COSTLY GRACE

 COSTLY GRACE - AUDIO

I find it no coincidence that the topic of this devotional, which is Costly Grace, is written on the 5th of the 5th Month, 5 being the number for grace.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Theologian during the WWII and very outspoken about his absolute disagreement with the ideology of Hitler.  He saw that his beautiful country was about to be destroyed. All that Germany stood for, the music, arts and academia, which was from the best in the world, and most importantly their Christian standards completely uprooted.  He loved his country and saw the role of the Christian as vital to the upholding of Godly standards in society and that if anyone is to be blamed when it comes to their countries downfall, it is that they as Christians did not in themselves uphold it in authenticity, and therefore could not display nor demand it.  Needless to say that Hitler and his buddies did not like him at all.

In his book, “The Cost of Discipleship”, he starts his first chapter with the same title as this devotional – “Costly Grace”.  Grace being a regular topic of debate has caused many a drift between God’s flock.  However, in this devotional I was led to address both sides and should also be read as such.  It is interesting to note that when Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this book, it was first published in 1937, just before the war.  The noose was slowly tightened around their necks as propaganda was everywhere forced upon the citizens until they were given over to the deception.  No one dared to defy the “Fuhrer” and everyone knew that it meant persecution.

And so one can see how even now, we as believers are once again in the same position as history repeats itself, the noose tightening around our own necks.  The issues of then have become the issue of today.  We too hear the beat of war drums not only globally, but also spiritually.  We see the same pattern of control of where previously a star was required on the arm, now a “VC” is required.  Where a number was tattooed on the arm, a quantum dot tattoo soon.  Where there was a food shortage and the economy in serious trouble, we too are constantly threatened with the same demise.  Concentration camps are stealthily built under guise as prophecy plays out before our very eyes.  Indeed the anti-Christ spirit is rising very fast threatening every sphere of life, political, academic, medicinal, and yes, even in our homes.  Jesus promised us that this will happen.  I have a sense in my spirit that what division we have seen so far amongst our family interaction, is about to become bigger and even more hostile.  You should expect this as Jesus promised this.  Although Jesus is speaking to His workers here, we do also know that this applies even now.

Mark 13: 9 - 13

⁹ But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them.

¹⁰ And the gospel must first be published among all nations.

¹¹ But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

¹² Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.

¹³ And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we understand that we are not to fall asleep and place our heads in the sand like the ostrich, hoping that it is not that desperate and critical yet.  It is, and so we are to have our ears to the mouth of God that we may receive instruction and be guided by His Spirit, daily.  Not only corporately, but personally.  What is God telling me personally about my role in the time we are in?

Bonhoeffer writes that if grace cost God so much, why is it that we think that it will cost us little?  Jesus drew our attention to the same principle when it came to be His disciple.

Luke 14: 26 - 35

²⁶ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

²⁷ And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

²⁹ Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,

³⁰ Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.

³¹ Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?

³² Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

³³ So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.

³⁴ Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned?

³⁵ It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

Peter confesses his undying love to Jesus at the last supper, even to the point of dying for the Lord if need be.  However, when it came to those asking him, “Are you not one of them?” or whether he knew Him, his answer came swift and emphatically “No!” I cannot help to think of spoiled children that with the snap of their finger or just enough moaning are able to get the most extravagant gifts at such great cost.  Demanding their rights as children to be given what is theirs on the basis that they are children.   Whether it is the latest car, game, brand name clothing, jewelry or technology, the parents are willing to pay the bill.  Indeed it is costly, but for whom?  The parents.  What they receive in return for these gifts, that costs an arm and a leg, is entitled, obnoxious, spoiled brats that do not appreciate what the parents gave them.  The value of what they have received is based on what they paid for it…nothing!  It costs them nothing and so easy come, easy go.  Here we have Peter and we see how quickly it was for him to deny Christ.  The same man that received the revelation by the Spirit that Jesus was indeed the Son of the Living God who alone has the words of life.  This betrayal was met on the shore after a night’s fishing with Jesus preparing a meal for Peter.  By this time, Peter was well aware that this gift of grace bestowed upon him, did not cost Jesus an arm and a leg, but His body was torn, lashed and beaten, stripped of flesh, hung on a cross, pierced, blood poured with brutal suffering, unto death.  When Jesus asked him “Do you love me Peter?” it was not because Jesus did not know, but rather because Peter needed to know.  He needed to know that love, agape love, is the requirement to feed His sheep and that that love comes at a great price, the Cost of Discipleship.  I remember years ago I asked Father to fill me with His love.  I wanted the real thing, I wanted the depth of it.  At this Father said, “You do not know what you are asking”.  And then He said, “No one has greater love than he who lays his life down for his friends” (John15).  The cost of grace is very high.  It costs our Savior much.

At this point I want to ask “To what end are we saved by grace through faith?” and “at what cost cheap grace comes then?”  Grace and discipleship are inseparable, and discipleship costs.  Grace to follow Christ, to walk as Christ and to live and die as Christ.  Any other agenda or motive is outside of the faith and a deception.  Bonhoeffer was not writing as one unaccustomed to persecution, but as one who became a voice in the wilderness, a very dangerous wilderness, and was hanged by order of Himmler.  He knew the cost, because he counted the cost.  What you say and to whom you say it could cost him his life.  It was a reality to him.  And today, we find ourselves in the same place.  Once again, the question has to be asked, “To what end are we saved by grace through faith?” 

Grace has at the heart and intent of it discipleship and this discipleship should not be segregated from grace. Costly grace has been turned into cheap grace because of this very segregation.  It has become the justification of the sin, rather than the sinner.  Grace is given freely to us for the purpose of being His disciples, because without His grace we can do nothing.  When grace is about us, about our salvation only and reaching heaven, we have indeed made it cheap.  It is not that by our discipleship we obtain grace, but rather by grace we obtain discipleship, and therefore it is costly.  Cheap grace frees you from discipleship, but costly grace binds you to it.  This is what makes grace a gift.  It is our enablement to be His disciples.  Once again, the call of discipleship is inseparable to grace.  The cost of cheap grace is the lack or no discipleship and the Kingdom of God suffers for it.  We can do our A, B, C’s and call ourselves Christians without being the thing in itself, which is a disciple, a follower of the “The Way”.  What way?  The narrow way.  Please read more on this way in my post called “Followers of the way”. Anyone can be a Christian simply by asking Jesus into their life and to forgive them their sin without the clear requirement of what it means to follow Christ, which is to carry your cross daily and to die daily.  And so, subconsciously a license is given to sin because grace abounds.  You do not have to lay your life down because Jesus already did that for you.  But this grace is to enable us to sin no more as His disciples, which comes at a great cost.

Having said all this, we have to see this in the light of the present spiritual climate where this cheap grace without discipleship will indeed eventually come at a very high price.  For if we have looked upon the gift of grace as to only save us from destruction and have scorned the call to discipleship, then the fundamental purpose for this grace is not only rejected, but ignored, for which Christ paid a very dear price.  This grace is the gift that enables us to lay our lives down for our King.  Father has placed this upon my heart very clearly that some are soon to receive their assignments and that they should indeed consecrate themselves afresh to this call.  All of your life has been in preparation for the time we are in now.  He has shown me part of my assignments and to this I want to emphasize that more than one will be given at the right time.  The point is, how are we able to lay our lives physically down if we have not counted the cost, if we have not prepared ourselves spiritually in being a disciple by dying daily?  If we cannot deny ourselves now in the comfort of our own homes in the smallest of matters, how will be able to do it when our literal lives are at stake, just like Peter’s life was?  Make no mistake, what He is teaching us now is vital for this time we are in, it is His gift of grace to us.  If we choose to uphold cheap grace and have chosen to justify ourselves on the basis of atonement without applying the grace for its true intent, still loving our lives, we will try to save it at all cost when the time comes.  At which point this cheap grace will become very costly. 

At present we are inundated with different opinions about the VC whether it is the Mark of the Beast or not.  The word states that there are eight requirements. 

Revelation 13: 16 - 17

¹⁶ And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:

¹⁷ And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Now before I briefly discuss this point, please know that whether it is or is not, is not now the discussion, but rather the hearts of men, even professing Christians willing to take the VC.

The eight requirements according to Revelation 13 are:

1.      They cause all (meaning you end up with no choice but to comply)

2.       Both small and great, free and bond (no discrimination…it applies to all)

3.       A mark is given (many assume a visible mark – G5482, which means to sharpen  with a point, scratch, a stake, badge of servitude…The Jew’s badges were a yellow star)

4.       On their right hand (This has been shown to mean shoulder.  G1188 means right side, and in this case it means hand…when somebody stands on your right hand, they are not literally standing on top of your right hand, but next to you.  The right hand is referred in the Bible as to a place of strength.  Most people are right handed and it is known as your strongest hand.  The point is that it shows that this mark will influence everything you do.)

5.       On their foreheads (This means between, which is G3326 in the Strong’s Concordance).  Of late we have seen the implication of those who have received the VC and the affect physically and neurologically.  Once again, we have been programmed through the years that it will be a visible sign. But is it?

6.       No man may buy or sell without it (we are already there)

7.       The Name of the Beast (We know the substance Luciferase is in the VC’s for tracking purposes and for the purpose of authenticating that a person has indeed received it.  The name of the Beast is indeed Lucifer.

8.       The number is the number of man, being 666 (The patent number of the VC is 060606)

The present VC and the quantum dot tattoos, pills and plasters are all fulfilling all these requirements.  The fact that it will be linked to 5G and that this technology makes the 5G the trigger and the VC the mark, makes them both part of the whole and should not be seen as separate.    If I have a bomb, but not the trigger, I still have a bomb in my possession.  They are both needed to activate, but still the same thing.  Therefore it cannot be stressed enough apart from all the adverse reactions out there, that we are to speak up! 

I want to focus on the fact that Father chose divinely that this number had to be the number of man.  Why?  I have said before that without God, man is a beast.  The flesh is the beast system within Babylon.  The flesh, that beast that hates the Spirit.  When we give our right hand, that is to say all that we do in subjection to be in servitude to the enemy, we are in fact giving over to the government of man, which is the body of the Beast, just like we are the body of Christ.  This government as we know are controlled by principalities and powers.  The patent number being 666 is in essence claiming ownership over all who has this VC.  Their lives belong to the system, that is to say, the Beast System.  We were given the Kingdom mandate to rule and reign on this earth, and so when we comply we are in fact laying down our Kingdom mandate in order to subject ourselves to the Beast.  Whether that is our intention or not.  We lay our crowns down not before the King of kings, but to the Beast and his kingdom of darkness. 

Further, the word clearly says that cursed is he who trusts in man.  When we take this VC or those we know, they are in fact, whether in fear or ignorance, choosing to trust in the government, believing that their intentions are right and good.  Even though the whole world is aware that not enough research time was given for the developing of these VC’s, and still people are willing to take the chance.  Why? Nobody is exempt from the consequences of this even if they agree to this out of ignorance or feel that it is just fear mongering.  If they have not done their research, they will not be pardoned on the basis of “we did not know”.  They willingly chose to trust man and not God.  They in fact laid their life down for the Beast.  This falls into the issue at hand which is costly grace. 

The enemy works on the basis of covenant just as our Father does.  They know that innocent blood carries with it the greatest power and this possibly could have been the reason for their outright vengeance on our Lord and Savior on the cross with such venom.  And so whenever sacrifices are made on satanic high days, the purer and more innocent is chosen for this very purpose.  This is not just witchcraft, but satanic covenant.  Innocent blood must be shed.  Here we have in our lifetime the greatest sacrifice made ever, apart from the cross.  The enemy works also on the basis of a life for a life, just as Jesus gave His life for our life.  Many are presently making covenant with the Beast, by allowing the very name written within our DNA, our book of life, to be removed, because life is within the blood.

I just recently read on Fresh Oil Released ministry’s post about the Name of the Lord in our DNA.  She says there are sulphide bonds holding together the two strands of DNA and they occur after the 10^th pair of nucleotides, again after the 5^th pair of nucleotides, then 6 pairs later and then again 5 pairs later.  The 10^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet is yod.  The 5^th letter is hey, the 6^th letter is vav.  YOD, HEY, VAV, HEY spells “Yahweh”.  We are made in His image. 

The life within the blood is not just a nice statement of how no one can live without blood, but that very life, is the life we live from.  The only one that breathed it into us at conception.  This is the sacrifice of the innocent made presently by covenant.  The VC is covenant.  The enemy knows this and his aim is not just to defile mankind by mixing species as in the days of Noah, but by removing the name of God even from our blood, and thus thereby becoming the “life” of that blood, subject to him.  We have to remember that we are in a spiritual war between two Kingdoms and not lose sight of this by focusing on the tree and then missing the forest, so to speak.  Those who chose to take the mark are eternally damned.  You may disagree with me, but having fulfilled the eight requirements and just waiting for the proverbial bomb to blast, I cannot see what we are waiting for more? The trigger may only be switched on in years to come, but safe to say we are to take note that he is already standing where he ought not to be, which is in the temple of God.  5G however, is in the air.   It is here and only a matter of time.  However, having said all this, the issue is not the mark of the Beast, but costly grace.  There is a good chance that many will only hold onto what they want to and could possibly miss the whole premise of this devotional, which is, are we sufficiently prepared in our life for what is coming?  Have we allowed His gift of grace to prepare us to be His disciples?  Are we still fearing man and what man could say, especially if we should contradict their views on the VC?  Especially our family and friends? Is it more important for us to spare their feelings and not to offend, than to possibly save their lives?  It is more important to respect their views?  This is the very reason why there will be division within the homes at first.  For there must first come this division as foretold by Jesus, because here the goats from the sheep will be separated, those who profess like Peter, but unable to see it through.

Are you upholding to this cheap grace without considering the cost in the time we are in?  Are you denying this grace to make you His disciple?   Or, are you upholding to costly grace, but in fact have cheapened it, not by your confession, but your unwillingness to die to the smallest of things in your daily life?  We are quick to point a finger at cheap grace, but are you living up to the confession of your costly grace?  Either one will cost us. 

That which is upon us requires immense grace not only to not fall into this trap ourselves, but also to warn those we love with everything we have.  Eternity is at stake here and we just cannot be silent and think that we as Christians need to respect other’s opinions when so much is at stake.  We are to hear from our Father how to address this very serious issue for ourselves personally and also to those we come into contact with.  Because the antichrist spirit is already so rife, we should expect vehement opposition and persecution.  The question is, are we ready for it?  Because cheap grace will not suffice.  If we have been too busy to try and evade hell and making light of it, and do not take into consideration the true cost, then we are outside of the faith.  The good news is not just salvation by grace through faith, but that by that grace, which is very costly, He who is greater than he that is in the world, has already overcome him. We are no longer citizens of this world now, meaning not that we cannot wait to go to heaven, but are already as citizens of heaven establishing His Kingdom now.  It is and will remain a moral conflict and on the same basis that our King of kings destroyed the enemy, will be the same basis by which we obtain this costly grace to overcome…the cross.  For there is no greater love than he who lays his life down for his friends.  No greater force than love, and that love comes only by the cross. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer ends this particular chapter with the following words:

“Happy is the one who knows that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace and that grace simply means discipleship.”