TRANSFORMED

TRANSFORMED - AUDIO

 

What is man without God, but a brute beast.  Equally true the humanity of man is found through his divinity.  It takes God to be man, as He intended.  The issue of our humanity is in our divinity, which is Christ in us.  Without Christ in us, we are beasts.  

Consider Adam in the Garden of Eden where he had to name every animal.  How was this even possible that he could do this?  Adam before he sinned, is the first revelation and therefore one of the most important revelations of the Garden of Eden.  We look at Adam and our immediate thought is "the one who blew it".  But this is not God's first intention.  His first intention is that we may see man as He intended man to be.  The only reason why Adam could name all the animals, and I am sure much more, was because of being one with the Tree of Life.  And when that source of life was cut off, Adam died a slow death, like a branch cut off and left to the side.  It takes God to be man, man as God intended.  

This is also the reason why the enemy is ruthlessly trying to break down the truth of who God is in all the earth, but at the same time, ruthlessly breaking down man.  In reality causing an identity crisis as to who God is and who man is.  To the extent that all are free to make Him into their own image, and consequently themselves as well. Our understanding of who God is, as well as who man is, has been marred by the enemy.  And what man is left with when God is taken out of the equation is a beast.  The same beast that will rise up in him at the end of days to collectively war against the Most High God. Can you believe that of yourself?  Peter thought that there was no way that he would deny Christ.  In fact, just like us, he believed that he would give his life to Christ if need be.  However, when it came to that ultimate point, he denied Christ three times.  Without Christ, we ourselves will give Him up to be crucified, again and again.  This is the reality of man without God.  This is your reality without God.

Just as we collectively form the Body of Christ, so those without Christ form the Beast collectively.  Two systems not only within, but that which will have its final manifestation at the end.  For this, Christ, just like He did with Peter, has to show us who we are without Him.  This is the purpose of the Law, which is to show us our sinful nature and depravity, that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17).  He brings us to total depravity, even if it takes "three" times, like Peter, to the point of giving up on ourselves completely.  So that we may truly have no confidence in the flesh.   This is what the law does.  It strips us of our delusion and lifts the veil, that we may see the grotesque beast we are without Him.  He has to show us first who we are without Him, before He shows us who we are with Him.  

The mere ability to repeat a verse like "I am more than a conqeuror through Christ Jesus" will not surfice.  This has to go from recognizing, to revelation, to reality, and for each there is a corresponding practical application with a significant spiritual outflow.  Hence our wilderness experiences in order to bring us into Canaan, where we live by faith.  Not DO by faith, but LIVE by faith.  It is a mode of being.  This sounds simplistic and logical, but the reality is that it takes a lifetime to come to this point.  We do not die easily.  Once that final nail is pierced, the spirit committed into the hands of its Creator, the body laid in the tomb for 4 days, and the cry to come out of this tomb has come forth, we are raised like Lazarus, to walk by a new way of being, which is by faith.  

It is a vital transition from one mode to another, that of doing to being.  This is shown to us when we see the metamorphis of a worm into a butterfly.  The dictionary defines metamorphis as, "a change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one".  The transformation is radical.  When we see a butterfly emerging from a cacoon, we see it struggling as it tries to extend its wings, looking weak, pathetic and off balance.  This is because it has never been here before and now has to learn how to fly, having been a worm all its life.  And so it is with those who have come from death into His resurrection life, having always been a worm, but now finds itself in complete new territory all together.  How do you live from this new life?  How do you fly?  For this Jesus came to show us how to fly.  

He came as this new being, born of the flesh, but being divine.  Humanity in harmony with divinity.  Ask the butterfly who or what she is, and she will say, "I am a worm, but I am also a butterfly".  The two have become one.  You cannot be fully man the way God intended without Him.  This was the ultimate confrontation with the question that the Angel asked Jacob after a whole night's wrestling.  "What is your name?".  To which Jacob replied, "Jacob".  The name Jacob means surplanter and deceiver.  The moment he acknowledged who he truly was, the declaration came of a new name. "You shall be called, Israel".  

Genesis 32: 28

And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.

Other translations says, you shall rule as God.  And yet, many years later God addresses Jacob, as a worm.

Isaiah 41: 14

Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

And so Christ, comes as the Word made flesh, and identifies with our humanity not because He is God and is omniscient, but because being made a man, He understands our weakness and depravity in reality and in a real felt way.  David cries out as a type and shadow of Christ, in the Messianic Psalm the following...

Psalm 22: 6

But I am a worm, and no man, a reproach of men, and despised of the people.

Right here He is confronting our perception of who He was as a man, where we make Him to have been this super human, which we can adore and worship.  We elevate his humanity above that which He intended, which is that we would know and see that He became flesh and just like us, in human form had to learn obedience by what He suffered as it is written in Hebrews 5: 7 - 8.  

God's every intention is that we be brought to both realities.  This is why Jesus told the rich man, "Why callest thou me good?  Only God is good".  Have you even pondered on that statement?  Jesus was saying this from out of His humanity, knowing that as a man, He has no good in Him.  Not because He is God and He knows all things, but as man, He knows.  He is saying, I am a worm.  At the same time He tells Philip, "When you see Me, you see the Father".  When Jesus said that what He says is what the Father tells Him to say and the works He does, is the Father through Him, it was not just an issue of dependency, but of unity.  "I and the Father are one".  Jesus did not only start to live from resurrection life after His resurrection, but He has always been the Resurrection and the Life.  This is why He confronted Mary and Martha with the issue of resurrection, the fact that it is not only future, but also present.  He says the following in John 11.

John 11: 14 - 15

Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.

And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him.

Jesus was not flexing His spiritual muscles, as to say, "Check what I can do".  He was saying "Look what I can do through you!"  Lazarus death was not for Jesus' sake, but for the sake of His disciples that they may believe.  This is what will glorify the Father, Christ in us, the Resurrection and the Life!  Tragically we are all too human and way too little divine.  To the degree we have died to ourselves we will live in divinity.  Every act of obedience of Jesus was a statement of His dying to self, in order for us to see the cross as the sum of all His obediences, that He could say to Mary and Martha, as the Son of Man, I am the Resurrection and the Life even before being raised from the dead.  The word says that He grew in stature and though He was a Son, He learned obedience by what He suffered.  When one learns something, you are growing from one level to another.  

Though we long for Him to resurrect us soon, He longs to resurrect us now.  The whole of creation longs with Him for this manifestation of the Sons and Daughters of God, in the flesh even now, just like Him.  To no longer walk after the dictates of the flesh, but controlled by the Spirit.  Resurrection now.  This is the fullness of adoption, the Spirit of adoption by which we cry "Abba Father!".  It is not just knowing that we are adopted into the family of God, it is what we receive when we have the Spirit of Adoption, which is the very essence and reaility of being a Son or Daugther of God, His Spirit in us.  

Now we see dimly, but then face to face.  The face of man looking into his reflection, but seeing the face of God, Jesus Christ in you.  There is an ultimate price we pay, which is a life of obedience through suffering. The same way as He did, born of the flesh, growing in stature through obedience as the Son of Man.  As Romans 8 tells us...

Romans 8: 17

And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

Ours is a journey back.  As in the first Adam we die.  This death has to be walked through in the spirit until the first Adam in us die, that the second Adam may live.  For we have always been the Sons and Daughters of God, but in the first Adam became enemies of God.  However, in the second Adam, we become co-heirs and adopted anew.  Brought back home where we belong.  It is to this reality He is calling us to live, the reality of being the Sons and Daughters of God.  

That God became man is beyond our understanding.  He took upon Him flesh.  He became a worm.  But as a worm came to show us how to fly.  Just as He was conformed to our mode of being, which is the flesh, we are to be made conformable unto His death, to know the power of His resurrection.  Unfortunately we often miss the point or see the tree for the forest.  We think dying is the ultimate goal, whereas the point is resurrection life through us.  As His Body we can never do this from within ourselves.  This ultimately means full control and for full control there cannot be two masters.  The flesh must not only be brought into submission, but is must die.  In the light of His divinity in us, we can never lose sight of who we are...a worm.  But equally we cannot lose sight of who we have become...divine.

"Blasphemy!" you might say.  But even in saying this, it is nothing different that those who said during Christ's time on earth, "Is this not Joseph's son?"  And yet, was Christ not fully human and divine?  If He was only divine, how could he possibly ask us to emulate Him or require us to walk as He walked?  In 2019 He said to me, "Walk in the knowing that we are one".  Unfortunately we subconsciously want others to be like us and want them to fail on the same grounds as us.  We can believe Him when He said "The words I speak is My Father's words' but can you believe that the words I write here are His and not my own?  We fail to note that His purpose with His Spirit in us is not only infilling, but fusing. That we may be Sons and Daughters of the Most High God!  There is nothing more that the enemy wants than for you to subscribe to this in theory, as long as you do not live out the reality.  Paul is that very example of the Christian who lives by the resurrection life of God.  This also the reason why the demons cried out, "Jesus we know, and Paul we know, but who are you?" It was Christ in Paul and Paul in Christ whom they feared.  Man as God intended.  Some Christians stay so long in the wilderness, mostly due to disobedience, that they never leave and transition from their worm identity to butterfly.  They are continually humbled and this is not necessarily bad or wrong, but it is not all He intended.  There is a place of transformation - the grave.  Where it is dark, extremely lonely, and you are brought to death.   The same as we would find the mother's womb where He fashions us in secret.  He alone makes all things new.  There He transforms, there He speaks life, and there He gives us wings.

"Oh darling, that is just simply divine!", we hear and so the word is made into a catch phrase and stripped of its essence.  Do you know that you are divine?  Do you know that He is calling you to the same life He lived?  Not that you should try your best to be like Him, but rather that He should live life through you.  This new life can only be done through faith.  The just shall LIVE by faith.  It is a way of being He desires to bring you to.  Though you may be a work in progress, He already sees you as the finished product.  

Ephesians 2: 10

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Saved by grace through faith.  Any painter or sculptor or whatever creative process out there, always sees the finished product and never lose sight of that.  You are His.  He has invested so much in the making of you, at great cost for you, but an even greater cost for Him.  He will never give up on you, because His Son lives in you.  To give up on you is to give up on His Son.  He will never leave you or forsake you.  However, you can walk away from Him and through disobedience reject Him, causing separation between you and Him through habitual and willful sin.  But He will never reject you first.  His desire to deal with your sin has always been that you and He may be one, and not because He rejects you and think you are not good enough...even though we are worms.  He rejects the sin, but loves you.  Unfortunately there are many who are not willing to go all the way, the cost too great for this unity in Him.  

Like Christ who is now at the right hand of the Father, fully the Son of Man and the Son of God, so we are too fully sons and daughters of man and Sons and Daughters of God.  Worms turned into butterflies!  This is what glorifies the Father, that many sons and daughter are brought into this reality.

John 17: 21 - 26

21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:

23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.

26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.

What glorious words spoken from the heart of Jesus, praying the will of the Father.  Through Christ, and by Christ, unto Christ, be all glory unto the Most High God. Amen.