Part I
What God Wants To See In Us
“For the eyes of the Lord roam throughout the earth, so that He may strongly support THOSE WHOSE HEART IS COMPLETELY HIS!” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NASB, Emphasis added)
Beloved, let the text above echo its Wisdom throughout the depths of your heart at all times! Be ever aware of what it reveals. Take your Heavenly Father’s desire and requirement to heart. If you do, the purity of this fullness of Love between you and Him will serve as a beacon shining from you into the Darkness that surrounds you. And not only will it guide your steps in safety, but you will thereby serve as a reliable guide for many others around you that do not yet have the One you have, or know the One you know!
…“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37-39 NASB)
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Your light must shine before people in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16 NASB Emphasis added.)
God’s Spirit transmits the Life and Light of the risen Christ into authentic Spirit-empowered disciples! And through them, He intends to reveal His beloved gloriously resurrected Son to the unbelieving world, even while the ultimate stages of Last Days’ chaos, carnage, confusion, and terror continue to rage around us all! Christ’s manifest Nearness will keep His own on course to ultimate triumph and wellbeing even before He returns to this earth in His Absolute Glory at Father’s appointed time!
God’s heart is always focused on drawing and guiding us all the way into His Eternal Embrace. So if you remain 100% focused on, and submitted to, and filled with Christ, as He lives and works in you and through you… His Lovingkindness and the Reality of His Absolute Complete and Totally All-Sufficient Perfection will carry you through and past every deadly trap, snare, and concealed weapon your demonic enemies will try to use to destroy you!
“Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all because of My Name, but it is the one who has endured (safely in total union with the risen Lord all the way) to the end… who will be saved!” (Matthew 10:21-22 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
Another name for our Messiah is ‘Emmanuel’ or ‘God is with us.’ And now that God’s Living Word has become flesh, and is now our Resurrected Lord, He can actually abide and work as one with us, at all times! If we believe this, and learn to embody this awesome Reality, our minds, wills, and emotions will be aligned with where our spirits already are… seated and ruling with God, in His Heavenly Realm!
So how can we know our heart belongs completely to God? Well, the message of the Cross spells it out very clearly: ‘
ADMIT YOU DIED WITH CHRIST, AND TO RELIANCE ON YOUR INDEPENDENT SELF!
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.“ (Matthew 16:24-25 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I share in His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live (for myself), but CHRIST LIVES IN ME (to obey and serve our Heavenly Father)! The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, revealing, (and completely trusting)] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20 AMP. Amplification and emphasis added)
It’s one thing to give intellectual, theoretical, theological agreement and assent to this ‘Christ lives in me’ proposition. But it’s something else entirely to be actively engaged in Person-to-person living interaction with your indwelling Lord! When that happens, His Perfect dynamic Presence operates and reveals that God’s Living Word, is living and operating from within you, in real time! But for that to become possible in your case, you must first COME TO A COMPLETE END OF YOURSELF… in Spirit and in Truth!… No longer can you afford to be so ‘full of yourself’ that your precious ‘God is with you’ Reality is forgotten and lost in the shuffle of worldly affairs, and ignored and bypassed for long periods of time.
Now we must actually own the reality that we died so thoroughly and terminally to independent living, thinking, and behaving, that it is no longer we who live, but Christ now actually lives in and through u! He is here to reveal all that He is and does from within us, in our name! And we must forevermore depend on Him and draw everything we are, do, have, and will accomplish… and Him alone! From now on, we have no other source but God’s Living Word and Holy Spirit! And when that can truly be said of us, we actually become… ‘the Light of the world‘! When we identify with our risen Lord to that extent, His Nearness transforms those of us who formerly were fallen and very limited earthly creatures, into Heavenly beings that, by default, now emanate and display the overwhelming Presence and Authority of Almighty God! (See Mt. 5:14-16)
“But we have this Treasure in earthen containers, so that the Extraordinary Greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR BODY. For we who live are constantly being handed over to death because of Jesus, so that the LIFE of Jesus may also be revealed in our mortal flesh!“ (1 Corinthians 4:7-11 NASB. Emphasis added.)
So, Beloved, can you see what a profound, terminal ‘fork in the road’ choice this Gospel Reality forces us to make? This means that, from now on, Christ is our New Eternal Resurrection Life, and the only Life from which we can draw everything we will ever need! So from now on, everything will be all about Him because the Cross has permanently taken what we once were and did, entirely out of the picture! God Himself is our New Beginning, Middle, and End, from now on! And only when we fully grab hold of this awesome transition mentally and emotionally, will we be ready to operate in New Covenant ‘Resurrection Mode’.
No longer will we be able to get away with identifying with what we were, and what we did, and how we used to think about ourselves. The New Covenant ‘fork in the road’ forces us to deliberately decide to pursue a whole new direction that leads us into the brand new territory of a ‘Christ-in-us’ identity. This means we must develop a whole new way of seeing, thinking, acting, reacting, and interacting from now on. Christ is our Life and embodying Him is our new Agenda. Period! Many people claim to ‘believe in Him’ in theological, theoretical terms. Yes, they believe He’s a historical figure that really lived and acted on Earth centuries ago. But, at best, they think, act, react, and interact as if they’re convinced that He’s living somewhere in outer space, in a galaxy that is light years removed from wherever the rest of us may happen to be. And this is why Christ isn’t real to them. Nor is it obvious that He is operating from within them. And for this reason, they continue to identify with, and embody, the earthly roles and pursuits they picked up along the way in this world, even after they say they claim to have been saved and born again!
“But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For you are all sons and daughters of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all ONE in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” (Galatians 3:25-29 NASB. Emphasis added.)
So beloved, here’s the critical question: How many of us are actually totally convinced that He is so really actively living HIS LIFE within us, that we’re compelled to habitually, actually, identify with Him, and see ourselves as being and acting as one with, and out from HIM? Here’s an example of a New Covenant disciple that learned and embodied this New Covenant Reality very well:
“Now when they heard this [accusation and understood its implication], they were cut to the heart, and they began grinding their teeth [in rage] at him. But he, (Stephen) being full of the Holy Spirit and led by Him, gazed into heaven and saw the Glory [the great splendor and majesty] of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and (he was not at all phased by the angry men that surrounded his body at the time. It was obvious they were going to kill him, but despite the maelstrom of fury that was swirling all around his body,) he said, “LOOK! I SEE THE HEAVENS OPENED UP [in welcome] AND THE SON OF MAN STANDING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD!” (Acts 7:54-56 AMP. Amplification and emphasis added.)
Where our risen Lord is, there are we also. What pertains to us is entirely His property! And what is His is now our Eternal Inheritance in the sight of God. And this is why we must, by the obedience of our faith, mentally and emotionally exchange what we were, and receive in return a totally new identification with whatever pertains to our risen Lord! From now on, He will be living in us and through us and as us. And when we truly come to grips with this New Covenant Reality, we’ll be embodying God’s Son and nothing else! And then God, as He regards us, will see His Beloved Son living and acting from within us, by the Power of His own Holy Spirit, and He will immediately proclaim: “Here is one whose heart belongs entirely to Me!” And this is why Paul was inspired to write these awesome words:
“Therefore, if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above (where everything exists in its Eternally Perfect and Completed state, and), not on the (totally flawed, Sin-corrupted mortally wounded) things that are on earth. For you have died (to what you once were), and your (New Covenant Spirit-imparted) Life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our (New Indwelling) Life, is revealed (at His Return), then you also will be revealed (to be abiding in and) with Him in Glory!” (Colossians 3:1-4 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
This ‘God is with us and in us’ Reality must actually be seen in the way we perceive, think, act, react, and interact, from now on! This is what it means to operate out from God’s Kingdom of Heaven dimension, or, ‘Resurrection Mode’. And this is what makes us to be closer to our God than any pre-New Covenant Era generation of believers could have ever imagined possible in the past! This new awareness prepares and equips us to be part of the final completion and consummation of God’s Redemption, Regeneration, and Full Eternal Restoration of all of His Creation!
So if you heard the Lord summon you to ‘Follow Him’, you must learn to live from, with, and for your risen Lord. Then you’ll experience and operate from His Life as it produces the Fruit and incredible Heavenly effects of the massive, enormous New Covenant Reality-shift that follows true REPENTANCE!
The word ‘Repent’ comes from a combination of two Latin words: ‘Re’, a descriptive that indicates the ongoing repetition of some activity. And the second word is: ‘Penetencia’, which means: ‘penance’ . The combination of those two conveys the idea of ‘continually trying to make atonement by doing penance.’
So, in my opinion, the English word ‘repent’ is misleading and doesn’t clearly convey the true meaning of the command conveyed by the Greek Word ‘metanoia’ that we see in the original text. ‘Metanoia’ is: ‘a massive change, or reversal of the way you previously saw and thought.’ So the idea of metanoia goes far beyond just ‘being sorry’ for something you did or failed to do. It indicates a process of completely exchanging one life and identity and set of thought patterns for a completely new set that matches the Reality of God dwelling and acting from within you! And, beloved, that implies that we repent only if and when we are somehow able to undergo a massive Paradigm-Shift, a sudden shocking, ‘AHA MOMENT’ that suddenly imparts brand new revelation and enables you to see the same old things, in a brand new way! Only then can we rest from our striving and personal efforts, just as our Father is resting from His, and learn to live out from the Perfect Finished Works of God’s Living Word!
So ‘metanoia’ is a very powerful life-transforming result of a stupendous inner change of perspective and understanding that entirely redirects the course heading of our entire future! And that provides us with strong motivation to ‘completely rewire the neurological configuration patterns in our brains and reprogram and update the thought and identity and reaction patterns that flow from operating from this brand new set of New Covenant insights and realizations. Only the inner dynamite blast of this new revelation is powerful and authoritative enough to reset and redirect the automatic default thrusts and behavior patterns of our brains, hearts, and souls. The sudden inner explosiveness of a massive paradigm-shift sets us free from all former viewpoints and sets of feelings and agendas. Seeing an old thing in this brand new way immediately supplies us with the very powerful motivation and inner desire to change the direction and course of how we will live our lives as a result of what we now are able to see and understand. And when that happens, our souls and body behavior can match and be compatible with the enormous new Reality that God has placed in our regenerated and upgraded New Covenant ‘born again’ spirits!
Living in Resurrection Mode is our Foundational New Covenant Lifestyle
God actually requires us to radically change the way we perceive, assess, and think about everything until our habitual behavior undergoes a 180 degree change in identity, direction, and altitude level! This degree of radical change corresponds to the radically drastic transformations new recruits undergo during the stern and intensely demanding repetitive conditioning and reconfiguring they undergo through the earthly military level boot camp basic training during the dire emergencies brought on by being caught up in a deadly war. Just as it is in the midst of an earthly militaristic environment wartime environment, so must it be for the Lord’s New Covenant disciple trainees as they prepare to engage in spiritual combat with the seen and unseen angelic and demonic forces of the evil one! Disciples need to undergo corresponding intense kinds of discipline so they too can make radical breakthrough reversals in mindset and lifestyle that will equip and qualify them to fulfill their God-given combat assignments| in the tumultuous, dangerous and strategically important days that are already upon us.
Let’s look at Gideon in the book of Judges as an example. In his day, this is what was happening in Israel:
“Then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord handed them over to Midian for seven years. The power of Midian prevailed against Israel. Because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For whenever Israel had sown, the Midianites would come up with the Amalekites and the people of the east and march against them. So they would camp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel, nor a sheep, ox, or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, they would come in like locusts in number, and both they and their camels were innumerable; and they came into the land to ruin it. So Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord.” (Judges 6:1-6 NASB)
So young Gideon, who at that time, had the mind and identity and assumptions of a ‘peacetime civilian,’ became greatly intimidated whenever those ferocious enemies of Israel would invade his world. But suddenly God’s Living Word appeared to him and commissioned him to raise an army from among the men of Israel and drive them out! So of course Gideon was overwhelmed. And he responded by pleading total incompetence and inability. And if we were to assess his situation from the carnal earthly ‘fleshly’ perspective common to this fallen world, we’d naturally assume that God was requiring Gideon to beat the invaders at their own game. In other words, he’d have to do the impossible! He would need to enter and undergo a profound level of earthly boot camp training and preparation. He’d have to become physically fit and strong, and be able to master warrior level skillsets, so he could become worthy of commanding an army that would be equal in numbers and equipping to that of the enemy. Then he would have to lead the Israelites into outmuscling, overpowering, and outfoxing their enemies and beat them down to total submission! But that was obviously far beyond Israel’s resources and abilities!
So that’s not at all what God had in mind. This wasn’t at all about a self-improvement program for Gideon and those who would dare to follow him in a campaign against their enemies! The boot camp training God’s Word actually requires His disciples to undergo is not earthly. It doesn’t have anything to do with personal Self-improvement, Self-assertion, Self-armament logistics, and the attainment of superior Self-achievement levels! In fact, we must die to all of that! Gideon, as well as all other disciples of God’s Word, must be thoroughly trained to know, and therefore to rely and rest upon God… and the Perfect Finished Works that His Living Word and Holy Spirit have already accomplished in our name. And we must be trained to do that 100% of the time, regardless of how dire and hopeless things around us may seem to be, or how threatened they may make our flesh feel! The Truth is: all of the battles we’ll encounter belong to our Blood Covenant God! And His written Word reveals that He has already triumphed over all of His enemies, and provided for all of our needs, since even before we were created and came into being! (See Gen. 2:1-3 & Heb. 4:1-7.)
So we’re never required to learn to strive to improve ourselves in order to be able to help God out, or so things for Him, or give Him advice! No, our struggle is to finally learn to get out of the way of His Holy Spirit, and stay out of the way. Our task is to follow the leading of God’s Word, and join our Father in the Joy and Peace of His Eternal Sabbath Rest. (See Phil. 4:4-13.) We must train to develop an outrageous otherworldly confidence in our God, and wait on Him to progressively reveal His Glories and Perfection and the All-Sufficiency of what He has already done on our behalf! Only when we can learn to truly believe that we died with Christ, can we be prepared and equipped to operate out from what we call, ‘Resurrection Mode’.
“Heaven is My throne and the earth is the footstool for My feet. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, so all these things came into being,” declares the Lord.
“But I will look to this one, at one who is humble and contrite in spirit, and who trembles at My Word!” (Isaiah 66:1-2 NASB.)
So the disciples’ boot camp teaches us to consider ourselves to be utterly dead to the notion that anything is up to us. In Truth, the opposite is true: Everything depends on the Living Word of God who lives within His New Covenant disciples! The outcome of the war in which we’ll be participating never depends on whether or not we can grow to be all that we can be so we can beat our ferocious enemies at their own game. No, our boot camp forces us to die to such notions. Instead, we’re required to rewire our brains and reprogram our minds to realize that everything is always all about God, because He has already done all of the work and has provided everything His people will ever need in order to live as free, victorious sons and servants of their God!
“At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son determines to reveal Him.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:25-30 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, in order that the Scripture would be fulfilled, *said, “I am thirsty.” A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth.Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “IT IS FINISHED!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (John 19:28-30 NASB. Emphasis added.)
And this is what God was emphasizing to His chosen people in 2 Chronicles 20:1-30. Three armies were converging upon them in order to destroy them, so, in their total helplessness, they turned to God and told Him they didn’t know what to do. But they reminded themselves of the Blood Covenant God had made with them, and they called upon God to fulfill His promises in light of the dreadful situation that loomed over them. And Paul was emphasizing the same thing when he wrote the following to all disciples in Colossians 3:1-4:
“Therefore, if (since) you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the (already-finished) things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the (Fullness and Perfect Completion of the) things that are above, not on the (apparently unfinished grossly imperfect and inadequate) things that are on earth. For you have died (to what pertains to this fallen world), and your (new and eternal) Life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory.” (Colossians 3:1-4 NASB, Emphasis added)
Resurrection Mode Living Requires a Massive Paradigm Shift
Beloved, we must undergo a massive paradigm-shift that matches our new Spirit-filled, ‘born again’ identity and status. We have been made to be 100% brand new creations spiritually speaking! We have new utterly righteous regenerated God-filled spirits! No longer are we mere creatures of God, we are BELOVED BEGOTTEN SONS, HEIRS, AND REPRESENTATIVES OF GOD HERE ON EARTH! We no longer have any connection to what we formerly were before we died with Christ! His Life in us has made us to be brand new creations!
This is why we need a massive Exodus-like paradigm shift to upgrade and completely renew our formerly fallen Sin-corrupted and now outdated, brains, minds, and wills. All of our navigational equipment must be elevated to operate at a level compatible with our ever-indwelling risen Lord! And that is what the word ‘Repent’ really means! It is a total upgrading and updating of our earthly faculties so that they can match what already exists in our spirits.
So our boot camp training requires us to ‘potty train’ our worldly carnal, soulish Sin-corrupted brains and souls so that they can correspond to our regenerated spirits that now operate from the spiritual Holy Spirit way of operating out from God’s Eternal Fullness! This is implied in our Lord’s summons to ‘drop everything’ so we can be free to follow Him into this awesome New Covenant Reality-Shift! The Cross He tells us to take up daily means that we must continually remind ourselves to keep steering in the lane of those who have already died to the Sinful, unacceptable fallen beings we once were, and live only to God, and FROM GOD, and for God, from now on! This is the massive quantum leap in the personal level and quality of conscious awareness that the Gospel makes possible, and very necessary, for us.
“Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his (radically independent worldly) life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it (to be replaced by the Righteous Eternal Resurrection Life I came to be for him, in exchange).
For what good will it do a person if he gains the whole world, but forfeits his (unregenerate, out of date, Self-adoring) soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in the Glory of His Father with His angels, and will then repay every person according to his deeds!” (Matthew 16:24-27 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
Now that we’re ‘born again’ and our Lord has endowed us with Holy Spirit’s abiding Presence, everything about our spiritual state is new and radically different. We are ‘sons and heirs of God!’ God’s own Spirit lives in us, and works through us, on a permanent basis. He transmits into us everything that pertains to our indwelling resurrected Lord! Because God’s Living Word resides in and works from within our innermost being, we are supplied and equipped with every spiritual gift possible! So now we must learn to abide in our Lord, and draw everything FROM HIM. And this is ‘Operating from the New Covenant’s Resurrection Mode.’
People who do not know God, and who have not yet been saved, know nothing about all that He has revealed to us in His written Word concerning the Perfect All-Sufficiency of His Finished Work. They remain completely out of touch with the outrageous confidence, joy and peace that knowing God has already supplied everything we’ll ever need and has already routed our enemies and won the War in our name makes possible for us. But New Covenant disciples who do know their God and all that He has already accomplished in our name, are, spiritually speaking, just like brand new TV new sets that the factory has made to have the latest, newest features possible. They have been pre-equipped to receive and enjoy the multiple hundreds of cable television channels that are available. Whereas before we knew the Lord, we could only receive the few channels that our natural built-in antennas could access from the surrounding demon-infested and manipulated ‘airwaves,’ God has made us to be equipped to operate from the mind of the risen Lord Yeshua who now dwells and acts from within us! And that gives us capabilities that far exceed anything that unbelieving worldly people can attain.
“But the one who is spiritual discerns all things, yet he himself is discerned by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? BUT WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST.” (1 Corinthians 2:15-16 NASB, Emphasis added)
This is why disciple trainees must successfully undergo a ‘massive paradigm-shift that will enable them to develop the new set of personal abilities and habits that reflect the fact that God is in us to be our new Heavenly Spiritual Reality, Identity, Purpose, and Destiny! This is why we must train ourselves to think, imagine, act, react and interact as being one with our risen Lord from now on. We are not to think in terms of ‘being like Him’ or ‘working for Him.’ That implies far too much distance between Him and us. From now on, WE ARE ONE! So we now must think in terms of receiving what we are and do… FROM HIM! He is our New Life and the Center of our Being. So we embody and reveal Him… to whatever may be around us. From now on, He is our one and only Motive, Purpose, and Agenda! And our hearts are entirely His!
I pray this helps us to grasp the enormous difference that exists between the carnal, earthly, Self-absorbed humanistic people who surround us, and what our Lord requires of those of us He summons to follow Him. At one time, we were just like the worldly people around us. But now that God is our indwelling New Life, we MUST retrain our brains and minds to admit and absorb the fact that we’re God’s regenerated, ‘newly created’ sons and heirs. We must now abide and interact with the Lord and Creator of all things on His level and view everything from His Eternal perspective. That is what it means to ‘repent’. We switch over to a brand new identity and perspective. We move out from the former earthly mode of fallen human flesh, and begin to operate in and from the Living Word of God Himself!
Now we must learn to focus continually on our Awesome indwelling Commander who lives and works through us and is always for us! He is our new ‘default setting’ for dealing with whatever we will face in the future. Christ living in us is what equips and gives us the right to see, think, act, and react as one with God. This is why we must see what we experience in daily life as part of our boot camp training of Spirit-controlled chaos and intense pre-manufactured boot camp stress tests that are intended to strengthen, fortify and equip us for what is yet to come. Our daily life experiences become the boot camp lessons and tests we can use to enhance our growth, development, and toughening process for our long term future benefit. And that is what develops us into Combat Ready Warriors.
So we must now begin to regard every experience, event, and difficulty that comes at us as actually being a friend, a tutor and a training exercise that is given to us to help us learn to overcome, improvise, adapt, adjust, and maintain mental and emotional equilibrium even though the ground beneath us is shaking and quaking in wild and crazy ways. In this way, we learn to die to striving and doing and accomplishing for God… and we get used to resting and rejoicing in the Perfection and All-Sufficiency of what our risen Commander has already done and paid for us, in our name! And even as we learn to look to God and rest in Him, He will be able to demonstrate and prove to us the Perfection with which He has already handled and covered and provided for us in the midst of our daily issues and events and trials.
The Spirit of Truth is ALWAYS IN YOU TO GUIDE YOU INTO ALL TRUTH! He never speaks on His own, but whatever He hears that comes from Christ, He discloses to you. Everything about you will thus pertain to the Reality and Perfect Presence of your risen Lord and Commander! Holy Spirit uses whatever happens to equip and empower you to embody your risen Lord… in and through every molecule, pore, and fiber of your being! From now on, God’s Living Word and Spirit are your Resurrection Source for Everything and your Ability to bear, endure, and operate effectively and faithfully in everything! God empowers you to fulfill your battlefield commissions because every battle will belong to Him! Never will any of the outcomes depend on any of us, now that we abide with God on the Resurrection side of the Cross!
So after you learn to know and interact with your Lord at this level, when the Day of the Lord finally comes, and it’s time for Him to lead us into the action, knowing Him like this will cause us to be battle equipped, wise, trained and prepared, and firmly set, tested, and empowered to carry out any assignment He entrusts to us. We will be convinced that it’s not up to us to make anything happen. We’ll know what Gideon and Moses and David finally learned: God has already done all the necessary work in advance. So we too can learn to wait on Him to reveal to us and through us…and actually PROVE just how perfect and All-Sufficient His Finished Works of Creation, Redemption and the Full Restoration of Creation actually are!
A Welcome to Last Days Disciple Boot Camp
Now I ask you to imagine a Last Days disciple boot camp commandant as he addresses an assembly of newly arrived disciple trainees. Imagine how he would explain the purpose behind everything they will be experiencing as he mentions all the lessons, drilling, rehearsals, and massive repetitive battlefield skillset development to which they will be exposed during the upcoming days and nights of training. He says things like the following:
“Your time here will teach you to endure and extend yourselves to improvise and find ways to work through all kinds of challenging problems, puzzles, and obstacles. You will be trained to remain in close contact with your indwelling Lord, as He overcomes every extreme intense challenging combat situation and condition into which He will be leading you. At times, it will feel like you’re going through a blast furnace crucible. But it won’t be to hurt or torture you. It will forge your character, develop courage, and it will teach you to stay focused on the All-Sufficient Infinite Greatness and Faithfulness of your Commander! The training will amplify and multiply your awareness of all your God-given strengths. It will solidify your determination to rejoice and rest in Him. It will hone your abilities to see think, act, and react out from a full assurance of your already acquired Victory amid any and all battlefield situations and conditions. Regardless of what your fleshly perceptions and understanding and thinking to the contrary may be telling you, when you know the Awesome Perfection of the Lord who lives in you, you’ll be able to rest and rejoice in Him, ALWAYS!
“It will equip you to rely and draw from the Perfect Presence of God who is always in you so you can cut through anything the enemy will try to do to stop you during combat. You’ll be taught to stay in constant contact with your indwelling Commander… as He fulfills, in your name, the orders you’ve been given with precision, accuracy, integrity, valor, faithfulness, and maximum effect. To form Christ-in-you will always be the purpose for what we’ll be doing to train you.
“So be wise and mature. Learn to appreciate, embrace, and make full use of this time of preparation. You’ll have ample time and opportunity to get to know, love, rely upon, and draw whatever you need from Holy Spirit. He’ll train, drill, discipline, strengthen, purify, equip, and empower you to abide with your Commander and receive the Good of what He has already done, as Holy Spirit reveals what is in God’s written and Living Word (who is now rendered present on Earth in your flesh)… to you… in you… for you… and through you.
“Cooperate wholeheartedly with God’s Spirit as He leads you through each drill, practice session, and rehearsal. You’ll learn to fight off, outlast and overcome your demonic enemies, under any and all circumstances and conditions. We’ll train you to remember who you are now that God is one with you and is always working from within you. Because of this, your enemies have no chance of prevailing!
REMEMBER THAT GOD WILL CONCEAL WHAT HE’LL BE REVEALING TO YOU, FROM THE ENEMY! THEY WILL NEVER HAVE ACCESS TO OUR COMMANDER’S WAVELENGTH! YOU’LL KNOW THINGS THEY CAN NEVER KNOW. AND YOU’LL REMAIN STRATEGICALLY HIDDEN. LIKE TROJAN HORSES, YOU’LL BE FULLY CONNECTED TO HEAVEN’S COMMUNICATIONS AS YOUR TRUE CHRIST-IN-YOU IDENTITY REMAINS CONCEALED FROM THE VIEW OF THOSE WHO REJECT GOD’S WORD! So as God’s written Word tells us:
“… But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the insignificant things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no human may boast before God. But it is due to Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us Wisdom from God, and Righteousness and Sanctification, and Redemption (the guarantee of our coming resurrection), so that, just as it is written: “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord!” (1 Corinthians 1:27-31 NASB, Amplification added)
“Be strong in the Lord and in the Strength of His Might… (that is, remain steadily focused on interacting with your indwelling Lord, regardless of what the enemy may or may not be doing around you)… Put on the Full Armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. (Realize that the risen Lord Himself is your Full Armor and the enemy can never get to you, nor can he stop or deter your Commander from fulfilling His purposes. The Lord God Almighty is forever committed to being and acting as your Covenant Champion! This is why you can afford to continually focus on Him and draw whatever you need from His indwelling Presence!)
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with (His) Truth, and having put on the breastplate of (His) Righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of (His) Peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of (His) Faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of (His Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Himself)!
With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints…” (Taken from Ephesians 6:10-18 NASB with amplification added)
“And you will learn the meaning of what He was saying with these words:
“Therefore, since we have this ministry (wartime battlefield commission), as we received mercy, we do not lose heart, but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in trickery nor distorting the Word of God, but by the open proclamation of the truth commending ourselves to every person’s conscience in the sight of God.
“And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they will not see the Light of the Gospel of the Glory of Christ, who is the Image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond servants on account of Jesus. For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
“BUT WE HAVE THIS TREASURE IN EARTHEN CONTAINERS, SO THAT THE EXTRAORDINARY GREATNESS OF THE POWER WILL BE OF GOD AND NOT FROM OURSELVES; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying around in the body the dying of Jesus, SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS MAY ALSO BE REVEALED IN OUR MORTAL FLESH! ” (2 Corinthians 4:1-1-11 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
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To help you achieve the profound ‘Paradigm Shift’ this introductory Resurrection Mode article discusses, we offer the following link for your consideration. It has been an ‘eye opener’ for many others before you, and it should make it much easier for any of us to die to ‘being full of ourselves’… so that our beloved Lord and Redeemer may be fully embraced and enthroned in our heart of hearts from now on..