually mature believers rooted in the truths of God. We do not accept any doctrine contrary to the Word of God or attempts to distort the truth through deceit and lies.

We stand firm on the Word of Christ sharing the Living Water with the love of Christ.

We grow up united in Christ in all things and walk with Him by faith. 

Jesus is the head over all and we are His emissaries to those living in darkness. 

“Not my will but Yours be done” Luke 22:42

Walking with Jesus is life changing. You cannot stay in your comfort zone. 

Salvation is the work of God to transform you into the likeness of Jesus. Change is inevitable and never ending.

The world you and I live in is depraved, filled with temptations and false teaching abounds in the Body of Christ. 

The challenge today is to ask Jesus what He wants to change in your life. It might be something small like drink less coffee or it might be about letting go of something you cherish.

Make the transaction with Jesus by yielding your will to His will.

Leave your emotions out of the conversation. They will betray you and cause you to eventually slip back into what God wants to change in your life. 

God knows you better than you know yourself. He is omniscient and sees every detail of your future. So when God asks you to change it is for your protection and well being.

God wants you to respond with obedience to His voice. This is how He measures you and separates the wheat from the chaff.

“How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me” Psalm 13:1

King David had a powerful anointing over his life but at times he felt totally closed down and distant from God.

There will be times in your spiritual journey when God will be silent and seem aloof.

Jesus is teaching you that He does not want you to interact with Him by divine inspiration. This is an attempt to worship (or seek) a transfigured life with Jesus.

There will be transfigured moments in your life but they are few and far between and are determined by God.

The goal is to live in oneness with Jesus by faith. 

Your salvation is about integrating God into the ordinary moments of life.

We live with Jesus by prayer, meditating on His Word and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit. Then we have to let God be God and go about life with the confidence He lives inside us.

Don’t live for supernatural experiences with God. They are the exception not the normal in dealing with God.

The Holy Spirit teaches you the values of Christ in every day life. This is where you will find Jesus today!

David found God while hiding in a cave terrified he was going to be killed.

You have to live with God by faith not through your emotions or spiritual experiences. 

Today commit your works to God and invite the Holy Spirit to have authority over all of your actions. Then you can walk confidently with God even if He seems distant.

If you take a misstep the Holy Spirit will correct you. He lives in you!

Dwelling with the Living Christ is built on the spiritual principle it is not what you see with your eyes but what you cannot see.

Jesus lives so you can live!

“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Romans 8:26

This narrative is about the travailing (or laboring) of God to create new life. 

If you are a believer, God is laboring inside you like a mother groans and suffers prior to childbirth.

As a believer, you are in a state of transition changing from a natural condition of corruption into the glorious liberty of a new creature in Christ Jesus.

The travailing work of God for humanity was initiated through Jesus who suffered and died on the Cross for your salvation. The work of the Cross was an act of obedience by Jesus. He was willing to become an intercessor to set you free from sin and give you the gift of eternal life.

At this very moment, the Holy Spirit is laboring deep within your soul to transform you into the likeness of Jesus. The groans of the Holy Spirit cannot be uttered and are impossible to understand. They are the work of God to prepare you for heaven.

The Holy Spirit also labors within you through intercession to bring down strongholds and set people free from the bondage of sin to receive the gift of salvation. 

The whole creation groans with anguish for the glory and magnificence of God. We are living in a depraved world but our spirit and soul are crying out to live in the perfect creation of God.

This is about returning to a world like the Garden of Eden where every living creature and all the trees, flowers, rivers, and mountains praise God. 

The gift of salvation begins inside you as God touches your heart, personality and soul with His Spirit. Then gradually your salvation becomes integrated into your thoughts, words and actions.

The challenge is learning how you and I can participate in the travailing work of Jesus. 

You must accept the reality of God about prayer. As believers, we don’t know how to pray effectively and according to the will of God. We tend to pray guided by our emotions and natural sympathy for others. This will never bring down strongholds or set people free from the bondage of sin.

Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how to pray and who or what to pray for. 

Come before God in prayer without an agenda and have an open mind to listen and learn.

Give the Holy Spirit the freedom to teach you how to pray. 

Be patient and let God bring up what is important on His mind and then show you how to pray according to His will. The Holy Spirit will lead you into perfectly designed prayers. 

The travailing (or intercession) work of God can be exhaustive and draining because you are in the middle of a battle between light and darkness.

The Holy Spirit gives you the ability to actually pray like Jesus and attain powerful results.

“For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” Philippians 2:13

God woke me up today with the topic and Bible verse for this narrative. 

At this very moment God is at work to shape your will to be in accord with His purposes for your life. 

This gravitational pull of God is designed to draw you into oneness with Jesus.

The disposition of God is motivated by unconditional love to cause you to accept and live out the gift of salvation. 

God works to refine you into His nature so you can fulfill His purposes.

God works through His Word to teach you His values.

God teaches you the importance of living by faith and trusting in the promises of Jesus. Without faith you cannot please God. 

God gives you dreams and visions. 

God speaks to you. 

God convicts you of sin and makes you look at your destitute nature without Him.

God orchestrates circumstances in your life to draw you into His will.

God works through your prayers to show you His priorities for your life.

The gravitational pull of God is designed to cause you to die to self and live for Christ.

The gravitational pull keeps you centered in Christ and operating with pure motives.

The gravitational pull is nurtured through the Holy Spirit. He is the life of Christ and abides inside you. Listen and obey the Holy Spirit. He speaks for Christ. 

“After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.” John 13:5

I would like to start off by asking you to pray these words. “I pray Jesus you would pour your blood over me and cleanse me of all my sins. Create within me a clean heart and purify my motives. Search me and correct me of anything not pleasing to you.”

The miracle of salvation is after this prayer you can stand blameless before Jesus and look Him in the eyes without any guilt or condemnation. 

This is a daily ritual you must perform and sometimes repeat during the course of a day.

The question is how long can you stand blameless before God until you relapse into sin?

For most believers it may be for a few minutes, a couple of hours or maybe a handful of days. 

We all have to face the conflict between walking in the Spirit and living through our natural desires.

God has judged you and found you guilty. He has sentenced you to eternal doom. 

God is holy and will not allow you to come close to Him because you are unclean.

Thankfully, God has provided an appellate court presided by Jesus. It cost Jesus his life but He has purchased all of your sins with His blood. Jesus has forgiven you and restored you to God.

Find your refuge in the blood of Jesus and your strength in the resurrected power of the Cross.

Christ crucified gives you the freedom to do the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven.

The Christ follower is an imperfect person living in an upside down world. 

The gift of salvation gives you the ability to walk in oneness with Jesus through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit. 

This is possible because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.