What is the Power of the Gospel -1

When I write or speak suggestions of what to do; I am first of all telling myself. Secondly I am responding to the calling on me and thirdly it is selfish, as every time I speak out about Jesus and His word, my faith and spiritual life grows within me. I love this and am addicted to His warmth, love and energy. I think this has been catching on at our face book community too.

The overall guiding scripture the Lord has given me is where Jesus was preparing his disciples for the terrible and frightening events that were to befall them. He told them "and I, if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me" in John 12:32 and following we are told that he was describing to them how He would die.

Moses a few thousand years earlier, as recorded in Numbers chapt 8, was told to lift up a snake onto a stick before all the people so that they could be healed from being bitten by a serpent that the Lord had sent among them for speaking against the Lord. This is the origin of the medical symbol still used today, a cross with a snake entwined around it. We now know the snake on the stick was the sin of the people, as was Jesus on the cross. Jesus told us this in John 3 verse 14 "and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." Jesus became a snake on the cross. Jesus was made into sin for us. He switched places with us. He became our sin. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." 2Co 5:21

So what does this mean? We are God's righteousness. And Jesus is our sin. Many know that Jesus took our sin but forget who we are in Christ. We are God's righteousness.

More evidence is in Gal 3:13 "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:"

These truths are very powerful. Earth shakingly powerful. Because it means we are God's righteousness and therefore have the authority of that righteousness. It is powerful if we believe God's word as given to us through the Holy Bible. This belief in the divinity and sovereignty of the Holy scriptures must be a gift. I've always had it since I can remember. My Mother gave it to me, bless her beautiful soul but the catholic religion denied me knowledge of what is in the Bible until I began searching for myself in my teens. These words are seeds. A seed has been sewn in your heart. Some are probably disbelieving already, but those who still want that truth, that power, that huge indescribable gift of who we are in Christ, and what we have and what we can do in and through His Name need to hold onto that truth.

I admit many times I have had these seeds sewn into my heart but always slowly they die and the truth and knowledge fades away and I meander along. But God saved me from death through these words, spiritual, physical, emotional, financial, death. I was so down I felt like walking death. I was so down and defeated by an enemy that I entered hell myself. I went to despicable places and dreamed up despicable evil to rid and avenge myself of the cruel thefts and demonic words spoken against me. I went into an abyss of such horrific evil that when I came out I realised I had won a huge spiritual victory because I never acted out. The enemy could not claim me. I came out the stronger and better for the experience. In my coming out I had to cling onto God's word every day. I talked and walked with Him. I memorised these scriptures and wiled the days away on long walks and drives to new places where I could walk and talk and listen to Jesus.

So I looked for a church, visited some, attended others. I finally settled on a new church which was a satellite of a much larger church, so it appeared small but was actually controlled by a much larger labyrinthine network of leadership. Initially I heard more scriptures than I'd ever heard in any church before. They actually quoted from the gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, something I'd found to be extremely rare. Without noticing; this type of service disappeared. It became what I call psycho babble, glitsy one liners, studies from books but very little real liberating gospel of salvation of who we are and what we have in Jesus Christ Our Lord and Saviour and God Almighty who wants us to have His Name and live in victory, joy, peace, love and unity and fellowship with one another in the communion of Jesus and the Holy Spirit sharing together, eating together, praying together, crying together and bearing one anothers burdens so fulfilling the law of Christ.

So the faith of the power of the truth of who we are and what we have in Christ died and faded away. One day the Spirit was on me to pray for the sick but I was too scared to stick my neck out and be an upstart doing something that only "the leaders" were asked to do. The power was on me thick and heavy and I got hot and sweaty and felt very strongly that anyone I prayed for right then would have received the gift. It was at a time when I felt weak and pathetic and had to pray just to get the courage and energy to appear in church.

Back to John 12:32 where Jesus said "if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me": this scripture has been a guiding light for me for many years. This principle was taught to me a long time ago. I always knew it's truth and I've seen how the churches I've been to have failed to do this and failed to grow as a result and failed to reach our local city. To be fair I have learned some things from the churches I've attended and thank the Lord for some of the lessons the pastors and people taught me but overall Jesus is not lifted up.

The Lord reminded me how much the Bible is about Him. He had me look up how many verses mention His first name, over 160 in the N.T. Then He had me look up how many mention His second name, Christ, over 380 in the N.T. That's over 540 mentions by name alone. I have not checked how many more verses are about HIm. Some time ago He showed me how we should teach and preach. There are lots of examples. Paul's, Peter's and Stephen's preaching style has been recorded for us. Seemed like it worked for them, Peter's speeches that brought 3,000 then 5,000 in one day to belief and salvation are recorded for us.

There are a minimum of 16 records of actual speeches in the book of Acts. Every single one is entirely about Jesus, what He did, where He came from and what we have in Him which is salvation. The longer speeches all begin with historical overviews of the history of the Israelites from Abraham to Moses and the escape from Egypt down through King David to Jesus who they crucified and God raised again and made into Lord and Christ and that they needed to repent and be baptised to receive the promise, the promise of the Holy Ghost and the promise of Abraham.

These words were enough for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit and sell everything and live together, worshipping the Lord together every day winning a huge part of Jerusalem over into the Kingdom of Christ. Then Paul was chosen to take the gospel to us, the gentiles and to do so God revealed to him more revelation knowledge of just what we have and who we are in Christ recorded in Galatians, Ephesians, Phillipians and Colossians and parts of the letters to the Corinthians.

It is all about Jesus.

When you get it you will start to be free. Christ in you the hope of glory! No one can hang anything on you when you start to get inside deep down in your spirit who you are in Jesus. In the flesh my life is a total disaster. I can't say look how obedient I was, look I have lots of friends and grand children and a happy loved wife and obedient children. I have the opposite. I am an enigma. I have been twice divorced, stood in front of a judge once who said "do you know I can send you to prison for this?" reply "No sir" response "where is your lawyer?" reply "he told me he didn't need to come and I would most likely receive a fine", judges response "well I would sue your lawyer if I were you!" and proceeded to make me a prisoner in the community on an I.C.O. which is an Intensive Corrections Order; fifty hours community work to be done in a month. Funny thing was some of the acquaintances I'd seen here and there in the drinking holes I attended we met up on community service, so I was accepted and given the goss which mostly was horrible such as the account of a young man who knew my son and had died in the street from a king hit outside one of the regular drink dives I frequented.

I saw first hand how easily genuinely decent young guys get into trouble. It's a horrible trap that binds and hounds them. Minor offences earn them good behaviour bonds and black marks for one, two or three years during which time they can do no wrong. So a young guy 17 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 etc who maybe has a monster for a Dad, a home that is broken, friends who are users, bosses who are mean, little or no money, little or no work, trying to be a normal decent person has to remain squeaky clean for what seems like an eternity to them. One mistake and hay presto they have a record, nothing serious but it's there. So this time they get a heavier punishment and more time on their bond. The only way out is to stay out of trouble. Easy for me in my forties. Oh so hard for them in their twenties with all the emotional upheavals facing a harsh world that has little help. So genuinely reasonable young men find themselves fighting a very hard uphill battle.

Then I arrive in church. Meet up with people. Attitudes of harshness toward those stuck in our remand centres. My son spent a day in there two days before his death. Yeah, what sort of christianity do we have these days? Admittedly it's a sick sorry world and there are genuine evil doers out there, but one thing I have learned and that is that the real evil is smart enough to escape detection, oh yes mark my words, I have seen and experienced it first hand and it applies from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high!

So in Jesus I am free from all of that. Wether I did this or that or whatever dumb things I did to try and kill the pain from the loss of my only dear son 119 days after the death of my only brother. Sometimes stuff happens to people! I think Jesus called it the storm. I saw on one person's site, "never judge anyone you haven't walked in their shoes." Never judge anyone, be they a loser or a church goer, be they whatever.

This is the power of the gospel and it flies in the face of most of what I experienced in church. I would that the truth of the gospel would sink into their hearts, yours and mine, because it is the most liberating powerful thing. I had to leave because the power of the truth in the gospel was being devoured, destroyed and swallowed up.

My Lord Jesus told me what to do. He is showing me the way. He told me to point the way to Him. I know how to find Him. I know who He is. He is my friend. He talks to me. I can ask Him anything. I asked Him please lead me to good right information* (see note below). I told Him I am fed up with all the erroneous teaching out there. I came into Derek Prince teaching on blessing and cursing, it is a load of rubbish. I studied Kenneth Copeland and later Benny Hinn. Our churches then gave us little spiritual food so people like me got taken in by these teachers of false faith parading around in suits and lear jets. They did not teach me the gospel. ( I asked the Lord why did He let me get into so many false teachings so many times and He told me so you could learn where it's not at.)

The gospel is hard to find!!!! Yes it is, shock, horror. Where is it? What is it? Who is teaching it? When the power of the truth in the scriptures of the gospel hit you and the Holy Spirit takes over,obedience to those same scriptures is easy. But we need the words of Jesus and the Word of God for our faith to grow and live.

We each need to learn and study God's word because Jesus told us to and He even said if we love Him we will love His words. His words are so important that even "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away". Mt 24:35 and "if a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me."

So to wrap up I have been trying to paint a picture of what the Lord has given me to do and scriptural basis for doing so. We are to lift up Jesus all the time, in all we think, do and say, every day, every hour, every minute, even every second. You can do it too. Some of you know Him intimately and we resonate, we have struck a note together, just like a musical band who comes together and miraculously they fit together, like Simon and Garfunkel. As individuals they were insignificant, as a pair they have blessed millions with their harmonies. We are the same, individually we are insignificant, collectively God can shine out to a desperate needy world. And we can all work together, we are not competing, we are in the same team, the team of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

*NOTES: The good information the Lord led me to was via some books and two christian men. The books by Brother Yun, 'The Heavenly Man' and 'Living Water', a book called 'Ten Stupid mistakes men make to mess up their lives' by Dr Laura Schleisenger, a divorce course called Divorce Care put together by Steve and Cheryl Grissom under a ministry called Church Initiative. Also Howard Willard faith preacher and healer, Kenneth Hagin Radio Rema a little bit and Gail Riplinger who is a scholar and studied modern Bible versions and written her study "New Age Bible Versions". The rest has been sifted out from experience and church and group teachings over a life time, mostly Bible reading and memorising. The secret is to be with Jesus, "now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus." Acts 4:12

NOTE 2. The truth in the gospel is a lot, I mean the Gospel of Salvation and who we are in Christ and what we have in Him. I believe we need to meditate and soak in God's word and speak it out as in Romans 10. I also believe I need to be in God's body in one shape or form or another. So far the only body I am in is our little community here on face book. I am hoping and praying we will become known to locals. One brother called round a week ago, another old friend from '90's has found me. So if anyone is interested I would love to share my story and faith and God's word in person anywhere so we can pray together, heal together, and speak out God's word and message of hope and salvation and love for all which includes the sick, the frail, the bound, the hopeless, the lonely, or the rich, or bereaved, or drug infested or anything - I don't care, but we gotta ask, we gotta seek, so ask me to come and let's see what God's gonna do, Praise the Lord!