220 Any Identification? Part Two

 

Extracts from Identification by Creflo Dollar

 

Most of carry a Driving Licence, Travel Pass, or Passport to produce when we are asked for identification, and this method or form of identity is generally accepted world-wide.   It is my purpose today to examine the subject of the Christian Identity,

an issue on which I have made but brief comment in recent messages. In fact I am writing Three Sermons on this subject which I have entitled ANY IDENTIFICATION?   Today’s message is the Second of those three.   So be sure to write me for your printed copy of all 3 sermons, absolutely free.

 

Today I want to take a further step into this radical teaching which will transform your life, if you can renew your mind set to thinking as Jesus did. Paul says: “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” Phil 2:5

 

I will recap a little on what I said in the first sermon, in that without the revelation from the Word of God there can be no perception of the Spirit.   We are tri-partite beings, body, soul and spirit, but God can only deal with us in the spirit. As long as we are controlled and motivated by our five senses, we will remain oblivious to the work of the Spirit in us. God cannot relate to us through our flesh.   Already, some of you are having difficulty with that statement for you have been brought up to think otherwise, and many believe that God is speaking through illness, or through pain, or through suffering and hardship and so on, but in this way of reasoning we make a great mistake

and we walk in error and in confusion.

 

Let me teach you that God can only speak to you through His word, and this is why the Holy Spirit came to make that word a revelation, – to reveal that word!

Our circumstances, our pains or our struggles may prompt or force us to seek God, ( in fact they often do) but He does not speak through those crisis, yet he may speak in those times of testing to underline or emphasise his word, to reinforce it in your mind.

 

God speaks only though His word. and then only through the Spirit.   The word may be received in the intellect, in the mind, but its revelation is only perceived and understood in the Spirit.

Without being a Christian at all, one may memorize the Bible from cover to cover, but that word will never become revelation it can never become “life” without the spirit.

The Bible says in 1 Cor 6:17 that those who are Joined to the Lord are one Spirit with him. He is talking to you in the Spirit and you are one with the anointed one, one with Christ.

 

Turn with me now if you will to the book of Ephesians and to chapter 1:   This letter of Paul is crucial to our understanding

of our identity. So lets read from Eph. 1 at verse 1 …

(1) Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

(2) Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

(3) Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, (listen now) who hath (already – past tense) blessed us with

all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ”:

Now he is clearly not talking about our body or soul, he is talking about our spirit man and about our spiritual blessings.

And he is telling us that this is already a done deal. God is not thinking about blessing us, he is not planning to bless us, he is not hoping to bless us, he has already blessed us says Paul. Our Spirit man has already been blessed with (not a few) heavenly blessings, NO, but with ALL spiritual blessings in Christ. (because we are in Christ)   We have already received every blessing, every empowerment, every thing we will ever need for the journey, every thing we need for life and godliness has already been set aside, with our name on it!   Yet in our ignorance of this glorious truth, we are trying to get God to bless us, praying and pleading for blessings, when God says,

“I have already blessed you with ALL” that you’ll ever need! God has given us ALL – he has, already.   I didn’t write this

I’m only reading it, see for yourself. So where was the

deposit made? … In your Spirit!

Now we need to ask the question, – Can we access that?

 

Absolutely, sure you can!   Your faith will release the good that is on the inside of you, through your acknowledgement of those good things. You start “confessing” admitting the existence of the blessing in you, the reality in your life, and your faith will connect with all the good that has been put into you, and through your acknowledging of it, – it will manifest, show up in your circumstances.   Your confessing it, is not about receiving it, it is about your acknowledgement that you have already received it.

By your testimony, (your words of confidence in what is yours) you begin releasing those blessings into your physical body, into your material circumstances, and into your life and living.

This is why we need to “renew the mind” and “let this mind which was in Christ Jesus be in us” because religion will not

allow you to think like this, – because religion focuses on works and not on grace. All of these blessings, these gifts are grace gifts, undeserved, unmerited and unlikely ours, except by faith.

 

Let me share with you a dream which God gave me a while ago.   I had been praying about provision for the future of this ministry, for The Sanctuary is not always just going to be a “radio church” very soon, it is going to be a “real church”

a living and vibrant Christian community here in Banbridge,

a community with no labels but Christian.

 

I’m asking God about provision in these times of economic downturn & God gave me a dream in which I was cleaning my teeth in the bathroom, and the water in the tap suddenly stopped running. In need of water on my tooth brush, I went outside to investigate if the water had been turned off at the source. In stead of going out into the street, I went out into a field, in which were standing two high water taps. Both of them about 10 feet high, and way beyond my reach of turning them off or on. There was one on the right which was already connected to several small tubes supplying several needs, and I was unwilling to unhook those supplies. The other however on the left hand side, was running freely, and the water had begun to flood the field around it, and was already running into a ditch filling the ditch.   That’s when I awoke.   In that moment God said to me, you come to me wanting a toothbrush full of water, but I have a source for you that is way beyond anything you can ever ask of me, for “the river of God is full of water”. Psa.65:9

This dream was reinforcing his written word, enabling or helping me to understand the great potential that is Gods.

The natural mind would think it crazy to be even considering building a Church in such times of economic hardship, but God

and His supply is not effected by this worlds economy. The Babylonian system on which all of our global finance is based, is about to fall, and the fall of it will have tragic consequences for all, but Gods river will never run dry.   Identify with God today, and you can never fail or fall short. Do not be conformed to this world, nor to religion, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind in the Word of God, receive its revelation into your Spirit, and then stand on it, act on it, speak up for it by faith – and it will begin to live.

You do not have to be defeated not another day of your life, all you have to do is to know who you are, and how to access what is yours (already yours) in Christ. God has put my supply in place long before I will ever need to draw on it. Praise God.

 

I have the Spirit of “might” in me, I do not have to suffer defeat any longer for God has deposited too much in me, for me to fear! I don’t care what my body feels, I don’t care what is going on in the natural, or what I am seeing right now in my circumstances, all these things are only temporary.   Everything you see is temporary.   Your debts are temporary, your problems are temporary, your headaches are temporary, your shortages are temporary, whatever the doctor saw in your body is temporary, because YOU as a believer, are connected to the eternal, and you know how to bring the eternal into the natural for the eternal which gave birth to the natural can change this natural. Hallelujah.

 

Without you having any right to it, without your earning it, because it is the Fathers good pleasure to give you the Kingdom and everything in it, it’s yours, but if you don’t know it, you cannot benefit from it.     If one of my Ministry Partners were to transfer and deposit £1000 to my bank account tomorrow, if I

don’t know it’s there for me, I cannot withdraw from it, I cannot appreciate it and begin to appropriate it for my ministry needs. God says in Hosea 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge:”   Many of our problems stem from what we don’t know, not what we know. In the same way many of our pains come not from what was done for us, but from what was not done for us.   Remember there are sins of omission as well as

sins of commission.

 

God has already given us ALL things. Everything you will ever need has already been deposited in your Spirit, you need to know it, and you must learn how to draw from it.   And you cannot draw from the spirit with the flesh. Only with your Faith can you connect to all that grace offers, to all that you didn’t work for or earn, for by grace are you saved through faith.   And just as you are not saved without faith, you are not going to be blessed without faith.   Faith makes the connection. Faith calls those things that are not, as though they were.   Heb 11:1

There is no natural means by which you can make contact with the things that have been deposited in your spirit, the contact, the connection is by faith, and faith alone.

 

Lets go back to Ephesians 1 and to verse 4 where we read …

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love”

What part of you is Holy before him? Not your body, and not your soul, but your Spirit is as holy as it can possibly be, right now, your Spirit is as righteous as it can possibly be, there is no progress that needs to be done on the spirit, your spirit is mature and as perfect, exactly as Jesus’ both for time and for eternity;

and God says, it has been so planned since before the foundation of the world. There is no blame in your spirit, no debt in your spirit, Jesus has cleared the sin debt. You would not want to get into, or be in the presence of God if you owed him something, Jesus blood has cleared that all up.

 

Now look at verse 5 ….

“Having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will”

He planned it before your time, to make you his child – to adopt you as his child, and sometimes you won’t even admit to those that work around you, that you are even part of Gods family,

yet he pre-planned ahead of time your identification.

and Verse 6 says …

“To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved”

What part of you has been made accepted in the beloved?

You don’t want to go around thinking that because your body does not perform as it should, or does not look as good as it once did, or does not measure up to what others expect of it, nor do you measure your soul performance and considering its failing imagine that in no way could you be accepted in the beloved?

It is your Spirit that is accepted … it is your spirit that connects you with God.

Of course the Devil who wants to rob you of your identity will get you measuring yourself by the standards of others, get you to identify with all those little things that could condemn. Yet

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit”

as Paul says in Romans 8:1.

Understand that God will not, cannot, commune with your

body, nor will he commune with an unregenerate soul, he can only legally commune with you through your spirit.

Only angels have the ability to interact with the physical and the spiritual at one and the same time. Heb. 13:2

Then verse 7 adds: …

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace”

This is how rich his grace is, he has redeemed us from sin, sickness, death, poverty, pain, sorrow, but the only part of you completely “Redeemed” right now, is your Spirit.

All of you, Spirit Soul and Body has been purchased, yet only your Spirit has been completely redeemed. Now you can benefit from that by your faith and the renewing of your mind, drawing on the redemption that is in your spirit, and it will begin to affect you in the natural realm. Praise God. Through the Blood of Jesus and through the richness of his grace you have been forgiven of all your sins, past present and future.   When He paid that one time, that one sacrifice on the Cross, that took care of your sin.   But there is a sin of “unbelief” and the Christian is often being judged every day for their unbelief, for it is as if God is saying -“I showed you the way out, but you rejected it”?

Unbelief, the lack of confidence in God, the failure to truly identify with Jesus – will bring us into all kinds of pains and problems that God never wanted in our lives.

 

Lets read on now from verse 8 …

(8) Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

(9) Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: (here’s the reason)

(v10) That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one   all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, (The angels?) and which are on earth; (The Righteous or Godly?) even in him: (emp-dhg)

I will have more to say about this verse in part 3 of this series.   lets read on: at verse 11

(11) In whom also (in Jesus) we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of him who works out all things after the counsel of his own will: (that’s all the advise or counsel that God takes, His own)

(12) That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ”.

 

Here we see that Gods purpose in trying to get us to understand our identity, is so that He might gather us all together at the “fullness of times” all in heaven and all on earth, all together, all one in the adoration of Christ Jesus, all saved, all sanctified and all spiritually prepared for the journey through time and into eternity – all living and walking in the Glory!   God wants to bring back the “garden world” like the Eden he made at the first, and I can’t wait for it, I am excited every day about its prospect and promise.

While Jesus was here amongst us, he always walked in the “glory” he always walked in the shadow of His heavenly father and could say, “he who has seen me has seen the father”. It is in this identity that the Father wants you and I to walk also. In other words, we should be able to say, “he who sees me, can see Jesus”.   Do folks see Jesus in You, do they see him in me?

When Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil, Satan’s first line of attack was to his identity. “if thou be the son of God, command that these stones

be made bread”   Matthew 4:3   The Devil knew fine well who

Jesus was, the temptation was not about hunger or food, but about identity, and every temptation you and I will ever face will challenge our identity, this is why it is vital, that we get it right, that we know who we are in Christ.   Jesus did not have to perform to prove who he was, identity is not about performance, it is about relationship.   God is more concerned about who we are, than about what we do. We do not want to do better and stronger, we want to be better and stronger;

The doing will flow from the being!

So I ask again, can the world see Jesus in You and in Me?

 

NOW THIS FINAL WORD

 

When Jesus Christ was caught up and sat down to secure our place POSITIONALLY

The Holy Spirit got up and came down, to secure our place

CONDITIONALLY

If there are times when you feel your condition does not fully align with your position, then ask the Holy spirit to help you

to fix your identity.

But remember that God cannot work on your condition, unless you maintain your position.

 

God Bless You. AMEN