I Will Become

I will become 101126 1906

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I will become more aware of Christ in me, the hope of glory.

We are shifting into the practical aspects of the 12 I wills, and what they mean for those who make the Belonging House Commitment.

By the way, we will be receiving new members into the house on November 1. If you would like to make the Belonging House Commitment,
renew your Baptismal covenant,
or join the community,
let me know.

This I will,
I will become more aware of Christ in me,
sounds very spiritual and theological.
It's not.

Many people operate under the misconception
that Christianity is a set of beliefs or doctrines
and then after you embrace them
you try to live a life according to a set of moral standards.
And of course,
this is a recipe for failure.
In the last few decades
people have come up with a way around this,
where you just change the moral standards
and make it easier to be a Jesus follower.
You can still embrace the belief in Jesus and
you don't have to change.

Charismatics add a ripple to this misconception,
that you can believe the right things
and have an experience
with the Holy Spirit.
That experience can make it easier to believe the right things
and be a moral person.
And you have an unstable experience between being
religious and being spiritual.
These folks go up and down a lot.
It is uneven.
It doesn't work either,
and the revival police online will attack you
at your perceived
hypocrisy.
Never mind theirs.
It's a gloomy vision of the Christian life.

St. Paul gives us a completely different vision:
In II Corinthians 5:17, Paul says:
If any man is in Christ
he is a new creation,
the old is gone and the new has come.

A lot of modern translations will use gender-neutral language
for this verse,
and that obscures the meaning.
What Paul is saying here,
is that if you are IN CHRIST
you are a new kind of species.
You are something that never happened before
in the history of the universe.
You are now a "Redeemed."
You are now a "Holy."
You are now
a fallen human being
who has been reborn
into Christ,
and in that birth
you are now part of a new nationality,
a new species,
and you are different.
And that difference is
because of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said in John chapter three that the only way
to become this kind of creature
was to be born again by water and the Holy Spirit.
He was talking about baptism.
You are born into this body.
And when you are born again,
Jesus Christ comes and lives in you.
As Paul says in Colossians 1:27
that the mystery is Christ in you
the hope of glory.

Christ is living in you.
And Paul talks about this many ways
and in many places
as he did today in the epistle lesson.
Because I am weak,
Jesus can be my strength.
In I Corinthians he says we have the mind of Christ.
And Jesus says,
in John 15,
that if you live in me
and my word lives in you
you can ask anything in my name and I will do it.

This is the mystery,
that if you are a Christian
it is not about right religious beliefs,
and right morality.
It is about becoming more aware
of the presence of the Messiah
living in you
through the Holy Spirit.
Jesus in you
can move through you from the inside out.
This is what I mean
when I say
that God works from the inside out.

When I was a youth,
I studied the Strasberg technique
of method acting.
I am going to oversimplify this,
but the basic idea
Lee Strasberg
taught was if you can recall an emotion
or a memory from within,
your outside behavior as you create a character
will change.
This "method" will be more effective
than if you try to take on the qualities of a character
as outward acts.

Strasberg believed the character came from the inside out.

What's interesting
as we work with people in healing ministry,
that subconsciously,
many people are directed and controlled
by old memories and tapes,
and these create sick and painful behaviours.
When we bring these things to Jesus,
and learn to forgive and release them
the outward behaviour changes.

When I first attended a Leanne Payne conference in 1995,
she opened with a very powerful statement.
"Many of you are broken
and you express that brokenness in all kinds of ways.
If you are a Christian
I want you to tap into the place in you
that is whole.
There is a healed place in you already.
Jesus lives in you,
and that place where he is
is a completely healed and healthy place."

I have been learning for thirty years
how to become more aware of Jesus in me,
and then how to get out of the way
to let his healing and wholeness out.

There is truth in the prayer that many pray,
"God there is no sickness in heaven
so we call down that healing to manifest."
Jesus said to pray this way.
Come Kingdom of God,
be done Will of God.

Eventually though,
this slips back into religious thinking:
I have to do something to get this
to manifest on earth.

Let's reframe this.
You are a new creation,
because Jesus lives inside of you.
So imagine that there is a place inside of you,
that is completely and utterly blessed,
fulfilled,
complete,
and whole.
This is the place where Jesus already is.
He is there.

For a long time in the house of prayer
we sang passages from Revelation.
If Jesus is God
then some of these things do not make a lot of sense:
Riches,
honor,
glory,
power,
wisdom,
and might.
All these things are already his.

One day I asked the Lord
about this,
and the Lord said
that when we worship him
and ascribe these things to him
they get poured back into his presence in us.
We receive
wealth,
power,
riches,
strength,
as an unintended consequence.
This mystery of Christ in us
is very great.

The Pentecostal preacher, Marilyn Hickey
used to have a TV show,
that honestly, I mocked.
She ended her show every day by telling the audience:
"Today is the best day of your life,
because Jesus Christ lives big in you today."
Marilyn Hickey knew the secret.

What do we know about Jesus?
Every name in heaven and on earth is under his.
He is the creator of the universe.
He is the holiest person in the universe.
The Universe is constantly growing, so we must infer he is growing.
He is the happiest person in the universe.
He is the richest person in the universe.
He is going to rule and reign over all things.
He is the source of all health, strength, and peace.

That's a lot of things to work with,
and a lot of stuff in that you might need.
So Jesus said to Paul,
My grace is sufficient for you.
The word we translate grace
is "charis" in Greek,
and that is the Greek word used for "chesed"
in Hebrew.
Chesed is translated,
steadfast love,
or lovingkindness.
In other words,
practical love toward us.

So this verse is not saying,
Paul, I am giving you the grace to be a stoic
and suffer under this miserable affliction.

No, Jesus is saying,
my practical steadfast love toward you
is enough for you to manifest my perfect strength
in your weakness.
My strength can come through
and you can experience strength
in this moment.
This isn't about Paul developing his stiff upper lip.
It is about being in a weak place, and learning how
to manifest the strength and power in it.

And Paul did learn this lesson.
He was stoned to death.
And in that moment
with real pain and injuries,
he reached inside and said,
Jesus
you are the strongest person in the universe,
and you are the Resurrection and the life.
Holy Spirit,
manifest the life of Jesus through me
and help me get out from under these rocks.
And in Acts it says,
the disciples gathered around him
and Paul was alive.
And he went right back to teaching.

Wow.

This is very important,
and it is not theology.
This is practical Christianity,
because many of us
if we follow the call that God gives us
will need to learn these lessons.
The world of the arts and culture
is dangerous.

Let me give you a few examples from my life.

Yesterday God told me to go to Boston ahead of some friends
who were called to worship around Massachusetts.
And when I got there,
God said,
stand.
Don't pray,
just be.
Often this is what God will ask me to do,
just be the presence of Jesus in places.
Jesus in you
will change the atmosphere.

I have seen this with money.
More than once
I was traveling overseas
and my bank account was hacked.
The worst time was while I was in Israel.
In every case where this happened,
instead of panicking,
I paused.
I said,
Jesus,
you are the richest person in the universe,
and all the wealth of nations belongs to you.
I need your wealth right now.

In one case,
a person handed me £200 in cash.
Another time
a Palestinian bus driver picked me up and gave me a ride
even though I had no money.
Later on I learned he saved my life.
And many times
God has met the need even before I asked.
Jesus was manifesting his wealth in me,
and sometimes
he was attracting wealth to me.
But it was not me,
and not anything I was doing.
It was not some weird New Age "law of attraction."
It was Jesus in me.
Jesus in you,
the one who knows all things,
holds all things,
and orders all things
knows what you need and will bring it to you.

Jesus said,
do not worry about when you are called to account
and have to testify.
The Holy Spirit will speak through you.
As many of you know,
I lived in Great Britain without a visa for almost eight years.

One day,
I came up to the gate at Gatwick Airport
and the border guard noticed
that I only had a one-way ticket,
and that I was making a lot of trips.
That pattern will get you flagged when you travel
around the world.
The guard asked me a question,
and I opened my mouth
and started to say something that sounded smart.
The man smiled,
and had a very nice conversation with me
and stamped my passport.

That evening, in the course of reading
on UK Immigration law
I found a paragraph
and it was a loophole in the law for US citizens.
I had spoken that paragraph,
verbatim
as if I had memorized it,
to the border guard.
At that time, an American artist or a writer could be in the UK
for unlimited extended visits without a visa
as long as they didn't stay longer than six months at a time.
This was the loophole that allowed me to be a missionary
without a visa.

This was the mind of Christ flowing out of me.
This was the Holy Spirit in me, giving me the words at the moment.

And the last is a story I have shared many times
but it best illustrates this point.

In 2019 I decided I had to "bite the bullet"
and go into London.
I didn't have enough money,
and I didn't have a place to stay.
And so I bounced around at cheap Airbnbs and hotels
and lived hand to mouth.
One day,
I was walking along the street in London
and I had nowhere to go.
And then my back went out.
All I could do was hobble over to a tree
in Hyde Park
and sit there.
I sat down under a big oak next to the Albert Memorial.
I was out of money,
and so I said,
"Jesus
you are the richest person in the universe,
and I need somewhere to go."
And a few minutes later,
the Lord told someone to send me a few hundred dollars.
I found an Airbnb,
and then I had another problem.
I could not lift my bag,
or walk.
So I stood up,
and I said,
"Jesus you live in me.
You are the strongest person in the universe,
and I am weak.
I need you to carry my bag for me and help me walk
to the hotel room."

I picked up the bag,
and it was weightless.

I will become.
That means
you will grow,
and you will increase.
You will learn more and more
that Jesus lives in you,
and his life in you
can shape and change you.

And so,
when you are in that difficult situation
with someone
you can ask Jesus to manifest and work out of you,
what you could never do yourself.
Understanding the reality of Christ in you is going to change
how you understand your relationship with Jesus,
and also the language you use when you talk about your life in Christ.
Graham Cooke said,
you can move from a visitation culture to a habitation one.
As you become more and more aware of Christ in you,
you don't have to try to get God to come.
God is here.
God is in you.
God is within you.
And of course,
this ultimately means
God is not in a building or a program.
God is in you
because you are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And when you come into greater agreement with this truth,
then the outward manifestation in your life
will change.
You don't have to try harder,
because you are now in a dialogue with Jesus
and Jesus is guiding you,
leading you,
and shaping you
into the image of himself.
And when this happens,
people know that you are his disciples.

And when you are in an audition,
in an art gallery,
in a university classroom,
or dealing with people who are coming from a completely different point of view,
you can trust that Jesus in you,
will give you everything you need.

I will become
more aware of Christ in me,
the hope of glory.

Next week,
I will live a life of generosity.