The Wise Master Builder’s Enterprise ~Monica Miller-Ruhl www.globaldestinyministry.com
There needs to be an understanding of the full eternal thought of God if we are to experience the overcoming life. God is after individual lives bearing theimage of Christ, which makes God’s love and purpose (intent) inseparable in achieving this as a personal reality. Thus, there are no short cuts—it is a relational journey that we are invited to embrace and experience growing up into the fullness of Christ. Fullness is the Father’s heart and intent and we must allow Him “access” while trusting His wisdom to establish it (Heb. 3:4).
- For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.
In terms of the New Creation life, success is only measured by Christ-life, that is Light, being formed and lived through us. Thus, metamorphoo—metamorphose is a true depiction of the “process” that is involved in the “arising” of an entirely other than New Creation Life. This essentially means that our natural bodies (the outer court) are an earthen container in which the New heavenly Life can grow and have expression while our souls (mind, will, and emotions) are being transformed through a renovation process (Romans 12:2).
- And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. NASU
Christianity is the total involvement in a perpetual life-change. God allows certain circumstances as a form of irritation, much like in an oyster, until He gets what He wants developed within us. Christianity is not merely the implementation of doing something in a correct way; it is life that is Light, Christ, havingexpression though us as the visible “pearl of great value”.
Anyone can read a book, but that doesn’t make the book a living entity unless the life that is in it becomes life existing in you. So, distinction is measured by Life and the Holy Spirit has been given to the Believer foremost for that purpose—the life that is Christ’s light formed in our inner being. Let me be very clear, the Father’s enterprise is all about Christ being formed within the Believer.
- But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God… (2 Cor 2:14-15, NASU).
THE OFFENCE OF THE NATURAL
“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Gal. 5:24
The natural life is not sinful; we must be apostatized from sin, have nothing to do with sin in any shape or form. Sin belongs to hell and the devil; I, as a child of God, belong to heaven and God. It is not a question of giving up sin, but of giving up my right to myself, my natural independence and self-assertiveness, and this is where the battle has to be fought. It is the things that are right and noble and good from the natural standpoint that keep us back from God’s best. To discern that natural virtues antagonize surrender to God, is to bring our soul into the center of its greatest battle. Very few of us debate with the sordid and evil and wrong, but we do debate with the good. It is the good that hates the best, and the higher up you get in the scale of the natural virtues, the more intense is the opposition to Jesus Christ. “They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh”—it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said—“If any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself,” i.e., his right to himself, and a man has to realize Who Jesus Christ is before he will do it. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.
The natural life is not spiritual and it can only be made spiritual by sacrifice. If we do not resolutely sacrifice the natural, the supernatural can never become natural in us. There is no royal road there; each of us has it entirely in his own hands… ~Oswald Chambers
THE OFFERING OF THE NATURAL
“Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid [natural birth], and the other by a freewoman [supernatural birth]”. Gal 4:22
Paul is not dealing with sin in this chapter of Galatians, but with the relation of the natural to the spiritual. The natural must be turned into the spiritual by sacrifice, otherwise a tremendous divorce will be produced in the actual life. Why should God ordain the natural to be sacrificed? God did not. It is not God’s order, but His permissive will. God’s order was that the natural should be transformed into the spiritual by obedience; it is sin that made it necessary for the natural to be sacrificed.
Abraham had to offer up Ishmael before he offered up Isaac. Some of us are trying to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God before we have sacrificed the natural. The only way in which we can offer a spiritual sacrifice to God is by presenting our bodies a living sacrifice. Sanctification means more than deliverance from sin, it means the deliberate commitment of myself whom God has saved to God, and that I do not care what it costs.
If we do not sacrifice the natural to the spiritual, the natural life will mock at the life of the Son of God in us and produce a continual swither (a state of confusion). This is always the result of an undisciplined spiritual nature. We go wrong because we stubbornly refuse to discipline ourselves, physically, morally or mentally. “I wasn’t disciplined when I was a child.” YOU MUST DISCIPLINE YOURSELF NOW. If you do not, you will ruin the whole of your personal life for God.
God is not with our natural life while we pamper it; but when we put it out in the desert and resolutely keep it under, then God will be with it; and He will open up wells and oases, and fulfil all His promises for the natural. ~Oswald Chambers
John 3:1-15, NASU:
Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews; this man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, ” Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? “Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. “If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? “No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.
What Does It Mean To Be Born-Again?
To be born-again, is to be born from above with heavenly life which is entirely supernatural. Everyone who is earthly born is earthly and must be born-again from above with the DNA or image of God. Nicodemus grappled with the issue because it was a supernatural reality that becomes personal reality only through the Son of Man-Son of God, the eternal LAMB of God. Life begets life in the SON of God who is the Alpha and Omega—the beginning and the goal. God’s image restored in man. Our ultimate personal destiny, therefore, is to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
This discussion with Nicodemus was a paradigm shift. Life, Christ, must become life in us which is not earthly based but instead heavenly. There is no other way to have God’s original intent except through the SON—His divine nature growing and abiding within us from Seed to fullness; distinctly a second birth expression. Thus, the development of this reality involves the giving up of our self-life so that the New Life can make its assent in us. It is clearly the ongoing dynamic of Christ’s increase that brings our decrease with the final goal of fullness of Seed—Christ in you the hope of glory (Col 1:27). A transformed life, therefore, is the expression of Christ’s nature living through you under the relational governance of His Spirit, with the education of the living Word in all aspects of daily life. Just as a natural seed needs the right conditions to germinate and grow, the same is true for the born-again Seed-life. There are no short cuts, it is a physical, lifetime, love-journey intended for a greater eternal purpose—vocation (Proverbs 23:18-19, AMP). So, we’re here for Salvation andtransfiguration—the expression of heavenly life in Christ (Is. 60:1-3).
~Monica Miller-Ruhl 5/1/16 www.globaldestinyministry.com