Sent Ones

Awhile back I started to think about how important a true sending of God is. Though we are already equipped to go, maybe the idea of being sent speaks more about unique and specific sendings. It could be that God’s intention is not always about us going and initiating but sending what is resonating.

My own observation is that many Christians are trying to fulfill the Great Commission in their own strength. It makes for religion and redundancy.This may be in part why Jesus said to pray that the Lord of the harvest would “send forth laborers into His harvest”. Spirit-empowered sending, the kind that “came upon” the book of Acts church, does not find its origins in a law-based, guilt-driven evangelism. No! Going forth is compelled by a kind of apostolic necessity in the inner man. No wonder the apostles said in Acts 4:20, “But we cannot help telling (we cannot keep quiet about) what we have seen and heard”. When our spirit is quickened and yearns to move out in expression and demonstration of the grace of God, the result is a testimony that inherently contains and spontaneously creates living faith in the hearer. This is the sort of message that comes from a sent one, led by the Spirit. (Acts 8:29, Romans 10:14,15)

So, do we sit around in inactivity “behind closed doors” until heaven comes knocking? No. In Acts 4:29-31 we see there is a ministry before the Lord, receiving from Him that which will insure much sending. Emboldened by God, we are filled with such life that the Lord must advance it out to overflow onto others. It is said that the early apostles flooded Jerusalem with their message (Acts 5:28).

I believe there is coming a greater esteem for the phenomenon of God’s sending. Where we realize the church and the world not only need to be assisted but also “turned upside down” by the reality of God released through sent ones. (Acts 17:6) There is, in the the sending of God, an apostolic distinction that continues to identify one of the church’s essential characteristics from the beginning.

In God’s sending, He imparts to us a love and a fearlessness to face people who may be intrinsically hostile, bound up, or indifferent to our message. (Phil.1:28-30 Amp) The way of entrance into hearts is the way of being sent: having been with Jesus, bearing a sent word, coming out from His presence. As Jesus said, “He who sent Me is with Me…”.

Grace: The Divine Disclosure of Christ

In this post I am going to be speaking less about grace as the gracious act of giving, and more about grace as the substance of Who is given. John 1:14,16 says, “And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth. And out of His fullness we all have received, and grace upon grace”. What is His fullness? Grace and truth. Grace is the substance, the essence, of everything He is. The word “grace” in this context means more than a doctrine; it is the property that constitutes the Christ. The word “truth” in John 1:14 is the Greek word “alethia” which means “unveiled reality; the reality pertaining to an appearance”.The release of His grace is His appearing; it is making visible what was invisible, material what was immaterial. When you say Jesus is “full of grace and truth”, you are saying that when the inner substance of everything He is (grace) manifests,, you have the unveiled reality of Christ or “the truth”.

What is interesting is that John the Baptist says that out of the Lord’s fullness we have all received. Received what? “Grace upon grace”. So what is contained within us is that substance or property which constitutes Christ. And when released, that grace contains the transformational ability of God. It is the appearance of that grace compliant with the substance within that brings the divine disclosure, the distribution of Christ. The pre-existent One, from outside this time/space world, becomes Immanuel-God with us, full of grace and truth. Jesus died to do away with the veil, that body of flesh that hid His eternal being. (Hebrews 10:19-22, II Corinthians 5:16). It is difficult to reduce the significance that God has placed upon our lives when we acknowledge what the Lord went through in order to live in and through us personally.

We can’t buy this grace, merit it, or labor for it. It is given (Ephesians 4:7).When we receive it, it becomes our divine “engine” and defines who we are. I Corinthians 15:10 says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am (identity) and His grace toward me was not found to be for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them, though it was not really I, but the grace of God which was with me” (the engine). I don’t have to wear certain kinds of clothes to know who I am or derive my energy through self effort; I am what I am by the grace of God. And I do what I do by the grace of God; so much so that when I look back, I realize it could ONLY have been by the grace of God! What was seen was energized by Someone within. There is this substance in us that drives us; it is the hard drive of His being. That engine determines the output of His appearance, and He just cannot remain invisible!

When we go forth, we are usually an answer to a cry for help. Paul admonished those he was sent to “not to receive the grace of God in vain (the grace in Paul; the means by which Christ would exert His holy influence on hearts through him). For God says, In the time of favor I have listened to and heeded your cry….” (II Corinthians 6:1,2). We are His grace distributed. However, in the same chapter, Paul went onto lament over the Corinthian rejection of that grace (verses11,12) just as Jesus did over Jerusalem’s rejection in Matthew 23:37-39. Without the recognition and reception of the measure of grace upon each one, there will be the loss of what God intended to impart of Himself into need in order to bring that which sustains and builds up the inner man. He distributed Himself to a many membered body so that He might continue appearing everywhere, impacting lives, full of grace and truth.

My God Reigns

Wanted to share this awesome song from Abundant Life Church in Bradford, England.  Praise our mighty God!! He truly is GREATER!!

He WILL Keep Us From Falling

Here’s more from Grace Walk by Steve McVey.

“A guaranteed way to be defeated by the flesh is to focus on the sins that we want to avoid. That’s like going on a diet and then reading the menu at Pizza Hut every day just so we’ll know the foods we want to avoid! We don’t experience victory over the flesh by being preoccupied with it. We are to be obsessed with Jesus, not sin. ‘For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.’”(Ro. 8:5-6)

“Satan can’t make a Christian sin. The Bible says that God is able ‘to keep you from stumbling’. (Jude 24) A Christian’s problem isn’t that we are spiritually weak; the omnipotent power of Almighty God is in us. Our problem is that we focus on the temptation to sin and not on  Christ. We confess greater confidence in Satan’s ability to cause us to fall than in the ability of the Holy Spirit to keep us from falling.”

Never a Worm Again

“We’ve been programmed to think of identity as inseparable from behavior. But God doesn’t look at it that way. He doesn’t determine identity by behavior but by birth. A person born into the family of God receives a new identity.”

“It is important to see yourself as God sees you. If you were to see a butterfly, it would never occur to you to say, ‘Hey, everybody! Come look at this good-looking converted worm!’ Why not? After all, it was a worm. And it was ‘converted’. No, now it is a new  creature, and you don’t think of it in terms of what it was. You see it as it is now–a butterfly.”

“In exactly the same way, God sees you as His new creature in Christ. Although you might not always act like a good butterfly, the truth of the matter is you are never going to be a worm again!”

“Don’t believe the lie that you are a worm. You are a butterfly. Remember who you are! Your identity is determined by your birth not your behavior. Why would a butterfly want to crawl around in the mud?”

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, ALL things have become new.”                -II Corinthians 5:17

(Excerpt from “Grace Walk” by Steve McVey)