If Jesus, in three and a half years of being anointed with the Spirit, produced such fruit, shouldn’t we, in a generation or two in the Lord, be able, as a body, to produce similar results, that is, if we are truly living after His Spirit?

The Spiritual Man, Christ, must live with us individually, as well as corporately.  We must be the feet upon the Earth, whose head is in the highest heavens, namely Christ, where also we are seated.  It is His call, the same as it was in the beginning, for His Word has not returned void.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:28

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By Him, all things were created.  Things that are in Heaven and in the Earth, both visible and invisible.  Whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him (Colossians 1:16).

The Builder Himself came down to the built, the maker to the made, and lived with them in skin.

Through Him, all things were made that have been made, yet it, they, we did not recognize Him.

The most stunning puzzle of all Eternity, God Himself, the only self-existent God, lived a life of a creature, indwelt the flesh, and became man.

The one deserving to be served, served, and humbled Himself to His Father’s will.

Untold angels peered on into this delivery, as messengers came by.  Prophets of old had desired to understand this, and the multitude of the heavens looked on to comprehend.  What was this bold, blazoned, bizarre, and blessed plan of God?

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[The following is a letter I wrote to a friend, with a few edits for privacy]

Let me say this:  I appreciate your position, and I am not particularly in most of the camps that you might expect.

Summing it up, I hear about four main statements in your email.

First, there have been many different positions and view regarding holiness..  Which you cataloged quite well.

Second, you really don’t care which one is most doctrinally correct, but are sick of the compromise in your own heart and unless it can help with that, you’re not satisfied.   You said, “All I know right now is that I’m bound to sin and I don’t know how to get out”.

Third, You’re sick of the crap (scripturally, “dung”).  You want to know the experiential love, experiential forgiveness, and experiential cleanness of heart.  No more hypocrisy from yourself or others.  You want the real deal.

And, finally, the question of how to know anything arises.  “The only way I will know or anyone on this earth will know is if God shows us personally.”

I think some of these questions are proper place of a heart for your condition.  Let me remind you, however, truth is a person.

Let me present my Gospel, if you will…

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A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.

Matthew 7:18

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:6).  The physical body and the physical soul are not evil creations.  In the beginning, God created them, and He called them good (Genesis 1:31).  Yet, fallen man is completely incapable of pleasing God on his own (Romans 3:11).  It takes Faith to please God (Hebrews 11:6), and this is given (Romans 12:3).

The life of the Christian is marked by ‘baptisms’ (plural, see Hebrews 6:1).  We are baptized (immersion, you go down into it) into Christ, and we are baptized (immersion, you come underneath it) into the Holy Spirit.  This was depicted in the wilderness by the Israelites being baptized into the Red sea (water baptism) and the cloud (the Holy Spirit) (1 Corinthians 10:2).

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And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.  My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.

Matthew 18:34-35

Jesus has commanded that we love one another, and in order to do this, we must be willing to forgive.  Total forgiveness may begin with an act of the will, but always must proceed to the depths of the heart.  Forgiveness is being willing to live with the consequences of another’s actions.

In order to forgive, you must first be willing to say, “that was wrong.” When there is no attributable wrong, how can there be forgiveness?  If you cannot say it was wrong, what are you forgiving?  What forgiveness is not is trying to minimize the hurt so that no offense can take root.  This may seem profitable in the short run, but lacks the integrity to go the distance.  No, rather, when someone does something wrong, it is important to acknowledge that what was done was wrong.  It is from this place that all forgiveness can happen.

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And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?  Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:  He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

Luke 6:46-49 KJV

The best advice to going deeper in Christ is Transparency.  Jesus said the verdict of men’s condemnation is that He, the light had come, and that men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil (John 3:19).  They preferred to hide in the shadows rather than come forth and have their true selves exposed.

At the end of the Sermon on the Plain in Mark 6, Jesus said that the one who heard His words and did them was the man who “dug deep” and laid his foundation on the rocks.  The practical application of that is the progress of continually learning to trust on the Holy Spirit on every level for every thing.

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A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.

Luke 6:40

There is exactly one reason why we do not see miracles on the order of Jesus.  We have not understood and applied His teachings.

This is not to question anyone’s authenticity in the Gospel, nor their sincerity, but the truth remains, that we as a church as a whole have fallen far short of the Gospel Jesus preached.

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You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, so that the outside of it may become clean also.

Matthew 23:26

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (1 Timothy 1:5).  Once we have purified our souls by obeying the truth unto the point where we can love for real, we should love each other fervently, as we ought to (1 Peter 1:22).

This is the point of the Gospel.  This is the work of the cross and the path of life.  If your gospel is not aimed at producing this life here and now, a life that is demonstrated by a visible, recognizable love (John 13:35), that does not tolerate sin so much to eat with an immoral brother (1 Corinthians 5:11), what are you living?

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For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.  For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.  He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

John 3:16-21

This seems to me one of the most commonly referenced and the littlest truly studied passages in the Bible.  It is one of the best tools for evangelism, for it sums up the entirety of the message of Jesus in one little place.  It may be that it is just this writer’s perception that it is one of the littlest studied passages, it maybe that so few people do much in depths studies in the Gospels or otherwise, or, it may just be that it seems that this section is so commonly understood, it must, of course, be understood already.  When we come to think over these words, we can wrongly assume we understand them all.  Yet, as there is no shadow of turning in God, it stands to reason, that if we could plumb the depths of any passage, without taking it grossly out of context, and know the fullness of the weight of the words in the realm of Heaven, we would know Him much better than we know now.  Suffice to say, these words are spirit, and they are life.

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 Who is blind but My servant, or so deaf as My messenger whom I send?
Who is so blind as he that is at peace with Me, Or so blind as the servant of the LORD?

Isaiah 42:19

When all around fades, and the only thing left is Him.  When all background noises, and all distractions are stripped away, and you are only His flame (Psalm 104:4).  When you see nothing but His purpose, and hear nothing but His voice.

There are many ways to move in the Kingdom’s power, but Jesus didn’t just come with a few simple nuggets, a few quick keys that might improve your ability to flow in the Spirit.  His teaching wasn’t “pointers” for ministry, it was a yoke (Matthew 11:30).

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