22. God’s Foundational Pattern for a Wicked World
God chose Abraham and his family to serve as His ‘Pattern People’ for the instruction and salvation of the rest of the world. The natural family that came from Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob later came to be known as ‘The Jewish People,’ and, ‘Israel.’ They are that unique pattern nation that God created and set apart for His everlasting praise.
There are many definitions and ways of understanding what it means to be part of God’s Abrahamic Covenant Family. Some say you are part of it simply by being born ‘Jewish’. But as Romans 2 reveals, you’re only part of it if you are a true child of Abraham in your heart of hearts, that is, in the spiritual Biblically revealed sense. That happens when you follow the pattern God taught Abraham. You become Abraham’s true child according to the condition and attitude of your heart when God’s living Word confronts you. How do you react to his revelation and commands? If you hear God’s voice and obey the summons He gives to all men, your heart submits to His authority and you repent of your former disobedience and radical independence. But if your heart rejects and disobeys God’s Word, then, even if ethnically speaking, you are ‘Jewish’ …God will not be free to graft you into His Covenant Family. Just as Abraham did, we too, whether we’re Jewish or non-Jewish, must all ‘cross over’ from being Head-less…to being one with God’s Word and regarding Him as our Head. When we cross over to that, we become true Hebrews and children of Abraham.
But if God’s living Word is not really your Head, it won’t matter if you’re Jewish or Christian or belong to some other religion or are outrageously wicked or deeply pious and religious in your lifestyle. Whatever you may be on the outside…if the Word of God is not your true Head and Lord and Shepherd, nothing you do will be accepted by God.
Abraham’s natural children through Jacob are born into this Covenant line. But in order for that to benefit them, their hearts must truly be submitted to God’s living Word…on His terms!
“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in Heaven and on Earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20
God’s Covenant Pattern
The natural children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the first ones selected by God’s living Word to fulfill His world-redeeming purposes. And so God established a pattern. It is this: Whatever God intends to do with the Sin-corrupted sons of Adam, He first reveals to and demonstrates through, the family of Abraham through Jacob. They become the ‘object lesson’ set before the rest of the world. In this way the world can find out what God expects of them, by seeing what He expects of His Covenant people. So God teaches through Israel, and the world is required to learn from her and through her, what God requires of all fallen flesh.
“So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY (the obedience of) FAITH.’” (Romans 1:16-17 Emphasis added.)
So in the sense of living by obedient faith, Abraham and his family are God’s Salvation ‘Pattern’ or ‘Template.’ What happens to this family for good or for ill, serves either as a dire warning or as a sure and certain hope for all mankind. God wants all men regardless of ethnic origin to be saved and fully restored to His Original Blessing. And although evil and wickedness contaminate all human hearts and devastate this poor world, God is intent on Salvation and Restoration for all. By nature, He overcomes satanic evil with His Goodness and seeks to deliver us from the curse of radical independence from His Word by uniting us to His Word, in Covenant Love.
Even though the residue of our inherited tendency toward Sin remains, and evil is all around us, and although it is impossible for us to do anything about it, still, in our hearts, beneath our tendency to selfishness and the whirlwind of wickedness that swirls all around us, God has placed a nagging ‘homesickness’ for Himself within us. He planted it at the dawn of Adam’s creation (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and, to fulfill and satisfy that inner hunger for our Source, God planted the seeds of our Redemption into Abraham and his household. That is where the coming to life and fruition of each of those kinds of seed is to be found.
The promise of Redemption shines out to us from Israel, and like a beacon in the Darkness, it draws the hearts of those that hunger for God. It draws them toward its Light and to what God has in His Kingdom for all mankind. God’s Word and His union with Abraham is that eternal Light…His Word…entrusted to Israel’s stewardship and protection. And nothing created will ever be able to quench His Light or change or stop His redemptive purpose. That is why when He appeared as Israel’s Messiah, He said to His Jewish disciples and future apostles:
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16)
So what does this pattern call for? What does God reveal to the world through Abraham and his Covenant Family? Well, to cure us of our inherited self-centeredness and our addiction to radical independence, God first deals with those very things in His chosen people. Then the rest of the world can watch and learn what it too can expect. That’s why God places His chosen people into one impossible situation after another and makes promises to them that appear to be outrageously ridiculous and impossible by our human reckoning and past experience of achievement. He allows His people to experience dangers and threats and dire situations that are utterly impossible for them to do anything about. In that sense they are ‘crucified’. And amid their weak helplessness – God, through His risen Word reveals Himself to them, and works on their behalf, again and again…in the sight of the powers of Darkness and the decapitated humans that serve them.
Perfect Creation and Provision
Thus He proves to the world that what He created in the beginning is perfect and is all-sufficient for meeting all needs and allaying all anxieties (Genesis 2:1-3). He proves that the Original Blessing contained in His Word covers everything. And when His people embrace and obey His Word, He proves that the Blessing His Word is, has been restored to them and that all their debts have been paid and all the provision they need has been provided and paid for in advance; and freely given. God’s responses to His people, when they obey Him, are more than enough to cover whatever they may need, no matter what it is. When the world sees what happens to Israel as she obeys or disobeys, it knows what to expect from God as well.
God began to do this with Abraham and his household time and again. He does it with his descendants to this day, so that each generation can know Him and His awesome, magnificent power and creativity and faithfulness. He has made His Covenant people into a home into which all other peoples can fit…a home filled with His Peace, Rest, Joy and everlasting Hope. Through His True Israel Remnant, God will restore to the world, everything that was contained in the Original Blessing He gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:26-31. This redemption and salvation pattern was determined even before Creation came to be. It is a revelation of God’s own unchangeable perfect nature and eternal decrees. The path along which God’s Word intends to lead Israel is the ‘narrow gate’ and ‘narrow path’ mentioned in Matthew 7:13-14. They are the Portal and Exodus route that lead to eternal salvation…in God’s eternal Land of Promise.
The fall of our first parents severed us from God’s living Word who contains in Himself everything the Original Blessing is meant to be for us. So when we lost Him, we lost everything. But our perfect God chose to ordain that Blessing and He chose to speak it into existence. So His Word and the Blessing He is to us, stands forever! Nothing but continued separation from our Head can stop it from being there for us, just as God intended. So regardless of how terribly hopeless and impossible our prospects in this dark, wicked world may seem, God reveals, through Abraham’s Covenant Family, that just as He always sends His Word to supply and rescue little Israel amid her weakness and impossibilities, so will His Word do for all other people who repent and become one with Him and His Covenant People. Darkness can’t stop God’s Light from taking over completely. And this revelation of God’s grace, amid our impossibilities, is the rock-solid permanent foundation of every true disciple’s faith. No matter what may happen or what kind of threats we will ever face, disciples must know God in His changeless Perfection and understand that He has everything covered, paid for and ready to give to them, if, they receive His living Word on His terms.
And just as God is ever-faithful to Israel, so will He be to anyone who will allow Him to graft them into the Covenant of Abraham. This is the Pattern as revealed in Genesis and as it is explained and amplified throughout the rest of the Bible.
Discipleship Began in the Garden of Eden
When you study the issues between God and mankind as revealed in Genesis, you see that they concern all mankind. And you will see that what we know today as ‘discipleship’ is actually God’s way of restoring the original relationship Adam and Eve enjoyed with Him in the Garden of Eden. The discipleship ideal and lifestyle appeared with the creation of Adam and Eve. They were the image and likeness of God’s living Word. They did everything as one with Him, allowing Him to abide and work from within their pure and Sin-less hearts. And it was in the Garden that this beautiful relationship was destroyed when the Serpent lured the first humans into Sin and Death.
So the training our Master intends to give us is meant to restore and equip us to be able to fulfill God’s original blueprint specifications for the human image and likeness of God. So consider what changes such a restoration will require! What will restored disciples look and sound like once they become ‘mirrors of God.’ Imagine the selfless love of God that Adam and Eve were once able to reflect and mirror back to their Lord and Master. Consider how intimate and intensely synchronized and interactive their working relationship with God’s Word must have been before Sin’s radical independence destroyed the union they enjoyed with their Head and Life Source. When we understand how far below that original standard they fell, we begin to understand the tremendous Exodus Journey our Master has to lead us into, in order to take us from where we begin, to where He has always intended for us to end up.
God’s Response to our fall
We must also ponder God’s immediate response as soon as Adam and Eve fell into Sin and were so badly disfigured and damaged because of it. Was He surprised? Did He give up and decide to try some other alternate Plan B? No, the fall didn’t change God’s mind in the least! Yes the humans were spiritually and physically killed by the Serpent. But God’s mind did not react in dismay or shock or anger. He did not pursue a course of condemnation, revenge and punishment. He remained ever-focused on overcoming all the evil with His Good and drawing all men back to union with His living Word. Thereafter He remained focused on our eventual resurrection from the dead and the complete restoration of our original identity, purpose and birthright inheritance!
God immediately sent His Word after our first parents to redeem, repair and restore them and their offspring and everything else in Creation that had been damaged and disfigured. God created us to be His image and likeness. And that will never change. As soon as we learn to live as disciples of His living Word that is exactly what He will make of us. If we disobey our Head, we decapitate ourselves; but if we obey, we become as one with God’s Word. So the Word is our Way back to God. When we obey Him, He restores us to that original Master/disciple relationship once more. He is the only Way back to God.
This union is what the Lord had in mind when He first appeared to Abraham. He separated and reserved him and his family from their ties to this fallen world and set them apart for His own personal service. Notice what God’s living Word said to Abram:
“I am God Almighty; walk before Me, and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly.” (Genesis 17:1b-2 Emphasis added.)
Our relationship to and with God’s living Word is always the issue between God and us; and this initiative on the part of His Word is the pattern God uses to deal with it. It is the same for everyone for whom He sends His Word. If we respond properly, the Word will join us to Abraham and his Covenant Family and together with them we too will begin our exodus from the world, the flesh and the devil. And we will be trained to serve our Lord and Master and He will become our new, eternal, indwelling Life. That is what disciples are and what they do! And God reproduces them many times over from generation to generation. As He promised Abraham, He multiplies him exceedingly, through Abraham’s ever-growing family of faithful, obedient descendants that learn to be the Word’s disciples.
The Proper Disciple Response to God’s Call
The words, “Follow Me!” call us to the lifestyle our Master taught to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses and every other true member of this unique Covenant Family. So we must learn from Abram’s response. It is our foundational pattern. The proper disciple response to the Word’s absolute, infinite Authority is this – “Abram fell on his face.” (Genesis 17:3a).
This is the only proper response a human can make when the Word of Almighty God pierces and penetrates his or her soul. As soon as God’s Word pierces us to the core, there’s nothing else we’ll be able to think of doing but to fall on our face and remain silent. When God’s Word hits that deeply, we must submit and worship Him and await His good pleasure. There is no other possible human response to the Presence of such blinding, overwhelming infinite Holiness, Majesty and Purity!
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. 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, thus all these things came into being,’ declares the LORD.” (Isaiah 66:1)
If our hearts are open and tender toward God, His Word will penetrate us deeply when He speaks to us. And He will do His assigned work of joining us to Himself. In that case, this is how God will regard and respond to us:
“But to this one I will look…to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word!” (Isaiah 66:2 Emphasis added.)
God saw Abraham’s open, trusting obedient heart. So He brought him and his ever-growing household into His eternal Blood Covenant (Hebrews 13:20). Thus He and Abraham became ‘Blood Covenant Friends’ Forever! From the moment that Abraham was pierced and fell on his face and submitted to God wholeheartedly, it never entered his mind to say to God’s Word something like: ‘Come into MY life.’ As he lay there with his face in the dust, his Almighty living God destroyed (crucified) his Serpent-possessed, radically independent life and all of its former personal ties, priorities and agendas. God possessed Abraham and made him His own! And everything Abram was, prior to that moment, blew away until nothing remained. Now, he was totally free and wholeheartedly able to receive the eternal Life that His new Lord and Master had come to share with him. Abraham’s heart became the Lord’s throne room and he welcomed the Lord and began to wait on Him and serve His good pleasure. God didn’t come into Abraham’s original life. That life died! And what was left of Abraham came into God’s Life! And nothing, not even Abram’s name, was ever able to be the same. God made him into a new creation!
“…and God talked with him, saying, ‘As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” (Genesis 17:3-5)
The apostle Paul experienced the very same thing. God’s Word exploded all over him and immediately, Saul knew how to respond. Just like his father Abraham had done, Saul, later known as Paul, fell to the ground on his face:
“As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’ The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; and leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank.” (Acts 9:3-9 emphasis added.)
From the moment that God’s Word confronted him, just as He had once confronted Abraham, Saul (Paul) was never the same after that. His original understanding of God and the very religious life that flowed from it were destroyed. And thereafter, Yeshua, the risen Word Himself became Saul’s new Life and the love that compelled everything he did and said from that time onward. Then…Saul really became a true son of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and a disciple not of other men, but of God’s living Word who became flesh. And through Abraham’s Pattern, the Lord took Paul in and also multiplied him many times over thereby adding to the great nation that He promised to make of Abraham. And Paul was able to demonstrate what he had become and convey what he learned in the process to other disciples-in-training:
“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure!” (Philippians 2:12-13 Emphasis added.)
When former slaves of the Serpent and Sin-corrupted enemies of God are confronted by God’s awesome, mind-blowing, overwhelming Word, it does not enter their mind to dictate the terms of the relationship to which Almighty God summons them. It doesn’t work that way. Once this awesome Being explodes all over us, we instinctively respond to His overwhelming Authority and infinite Preeminence. We can’t do anything but fall before Him and worship in silence. That is the Pattern of Abraham. From that moment onward, our hearts become totally obedient and devoted to our Master. We develop a submissive spirit and our posture before Him follows the way of Abraham. And as we follow our Master into the future, He leads us through the same Portal through which He led Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. And we follow the narrow path of the Exodus route by which our Master leads us out of Darkness and into God’s eternal Kingdom of Light.
Our Master, God’s living Word, continually seeks to create this kind of relationship with every human He has made. Like the Good Shepherd that He is, He comes to rescue us, and to cover our shameful nakedness. He redeems us from Sin and regenerates and restores us to our intended image and likeness of God state and status. God does not send His Word because He needs us. He sends Him because He is perfect and changeless in nature and has decreed that we are His. God owns us by the right of Creation and by the right of Redemption. He sends His Word to bring us into His Eternal Blood Covenant Family so that He can be to us whatever we will ever need Him to be. He sends His Word; and the Word obeys and fulfills everything His Father decreed in the beginning.
That is why God’s Word comes after those who remain ‘decapitated.’ They are summoned to come under His Headship. When they obey, He restores and transforms them into His image and likeness. And then the awesome birthright and inheritance that God gave to Adam and then later, to Abraham, can also be theirs. That’s the first part of the Abrahamic Pattern. Now let’s consider the second part:
Disciples Are ‘Points of Entry’ for God’s Word
Once Abraham heard, obeyed and lived under the Word’s authority, He became a disciple. But what is a disciple? A disciple learns what Abraham had to learn. He learns to be a ‘point of entry’ through which the Lord can come into this world and apply the fruits of His perfect, finished, redemptive work into many other lives. That’s what Abraham became, the first point of entry. Through him, our Master gained total access to the rest of us and all of our circumstances, challenges, relationships and needs. So that’s the pattern that must be reproduced through us. We too must become points of entry for our Master. Thanks to the access our obedience can provide for Him, He can enter our time and space experiences and circumstances and take over and work from there as from a base of operations. Then He transmits the benefits of the Finished Work His Father commissioned Him to do on our behalf – to us…in us…and through us…for the others that are all around us.
This is the significance of Abraham and all of the Word-obeying members of his ever-increasing Covenant Family. They are God’s ‘Pattern People,’ chosen to serve God, as He serves the rest of His Sin-damaged Creation. Through His Word-obeying Israel, God sends His Word to do whatever is necessary to redeem and restore Creation to meet His perfect standards.
“But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the Root, but the Root supports you.” (Romans 11:17-18 Emphasis added.)
Just like Abraham, we too must learn to live under the Word’s authority and abide in His presence and embrace the Salvation He was sent to be to us. Then we too will be able to interact with Him directly, personally and freely, at all times and in all things. The Serpent stole all this from us when he managed to ‘behead’ our original parents. But our Master IS The Original Blessing that God gave to the human race in Genesis. So as soon as we repent of our rebellious, disobedient radical independence and embrace Him, we become one with Him and thus embrace and become one with the Fullness of the Blessing that He is. After that, we must never again consider ourselves to be citizens of this fallen world and its Serpent-possessed system. We are forevermore to think, act, react and interact as regenerated sons of God…the true image and likeness of His Word, and citizens and heirs of His eternal Heavenly Abrahamic Kingdom on Earth.
A Breed Apart
Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before them (with whom disciples are now one), we too must live as nomads, in the sense that we are in the world but no longer belong to it. We are citizens of God’s eternal Kingdom and strangers in this world. Much of our Covenant Family is still deployed here and commissioned to love and serve God as He redeems the decapitated people who are still entangled by the allurements of this world. So our hearts must remain as one with all of the Family members who have gone before us and those who remain on Earth to continue the struggle in which we are engaged. But our hearts must also be open and responsive to those Family members that are yet to come! Many of them are God’s enemies at this time. But the day is coming when our Master will summon them to follow Him too. And we must be there to receive and welcome them into our midst. This is why we must remain immune to and free of the influence and allurements and domination of the Serpent and his world system, and the residue of Sin that still abides within our own mortal flesh. We can’t have it both ways, we must choose to abide on one side of the Sin-chasm that separates the two races, or the other.
If we follow the pattern God established with Abraham and his household, God will continue to correct, instruct, prune and train the rest of us to reflect and radiate the Light of His Word into the Darkness around us. The Covenant Family of God is the human matrix from which His living Word, The Light of the world, can shine forth and be a constant beacon to this dismal, dying world. We must become as one with the Light of God. His Light (Son) must be free to shine in His disciples, so that through us, it can radiate outward. He is The Light that guides the feet of the decapitated slaves, to their rightful Home in God. And we are to be the vessels that contain and embody that Light.
The headless people of Earth maintain an idolatrous world system made up of many gods of their own devising. But their gods are only dead, empty products of their own imaginations. God’s living Word is the only true Source of eternal Life. And His Heavenly Father calls Him ‘My beloved Son’ (Matthew 3:17; 17:5, and, ‘The Tree of Life’ (Genesis 2:9; Revelation 22:1, 2). And we disciples call Him, ‘my Lord and my Life.’
Abraham’s Disciple Training Was the Cross
Once Abraham and his household came under the Word’s Authority, He began stripping away (crucifying) the Head-less Sin-residue they inherited from Adam. Their reunification with their Head automatically separated them from the decapitated peoples around them. God doesn’t separate us because He despises and wants to abandon the other people. Our union with His Word separates us. We become new beings with new identities, purposes and destinies. Now we belong to and operate from another Kingdom in another dimension. And that is why the residue of the worldly influence has to be removed from within us and we can be free to be trained and equipped to serve our Master. Then, through us, He can begin to reach out to and redeem and bless the others. Abraham’s family is not chosen to be God’s special favored pet. They are chosen to serve as God’s instruments and messengers of reconciliation and blessing, for the salvation of all of the other families of the earth!
The decapitated people who belong to the world system are by nature, totally self-centered and independent of God in viewpoint and activity. They are driven solely by their fallen intellects, perspectives, opinions, desires and urges. In this respect they cannot love and appreciate God’s Chosen People. They cannot recognize the blessing from God they actually are to the rest of the world. Instead they remain the image and likeness of the Serpent and serve as tools in the hands of the powers of Darkness. Even when decapitated people become hyper-educated and refine and discipline their skills to amazing degrees, and even when they become hyper-religious, they still remain decapitated from God’s Word and remain therefore, offspring of the Serpent:
“But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance…” (Matthew 3:7)
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil.” (Matthew. 12:33-35 Emphasis added.)
The plight of such people is dire and desperate. But they are not spiritually equipped to realize it or do anything about it. But God loves them with an endless love. So despite the fall and the hurricane of deceit, destruction, and wickedness the Serpent unleashes through them, nothing will deter or derail God from fulfilling His original purpose for Creation. His nature is perfect and His Word is perfect. Perfection never changes. Only the imperfect must change – until it can reflect our perfect Creator perfectly! Our changeless God loves us as much now as He did in the beginning. Nothing can change that or deter Him from sending His Word after us. He will do whatever it takes to become one with us, and to live as one with us at all times, and in all things. The only thing that prevents that from happening is our own demonically deceived free will. It must repent and change or we cannot be saved. That is why God warns:
“He again fixes a certain day, “Today,” saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS.’” (Hebrews 4:7)
“…Jesus said to them, ‘Do you suppose that these Galileans were greater sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this fate? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Lk. 13:2-5 Emphasis added.)
Before each generation of Abraham’s Family can fulfill its God-given purpose of being a blessing to its contemporaries, they must unlearn what they originally embraced as decapitated children of this world. God has to teach and train us to transform into the image and likeness of His Word. And His Word is not at all of this world! He created the world; but He needs nothing from it and as long as it remains in its Serpent-dominated state, He will redeem and cleanse it when it repents, but until then, it will not pass God’s Judgment.
So disciples are trained for continual obedience to God’s Word. As the exodus process continues, the Word transforms His own into His image and likeness. Then they can reflect and radiate Him, thereby proving that He actually lives in and operates through their yielded flesh. Whereas the decapitated humans serve as living extensions of the rebellious Serpent, the true disciples serve as the living members of the Lord’s Body on Earth. So each race demonstrates the presence and nature and character of its respective ‘head.’ One group embodies the activities of the Serpent; the other embodies the indwelling Presence of the living Word of God.
True Biblical Discipleship Transforms Us!
As disciples learn to obey God’s living Word, they transform by learning to do everything with the Lord and from their indwelling Lord. He becomes their ‘Vine’ and they learn to serve as His ‘branches.’ He lives in them and produces His fruit through them. In other words, they allow their indwelling Master to ‘do the impossible’ from within them…in their name.
We cannot be as God nor can we do what He does. We can’t fulfill the promises He made. So we allow God’s Word to abide in us and do what only He can do and be, through our yielded, crucified flesh. And so God Himself does what is impossible to us, to the amazement of all the decapitated people around us.
Disciple life is simply allowing God to do the impossible through us. That’s the way we prove to the world that the Lord was actually raised from the dead and really is present and living within us. We demonstrate His eternal Life, nature and disposition working from within. As His Life abides and works through us, the Fruit that only He can produce appears. That proves that we no longer have any connection to the Serpent, are no longer numbered among his headless slaves, and that God’s Word is our indwelling Life.
So Check Your Attitude Toward the Word
Abraham’s pattern teaches us a simple but profound lesson. Our level of obedient faith will determine the level at which we will be able to serve as God’s image and likeness. If we have but little obedience to God’s Word, that will result in our having but little resemblance to God’s Son. The Son gives total obedience to His Father. So if we give total obedience to the Son, the resemblance in us to God’s living Word will be remarkable, supernatural and unmistakable!
If we put this in military terms, and consider warriors that must be combat-ready, we can assess our level of combat-readiness and future effectiveness by noting our attitudes toward our Commander’s ability, wisdom and authority. To the degree that we trust His Ability and Wisdom, to that degree will we submit to his authority and follow his orders wholeheartedly.
And since we know that Abraham’s Pattern always places us in impossible situations, it is important that we have an accurate, precise knowledge and understanding of our Commander and His infinite, eternally perfect Credibility, Wisdom, Omnipotence and Trustworthiness. Our obedience to His commands and our performance and effectiveness on the field of battle will reflect the depth and quality of our knowledge of Him. And that will determine how much we can trust and rest and rejoice in Him. It will reveal how much we believe and trust in His Resurrection Presence and whether or not we really believe and know that He is always with us and in us and has already done everything perfectly in order to manifest and share His eternal Triumph with us.
If we really believe He’s with us and that He is everything we will ever need Him to be, we will know that the battle is His and not ours. We will know that He is the living Almighty God and Supreme Lord of Heaven and Earth who has already overcome and destroyed the hold of the Serpent and will never leave nor forsake nor disappoint us. Then we can walk in the Original Blessing God gave to us from the very beginning, in Him. Our Master is that Blessing. He contains within Himself the Fullness of Almighty God Himself. So if we have Him, we have everything we will ever need. And when we know that, it will show in our demeanor and attitude and in the way we react to whatever happens.
This is the Pattern of Abraham. The God of the Impossible is with us…and now, the only question is: how much are we with Him?