WHAT I SEE MISSING IN THE CHURCH - PART ONE

As I stated in my first blog, "My Nine Month Sabbatical....," I have been unhappy in what we call church, for a very long time. My thought was always, "Is this all there is? There has to be more to the Christian life than this!" For years I knew something was missing, but in all honesty, I couldn't put my finger on it. Oh, we can all find things to complain about and want to change, but what I was feeling went so much deeper than that.
After having taken my nine month sabbatical, and receiving so much download from the Spirit of God through many avenues, I can now clearly see what is missing in the church today.....at least from my perspective. The majority of believers have no idea WHO THEY ARE IN CHRIST! They have no idea about their true identity. Most would say they do, yet what they are actually saying is, I have a head knowledge of who I am. Head knowledge and revelation knowledge are two very different things. The latter comes through the heart by the Spirit of God.....and that can only come through relationship......intimacy with the Holy Spirit. He is our teacher and our guide who will lead us into all truth (John 16:13).


The majority of the church has no idea about the "Finished Work of the Cross," or what the wonderful message of "Grace" really means in their own lives. We have been brought up on a mixture of "law" and "grace," trying to live a victorious, overcoming life, yet never succeeding because it will never happen until you transition from the Old Contract to the New. You CANNOT put new wine in old wineskins or they will burst. You cannot try to live by the "old rules" under a life of "freedom" and expect to see results. It will never happen. You must either be hot or cold...never luke warm, which is living a mixture of law and grace. There is NO LIFE in that kind of existence. To move on from where we are, we must first find out what it means when Christ said on the cross, "It is Finished!"


Leonard Ravenhill referred to these three words, IT IS FINISHED, as "the most important words in all of history. The greatest words ever uttered, by the greatest man who ever lived!" "Could you try and imagine what Jesus was thinking on that road to the cross? I think the earth shook beneath His feet. I say God draped the sun - He would not let anybody see His Son bear the sin. He BECAME sin for us! Remember please, will you? When Jesus utters these three words - It is finished - it is after the three hours of darkness that covered the whole earth. There was a historian in Egypt at the time who wrote this, listen, "In this awful mid-day that has become midnight, either God is suffering or Somebody He loves is suffering." That was a pagan testimony. The whole world shook under the impact. He is not bearing millions or trillions or quadrillions, He is bearing the total sum of human sin. Not only committed sin but depravity as a whole."


And prior to all of that, he had taken on and carried every sickness and disease known and to be known to man....past, present and future! Ponder on that gut-wrenching truth. Think about what some of these diseases are and look like....leprosy, and how it eats away at your flesh; cancer...how it brings about tumors in your body and destroys your cells; diabetes.....liver disease, and the list goes on and on. There are diseases that most of us don't even know about that are so dibilitating beyond our imagination. Can you imagine what He looked like? His outward appearance was beyond recognition.


They spit on Him, punched Him, ripped out His beard, scourged Him and finally crucified Him....the only innocent man who ever lived....how sad, how unfair. We hear these things and we read about them, but have we really stopped to meditate on what He actually endured for our sakes. The magnitude of such love just blows me away!!!!!


Stop for a moment to ponder on the magnitude of these words. Say it aloud several times....IT IS FINISHED.......IT IS FINISHED.....IT IS FINISHED!  Even the devil didn't understand the power of these words, until Jesus descended into the depths of hell and took back the keys.....the authority given to man before the fall. (Eph.4:9; Rev.1:18)  I'm sure he got the point then, for if he had known and understood prior to the crucifixion what those words meant, he never would have crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Cor.2:8).


In this one statement, "It is Finished," lies all the possibilities of heaven! The heavens HAVE BEEN RENDERED (stop praying for that!). All of heaven is now at our disposal, and we can come BOLDLY to his throne of grace (Heb.4:16), yet so few do come boldly, because so many are still living under the condemnation of the law for which they have been set free. But, until you KNOW IT (revelation), a heart knowledge of this truth....that we are free....It is finished, then we will not walk in the truth of Romans 1:8 "There is therefore now, NO CONDEMNATION to those who are IN CHRIST JESUS...."


We will never be free of feelings of condemnation until we know WHO WE ARE IN HIM! In a series of blogs I will be doing, I am going to attempt to share some of the wonderful truths of what it means to be IN CHRIST JESUS. I hope you keep coming back to read more!