Greetings and Solutions! Today, we were going to move on to the second part of Jesus' use of the two metaphors describing our authority in the earth -- the first one was the way we permeate and "season" our homes, our neighborhoods, our communities, etc., as salt -- and the second being our function in Christ as "the light of the world.
Good Morning! Gotta share a recent event that took place as an illustration of our continuing study of what it means to be "the salt of the earth."
And another TGIF day to you! If my calculations are correct, we have passed the 1,000 mark in these Coffee Break articles during the past few weeks -- and that spans a period which began in December of 2004 on a sporadic basis.
When we paused in this discussion last week, we were talking about the presence of the Lord as it manifested in the cloud. This is a discussion that could take us way off track if we followed the rabbit trail, but I'm really just wanting to draw some illustrations for you to help in understanding what Jesus means when He speaks of "the pure in heart."
Let's get right to our discussion today. This concept of being "naturally supernatural, and supernaturally natural" is rooted and grounded in the following truths.
Need to share a personal story with you as a lead-in to today's Coffee Break. It was December 5, 1960 that I joined the Army. Not long after completing Basic Training at Fort Ord, I was standing out on the tarmac, duffle bag in hand, awaiting being boarded on an aircraft with orders that would send me to Ramstein, Germany, with ultimate deployment to Laos.
For those of you with children who are running from God or who simply ignore the call of Holy Spirit in their lives, let me share a quick story of encouragement before we begin today's sharing.
You’ll excuse me for the following. I know it is basic, and we have covered this before, but this is foundational to our response to “Come Up Higher!” One cannot live in the Spirit, and one cannot walk in the Spirit until such time as they surrender to Holy Spirit completely and unreservedly. That surrender is generally marked by a release of Holy Spirit using their tongue. They yield total control of their tongue to Holy Spirit and He speaks through them in some language (or languages) they’ve never learned — and in most cases have never heard. Why this becomes a proof of one’s immersion in the Spirit is evidenced in something that James writes to the body of Christ.
Coming up higher is not a metaphor, or a figure of speech! This is a real, living experience. I don’t want to go there today because it would take too long for the time we have left, but in a couple of weeks, we will talk about living in the presence of the Lord. That is something that Della and I have experienced in time past with unbelievable but tangible results. Consider how John experienced the kind of revelation that opened up whole new dimensions to him.
Bill and Gloria Gaither have written a song that the Gaither Vocal Band has released on their latest CD, titled, “Praise God, I’m a Child of the King.” The second line to the song is, “And His royal blood now flows in my veins.” That’s a revelation that seems to escape most of us. The truth of that phrase is that it is the very life blood of the Lord that flows in us, and with that life blood comes the very character, nature and essence of Who He is. With that essence comes a level of inheritance in Heaven that incorporates the authority and power.