Monday, December 24, 2007

Coming Into The Light Part 3 by Gary Sigler

Coming Into Christ Consciousness
Each one of us has within us God’s infallible guidance system. The only pre-requisite to be able to hear the voice of the Spirit of God within you is to be quickened, regenerated, born again, be saved, or whatever terminology you are familiar with. The most important thing in your life is to have that experience of knowing God intimately, being quickened by His spirit, to be born again and sense the release and the freedom from all the past.
Jesus told His disciples, “When He, the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). It is amazing that after 2000 years we have so many different voices and so many different variations of what people think they hear God speak today. Why is that? How can we be absolutely sure that we are hearing God and know that it is His voice? The only way you can be sure is to ask yourself, do you really want to hear God’s voice? Do you above everything else want to know what God has for your life? The grace of God has brought to each of us the desire and the heart that longs after Him and to know the truth. If you have the desire to know God and His will for your life, you can be sure that God will speak to you. You must be willing to take the time from your busy schedule to spend with Him to know Him intimately.
I often share that it’s very difficult for the Christian today to discern God’s voice, because of the traditions and the things that we have been taught. It is very difficult for us to follow the leading and the prompting of the Spirit of God, mainly due to our mindsets, to our religious upbringing, and how we have been taught. The main thing we can do is to take time every day and calm the mind and sit in the quiet. The Scriptures tell us to “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). You will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to hear God’s voice with your mind so active. When you are trying to figure out what God is saying to you by thinking about it and using your natural mind, you can be misled. You may find yourself doing what seems good to your natural mind, and miss hearing God’s voice and His desire for you in the present moment.
I need to make it clear that to hear God’s voice does not always mean hearing Him speak clear words to you, however He does do that at times. Most of the time, God will speak in an inspiration that comes from deep within us and we do not always understand it with the natural mind, but as we continue to take time in His presence, He makes us clear as to what He is saying. If God spoke to us in plain English, then we would always be clear and none of us would make mistakes as to what He was saying. Many people say they have never heard God speak to them, because they do not know how He speaks. They are expecting plain English instead of an inspiration. Other people are always saying, “God told me this and God told me that,” and later they discover that what they heard was not an inspiration from God, but it was the natural mind talking to them.
The Conscience
A lot of people have said in the past, and still say today, that your conscience is the voice of your spirit, and I believed that for a long time because that was what I was taught. But then one day I discovered (and don’t misunderstand what I am saying here) that your conscience can be trained to either condemn you or excuse you. What do I mean by that? In many cultures today it’s very common for you to sit down at a dinner table and have a glass of wine, and if you are raised in that culture, you can be one that really loves God with all your heart and your conscience will not condemn you for drinking a glass of wine. If you are in Germany, you could drink a glass of beer and your conscience would not be offended. However if you are in America, in many churches you are taught that it is a sin and an offense to drink alcohol. If you are taught that and believe that, then when you drink a glass of wine or beer your conscience will condemn you.
Your conscience is programmed according to the knowledge of good and evil. If you believe something is wrong, then your conscience will condemn you when you do it. Let me give you a religious example of that. If you are a typical Southern Baptist and you’ve been raised in the Baptist church, or many other denominations for that matter, your conscience is programmed in certain ways and you can be taught, for instance, that people who speak in tongues are of the devil. If you learn to live by your conscience and you are a faithful Baptist and adhere to your teachings and believe what you have been taught, then when you get around people who are baptized into the Holy Spirit, and speak in tongues or prophesy, your conscience will tell you that’s of the devil.
There are books in Christian bookstores about how the Pentecostals are deceived because they speak in tongues. Many Christians sincerely believe that, and their conscience will agree with them. So if they go to a Pentecostal meeting or they get around Pentecostal people, their conscience will tell them that it is the devil speaking in tongues.
Some are taught in the so-called holiness churches that women should not cut their hair, or should not wear jewelry. Some are taught that television is evil and that you will go to hell for smoking or for many other things. If you are taught this way, then your conscience will always condemn you when you do these things.
The reason I want to point this out is that your infallible guidance system does not function according to your conscience and the knowledge of good and evil. If you don’t understand that, then you may listen to your conscience and miss what the Spirit is speaking to you. You must learn to sense the guidance and the leading of the Spirit of God in you. If you do, then no matter how much you are programmed by your conscience and no matter how much your conscience condemns you or tells you that it is wrong, if you are one who is absolutely seeking after God, there will be another stirring. There will be enlightenment. If you listen to your conscience, which may be very strong, having been programmed for many years, then when the Spirit is saying something different, you will miss God.
Some of God’s people are taught that it is wrong to play musical instruments in church, so their conscience tells them it is wrong. Other folks think it is wonderful to praise God with musical instruments in Church, so their conscience does not bother them about this. Their are many examples that we could use to show that the conscience is simply programmed by knowledge, what you have been taught. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. If you do not learn how to live in the spirit, then it is important for you to follow your conscience in most things.
A big deception in God’s people today is the way the verse in Hebrews is taught that says, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together” (Heb. 10:25). Many preachers use this verse to keep people in bondage. When people hear the call to come out of the system of Christianity, their conscience may condemn them with this verse. This verse does not say to not forsake the local denomination or the system of religion, it just says not to forsake the assembling of yourselves together. You can do this anywhere in any place, even with two or three. When you come together with another person to worship the Lord, you are assembling together. Jesus said. “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the mist of them” (Mt. 18:20).
As you are learning to follow your spirit, you may also sense an “uprising” and a “down-falling”. For instance, if something is of God, you’ll sense a rising of the spirit within you. Yet, if all your life you’ve been trained to go simply by the knowledge of good and evil or been trained to go strictly by your conscience, you will put down the sensations and you will put down the leading of the Spirit of God in you, thinking that it’s a false spirit or that it is a deceiving spirit, because your conscience says it is wrong.
The first time I met some Pentecostal folks, I went to my pastor and shared with him and he said to me that the Pentecostals were deceived. Yet something within me was stirring. I had some difficulty with it at first, but I just knew that this was something of God. I knew the Pentecostals had something I needed. This was my infallible guidance system at work.
God many times will speak to us with just a sensation, or intuition. You go to do something and you just have a sense or an intuition about whether you should or whether you shouldn’t. Each one of us must learn to seek God and say above everything else, “Lord, you know that I don’t want to believe everything that anyone says, but I want to know the truth. I want to hear You speak to me.”
God’s people have been taught so much fear about being deceived that they are afraid to follow the leading of the Spirit, because He will lead you differently than what you have been taught. There is a lot of deception in the world today, but the people of God have been in deception too. All of us have been in deception. The only way that we will get out of deception is for each one of us to understand some very basic principles in the Word of God. One thing that is needed so desperately among God’s people is to know that they can trust their anointing, they can trust the sensations, the leading of the Spirit within them.
Hebrews chapter 8, beginning at verse 10 says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after these days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: and they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know Me from the least to the greatest.”
Now I have heard these verses put off into some future age called the millennium, when there’s going to be a day when everyone will be able to hear the voice of the Lord. That’s a real problem in the Christian world today--to take some very precious words and put them off somewhere into the future.
There’s going to come a day, folks, when we will all be one. There’s going to come a day when the glorious man that Paul talks about in Ephesians is going to stand on the earth. There’s going to come a day when every one of us will be able to hear God for himself. But until then, what do we do? Because if it’s not until then, then the only alternative is to listen to what Gary Sigler says or what someone else says.
We must realize that the price of Calvary brought us into such a relationship with our Father that there’s no excuse and no reason for us not to be able to hear Him speak to us. One of the main reasons that we can’t hear Him is that we have been programmed according to the knowledge of good and evil and according to the precepts and concepts and doctrines and theologies of carnally minded men.
If you are in the typical Christian mindset when you first begin to hear God for yourself, you may rebuke it as the devil. I know, because I have done it. I would not tell anyone that they should violate their conscience, that’s not the point of this message. The point of it is, your conscience many times will tell you something’s wrong, when it is God speaking to you and revealing a truth to you.
There is something deeper then human consciousness. There is something deeper than living by the knowledge of good and evil that can be programmed. When He, the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth. You can’t fail when you begin to just quietly listen for God every day of your life. One of the most important things that you will ever do is to quiet yourself and listen for God’s voice. Do not be afraid to ask God questions and then do not try to figure out the answer by your mind.
There Is No More Sin
I have learned more in my Christian walk by asking God questions than I have any other way. For instance, I heard for a long time the New Age teaching that there is no sin, there is no death, there is no sickness, there is just nothing at all but God. Christian Science also teaches this. If you hear this teaching and you hear it with the natural Adamic mind, it’s going to deceive you. You need to ask God about these things and let Him reveal the truth to you. John said about Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God can reveal to you that at the Cross, sin, flesh, corruption, and all negative things were dealt with and put away. You are A NEW creation in Him if you have been regenerated. ALL old things have passed away and ALL things have become new. That means, in reality, that there is no sin, no sickness, no death or corruption in Him. You are in Him and “As He IS so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17).
You see, there are seemingly two realities in this world, but actually there is only one. Because we are living in the Adamic consciousness, there are two lives and there are two laws and there are two men in this whole universe. One is the Adamic consciousness with the law of sin and death, and the other is the Christ consciousness with the law of the spirit of life. There is no other, there are only two men and you are either living your life out from the source of the Adamic consciousness or the Christ consciousness.
What does that mean? If you understand that you have been totally redeemed and reconciled to God, then you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that as far as you are concerned, God has taken every sin, every mistake, every habit, in the past, in the present, and in the future, and He has nailed it to the cross, and now we stand on this earth not in an Adamic consciousness but in the Christ consciousness, knowing that God has fully redeemed us and we stand as a new creation on the earth. We don’t stand any longer in Adam; we stand in Christ.
You see, that’s what the offering at Calvary has provided for the person that can truly see this. If this is just a teaching to you, it’s not going to help you, but if you truly see that this is what God is doing today, it will give you revelation to see that we are standing on Holy ground. Not only are we standing on Holy ground, we are Holy ground. For those who have been born again, there is no more sin.
“Neither by the blood of goats and calves but by His own blood He entered in once into the Holy place having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:12-14).
“For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:24-26).
I ask this question again and again, did He do that? Did He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself? Well if He really did, then sin is no more, and until you see and understand this, until you can stand with a grateful heart and with praise in your heart and realize that sin is no more, you’ll never understand the true redemptive plan of God. You will never be free from sin experientially until you have a revelation of Christ’s victory on the Cross.
“So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9:28).
We know this verse can’t be talking about Christ, as far as appearing without sin, so who is it talking about? Unto them that look for Him shall He appear without sin. You see, there is a life in us that has never known sin. There is a life in us that has never been tainted. In that life is the pure unadulterated life of our Savior, Christ Jesus. His life in us knows nothing but overcoming all obstacles and hindrances. His life is a joyful, exuberant, loving and victorious expression of God on the earth.
Now, how can we experience that life? The plan of redemption is so much greater than we have ever realized. How can we say that we stand without sin? Because that is what the Word says. The Scriptures plainly reveal this. But because we’ve been living as Christians for years with an Adamic consciousness, we know this old unrenewed mind, we know the hang-ups, we know the problems, we know how we terribly miss God in Adam, and because we live so much out of the Adamic consciousness we cannot receive the truth and the revelation of “I stand without sin and without shame and without guilt. I can walk boldly, unashamedly, into the very presence of Almighty God at any time to find grace to help in time of need.”
Of course, there are people in the world that take some of the beautiful truths of God and misuse them. There are groups who get a hold of these truths and exploit them, but nevertheless, folks, it’s the truth. If Jesus took away your sins, you don’t have any. And if He didn’t, you’re in a whole lot of trouble. That doesn’t mean that we are perfect in Adam, but it does mean that we stand guiltless and without spot or blemish as far as God is concerned.
There are seemingly two realities, the Adamic consciousness and the Christ consciousness. Which one would you rather live out of? Because that’s the choice you have today. Even as a Christian you have the choice. If you’re not a Christian, you don’t have the choice. If you don’t know God, you’re not going to live out of a God consciousness. But as a Christian, you have a choice today to live out of the Adamic consciousness or out of the Christ consciousness. If you can simply believe some simple truths in the Scriptures, you can begin to look at the Adamic consciousness for what it is--an outright, bold-faced lie.
I know that there are people who are misusing and misapplying these truths. I don’t doubt it at all. Nevertheless, if you cannot receive the truth, you will die in an Adamic consciousness. We all know that the end of the age is upon us. We are all waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. Yet, I’m telling you, if you don’t understand and if you don’t seek God for the revelation I’m giving you, you will die in an Adamic consciousness, never knowing the excitement of living out from Christ.
Becoming a son of God is not some magical formula that one day Jesus is going to come and you are going to be changed into a son of God. It does not work like that. That’s the same as most Christians, who are just dying and waiting to go to heaven some day. You will never be a manifested son of God on earth unless today you are being transformed and changed into His likeness day by day. It is so easy today because there is more light, there is more revelation, there is more presence of God in the earth than there has been since Jesus was here in the flesh.
“Then said He, (speaking of Jesus) Lo, I come to do thy will. He takes away the first (speaking of the Old Covenant) that he may establish the second, by the which will we are sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:9-10). Only one sacrifice was needed, and that is once for all times. “By the which will” is kind of funny language, but what it’s actually saying is that it’s by His will.
How are we sanctified? We all know that this cannot be done by Adam, by our carnal nature, but by His will we are sanctified through the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Then in verse 14 it says, “For by one offering He has perfected FOREVER them that are sanctified.” This is why it is so important for you to live out of Christ consciousness. For years, we have been taught terms like “live in the Spirit”. If you live in the Spirit, you won’t fulfill the deeds of the flesh. I knew for years that that was the answer, but I never knew how to do that. Jesus said, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you” (John 15:7) that that’s answer too, but how do I do that?
We have to realize that what the Scripture says, it really means. If it says that Jesus took away the sin of the world, then there isn’t any. Remember, I said that there are seemingly two realities. In Adam, in the Adamic race, in the Adamic consciousness there will always be sin, there will always be all of the horrible results of the fall of man in the Adamic race. But according to the Scriptures, when you are born again, when you’re regenerated and quickened by the Spirit, according to the simple truths of the Scriptures you are delivered out of darkness, you are taken out of the kingdom of darkness and placed into the kingdom of God’s Son (Col. 1:13)
What does that mean? I am taken, lifted out of the Adamic consciousness, and placed into Christ. I begin to focus everything that I am, not on my failures, not on my inabilities, but I focus everything I am on what God says that I am. I am a NEW creation. I’m not Adam made over. In fact, Adam does not exist. That’s why I said there are SEEMINGLY two realities. In the Adamic consciousness, Adam is very much alive. But in Christ, in the Spirit, when we begin to have eyes of the Spirit, we begin to see as God sees, we begin to understand as God understands, and we begin to realize that if Jesus took away the sin of the world then we don’t need to be out there telling them what horrible sinners they are. We need to be giving them the good news of the gospel, which is the power of God to deliver them.
There is not much power in teaching you how to be godly. But if my words can convince you that Jesus took away your sin and even though it appears that you are full of sin, if I can get you to turn your focus off of sin and get you to focus on the reality of the gospel, it is the power to deliver you. You are not Adam, you are Christ!
I looked at my sin for many years and every day I confessed my sin. I was taught to do that. I never realized that Jesus took away my sin, because I was living in an Adamic consciousness, going to church, reading the Bible, praying every day and trying to make Adam like God. What you are is a new creation. You are born of God and you are His offspring. In Christ, you have His nature, His wisdom, His ability, His loveliness and you are His body on the earth. When you live out of your Christ consciousness, you begin to experience all of His attributes.
We have, in Jesus, the finest example of a human being that we have any record of anywhere. Even if He weren’t resurrected from the dead, history alone would say that He was the finest man that ever lived. But not only was He the finest man that ever lived, He went to the Cross and conquered death; He took the Adamic consciousness and buried it. He took humanity in Himself into death and came out of death the head of a brand new creation. He brought all of creation out of the Adamic consciousness. Why don’t we experience that? Because we haven’t had the revelation. We read the word that Jesus took away the sins of the world, we read that He sanctified us once and for all, and that He perfected us forever, but then we look at Adam and we say, “My, that’s wonderful, I wish it were true.”
For many years I was in Pentecostal churches, and one of the songs we used to sing almost every Sunday in the place I was attending was “Jesus Breaks Every Fetter”. I used to sing that song with tears streaming down my cheeks, thinking, “Oh my God, I wish that were so.” These things can never be so in Adam. Adam will never experience that preciousness.
The only person who can experience the loveliness and the beauty of God is the new creation man. When you are regenerated, it is like a new birth, that’s why it is called being born again. The birth that is regenerated in you is like a small seed. A seed of corn has everything in it and lacks nothing to restrict it from growing and producing the fullness of the corn kingdom. We are of the seed of God, of which Paul plainly says, “The seed is Christ” (Gal. 3:16).
What we have is not the Adamic consciousness made new; we have the regenerated seed of God on the inside of us. We must learn to focus all of our attention on the seed of Christ and not on the Adamic life. You know, by experience, that you become what you focus on. Everyone has that experience. There are many people today who live and breathe many different things, and they become a product of that which they receive into them, whether it be sports or any other thing. How many people do you know that can tell you the name of every ball player, their batting average, etc. They live, they eat, and they drink sports. It is a divine principle, whatever you take into you, you will become.
There is a simple solution for you if you’re in an Adamic consciousness and you’re trapped in sin and death. I know that none of us want to be there, but if you’re there, you cannot get out of there by focusing on that. The more attention you give to your sin and the more you bewail your condition, the larger it will become. But you must look at the seed of God, and just understand the simple truth that when you are regenerated, what you have is a brand new nature. You are discovering that you are spirit, and that Christ is in you. You only hinder the growth of the seed of God in you by trying to make your Adamic consciousness better.
So many people try to live godly by will power. A lot of Christians are afraid to let go of their will power because they know that if they did they would sow to the flesh. So they have to be in bondage all their lifetime to rules and regulations while trying to be a joyful Christian. This is really hard.
If you focus on what you have inherited, simply by believing what God has said, there will come a day when you will fully reveal and manifest to the world the loveliness of your Creator. When that will happen, to a great degree, depends upon you, but it will happen. You can continue, as you are now, trying to remake and reform your Adamic consciousness into something that is more acceptable to God, or you can let go of it. When I say “let go of it”, I don’t mean stop sinning. I mean, turn your mind away from it, and center, focus on, the loveliness of forgiveness. You’ll never know the joys of forgiveness until you can look at your sin and know you are forgiven, instead of being condemned over it. God knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adam can never, in any condition whatsoever, satisfy His heart. There is only one in the universe that can satisfy the heart of God, and that is Christ. Christ in you is the hope of glory (Col 1:27).
That is why it says in 1 Corinthians 15:45 that on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, 2000 years ago, that the last man Adam, meaning Christ, became a life-giving Spirit. Or you could say it this way: He became a Spirit to give you life. He went through death, came out of death, and simply by the breath of His mouth He can give life. On the day of resurrection, He breathed on His disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). If you’ve been regenerated, if you’ve been quickened, you have received that same Spirit. If you can even faintly remember that there was a day when God touched you, then you know that you were born again. The seed of Christ has been quickened on the inside of you.
That seed on the inside of you is pre-programmed to reproduce everything of the kingdom of God on earth. You lack absolutely nothing in Christ, but because of living out of your Adamic consciousness, you’re a loser. The message isn’t to try to kill Adam. Probably most of us have tried that. It’s simply to recognize, and this comes by revelation, that you are of the seed of Abraham. You have the seed of Christ. Stop looking at Adam, stop condemning yourself, and realize that Jesus paid the penalty for this whole thing--that’s why He died. Not to give you a license to sin and to stay there. No! He gave you the liberty to look away from that. There is no place in the Word where you can find that you are told to look and focus on your sin, but there is a verse that says to look away unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith (Heb. 12:1-2).
We know that God drew us to Himself. He authored the birth of His seed within us. We had nothing to do with it. Any person who thinks they had anything to do with their salvation and that it was their goodness that brought them to God, is most deceived. If you didn’t bring yourself to God, if you had nothing to do with your redemption and your acceptability before God, then why do you think that you have to take Adam and perfect him? If God truly is the finisher of our faith, as the Scripture says, then when Adam rises up we simply realize that that is an opportunity for us to forgive ourselves. We should all walk in forgiveness. You must learn to forgive yourself when the flesh rises up.
How could I not be conscious of my sin? When I began to walk in these truths, not only did I lose the sin-consciousness, guess what you lose along with it. You lose the sin. That’s why I say that in actuality, folks, there is only one reality. Seemingly there are two. But there is only one, and the reality, the truth of the matter is, sin is no more. It was dealt with.
Because we haven’t been living out of the right consciousness and we haven’t been focusing on Christ, to us Adam is very real. A lot of people say there is no sickness; there is no death. In Christ, this is true. There is a lot of suffering in this world. There is a lot of pain in this world. How can we deny that? Yet, there will come a day when every one of us will experience that death is no more. Sin is no more. Sickness is no more. Christ will come forth in us in all of His glory and then we will experience these things in their fullness.
If we are waiting for this like a fairy tale, that someday this is going to happen, we are missing the joyous journey of walking in it. If you are not walking in it, you will miss it until you do walk in it. We are so close today to seeing a group of people rise up on this earth that will absolutely bring the dominion and the kingdom of God onto the earth. I’m doing that today. But not out there (externally). I’m doing that in this earth (internally).
The traditional Christian mindset is that someday Jesus is going to come back and we’re going to rule and reign with Him. Are you? Not if He hasn’t been ruling and reigning in you right now. The only way that we can bring the kingdom of God to earth is to recognize everything that should not be in His kingdom and make sure it isn’t in us. If each one of us will do that individually, without making it a performance, we will succeed in bringing the kingdom to our earth.
If we soak ourselves in the presence of God and meditate in these truths, we will begin to walk in the reality and freedom of not having the bondages of sin in the flesh. It is so wonderful. No one really knows except those who have been in the throws and bondages of the flesh, how wonderful it is to wake up in the morning and to know that once again Christ is going to flow from your being. You don’t have to worry about the pull of the flesh and make all of the resolutions and false promises to yourself. You just know that God is able to do that in you which He has promised to do.
RENEW your mind. Paul says that this is so important...to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but He humbled Himself” (Phil. 2:5-7). A lot of people like that phrase “equal with God”, but they forget about the humbling of themselves. Jesus said, “He that will be the greatest among you, let him be the servant of all” (Mark 10:44).
A lot of people want to preach the Word today. A lot of people want to get in pulpits. A lot of people want to do a lot of things. But when Christ really gets a hold of you, and you begin to understand who God has really made you to be, then you will become...not out of performance...but out of character, one who serves. You will find it very easy to prefer others before yourself. It’s your nature.
There is no performance whatsoever in the true Christian walk. It is not, “I want to do this, but I’m not going to because I know a Christian shouldn’t do that.” You see, when you are walking in your nature, you don’t want to do those things that are displeasing to the Father. It becomes your nature, and God’s life just flows from your being. His life must grow in us and then we do by nature what pleases Him.
It’s not a religion. It really isn’t. It has absolutely nothing to do with being based upon how well you perform for God. It has everything to do with you understanding the simple truths of Calvary. “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
I spent years going before God every day confessing my sin, and I knew, every day, when I was confessing my sins, that I would do them again tomorrow. For the most part, I had some habits that had me for years, and I knew every day as I was confessing them that I would most likely do them again, but I didn’t know what else to do. I would continually confess my sin to the Lord, and I’ll never forget the day when the Lord spoke on the inside of me and said not to continually come before Him confessing my sin that He had already taken away.
Don’t keep focusing on your sin. Keep turning your eyes and your focus upon what He’s done for you, and learn to have a heartfelt attitude of thankfulness, that no matter how bad you are in your daily life, you can receive the wonderful forgiveness of your Creator. There will come a day when every bondage of your life will fall at your feet. Not because you have tried so hard from self-effort, but because you have received the revelation that you are forgiven. You have finally recognized the wonderful sacrifice of Jesus, who has shown you the way to the Father.
God has many, many different ways and methods to bring you into perfection. It is not a matter of saying, “Wow, there’s no more sin and everything is wonderful, so I can just go ahead and live the way I want.” NO. It is as you seek God that when you do get into error, when your flesh does rise up, God simply brings to you judgment. You have to understand His character so that you do not get under the condemnation of judgment. You must know that whenever God brings to you judgment and correction this is good.
Hebrews 12:9-10 says, “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.”
Our Father is the Father of spirits. He is the Father that has regenerated and put within you His life. Everything He does to you is for your good. No matter how severe a judgment, no matter how severe a correction, when you get a revelation and an understanding of the Father-heart of God you will begin to pray in your daily life, “Lord, judge me. Lord, bring me your judgment. Lord, I don’t want to be a wayward child.”
There were many times when I would go out in the desert and I would say, “God, no matter what it takes, whatever you have to do, I give you permission to go against my will.” I had a strong, stubborn will that liked to do many things that I shouldn’t do. I said, “God, whatever it takes, transform me into a son of God.” Let me tell you, folks, I went through some mighty suffering, but every bit of it was worth it, and I’d do it again.
God’s judgment is fearful to Adam, to the flesh, but God’s judgment is to be cherished above everything else. If He does not correct you and does not bring judgment to you, you will always be a wayward child. The key here is not that you can just do anything you want to do, but that you focus everything within you on receiving that which God has provided for you--walking in an instant, up-to-date awareness of the forgiveness and loveliness of your Father God. Thank Him that He is daily transforming you into what He wants for you to be.
So many of us look at the future thinking, “I can never be like God wants me to be.” Or we look at the past, seeing all of our failures and thinking we will never change, yet right now, this very moment, there is no other time but right now to turn to Him and experience His forgiveness. Right now, this very instant, you can be the most despicable, the most sin-laden, the most bondage-ridden person in the universe, but in this very instant you can say, “Father, I am so thankful for the blood of Jesus. I know that my Adamic nature is so strong. I know that there are bondages in my life, but I am so grateful that as my Father you will continue to love and forgive me until my inner man is strengthened and is able to deliver me from the bondages of the flesh. I know that in Adam I will never amount to anything. But Lord, I am so thankful that I see the preciousness of your sacrifice on the Cross. Father, I know that because of that I am set free from the guilt and the shame.”
There were times when I would do horrible things in Adam, in my old habitual nature. Yet, I would experience such forgiveness. Sometimes when I was at my worst God would just flood me with His love, so that I could learn to understand that that’s why He died. He wasn’t condemning me. He was simply causing the Spirit of His life within me to grow. That doesn’t happen overnight. We don’t receive Jesus today and then be fully manifesting His glory tomorrow, but we can be manifesting at least a little bit of it.
Oh, God is so gracious. God’s people are under more bondage today than they have ever been before, but they are in bondage to an Adamic consciousness, to a mindset that they are Adam, rather than realizing that they are a brand new creation in Christ. You must simply quit looking at Adam and not focus on Adam but focus on Christ and realize that what you focus on, what you receive, what you take into you, you will become. That’s a guarantee.
Feed on the preciousness of His Word. Feed on the preciousness of the sacrifice that He made. Focus on watering the seed of Christ. My wife, Carol, can tell you that when we were first married I had over 800 teaching tapes. I was so hungry to know the truth that I spent hours every week listening to tapes and spending much time in prayer.
I was taught that if you would fill yourself with spiritual things that that would cause you, one day, to be released from the bondages of Adam. I spent all of my time feeding my spirit, listening, spending time seeking Him, sitting in the quiet, sometimes getting out my songbook and spending an hour just singing. I would do anything that would help me spiritually. Just a little, slowly at first, I began to notice a change. Then I really got a hold of some of these simple truths, which began for me with a man by the name of E.W. Kenyon, who shared in some of his writings some of these simple truths, and God opened my understanding to realize that hey, this person, this Adamic nature, this carnal person I am, seems so real, but it’s really not.
The reality is what Christ has made you to be through the sacrifice of Calvary--and by the breathing of His Spirit. I used to say, “Lord, breathe on me.” Then I realized that the Spirit of God is like the air that we breathe; it’s everywhere. There is nowhere that God is not. The Spirit is like the very air that we breathe. We breathe unconsciously in the natural now, but you can consciously center on your breathing. You need to consciously center on breathing in the Spirit of God in your daily life until it becomes an unconscious act.
“Father, I am so thankful that you are like the very breath that I breathe. Lord, in my daily life I just turn my attention and focus on you. God, breathe on me. Breathe your quickening life into me.” Begin to focus your attention on Christ within you, and watch how quickly the bondages of Adam fall away. The gospel is so simple that we miss it.
One of my biggest hang-ups, I thought, was smoking. I smoked for 13 years as a Christian. I used to think that if I could just stop smoking, I could really be a good Christian. I used to really believe that. Even before I stopped smoking, I realized that even if I stopped smoking, it would be good for me, it would be good for my health, it might make me a little better person, but it wouldn’t make me any more godly.
Yet if the Spirit of God begins to arise in me...the Scripture says, “Let God arise and His enemies will be scattered” (Psalm 68:1). As God begins to arise in you, every one of those enemies will scatter. Smoking was NOTHING. After 13 years of agonizing over that habit, there came a day when God spoke these truths to me. I spent about 3 months in some of the writings of E.W. Kenyon and just in a short time...I woke up one morning and I had the realization that I didn’t need to smoke anymore. At that time, I didn’t throw my cigarettes away, I left them right on my dresser...and I never touched them again, nor did I have a desire to.
Folks, that’s salvation. Then I experienced, one by one, some of the different strongholds in my life being broken, and it wasn’t difficult. It was simply knowing that I am not an Adamic man, I am a new creation. We can say as surely as the apostle Paul said, “For me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). What is he saying? Paul means that once again, Christ is living and manifesting the Spirit of the Living God in humanity. Paul was even so bold as to say, “Follow me as I follow Christ” (see Phil. 3:12-17).
There are not too many men today that you would want to follow. But God is raising up a people today who are soon going to be able to say, “If you follow me, you will be following Christ.” These people are beginning to understand what God has really given to us and beginning to walk in the liberty and the abundance of His provision.
“Father, we are so grateful, that you have deposited everything that you are within our being. Lord, I thank you that the veil that has been cast over all nations shall be removed. We shall understand as we have never understood before that we are a new creation in Christ Jesus. Father, we are thankful that you’re bringing this truth and this revelation to your people who are in such bondage, that they may stand upon their feet, a great and mighty army, and that they will recover and restore all of creation back to the Father.”
To be continued . . .
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The sharing of a dream by Tom Anheluk, Springfield OR.
I want to share with you what was very vividly impressed upon me in a dream about 3 to 4 weeks ago. In the dream, I even saw myself saying what I am going to say to you tonight. It was a very vivid dream. In this dream, I was on a train. This was a small miniature train where people sat two by two...the kind of train you see running through a park or a zoo. I was on this train when I realized my consciousness was very, very anxious. I was not in peace, because in my consciousness, I sensed what Elaine alluded to earlier (about the ending and beginning of a new day). We were coming to a time when this train was coming to a destination. I did not want to come to this destination with that type of consciousness. It was like a consciousness of being found out wrong. It was a very uneasy, very anxious consciousness. That is the consciousness of Adam. It is unsettled because it is a mistaken identity. It is not reality.
As I was approaching this destination, I knew that Jesus would have to help me. I knew there was some way He would help me, but I also knew the destination was approaching very quickly. Once we stopped at the destination, a person was found out and you didn’t want to be in that consciousness. As we were progressing along, I noticed in my lap a little box had been placed there. It was like a gift box. I knew Jesus had put that box there. So I opened the gift box and pulled out a can...it was just like a regular ordinary can.
By this time in my dream, the Holy Spirit is telling me everything about the dream. The label on the can is what is of utmost importance. The label was the three words “WHAT I AM”. As soon as I picked up the can and saw those words “WHAT I AM”, I thought, those are pretty strange words. Yet I recognized I was at total peace. I had the absolute answer to my quest, but I did not know what to do with those words “WHAT I AM”.
Then, the Spirit posed this question to me: “Who are you?” I thought about it and I thought, “I know I’m not Adam.” But as the Holy Spirit asked “Who are you?” I did not really have an answer because of the depth of which this question was asked. Then I thought, “Do most of us really know?” I did not have to open the container because I knew that everything of God was in the can (vessel). Where do we fit in?
The Holy Spirit answered my dilemma by stating, “WHAT I AM IS WHO YOU ARE.” Even though the top of the can could have been opened, I did not sense to open it. Scripture verses were wisping out of it. One of the verses was, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13). And He asked, “Who is that ‘I’? When you looked at it through Pentecostal eyes, through the eyes of your past understanding, you always thought ‘you’ would be strengthened somehow, but you see, that’s not ‘you’.” I can do all things through Christ. He says, “I do all things through Christ.”
I asked, “Lord, why was it a miniature train and why were people sitting two by two?” He said, “Because I wanted to give you a picture, a glimpse, that this was a double witness, so there was a twoness confirming this word. I am giving you this witness in a dream.” I remember what Gary shared years ago from 1 John 2:27, “And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you, but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.” The Holy Spirit does lead us into all truth. No one can take away the reality and the anointing tied to this dream. God showed me my identity in Him, which I did not fully realize before.
Other Scripture verses were quickened to me. These are common verses we all know. Ephesians 4:22-24, “That, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth.” God showed me that the label “What I Am” and the question in the Spirit “Who are you” are in reality, “WHAT I AM IS WHO YOU ARE”. But still, our consciousness does not know how to fit that in. It does not know how to make sense of it because we have never really made sense of this new creation which has been created in righteousness. This new creation has never, ever known sin. Never! It has been created in the holiness of truth. These are things most holy. When a man declares or has to announce himself to be God, it is grievously untrue. It is not right. These things are almost unutterable truths because they are the experience and expression of the life of Christ.
Gary taught us tonight concerning the seed of Christ. This seed is within. When this seed grows and is manifested fully, like every seed, it will manifest the full stature of Christ. The seed is Christ. If the seed is indeed Christ, then who are we when we are living from that new creation person? Who is it, then? “WHAT I AM IS WHO YOU ARE.” He wants to bring down our imaginations that are vain and unlike Him. He is bringing us into the realization, which will finally set us free, “If therefore, the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).
Before this dream occurred, I had been asking in full assurance for wisdom. We have this liberty according to James 1:5 “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” I had been asking and saying, “God, there has to be a breakthrough. We can not go from newsletter to newsletter, from message to message. There has to be some breakthrough to get us to our destination.” Creation is suffering intensely. James 3:13 asks, “Who among you is wise and understanding?” There is no need to look around the room at anyone manifesting the Adamic life. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. True wisdom is anyone manifesting the life of Christ. “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, and without hypocrisy.” That is tabernacles! “And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:15, 17-18). Can you hear the expression of tabernacles?
Gary made it very clear that all of us will manifest everything that God is. This is a huge statement. It magnifies the sacrifice of Christ. I would like to personalize this last Scripture verse to impact our understanding. “When Christ, who is my life, is revealed, then you will be revealed with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4). Let me repeat this verse. “When Christ, who IS my life, is revealed, then I will be revealed with Him in glory.” Christ is our life. We can reveal Christ. This is why I am thrilled to be in the company of ones like Aaron, because of the manifestation of the life. Christ will not share His glory with another, because there is no other. If there are times we are not manifesting or revealing Christ, we do not walk in this abundant life. It is available and it is our gift.
God gave me this illustration and it is the last thing I feel to share. In Passover, we came to the place of accepting and acknowledging the gift of the blood of Jesus. We realized He took our sins to the Cross. This was hard to believe. How could one man die and set us free? Such good news is hard to believe! What a gift! In Pentecost, we realized we have this Comforter, this Holy Spirit, who will lead us into all truth, absolutely all truth.
What is the gift of Tabernacles? God told it to me like this: the gift is so big and so complete because it is the very life of Christ as a living reality. We are not Adam. Our true identity as a new creation is the very life of Christ. Christ has given us His very life. WHAT I AM IS WHO YOU ARE. This is our true identity. There’s nothing beyond the life of Christ. The life of Christ is a perfect gift.
The sacrifice of Christ is so enormous. The blood led us to the Spirit, the Spirit leads us to the actual living from the life of Christ. Just like Gary said, “This life is lived without effort or performance.” It is real and it is ours as we walk in Him. Thank you Jesus.

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