OUR JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY

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The moment we believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior and confess Him as such, we are saved, that is, we are Born Again, our spirit is made alive unto God. The Holy Spirit is the one who recreates our spirits and indwells us, essentially making us one in spirit with Himself. No wonder the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthian believers and to us today, said anyone who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17)

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. – 2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV

The moment we are in Christ, our spirits are made New Creations but our souls and bodies remain the same, they don’t change. Our newly recreated spirits, indwelt by the Holy Spirit are perfect in every way, our souls and bodies on the other hand aren't.  That’s the reason why we need to get our minds renewed by the Word of God.  As our minds are renewed, we get to know our true identities in Christ and what God has made available to us through Him. The Holy Spirit is the one who guides us into all truth as He progressively reveals Christ to us and what He has already done for us.

¹² What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. – 1 Corinthians 2:12 NIV

Life now becomes one incredible journey of discovering who we are in Christ and what we have in Him and through Him. Life can now be likened to unwrapping the wonderful gifts and treasures that God has placed within us and enjoying each one of them as we do. As we spend time in the Word of God, in prayer, in fellowship with our Loving Heavenly Father and with other like minded believers, we are both unwrapping and enjoying God’s gifts to us and our minds are being renewed in the process.  As our minds are being renewed, we will be able to discern the will of God for our lives and the situations we face clearly, for the Word of God urges us to do so.

² And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. – Romans 12:2 NKJV

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As we continue to grow and mature in our knowledge of Him, grace and peace will be multiplied to us and we will be walking in His divine provision, having everything we need to live a godly life, 2 Peter 1:2 -4 comes to mind. As we continue in His Word, we will not only be Jesus’ disciples but we will also know the truth (He is the truth) and that truth will set us free from all the lies the enemy, the world, the flesh and religion has been whispering to us.

Beloved, let us continue to discover what God has both made and provided for us in Christ, and by His grace live up to our full potential in Christ today. Blessings!      

SAVED BY GRACE, WE SERVE BY GRACE!

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The grace of God not only makes it possible for us to be saved and reconciled to God, but it also makes it possible for us to grow in our relationship with the Lord and in all areas of our lives. Now that we are under this awesome grace of God, we are free from the agony of trying to earn God’s approval by keeping the Old Testament Law of Moses.

The reason Jesus had to shed His blood was so that our sins would be forgiven and remitted, for the Scriptures declare:

²² [In fact] under the Law almost everything is purified by means of blood, and without the shedding of blood there is neither release from sin and its guilt nor the remission of the due and merited punishment for sins. – Hebrews 9:22 AMP

If Jesus hadn't been crucified we wouldn't have been freed from the curse of the Law, so the cross made it possible for us to be redeemed from the curse that came with the OT Law of Moses. The Apostle Paul, quoting from the Old Testament Scriptures made this inspired statement:

¹³ Christ purchased our freedom [redeeming us] from the curse (doom) of the Law [and its condemnation] by [Himself] becoming a curse for us, for it is written [in the Scriptures], Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (is crucified); - Galatians 3:13 AMP

Today by the grace of God we have been redeemed from every curse. We are God’s children, perfectly and eternally loved. Now, what next, someone might be wondering, do we just sit around and wait to die and go to heaven?! Well, for starters, we are already seated with Christ in heavenly places in the spirit, so in a sense, we are there already! (Ephesians 2:6)

The grace of God doesn't turn us into spiritual slouches or Christian couch potatoes, far from it!  The grace of God empowers us to effectively fulfill our destinies in God. The grace of God teaches us how to live and conduct ourselves as beloved children of the Most High. Titus 2:11-12 comes to mind.

As we grow in God’s grace, we will be more productive and more effective in reaching out and blessing others with the love of God that has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We will be ministering out of pure love for others and not out of a fear of punishment or an unhealthy sense of duty. The grace of God enabled the Apostle Paul to accomplish much more than all the other Apostles, he traveled teaching, ministering and preaching, he wrote so many epistles while going through really tough times, he still had time to make tents for a living, talk about being productive… This is what he said of himself, he wasn't bragging but he was simply stating what the grace of God had enabled him to do.

¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than

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they all — yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. – 1 Corinthians 15:10 KJ21  

May we follow Paul’s example by not letting the grace of God in our lives be in vain, let us step out boldly knowing that His grace will empower us to do what He has placed in our hearts to do for His glory.

Whatever God has placed in your heart, His grace will enable you to accomplish it. Trust Him and step out in faith! His grace is sufficient!

MIRROR, MIRROR…

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22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. - James 1: 22-24 NIV

A mirror does not create images on its own, but rather reflects whatever is projected onto it. If I were to stand in front of a mirror I would see MY reflection in that mirror, that’s pretty straight forward, isn't it?!

Now, if I want to see myself the way I really am in Christ, I must look into the Word of God, for it is our mirror. The Word of God reflects back to us who we are in Christ and once we know who we are we will be able to conduct ourselves accordingly. Let us endeavor to see ourselves the way we truly are in God’s sight through His Word which is our perfect mirror.

The enemy doesn't want us to see ourselves the way we truly are in Christ for He knows if we do, he will be powerless to stop us from fulfilling our destinies in God. He will attempt to get us to look at our performance, our surroundings, our failures and everything else but the Word of God, but we are not ignorant of his devices.    

As you look into this "Mirror" some of the things you will see about yourself in Christ are these: - You are a new creation in Christ, you are the Lord's

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beloved, you are the righteousness of God, you are more than a conqueror, you can do all things through Christ, your needs are abundantly supplied by God, you are a Child of God, He is your Abba Father, you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, and a whole lot more. 

May the Holy Spirit continue to remind us of who we are in Christ as we keep on looking into this blessed Mirror everyday!

RECONCILIATION: Our Ministry

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After Adam and Eve sinned and disobeyed God, they were estranged from Him and so was the entire human race after them, but God so loved us and sent Jesus His Only Begotten Son who lived a perfect sinless life, was crucified, died on the cross and rose again from the dead to redeem us and reconcile us to God. 

Through Christ and through faith in Him alone, we are restored into perfect fellowship with the Father. He was made sin so that we might become the righteousness of God when we believe in Him, we have passed from death to life, we are no longer under condemnation, through Christ we are accepted by God without any reservations. Now that is Good News.

Today everyone who believes in Jesus as their Lord and Savior has been given this one ministry, the ministry of reconciliation. God has entrusted to us the opportunity, responsibility and privilege of being His vessels through which others may be reconciled to Him. 

Let us spread this Good News – God isn't mad at anybody today, He wants everyone to know how much He loves them and wants the best for them. The Father wants everyone to respond to His call, to respond to His invitation, to respond to the salvation He has already provided through Jesus. 

The Good Book puts it this way:

¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^[c] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  – 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 NRSV

Wherever we find ourselves today, let us be aware of this fact: it could very well be that the Father has strategically placed us there as part of His plan to reach out in love to those around us and who knows... we probably might be their only chance of hearing the Good News of God’s love and grace that is through Christ. Let's not forget we are Christ's ambassadors...what an awesome privilege!

God has not called us to condemn or attack people, we have not been called to rail against the sins of our fellow men and women, no, no, no…we are to entreat people to be reconciled to God. We have been called to reveal the

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heart of God to others, how much He loves each one of us and how much wants to give us His life; we have been called to share God's love with others and to let them know God loves them and that He has made a way for them to be restored to Him as sons and daughters.  

Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, the entire human race (John 1:29), we now have the privilege and the responsibility of letting the whole world know that because of Jesus and what He did, sin that has separated man from God has been dealt with once and for all; God isn't mad at anyone anymore instead He is calling everyone to come to Him through faith in Jesus.

We are Christ's ambassadors, let's represent Him confidently today knowing that all of Heaven's resources are at our disposal as we share the Good News of God's love with others. Blessings!

  

THE LAW vs CHRIST’S NEW COMMANDMENT

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³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” – Matthew 22: 37-40 NIV

Jesus reduced the entire Law of Moses and all the instructions of the Old Testament prophets down to two basic things – Loving God with everything we are and have and loving our fellow human beings just as much as we love ourselves. Now the Law had blessings and curses attached to it and since no one could keep it perfectly, everyone was basically brought under the curse of the Law.

But our Heavenly Father, who loves us with an everlasting love, had a better plan; He sent His Son – Jesus who came, lived a sinless life, perfectly fulfilled the entire Law and gave Himself for us; He died on the Cross to redeem us from the curse of the Law and rose again on the third day to complete our redemption.

¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” – Galatians 3:13 NIV

When we believe in Jesus we are not only Born Again and forgiven of all our sin, but we are also redeemed from the curse of the Law and reconciled to God. We are now no longer bound by the Old Testament Law, but that doesn't mean we are lawless, far from it. We now have the Spirit of God in us, He writes Christ’s Law in our hearts and empowers us by His grace to walk in it.

The grace of God empowers to follow Christ’s New Commandment, which is of a much higher standard than the Old Testament law.

According to the OT Law, we are to love God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind but no human being, apart from Jesus that is, has ever been able to perfectly fulfill it. God is Love and through Christ He demonstrates to us what love actually looks like. The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5) and that's how He enables us to love others and to reciprocate His love.

¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. – 1 John 4:19 NIV

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While the OT Law also required us to love our neighbors as ourselves, the New commandment we have from Christ goes even further.

³⁴ “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. – John 13:34 NIV

We are to love one another just as He loved us for the Love of God has already been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. His love is in us, may His grace empower us to share it with those we interact with today and everyday.  

WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU HAVE

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We know that when we are in Christ we are New creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), we know that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us by His Spirit. Now let's stop and think about that for a minute, God lives IN me; my spirit is joined to HIS. I am not alone anymore, the Creator of all things is in me and with me and He is my Father and He loves me immensely.

¹⁷ However, the person who unites himself with the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

¹⁹ Don’t you know that your body is a temple that belongs to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit, whom you received from God, lives in you. You don’t belong to yourselves. ²⁰ You were bought for a price. So bring glory to God in the way you use your body. – 1 Corinthians 6:17, 19-20 GW

I'm not your own, I'm God’s temple, I belong to Him – Child of God, let this truth be forever settled in our hearts and as we do, anxiety, worry and fear will lose their grip on us. Once we are conscious of the fact that it is no longer us who live but it is Christ who is living through us (Galatians 2:20), we can rest in Him and what He has already done.

May the Holy Spirit continually remind us that we are His temple and you know what? He knows how to take care of His temple better than we do, He holds the future, He is there already. If we have trusted Him with our spirits and our souls, why not go ahead and trust Him with our bodies as well, or have we forgotten that our bodies are His temple? God has promised to meet all our needs; He’s also given us all things that pertain to life and godliness.

To effectively fulfill our destinies, we will first have to come to terms with who  we are and what we have. The Apostle Paul prayed that the Ephesian Christians will be given to see what they already had in Christ, He didn't pray that God would give them some special impartation or double portion anointing or anything like that, he simply prayed that they would get a revelation of what they already had in Christ.

¹⁸ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, ¹⁹ and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength ²⁰ he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.  – Ephesians 1:18-21 NIV

Once we know what we have in Christ and actually believe it, we'll be well on your way to fruitful and victorious living, not a moment sooner. We have the very same omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, eternal Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of us; let's get a glimpse of how rich and glorious all of God’s promises to us are and see the hope of His calling for us today. In Christ we are complete and unstoppable!

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Let's not entertain the lies of the devil designed to heap feelings of insecurity and unworthiness on us, we are not only complete in Christ but we are also accepted in the Beloved. Because of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice of Himself, since I'm in Christ, God has a very good opinion of me, He calls me Righteous, Holy, Forgiven, Redeemed, His beloved, His temple and the list goes on… 

In Christ we lack nothing, opinions contrary to God’s Word should not sway us!   

ETERNAL LIFE: YOURS RIGHT NOW

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God wants everyone to have and to experience Eternal Life beginning right now in this life, not to wait to experience it in the afterlife. Sin separated man from God, but God made a way for the entire human race to be reconciled to Him by giving us His only begotten Son, Jesus, who was born of a virgin, lived a sinless, perfect life and gave His life for us.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. – John 3:16 NRSV

How do you know if you have this Eternal Life in you? Again the Word of God makes it plain:

¹³ I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. – 1 John 5:13 NIV

There you have it, if you believe in the Name of Jesus, then you have Eternal Life. We can’t earn Eternal Life, we receive it by faith. It is by grace that we've been saved, through faith.

What exactly is this Eternal Life, someone might be wondering, isn't it just being alive forever with God in heaven? Yes, Eternal Life includes, but it’s not limited to, being alive and well forever after this life is over. Again, let’s see how the Good Book defines Eternal Life, this is Jesus Himself praying:

³ And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. – John 17:3 NRSV      

Being intimately acquainted with the Father and the Son is the very essence of Eternal Life. Now, how can we mere mortals even begin to know the Almighty? Worry not beloved, He’s given us His Spirit; it is the Holy Spirit who reveals Christ to us, He takes what belongs to Jesus and shows it to us. The Holy Spirit also searches and reveals the deep things of the Father to us. God loves us and desires intimacy with us and has given us the gift of Eternal Life for that purpose.

The Father has given us His Spirit so that through Him (the Holy Spirit) we may be able to know not only what He has freely given us, but also that we may know Him. The gift of Eternal life enables us to enjoy our lives right now regardless of our circumstances; every area of our lives is positively impacted for the glory of God. The abundant life that Jesus spoke of in John 10:10 is but a part of this awesome gift of Eternal Life.

This gift of Eternal Life is available to anyone who decides to believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Everyone who does not believe in Jesus does not have Eternal Life and while they might be alive and well on planet earth, they are spiritually dead.The opposite of eternal life is spiritual death, eternal separation from God, an awful, terrible, torturous form of existence that God never intended nor prepared for mankind, it is the result and ultimate consequence of sin. 

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23 NIV

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When we believe in Jesus and what He did to reconcile us back to the Father, we receive this gift of Eternal Life and are translated from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son, the Kingdom of Light. The Word says:

³⁶ He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” – John 3:36 NKJV

The gift of Eternal Life is available to every single person, if you are in Christ, it’s in you, go ahead impact the lives of those around you with it today.