Simnor, Greg.

The Triangle of Life

© 2024 Greg Simnor

Printed in New Zealand.

ISBN 978-0-473-71495-6

Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.

Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

The author permits others to copy, share, display, and quote from The Triangle of Life in print and electronic format for any non-commercial, non-profit purposes, on the conditions that the original author is credited, The Triangle of Life is cited as a source, and the work is reproduced in the spirit of the original. Reproduction of the texts for commercial purposes is prohibited without express permission from the author.

“Freely we receive; freely we give”

Publisher: The Rock Church, Wellington. www.therock.org.nz

Cover design by Jay Huygen

Interior design by Rose Miller, Kraftwork

Without the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit none of this is possible. Thank you Lord for your continuous revealing of what is concealed in Your Son Jesus Christ.

Life can only be found in You and You alone.

I also want to acknowledge and thank all those who have played a role in shaping the words on the pages of this book.

A big shout out to Rochelle Goreng for all her help in putting this together.

Contents

Introduction

The Door, the narrow way

Around it all but not in life

What we will unpack

The Triangle of life

Love, Lordship and Worship working as one defined by God not us

God’s kingdom is established on conclusions

Incorruptible Love – The First Position

God is Love – The True Definition

A Love that IS before it’s a love that DOES

Not knowing Love the way we need to

Why is this so important

Love releases us from the intruder

Controlled by Love

God performs this work of love, not us

Love overwhelmingly conquers all things

Crucified by Love is the way to Lordship, not trying to die to self

Love lays its life down

Love loves regardless of behaviour

True Spiritual Lordship – The Second Position

What is Godly Lordship

Saved into Lordship

Why is this the case?

Having Lord as primary and Saviour as secondary

Lordship and obedience are not the same thing

Dynamic number 1

Dynamic number 2

Dynamic number 3

Dynamic number 4

Lord of all or not Lord at all

In the absence of Lordship idolatry exists

The Clash of the Lords

Lordship is God’s design for our new lives in Christ

Great faith empowers great Lordship

True spiritual worship – The third Position

What then is true Worship

Your will be done

The renewal of the mind

Eternal life now

Who is an eternal life

What is an eternal life

The values that reflect this eternal life

The Eternal Life demonstrated is the wisdom of God

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Introduction

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The purpose in writing this book, is to testify of the “IS” reality and dimension which is rooted in God, as opposed to the “DOES” reality and dimension which is rooted in man. I have entitled this book, The Triangle of Life, to prophesy of this living “IS” truth, which births and brings us into the fullness of life in Christ.

The IS and DOES dimensions are completely separate from one another and lead us on two opposing spiritual journeys. The natural eye and ear are unable to discern the difference and perceive the two realities to be the same.

What makes this even more deceptive, is that there is a counterfeit state of this IS position, which the flesh knows and lives from, but the counterfeit is nothing like the real.

The IS reality leads us into an eternal life, and this eternal life will be manifested on the earth for all to experience. The expression of this IS dimension is called the wisdom of God.

Ephesians 3:10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

The problem is the counterfeit versions of these two realities, will lead us astray from knowing this all-encompassing life in Christ, called eternal life, leaving us incapable of being the demonstrators of God’s wisdom.

So what is this true IS reality and dimension?

In simple terms, it is a state of being. It is an innate state that just is, just like God Himself. It is a state that has always existed because it is a part of who God IS, the great I AM. It is a part of God’s nature and His identity as God and as we enter into this state through the revelation of the Spirit’s power, we become ONE with this “IS” reality.

It is no longer God AND His people, but for all those who the Spirit has led into this eternal dimension, it is now His people WITH the Son, in the Father.

Colossians 3:3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

This is the fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer from John 17 when He prayed, “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me (John 17:21).” This is a now reality to be possessed by God’s people. It is the IS dimension.

It’s important to note that we are all born into the opposite dimension of this IS state, called the DOES reality and just because we have acknowledged our need for Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour, being justified, it doesn’t mean we have entered into this IS dimension.

This DOES reality has absolutely no reference for this IS reality, as it is of a completely different root system. Not one single person when born has any reality or reference for the IS state, and this is the major reason why many followers only know “about” God, as opposed to the intimate knowing of the GOD who IS, a knowing which is transformative in nature and power.

This book will testify of the three key elements which build, form and define this IS state, so we become fully capable of having this eternal life built within us and living from this eternal state of IS.

The Triangle of Life will prophesy of a Love that IS. It will prophesy of a Lordship that IS, and it will prophesy of a Worship that IS, leading us into an Eternal Life, who IS Jesus Christ.

This dimension exists in God and God alone, for the God who IS Love, IS also Lord, and when we know the God who IS Love, who IS Lord, we innately flow in a Worship which IS sacrificial, and become the true worshippers the Father seeks.

The Scriptures don’t say God DOES Love, but that He IS LOVE. The Scriptures don’t say God DOES Lordship, but that He IS LORD, and they certainly don’t say Worship is about playing music and singing songs. Worship IS an innate response of sacrifice, the loss and laying down of one’s life for His sake, because the God who IS Love, who IS Lord, has poured Himself into us, and taken us from an inner heart posture that only ever knew the counterfeit IS and DOES dimensions, to a brand new heart posture of “IS’.

Romans 5:5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

If we only ever know the counterfeit IS and DOES realities, then we will be constantly looking for life, meaning, purpose, value, worth, accomplishment, acceptance and our place of where we fit, in EARTHLY RELATIONSHIPS and in what we DO, rather than finding all we need in the dimension that IS.

God is the God who conceals and hides things for us knowing that the Spirit must reveal everything.

Matthew 11:25-27 At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

Proverbs 25:2 says “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

Yes, God conceals not only Himself, who IS the Word and the Way, but also His Will from the proud of heart and those who think more highly of themselves. He reveals Himself and His truth to the spiritually humble, those who are truly poor in spirit.

I believe this book is foundational for anyone who is serious about truly entering into the reality of the supernatural eternal life that Christ promises us now. If we do not have the divine elements that this book testifies to, which are to be operating in our lives through power, we will never know the life we were created for.

My prayer is you would take the necessary time to unpack the prophetic promise contained in these pages, searching for the reality testified to, and live in accordance to it. This is an IS reality and not a does reality.

The Door, the narrow way

As I began the thought process of the writing of this book, the Spirit gave me a clear picture. The image was of a big wooden door with countless Christians standing outside of it staring at it intently. They were all wondering what life was like on the other side, behind the door. They wanted to know but no one on the outside had any reference for what lay behind it.

John 10:9-10 I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

Christ is the door and it is through Him that we are not only justified, but enter into the abundance of life in Him. How many of us are justified by His blood (saved), baptised in water, but still find ourselves on the outside of a reality of abundant life within us. Still standing there looking at the door, but yet to step through and move into the reality of what lies behind it. It’s no different to the cross. Standing before the cross, looking up at Jesus, admiring and being forever thankful for His sacrifice, but failing to have a deep fellowship with the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ Himself, as our spiritual act of worship.

Romans 6:5-6 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

God’s abundant eternal life in us and through us, is the life we have been promised. An eternal life is not the same as eternity. An eternal life is a life that has formed within it, the supernatural eternal qualities of heaven. These supernatural eternal qualities are love, peace, joy, righteousness, faith, freedom, humility, hope, kindness, rest etc. These qualities or values are of Jesus, who is the Eternal Life, and we as His followers are to have these qualities being grown, formed and developed within us consistently.

We will take this eternal life to eternity with us, but they are not the same thing.

Around it all but not in life

The questions I pose to us all are:

“How many of us have confused an eternal life with eternity?”

“How many of us are still living towards an eternal life as opposed to living from it, doing everything in our own strength to try to lay hold of it?”

“How many of us are frustrated, hurt, disillusioned and even possibly angry at the fact that we read and hear about a life in Christ, and yet it’s not our known reality?”

“How many of us have substituted religious works, forms, purposes, ceremonies, traditions, and rituals called forms of godliness, for the substance of Christ in us, in the hope that it’s in these counterfeit forms, that we will attain this abundant eternal life?”

“Why is it you can be part of a highly functional, growing in numbers local or international church, or be chasing your individual dreams and assignments and accomplishing them, or both, and yet know deep within you, you are still lacking this all residing and inhabiting abundant life within you?”

“How many of us feel like we are stuck, drying up on the inside, believing the next conference, message, song, prayer, miracle, healing, purpose, goal, or revival, is going to be the answer to changing this spiritual condition?”

“How many of us are busy doing Christian activity, trying to keep God’s laws or truths from our own strength, while being successful in other areas of life, but still void of the abundance of spiritual life in us, all the while asking, ‘what am I still lacking?’”

Maybe we identify with Martha.

Luke 10:40-41 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things;”

A person who only knows function and how to do, rather than a person who knows how to “be still”, like her sister Mary. She is distracted with all her preparations, in other words, a person distracted by what they believe to be their service to and for the Lord. A person consumed with worry and anxiety because of the true state of their heart, unable to choose the “good part” as her sister Mary did.

Whether you identify with Martha, Mary or a combination of both there is incredible hope for you! You are the perfect recipient for what is contained in this book, The Triangle of Life. In this book, we will uncover and unpack God’s perfect design for birthing, building and establishing His abundant Life within us. He promises this eternal life to all His followers. This Life that IS, not a life that does.

What is contained in this book will invite, challenge and test you to your core. Everything you believe you know of God and His ways will be put to the test. You may even find yourself vehemently opposing what is being prophesied. If this is the case, stop and ask yourself why you are reacting this way, and then ask yourself this critical question.

How much abundant eternal life have I come into within me, by believing and thinking my way is truth?

What is written has the potential to expose all the forms of godliness you hold to and the ways of man which may still exist in your heart, but I promise you this, this is the Way, this is the Truth and this is the Life of God Himself. This will make you free, birthing, establishing and forming His very life in you, enabling you to live out His eternal supernatural wisdom.

Galatians 4:19 My children, with whom I am again in labour until Christ is formed in you.

Colossians 1:28 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.

What we will unpack

Chapter 1: will unpack the Triangle of Life and show how everything flows to produce the life of Christ within us.

Chapter 2: will look at the most important and critical element of the Triangle of Life – Incorruptible Love.

Chapter 3: will unpack the true spiritual reality of Lordship.

Chapter 4: will bring to life and light what true spiritual Worship is.

Chapter 5: will testify of the eternal life that we can know when we flow in the life of these three key elements (Love, Lordship, and Worship).

It’s important to note right from the start that we DO NOT chase or pursue the outcomes. The outcomes are a natural outworking of being in the process of the Triangle of Life.

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1

The Triangle of life

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The Triangle of Life is made up of three key spiritual elements, but it is one triangle. It is essential to realise and recognise this is one complete triangle with no gaps or joins.

These three key elements are:

Love

Lordship

Worship

They are ranked in order with Love being first, Lordship second and Worship third. When these three key spiritual components of the Father work together in unison, through the power of the Spirit, and in absolute alignment to the consecutive order of heaven, we will live in and from the eternal life, which we have been promised by Jesus Himself, the life that sits inside the triangle.

1 John 2:25 This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.

Love, Lordship and Worship working as one defined by God not us

Each spiritual element stands alone on its own merit, while at the same time working in unison, being interdependent on the others, producing a forever-increasing eternal life within the recipient. The greatest element in this triangle is Love. It is essential to note that everything starts with Love and ends with Love. This is why Love is the first element of the triangle.

Love informs, defines and empowers true Lordship. Lordship in turn informs, defines and empowers true Worship. Worship, which is our lives offered up as holy sacrifices pleasing to God, then becomes the evidence that a person is truly no longer the lord or god of their own life. Having truly received Love within them, they are now fully capable of keeping God’s greatest Commandments of love and it is producing a living reality of this life within them.

Once again, it’s important to note that we don’t chase the outcome of this eternal life, but rather that we embrace and receive each of these three elements which are one, in the consecutive order established by the Father.

2 Timothy 2:5 Also if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.

We must all be willing to enter into the Triangle of Life, based upon the Father’s conclusions not our own. Starting from the first position (Love), the way the Father has established it.

God’s kingdom is established on conclusions

Many followers fail to realise and recognise that the Kingdom of God has been firmly established before the foundations of the earth and comes with predestined conclusions.

All of the life that we are promised in Christ, is determined by our obedience to these very specific conclusions, from which the Kingdom operates. Our obedience to these conclusions is to be motivated from Love in us and activated through faith in Jesus Christ.

We are the creation, not the Creator. As the creation, if we are to operate to the full potential of our design, flowing in and experiencing the abundant life we were created for, it is imperative we adhere to these conclusions. These predestined conclusions interwoven into the Kingdom of God are instilled with the very essence of life in God.

This is exactly what this Triangle of Life is all about.

Let me give you an example of one of God’s conclusions, as opposed to the suggestions, which the enemy or other followers may give.

Genesis 2:16-17 The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Now let me give you the enemy’s suggestion.

Genesis 3:4-5 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The demonic will always give us suggestions to attempt to deceive and lead us away from God’s definitive conclusions to life. Well meaning and well intentioned followers of Jesus can in fact do the exact same thing without ever realising or recognising this, when they operate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of death. The knowledge of good is not the knowledge of God. Only the knowledge of God births transformational life in us.

We don’t get to determine God’s conclusions, the elements, or the order of the elements to the triangle. We don’t get to create our version of the elements or add any elements to it. This is already established and in place so it is imperative for you and I to know these conclusions and adhere to them, if we want to walk in the life Christ promised us, and this is exactly what this Triangle of Life is all about. What we can do, is flow in the perfect design of each element, which has been established by the Father and become the recipient of the life it produces through the Spirit. His perfect Kingdom Life within us and through us. It is that simple.

Let’s now start looking at the most important element in this triangle – Love.

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2

Incorruptible Love – The First Position

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Love is the first and most essential element of the Triangle of Life, therefore it is imperative we define its true meaning from the outset. Far too often, we have defined love through our own earthly reference or perspective, using our own knowledge and experience as the reference for our definition. This is a fatal mistake. If we truly want to come into the life God has for us, we must seek His definition.

Earth (or the temporal) never gets to determine or define the eternal. Nothing of the eternal starts with man or has its origins in man. Man has absolutely no say or input when it comes to defining anything of God and His Truth.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

Only the Eternal can define all of this, as it was only the Eternal that has been there from before the foundations of the earth.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

1 John 1:1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life.

When it comes to Love we must start from the beginning, the eternal, and that beginning position is God.

God is Love – The True Definition

1 John 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

Love firstly and I stress firstly is not an emotion, a feeling, an action or a choice. Love is God and God is Love. We have to be exceptionally clear on this, otherwise we will determine what Love is and as we have seen, we don’t get to do this.

If we know God, we know Love. If we know Love, we know God. We can’t say we know God and not love like God, for God is Love. If we do, we are a liar and Love is not in us. This is a Love who IS because God IS Love, just like God IS Spirit.

The truth is very clear here. It is literally saying the follower who does not Love does not know God. Now when we say Love, we are not talking about our human love. We are talking about God and loving with the Father’s Love, which is eternal, incorruptible, and supernatural. If we do not express this kind of Love, then this is the clear evidence we do not know God, because God is Love, and when we express Love, we are expressing the attributes of God.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

We can see from this passage the attributes and kind of Love we are referring to, when we say we are to Love as God Loves. If we are unable to express this kind of Love towards God and humanity, then we don’t truly know God, who is Love. We may think and believe we do but to know Him is to know Love, and knowing Love changes us and enables us to Love as He Loves us.

This puts an entirely different spin on things and is the first place we must start from when we begin to uncover the Love element in this Triangle of Life. To not be able to love as God commands is to not know God, and if we don’t know God, we will be void of this eternal life within us. We are not able to live the life we are called and chosen to live.

This is one of the reasons why Love is the greatest, and without Love, we are literally nothing.

Ouch, how hard is that to hear? How hard is that to receive as one’s true reality? Doing good works for God, or going through religious ceremonies and traditions, or speaking in tongues, is not the evidence you love or know God. Having the fruit of God’s Life in you, called the fruit of the Spirit IS.

Matthew 7:21-23  “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’

Matthew 25:1-13 Parable of Ten Virgins “Then the kingdom of heaven will be comparable to ten virgins, who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were prudent.  For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the prudent took oil in flasks along with their lamps. Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the prudent, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the prudent answered, ‘No, there will not be enough for us and you too; go instead to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’ And while they were going away to make the purchase, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast; and the door was shut.  Later the other virgins also came, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open up for us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly I say to you, I do not know you.’ Be on the alert then, for you do not know the day nor the hour.

Let me state this again. God is Love and Love is in Christ Jesus, so Love, is discovered in the Personhood of Christ Himself.

Romans 8:38-39 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God, who is Love, is concealed in His Son Christ Jesus. We are never to separate the Son from the Father or the Father from the Son, for they are one. Jesus said, “if you have seen Me, you have seen My Father.”

Now I want us to unpack John 14:9 and John 17:26, in relation to Love because these two verses are massive when it comes to having God who is Love, imparted into us. The eternal connections between “knowing” and “Love” are inseparable.

John 14:9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

Hebrews testifies to Jesus being the radiance of the Father’s glory and the exact representation of the Father’s nature, which is Love.

Hebrews 1:3 And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature…

There is no denying it. The Father and Son are One, so the Father and Son are Love. This is massive when it comes to truly knowing who Love IS and having Love implanted into us through resurrection power. This reality and truth determine the Triangle of Life.

It is not about having an intellectual understanding that God loves us or even that God is Love. We must receive God, who IS Love, allowing Him to be implanted within us, being perfected by Love from the inside out.

John 17:26 “and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

There are two questions for us to unpack from the Romans 8:38-39 passage and from this passage in John 17.

The question from Romans 8 is; “Where is the love of the Father?”

We can clearly see that the Father who IS Love, is in the Son and that the Son is to be in us. When we say in us, we mean Jesus is to be at the very core of who we are as a person.

The question from John 17 is; “Where is the Son to be positioned?” – When Jesus is at the very core of our being, He becomes the source of our lives, the very root system. He is to be the true foundation our lives are to be built upon.

The foundation of “self”, that we all begin with, has been removed through the crucifixion of our will, and has been replaced with the true foundation of Christ, who is now the unshakeable cornerstone within us.

Psalms 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.

Colossians 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

“Self”/“I” is found in the inner core of a person and is rooted in the system of lust and pride. All of which I am calling the intruder in this book. The intruder must be put to death by Love, the Love that IS. We will look more at this under the heading “Crucified by Love is the way to Lordship, not trying to die to self.”

If you have faith to move mountains, but don’t have Love it means nothing. If you prophesy or operate in other spiritual gifts, but don’t have Love it is worthless. If you share your belief in Jesus, and know the answers to all mysteries and have all knowledge but don’t have Love it is meaningless. If you give all your possessions to feed the poor and surrender your body to be burned, but you don’t have Love it is nothing. If you don’t have Love, you have missed the mark when it comes to God’s primary purpose for you as His follower.

In other words, all aspects of life in God are nothing, and deemed irrelevant, if a follower has not received Love and has Him operating in and through them. Again, when I say Love, I am not referring to our human earthly love, but God who is incorruptible eternal Love. The Love with which God Loves, because as we have looked at, God is Love.

This can be so confronting and hard to hear for the follower who is all about principles and purposes and what they can learn or do for Jesus, because it’s from these lessons and works, that these followers find their identity, value, worth, meaning and sense of purpose and accomplishment. Without this learning and works to do these followers are lost and do not know how to be still and be at peace and rest.

They have no concept or reference point for Love being more than enough.

Only the follower who knows this incorruptible Love within them is able to be still in complete contentment, knowing He is God.

A Love that IS before it’s a love that DOES

As we have looked at from 1 John 4:8, God IS Love and we see Paul describing Love in 1 Corinthians 13 as a Love which IS, before it’s a Love that does.

Love isn’t a doing reality first but God Himself. The great “I AM” IS Love. Think about the seven great “I AM” statements which Jesus made about Himself.

This is an identity reality. It’s a being dimension and not a functional reality or way of doing. Those who have a functional root system always ask what love looks like first. They need to see it in the natural because the natural is their reference point and where they live from. These followers have no reference point for the spirit, the unseen seen dimension, and so cannot in themselves grasp the magnitude of the Love that IS.

2 Corinthians 4:18 while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

The Love that IS, is from the unseen dimension, but the love that does, is from the seen dimension. In other words, one is eternal while the other is earthly. This is why we cannot know the Love that IS, unless it is revealed and implanted within us by the Spirit’s power.

This is why followers who only know the seen, the natural dimension or earth, don’t grasp the magnitude of the Love that IS. These followers can even reject, justify, deny and deflect it away. It’s the Love that IS which crucifies the nature of iniquity or lust in us, so we can receive deep within us this Love that IS.

The worlds were prepared with the exact same reality. They were not prepared or made by anything visible or seen. They were made from what’s not visible to the natural eye.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

The exact same reality is outworking itself when it comes to the Love that IS.

This is why many say love is a feeling, choice, action or emotion, when in fact God IS Love. This love comes from the seen realm, but the Love that IS comes from the unseen realm into the seen realm.

John 1:3-5 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

We have no way of knowing Love that IS, unless Love reveals Himself in us. All we are left with is a love that does, and this isn’t the Love that IS.

When we know the Love that IS, we get to experience Him in our emotions. We make choices based on this Love that IS and we will also demonstrate this Love that IS in action, but this is a completely different dimension and nothing like the love that does, even though to the natural eye they look the same. Spiritual discernment is necessary in these situations.

The follower who imitates Paul and Christ, due to knowing the Love that IS, demonstrating Love is nothing like the follower who lives from copying this demonstration in a form of godliness.

The first point of call for those who only know the love that does, is to go straight to the outcome and what Love looks like in the seen realm. These people only have eyes for the natural, as opposed to having the eyes of their hearts enlightened through revelation, of who Love is first.

They do this so they can attempt to comprehend and grasp Love, never knowing that Paul said, “The Love that is high, wide, deep and long, goes beyond man’s ability to comprehend it.” The natural has no ability or capacity to know the Love that IS.

Followers who ask first what Love looks like, live from their natural senses and need to be able to relate through these natural senses, otherwise they are completely lost and found floundering, being tossed to and fro without any anchor for their lives.

The reason for this is that these followers don’t actually know God, who IS Love. They only know about God from human learning and what they have been told by their fellow man.

God who IS Love is that very anchor, but these followers have no reference for the Love that IS.

They don’t know Love, they don’t know the great I AM. There is an identity crisis in the lives of these followers and all they know is the physical, the external, and they fundamentally have no capacity to grasp the Love that IS in and of themselves.

All they know is functional outcomes. This is why they need to see it and ask what does it look like in action. Even when it is demonstrated before their eyes, and they in fact can be the very recipient of this Love that IS, they still don’t know it and are completely oblivious to the fact, being none the wiser.

Why? Because this Love that IS has not been revealed in them.

The follower who only knows the love that does is unable to love in the way that the Father commands, because the love that IS, is not being formed within them. All they have is their earthly love within them and earthly love cannot keep the eternal command to love.

John 13:34-35 ”A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is a very confronting truth, which must be addressed in every follower’s life, so we find ourselves being able to be keep the Father’s command to Love, through coming to know and keeping His Word, having perfected within us the Love that IS.

1 John 2:5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:

The Love that IS, is anchored in faith and lives by faith, living a life of righteousness, while the love that does, is anchored in flesh, attempting to live by correct behaviour, living a life of unrighteousness.

Romans 14:23 and whatever is not from faith is sin.

Do you know the Love that “IS” as opposed to a love that “does”? The Love that IS, is the God who is Love. The Love which IS will express itself as a demonstration, but at its core it is not a doing thing, but a being reality. We could replace the word love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, with the word God, so the scripture would read like this.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 God is patient, God is kind and is not jealous; God does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; God does not seek its own, God is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. God never fails.

Love is all consuming because God is Love.

Love is indestructible because God is Love.

Love is all knowing because God is Love.

Love is all conquering because God is Love.

Love is ferocious because God is Love.

Love never fails because God is Love.

Paul’s personal testimony of knowing this Love, is there for all to read in his letters, but I want to focus on his letter to the Ephesians. Like all of Paul’s letters, they as a whole are his living testimony, his living declaration of the Father’s work in him. We can see Paul praying that this work, which is taking place within him, would also be happening within the lives of every follower of Jesus.

Ephesians 3:14-19 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Knowing what Paul knows from what he has just declared to us all from verses 1-13, we see him going to bat for every follower through prayer, that every follower be granted by God to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in their inner man.

The first question I ask myself is: why? In a world where most people are selfish, self-centred, self-absorbed, self-consumed, and purely looking after their own interests, followers and non-followers alike, we see Paul praying a prayer not for himself but for others. What is it that inspires, empowers and motivates someone to spend time on their knees for others before heaven, praying such a selfless, life-giving prayer?

Could it be that he has received the very thing he is praying for? Knowing the life and power of the outcome of his prayer, he is compelled by Love to pray all followers receive and come to know that which he has received.

Paul is a man who has been strengthened with power, through the Spirit, in his inner man, and through this has been rooted and grounded in Love: God. This has become Paul’s apostolic mission and call to see the church of Jesus Christ become rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ – Love.

Colossians 1:28-29 We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also I labour, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I laboured even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.

Paul has been the recipient of the life of the very prayer he is now praying for others. He is a man who has a deep fellowship with what he is praying. He has a living experience of the very words he declares. Paul is living out the very outcome of his own prayer and his overwhelming desire for the entire church is the same.

Ephesians 3:17-19 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

If God strengthens us with power through His Spirit in our inner man, then Christ who IS Love, dwells in our hearts through true faith, and we become rooted and grounded in Love: God. We are re-rooted out of lust, which has held the first place position in us and rooted into Love, which now resides in FIRST place. Internally we have been eternally changed forever, and now are truly able to become true imitators of Paul and Christ, through the Spirit.

There is absolutely no doubt or second-guessing when this takes place through a work of God in you and this becomes our living testimony, just like Paul.

The Love we have now laid hold of, or should I say has laid hold of us, surpasses all human intelligence, effort and works that try to grasp, understand and know this Love.

It is from this reality of Love: God that we are to live our lives from. Coming into a greater revelation of this life-giving dimension, through ongoing revelations of this Love: Christ within us.

Not knowing Love the way we need to

It’s very clear from John 14:9 that Jesus is stating the fact that Philip does not know who He is, Love.

Look at these words from Christ:

“Have I been so long with you and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip?”

Even though Philip has physically walked with Christ for more than three years, and verbally acknowledged Him as the Messiah, he still doesn’t really know who Jesus is. He has of course a mental understanding of who Jesus is, but he doesn’t have a revealed understanding of who Jesus is birthing life within him. He doesn’t know Love.

Knowing the intellectual answer to the question, “Who do you say I am?” doesn’t mean you are in the life of that answer. You may know the answer, while still being void of the spiritual life within you, and so unable to demonstrate the wisdom of God, Jesus Christ Himself, who is Love.

This is why Jesus was to make the Father’s name known and was making it known, so the love of the Father who is Love, could be imparted into the disciples.

John 17:26 “and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

I wonder how many of us are secretly like Philip, who in not knowing who Jesus was through revelation; don’t know this Love in us?

We have physically grown up around it but lack the substance of Love within us. All we know is an external form of Christianity, where we are physically present in a church building, but spiritually we are far from present.

We know all the forms and the doing, but we are not in the substance of Life in Him.

We have a factual, intellectual understanding and knowledge of who Jesus is, but we have little to no revealed knowledge in us, hence we don’t know Love, Himself, at the core of who we are. In this spiritual state, Love is covering us, but Love must go to a deeper place than that and crucify and resurrect us, which leads to us into being controlled by Love.

When we see the words of Christ in certain Scriptures, “I never knew you” or “I don’t know you”, what we are really looking at, is Jesus saying, “I know you never loved Me.” Jesus knows all of humanity. He knows every hair on our head. He knows the humble and he knows those who are proud of heart.

Psalm 138:6 For though the Lord is exalted, Yet He regards the lowly, But the haughty He knows from afar.

He knows exactly who loves Him the way He instructs, and He knows those that live for Him the way He instructs. There is no way around this. We love Him to the measure we know Him. It’s not enough to say you do, if your life is not a demonstration of His love. Right here is where I want to remind us of the kind of love we are talking about.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

This Love is eternal and not of earth. This one element of Love, which is “love does not take into account a wrong suffered”, gives us a clear indication of how powerful and supernatural this Love is.

This alone is the kind of love we are to love God and humanity with. Nothing else will suffice. Now ask yourself, “Is this the Love I have in me and the love I love God and my neighbour with, and if not, do I want it to be?”

This brings to light and life my previous statement, “The Father knows those who love Him the way He has commanded through the true knowledge of Himself.”

1 Corinthians 8:3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.

There are those words again. Love and knowing, knowing and Love. This is how powerful the true knowing of God is. This is why Paul said what he said in Philippians 3:7-8.

Philippians 3:7-8 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

The true knowledge of God, which Paul entered into through grace, is what empowers and enables us to love God with this incorruptible Love. This reality alone enables us to live and imitate Christ and Paul. Don’t breeze past this and say I have read this before. You either know the reality Paul prophecies or you don’t and if you don’t, you need to park yourself here until you do.

A classic example of a follower who genuinely believes they love God the way God instructs was Peter. Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loved him, to which Peter answered yes, all three times, but a closer look into the words used, clearly demonstrates Peter loved Jesus with a brotherly love, as opposed to the incorruptible eternal Love of heaven.

John 21:15-17 So when they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Tend My lambs.” He said to him again a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Shepherd My sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, “Do you love Me?” And he said to Him, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.” Jesus said to him, “Tend My sheep.”

Why did Jesus keep asking Peter if he loved Him? Because Jesus knew that Peter was yet to receive an outpouring of this Love, through the baptism of power from the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 3:14-21 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Why is this so important

In very simple but profound terms, because the Father has created us to be in a covenant of marriage with His Son. Loving the Father, the Son and all of humanity with His Love in us, are the first and second commandments of this covenant, to which eternal life is discovered.

John 12:50 “I know that His commandment is eternal life; therefore the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told Me.”

To be unable to love in this way, keeping these commandments, is to be unable to keep the marriage covenant, and to be unable to keep this covenant has eternal consequences for our inheritance in Him. Love is the way to life in Christ.

This Love is in and of the Holy Spirit not of us. This Love is a fruit of the Spirit not of the flesh.

It has nothing to do with our place in heaven, but everything to do with being a faithful and obedient bride now, who will ultimately become the wife of Jesus Christ in the future.

This is ultimately, what the parable of the virgins is all about. Five virgins were unwise and not ready for when the Groom arrived and they heard “I don’t know you”. You cannot separate the knowing of God from the love of God. If a person knows God through the power of revelation, then this person will love as God loves. Incorruptible Love is the fruit of truly knowing God.

The knowing of God is inseparable from receiving the incorruptible Love of God, and in turn, loving as God loves, being able to keep His eternal commandments.

1 John 2:3-4 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;

1 John 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

We cannot ignore these verses and pretend they don’t exist or say we live in accordance to them when our lives tell a completely different story. We lie to ourselves when we do this.

Also, we can’t say we love God because of all the things we do for God. You will know when you are in this Love and this Love is in you, when you are able to love with the love of 1 Corinthians.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

This is the standard of love God’s followers are able to live out and demonstrate when they know God. Growing in this living knowledge of Him through revelation, partaking of the Tree of Life, the True Vine enables them to keep His commandments.

The Father is searching for a bride who will eventually become the wife of His Son, as Jesus is the Groom.

Revelation 21:9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

It’s only those who have His Love in them that are capable and able to demonstrate this Love, which is the wisdom of God. Only those who demonstrate this eternal Love – wisdom, will in fact be His wife.

1 Corinthians 1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

The Father knows those who love Him the way He has commanded through the true knowledge of Himself.

1 Corinthians 8:3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.

Love releases us from the intruder

When I use the word “lust” in this chapter and book I am not referring to a sexual thing, but the root system of “i”, self, which resides in our human will. The intruder of iniquity, which Love came to crucify, and not just cover over, releasing us from its strongholds.

The reality is that this spirit of self, lust, the intruder can lay dormant within us for years. Going about its business until it is confronted by an apostolic word, sent by God to destroy it, releasing us from this spirit of lust, “i”.

The word iniquity has been lost in modern day Christianity, and yet it is a very real reality, which exists. David was very much aware of this destructive nature within him, hence his words in Psalm 51:2 and 5.

Psalm 51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

Psalm 51:5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

It is fully possible to be justified by the blood of Christ and still have this intruder living and breathing within us. Holding us hostage to the control of our own lives. In other words, holding rebellion against God in our hearts and being completely unaware of the true state of our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

Simon the sorcerer in the book of Acts is the classic example of this truth. Let’s unpack this reality and see what it means for all of us. We see Peter take him to task and tell him he too is still in the bondage of iniquity and the gall of bitterness, even though he believes and has been baptised in water.

This is a classic example of a type of follower who because they believe in Jesus and have been baptised (justified) are covered by Love but remain in bondage. This heart remained untouched by the power of God. The covering of Love does not free them from the bondage of iniquity as they have not yet been crucified by Love and resurrected into Life through this same Love.

Acts 8:13 Even Simon himself believed; and after being baptised, he continued on with Philip, and as he observed signs and great miracles taking place, he was constantly amazed.

Acts 8:18-23 Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.”

How can someone who believes in Jesus and is baptised in water for the repentance of iniquity and sin, still manifest this heart posture of iniquity, with a heart not right before God and be told they must repent of this reality urgently?

Just because we receive Christ as our saviour doesn’t mean that we come to Him with a broken spirit and a contrite heart as David spoke of. God receives us as we are but there is still a deep work of God that needs to be done in our inner most being, which is the hidden place.

Psalm 51:16-17 For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

This is one of the most powerful passages within all the scriptures. David comes into the revelation and realisation that God isn’t really interested in the physical sacrifices or offerings of goats and incense and all the other things the Israelites brought before Him, as their atonement for their lawlessness.

David realised what God was really searching for as a sacrifice, was a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart. This is all about the state and condition of the inner world of the human spirit and heart; hence the very first attitude in the kingdom of God is to be “poor in spirit”.

In other words, the spirit of pride in man, which is of a demonic nature, needs to be broken into pieces, ceasing to exist. In other words, a hardened heart made malleable is what the Father desires. This doesn’t mean the person has a demon in them, but the nature we are all born with, which is evil and of a fallen kind, needs to be put to death by the power of the sword, the Word of God.

This is what scripture testifies to when it declares our spiritual act of worship in the view of God’s mercy, is to lose our old lives to gain new Life. It’s impossible to offer your body as a living sacrifice, if you have no revelation of the mercy of God. We just won’t do it.

When we receive His love in us, through His divine power, we get released from this intruder, and we no longer live for ourselves. We are set free from this bondage. Love crucifies and puts to death this “i” intruder within us. We must receive Love first for this sacrifice to occur, as Love becomes the key motivator and enabler of this action.

You know when this happens as it is unmistakeable. This Love informs, defines and empowers spiritual Lordship. When I say no longer living for oneself, I am not just referring to someone who from a physical or external perspective, changes the focus of their life, i.e. not doing things for self but now for Christ. Anyone can do that, even a non-follower.

The “use” me cry isn’t the evidence of this work being done.

I am referring to someone who no longer has “i” or lust, the intruder at the centre of one’s inner core, their will, due to love dwelling there. The intruder or strongman called “i” has been removed by someone greater. His name is Love.

Controlled by Love

2 Corinthians 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

How many of us can honestly say before God that we have any kind of reference for what it really is to be controlled by Love? It is at this point I want to remind us of who Love is – God.

A definite outcome of truly knowing this Love and being controlled by Him is true Lordship. We will unpack what true Lordship is and isn’t in Chapter 3.

In this life someone or something will control us all. Jesus Himself said, “Where your treasure is there the heart will be also”. To be controlled by Love is the design of heaven. It is the living way of heaven, and it releases us into the fullness of life in Christ who is Love.

The word control in this context is an amazing releasing reality. It is a positive thing and has no negativity or restriction associated with it. It’s like an air traffic controller at an airport. This person’s role is to make sure the planes come and go without any accidents or incidences. They control the air space, controlling planes taking off and landing, which runways they are to land and take off from etc. etc.

Without this type of control, there would be mass death, destruction and chaos.

If we are not controlled by Love, we are controlled by lust. When lust is in control the result is the same as the airport without a traffic controller. Death, destruction and despair await. In other words, if we are still the controller of our lives we will bring death, destruction and despair to ourselves and those around us. It is that simple.

This is a very difficult thing to hear but we must hear it in order to come into truth and life.

So what does it mean to be controlled by Love?

In simple terms to be controlled by Love means you are no longer controlled by yourself. Your life is no longer your life. This is what it is to be a bondservant in Christ.

The spirit of self is no longer the one living and having the final say in anything. You as an individual have relinquished the ultimate control of your life and placed it in the hands of the One who created you. Any rights you thought you had, you no longer have, and you are more than content with this.

Love is now firmly in the driver’s seat and has both hands on the wheel of your life, determining and dictating who you are, how you live and what you live for. The life you were born in, with all its goals, dreams and aspirations has been lost unto Him and for His sake, and in return, you are given a brand new life, where the One who gives you this life, is now the builder, guide and director of your new life, a born again kingdom life.

You consult Love on all the major decisions in your life, because you are only interested in walking in step with Love and the fulfilment of His purposes and the intention of the Father’s heart, seeing His kingdom come and being obedient to His voice. This is the continuous key to receiving His life in and through you and being involved and actively a part of what the Father is accomplishing in the lives of others.

Followers have asked me numerous times if I have ever thought about leaving Wellington and living somewhere else, to which I have always replied, “No never”, because I know where the Father wants me to be, so this isn’t something I even find myself thinking about or contemplating.

I know if the Father wants me somewhere else He will make that very clear and then and only then, will there be any changes made in my life. This is an example of what it means to be controlled by Love.

In essence, Love has become the source of your life and in Love being the source, you are wholeheartedly abandoned and devoted to allowing Love to direct who you are becoming and every step you make and take. Being controlled by Love and in this Way, is where all freedom in Christ is truly found.

Mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual burnout is a consequence of not being controlled by love

When we are not under the control of Love then burn out awaits us all. When I say burn out, I am referring to mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual bondage. A turmoil of immense distress and darkness, where you are not living in and from the freedom, that is in Christ – Love. It’s where you are always searching for life outside of yourself, rather than Life being formed within you.

Galatians 5:1 It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

One doesn’t have to be incredibly busy functionally for Christ to burn out. One can burn out due to stress, anxiousness, worry and fear, because one is not controlled by Love, the Person.

Burn out is caused by lust carrying the enormous weight of responsibility to do and fix everything, including oneself. It weighs one down with the expectation to be and have the solution for all things. When lust is in control it will burden the individual or group with the weight of a responsibility, they were never meant nor designed to carry.

Love implanted within you will result in you knowing (Ginosko) Love. This deep and intimate knowledge of Love is essential not only to us being controlled by Love, but to us living and demonstrating a life of Love, just as we are commanded to do.

The word Ginosko, is a Greek word, which relates to having a deep knowing or knowledge of God, which transforms you on the inside, making you free from every form of bondage.

John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

It’s clear from Jesus’ words in John 14:9 which we have looked at previously, that Philip doesn’t know Jesus, so in turn doesn’t have Love within him. This results in Philip not knowing the Father also, who is Love. He has seen Love in operation but he doesn’t know this Love deep within himself that builds and shapes who he is. The outcome of this is being unable to keep the Commandments of Love, as seen here in John 13.

All the disciples found themselves in the exact same reality as Philip when they walked physically with Jesus. This wasn’t just a Philip issue, but a disciple issue, and today is no different.

If you say, you know Him but are unable to keep His commandments you are a liar and the truth is not in you. Keeping the commandments is about loving humanity the way Jesus did.

1 John 2:4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;

John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

This reality is to bring us to our knees in a posture of spiritual repentance, which leads us to life, because we are becoming aware of the complete inability within us to keep His spiritual command.

2 Corinthians 7:10 For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death.

The Father and Son are the same. If we don’t know one, we don’t know the other, and if we don’t know the other, then we don’t know Love. We only know “about” Love.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why Jesus asked His own disciples “Who do the people say that I am?” while at the same time personalising it, by asking them the very same question, “Who do you say that I am?”

I want to take this opportunity to remind us of the significance of not knowing Love. To not know Love, which is the first and most important element of this Triangle of Life, is to be unable to live the life Jesus calls us to live, a life of Love. This is how serious this is. To be unable to love God with all we are, is to be unable to keep the covenant we share with Him, which is the marriage covenant. To be unable to keep the marriage covenant, will lead to us being the unwise virgins and we will suffer the same fate of being unable to enter into the wedding feast.

Deuteronomy 30:6 Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.

Luke 10:25-28 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

God performs this work of love, not us

God declaring this Life in His holy scriptures does not mean it is automatically ours, simply because we say we agree with what’s written. We cannot claim the power and life contained in scripture through words. We must receive the power and life through the Holy Spirit.

This is to be our reality because we have and continue to experience the supernatural dynamic work of God Himself through His very Spirit and power within us.

Philippians 2:13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Notice where the work is taking place and who is accomplishing this work. If there is no work, there is no Life. Our vain imagination believes something is happening through what we call faith, but this is wishy-washy thinking, and not faith at all.

This work takes place in the deepest recesses of the human soul, the hidden place, where Jesus Christ is to dwell and reside as Lord and King. Love is to take its rightful ownership, rulership and dominion at the core of every being who receives Love, remembering that God and Jesus are Love.

This reality is to be continually perfected within us.

Philippians 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

1 John 2:5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him:

There is an overwhelming abundance of living scriptures that declare God’s will and way. He lays out in black and white for all to see, His role and man’s role. In spite of this man still tries to bring himself into eternal life. Failing at every turn, his insatiable hunger and thirst to “do” is never satisfied. For many this unquenchable thirst and hunger to “do” is still held in greater regard than the living words of Christ, which are Spirit and Life.

Instead of just believing as Jesus says to do, which is the work of God, we ask what must “we do” to work the works of God and the cycle of never-ending nothingness continues.

Let me give you some of the Scriptures along with the two above, which clearly define for us all who does the work of inner spiritual transformation.

1 Corinthians 3:7 So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

Matthew 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

Matthew 11:27 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

1 Corinthians 2:10 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

John 6:63 “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.”

1 Thessalonians 2:13 For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.

John 6:27 “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”

Revelation 1:1-2 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Mark 4:26-28 And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head.”

There are a plethora of Scriptures like these, which clearly define who does what and where God does it. It cannot be any clearer than this. The only thing that is left is whether we are willing to yield to this reality, repent of our ways of trying to bring ourselves into life and allow God to do what only God can do, and that is build His people through Spirit and Truth.

Love overwhelmingly conquers all things

When I say all things, I literally mean all things. There is nothing in the heavenlies or on the earth, which is more powerful than God: Love. Jesus came to heal the broken-hearted, to release the captive from the chains of bondage, to open the eyes of the blind and to bring the year of the Lord’s favour to all of humanity.

The love of heaven overwhelmingly conquers all things. All our pain, trials, tribulations, abuse, bitterness, hurt, all the works of the demonic to devour, and yes, even the strong man called “i”, the intruder, which lives in every human heart. Love overwhelmingly conquers all things.

Romans 8:31-37 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

This is why the answer to all things is Love, and why Love is the greatest, God being Love, a Love that IS. We are to be overcome by Love through faith, so we can become the overcomers the Scriptures speak of. Only when we truly know Love who is the Overcomer, will we truly be able to overcome the world, the flesh and our adversary. We are to be overcome and overwhelmed by Love, nothing more and nothing less will suffice. It is Love alone that empowers us to enter into true lordship, no longer being the lords of our own lives and living for ourselves.

We will revisit this and unpack it further in Chapter 3.

Indestructible Love is the lens we are to view everything through, especially people. The reason for this is that only Love can love the person the way God commands. Love loves in accordance with who and what it is – Love. Love doesn’t love based on behaviour but on the substance of what it is.

I am forever grateful and thankful that God doesn’t love me based on my behaviour but upon Himself-Love, and it is with this Love we are to Love mankind with, because it is the Love with which the Father is loving us.

John 15:12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”

This is exactly the same love that you love your neighbour with as well, because we know when Jesus said neighbour, He meant all of humanity, no matter if we have a relational connection with them or not. Our neighbour includes our spiritual family, our natural family, our friends and complete and utter strangers.

Mark 12:31 “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

There it is in print. The spoken written command for us all to keep and there are no other greater commands than the two love commandments.

Loving our neighbour as ourselves, means to love another the exact way you would want to be loved. If you were caught out, missing the mark (sin) how would you want to be loved in that moment? With a spirit of gentleness and kindness or one of harshness and self-righteous judgement?

If we have received His love in us, we get to minster His love to others. This I believe is the greatest miracle of all.

The way we hope to be loved if we are found missing the mark, is the very way we are to love others when they miss the mark. This is what it means to love your neighbour as yourself. Love the way you would want to be loved, if it was you missing the mark.

Only those who have actually received the indestructible Love within them and are being perfected in this indestructible Love can in fact release this eternal kind of Love to others and fulfil the great commandments.

Without this Love, all we have is our conditional and limited human love. This may be why so many followers ignore the Great Commandments and look to do the Great Commission.

Once again this proves why love is the greatest.

Crucified by Love is the way to Lordship, not trying to die to self

This is where the very first verse we spoke of in relation to the context of Love, plays the most significant part.

1 John 4:8 The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

When one is crucified by God, one is crucified by Love, and it is Love which leads us into a Lordship which is a posture of “being” and not what we do or don’t do first.

In 1997 Love led me to the loss of my life for His sake. The intruder in me was crucified and put to death by Love. In other words, Jesus loved me unto death. He loved me into the yielding and surrendering of the life I was born into. This is the power of Love. Only Love is powerful enough to accomplish this reality.

This becomes so clear from the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2.

1 Corinthians 2:2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

Jesus declared from the rooftops, to all those who had spiritual ears to hear Him that He was in fact LIFE. Not only is Jesus Life but Jesus is Love and Lord, so one cannot separate the three.

Not only did He say He was Life, but He said He was the WAY and the TRUTH. This means Life is a Person and the way to knowing Life and entering into Lordship is not in trying to die to self but in receiving and knowing the Person Jesus Christ.

Paul knew life was contained purely in the person Jesus Christ who is Love and Lord.

What do we notice about the order of this verse in Corinthians? Love, Lord and Life comes before death, the crucifixion. Jesus said that He was the resurrection and the Life before He was physically crucified and raised to life.

John 11:25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies.”

We also see in 1 Corinthians 5:7 Paul describe Jesus as the Passover.

1 Corinthians 5:7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.

This means Love is the way to Lordship and Lordship is the way to Life, as opposed to one trying to become less. There needed to be Christ’s death but this is so we can all receive the possibility of life, which is concealed in Love, and empowers true Lordship.

Our focus is never to be on trying to die to self or shrinking back and making ourselves less. It is impossible to die to self because we can never get the third nail in to crucify self, yet some still give it their very best go.

Why would you continue to believe it’s about dying to self, after you have been raised from death to life. Maybe it’s because the self in you is still alive and well and you have no revelation of how dead in the Spirit you actually are born, and in need of God’s power to raise you to life.

Our focus is to be on receiving Him, Love, Life, the Lord. We are no longer consumed with ourselves living for ourselves, rather we are to be crucified by Love and be raised up to life in Love, being controlled by Love. That is our goal.

The receiving and laying hold of Love will naturally have you living lives of love for Him. It is Love that empowers this new posture of being called Lordship.

I want us to look at the order again.

Jesus Christ – Resurrection and the Life – Lord

Crucified – Passover – Saviour

In other words, when we receive the One who said He was Love and the Resurrection and the Life through divine power, the spirit of pride (self), whom I am calling the intruder in this book, will be put to death (crucified), and Christ is established as Love and Lord of our hearts.

Through this divine process, we receive Him who is Love, as our Lord first and as Saviour second. Jesus is Love and Lord, and when we receive Him, we surrender ourselves into His hands and come into a posture of the heart, known as Lordship.

Is this the kingdom order in which you received Christ or did you say yes to Him through mental agreement as Saviour, while having no real concept of Jesus as Lord.

Having Jesus as Saviour and having Jesus as Lord are two entirely different realities. I believe this is one of the reasons many followers struggle with the reality of Lordship. We are happy for Jesus to be our Saviour, while at the very same time we deny Him being the Lord of our lives, ultimately because we are yet to know and experience Him as Love in us.

Love lays its life down

John 10:17-18 “For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from My Father.”

1 John 3:16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

Love doesn’t stand there saying, “should I lay my life down” or “I ought to lay my life down”. Love is compelled to lay its life down. Love is ferocious in nature and all-powerful. It trumps all things in its way, demolishing any stronghold or form of darkness. Love is unstoppable.

Acts 21:13-14 Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” And since he would not be persuaded, we fell silent, remarking, “The will of the Lord be done!”

There is no second-guessing or wavering in doubt, deciding whether to count the cost or not. Love never fails to love and acts in accordance with its DNA.

Laying one’s life down is an innate and natural response when you have received indestructible Love in the inner most place. Laying down one’s life for the sake of the Father and our neighbour is a spirit led expression of being in Christ – Love.

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.”

The inability to lay one’s life down is the evidence that we do not know Love.

1 John 2:4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;

This truth may sting, and hurt a bit, but it is the truth. If we will step towards this truth in trust, and be willing to accept and receive it, we are on our way to experiencing for ourselves Love being formed within us.

Could it be any clearer why Paul ended the book about God’s eternal purpose for His people, with these words?

Ephesians 6:24 Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.

The outcome of this is our ability to truly lay our lives down for God and others, fulfilling the law of Christ, the law of love.

Romans 13:8 Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law.

Romans 13:10 Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilment of the law.

Love loves regardless of behaviour

God, who is Love, loves humanity based upon who He IS and not what man does. God does not love man any more or any less because of his behaviour. God will reward man differently, but He doesn’t love man differently. This is what is so amazing about who God IS – Love.

Earth struggles with this reality big time because earth’s love is conditional and based upon behaviour. If you love me and like me, I will love you and like you. If you do good to me, I will do good to you, but if you hate me and hurt me, I will seek retribution and do the same back. It becomes tit for tat, or even as the scriptures under the old covenant declared, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth.

Earth can struggle massively to receive this kind of Love because it is unconditional with no strings attached. Earth’s love is revealed for what it truly is when placed under extreme circumstances and situations, in contrast to God, whose love is consistent regardless of the circumstances.

When Jesus was healing the sick and performing miracles, man loved Him, but when He started declaring the way of the kingdom, a life laid down for His sake, man’s love evaporated. Man turned on the Son and tore Him apart, but through it all God’s love and forgiveness never wavered for man.

1 Corinthians 13:8 Love never fails.

The context, to which God gives us the new commandment of loving one another as He loves us, is the very betrayal of Jesus by Judas.

John 13:21 When Jesus had said this, He became troubled in spirit, and testified and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that one of you will betray Me.”

John 13:26 Jesus then answered, “That is the one for whom I shall dip the morsel and give it to him.” So when He had dipped the morsel, He took and gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot.”

John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is an eternal standard and beyond earth’s capabilities to grasp. For those followers whose lives are hidden in Christ, who are growing in Spirit and faith in the truth, this becomes fully possible to model and demonstrate. To love those who betray, deny, hate, lie about, discredit, mock, and walk away from you, rip you off, harm, and even kill you, becomes fully possible when Love is being formed in you.

God’s people are called to this eternal standard. A Love that IS first.

It’s easy to love the one who loves you. Even the sinner does that.

Luke 6:32-33 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”

God’s people are to be able to Love in a way that the earth can’t. This is what separates us from earth and proves we are in the eternal One living an eternal life. This is what it means to keep the great commandment of love, and walk in the manner in which Christ walked.

Luke 10:25-28 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

Do this and you will live. In other words, be able to demonstrate this Love and you will know what it is to live like Christ. You will know what it is to walk in the manner of Christ Himself.

1 John 2:6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

Once again, nothing short of breathtaking and beyond earth’s capabilities, but firmly in the grasp of those whose lives are hidden within the Christ. To be able to love the thief on your right who acknowledges you as the Christ, but to also Love the thief on your left who is mocking, cursing and insulting you, is what it is to walk in Love.

The question then becomes, “Can we Love the thief who rejects us, as well as the thief who receives us? This is the goal.

The ability to live like this is the ability to love humanity based not on their behaviour, either good or bad, but based on the Love within you. This is eternal Love, from having an eternal life within us. When eternal Love is lived out it glorifies the Father. This is why Paul declares these words in Ephesians.

Ephesians 6:24 Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.

Love takes no pleasure in proving others wrong or revelling in the misfortunes of others

An evidence of this eternal, incorruptible Love being formed in you is your ability to love those who deny and reject the truth you have been sharing with them. You take no joy or pleasure in their pain, misfortunes or mistakes, instead you are found on your knees praying for them.

The flesh always looks for an opportunity to say, “I told you so”, or “This happened to you because you did not listen to me, so it’s your own fault”.

Love never goes there because love finds no life in acting like this. Love doesn’t have in its nature the desire to reinforce the negative and be proven right.

Love isn’t interested in being right or wrong. It is only interested in life and being in unity with a brother or sister in Christ. Love sees beyond the offence, lies, deceit, murmurs, deception, mudslinging, defrauding and character assassination.

Love would have every right to demand justice, but it doesn’t. Love leaves justice and judgment up to God who is Love and continues to cry out for mercy for the person trapped in the bondage of iniquity and bitterness.

Love is only concerned with seeing the person turn from the way of death and enter into the way of Life, so there is always an open invitation to enter into Love.

We see this Love in action in the encounter with Jesus and the rich young ruler.

Mark 10:20–22 And he said to Him, “Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up.” Looking at him, Jesus felt a love for him and said to him, “One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” But at these words he was saddened, and he went away grieving, for he was one who owned much property.

Jesus already knew what the outcome was going to be for this young man and His heart went out to the boy. The words of Christ, which are spirit and life, have their foundation firmly anchored in the root system of Love. This is also the place from which we must speak.

Love alone is and has the power to look beyond the arrogance and pride of others and continue to love the person in this state of bondage, in the hope that there will be a breakthrough for the person.

We see this Love in action in the encounter with Jesus and Peter.

Jesus doesn’t come back from the dead and start taking Peter to task for denying Him after He said He wouldn’t. He doesn’t say “see I told you so”, or go over and over and over the shortcomings of Peter.

What does Jesus do? He makes Peter breakfast. How many of us would be loving on the one who failed us in our time of need, continuing to believe the best for them, never mind making them breakfast on the beach?

Love not only loves and prays for those who reject, deny, deflect, ignore, accuse, and bad mouth it, Love makes breakfast for those who do and blesses them.

Love is sent to those who are spiritually blind and deaf, trapped in the bondage of darkness

Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind, To set free those who are oppressed, To proclaim the favourable year of the Lord.”

John 1:9-13 There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Love entered and enters into the darkness and doesn’t leave, no matter what the personal cost may be. Love has the capacity and the capability to love the person or people group called humanity unconditionally, no matter what their behaviour. A people who are stuck and trapped in the bondage of self. A people who ultimately reject and deny this very Love.

Love believes all things. Love hopes all things. Love endures all things. Love bears all things for the very purpose of making itself known to a broken and hurting world.

When followers say they know the love of the Father but are incapable of demonstrating His love through their actions, it is crystal clear, they don’t really know Him – who IS Love. As much as they believe and are convinced they know the love of the Father their incapacity to demonstrate His love is the evidence of their ignorance.

A key evidence that a follower is in the Love of heaven, is their ability to remain presently present in the face of offence and the possibility of division. Offence is one of the leading causes of division and separation in the body. The unwillingness to stay and work through the issues is a clear indicator that the follower has no real knowledge of the love of the Father nor is it operating within them.

Those who have His love in them know how essential and important it is to maintain spiritual oneness with the Father, Son and Spirit. These followers are devoted to working through any issues that arise, walking with and not away, because the Love within them compels them to stay.

Love compels them to stay because Love understands what’s at stake. What a powerful reality and dimension to know in you.

Love within them trumps their own thoughts and feelings and just when they are about to reach the point of saying, enough is enough!” Love Himself reminds them how much they have been forgiven and how Love never gave up on them, even when they too rejected Love.

This gentle but powerful reminder is enough to steer this follower back onto the narrow path of Love and continue to walk in Love, knowing because of how much they have received, much will be expected of them.

John 14:31 “but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.”

Love alone truly informs, defines and empowers true Lordship

With Love being the Person, Christ Himself, one can see why Love alone truly informs, defines and empowers true Lordship.

My hope is that this has opened your eyes to the magnitude of Love. That you now recognise how essential it is to receive true Love and have it being perfected in you. I hope you see how empty and worthless a mental agreement with the concept of “God loves me” is and the precarious position it leaves us in if this is all we know.

It certainly makes it clear as to why we must receive Love through His power and have it perfected within us as the living Scriptures declare.

This is the reason Jesus said we are to come to Him and to Him alone. He calls us unto Himself and says I and I alone have the life you are looking for. I am the only One who has this life and is one of the reasons the Father sent Him to all of humanity.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

He doesn’t leave us in this loveless state, He gives us the way out and into Life in Him. All we have to do is say yes and mean it and Jesus will meet us in this place, ask us to take His hand, and He will lead us into a life of incorruptible Love.

John 6:27 “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.”

Let’s now look at what true spiritual Lordship is and how it is informed by Love.

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3

True Spiritual Lordship – The Second Position

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Just as I stated at the beginning of Chapter 2, it is imperative that we have God’s definition of what Lordship is unto Him and not our own understanding, thoughts or beliefs. Remember the words Isaiah spoke. “Your thoughts and ways are not mine.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.”

This is why the scriptures declare the need for the circumcision of our hearts, which is the place of understanding, and the renewing of our minds, through the Spirit. It is imperative that both of these spiritual out-workings have and are taking place, and we are living from both of them.

Romans 2:28-29 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

Roman’s 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.

Ephesians 4:23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,

1 Corinthians 2:10-11 For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

We must grasp the fact that everything is concealed and hidden from us, but for us. This is all part of the Father’s master perfect plan, to find out who truly loves Him and desires to do things His way. Only those who truly are in the Lordship described in this chapter will enter into and receive all the Father has for them.

Matthew 11:25-26 At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.”

The wise and the arrogant are all those who think and believe they can know God without God revealing Himself in and to them. The wise and the arrogant are all those who try to learn all about God through their minds, applying all the natural learning operating systems of earth from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to God’s kingdom, forever wondering why they are constantly void of life, while forever professing to be in it.

We don’t get to interpret or define what Lordship is, or any of God’s Truth, we just get to enter into His truth and live our lives from it. Therefore, with that understanding let us look at what true Lordship is and what it is not.

What is Godly Lordship

In chapter 2, we stated the fact that someone or something will control us. If we are not controlled by Love then we are controlled by lust, the spirit of pride, known as the intruder of iniquity, the root system of “i”.

Jesus didn’t just come to save us from spending our eternity away from Him. Jesus came primarily to save us from ourselves, this spirit of self, which lives within us, controlling us as His people.

First and foremost, true Lordship is a heart posture of being, manifested through the crucifixion of the intruder of iniquity, by Love Himself. Just like the Love that IS, Lordship is no different, Lordship is an IS posture first. Jesus said we must lose our lives for His sake if we want to find life and not for what we get in return.

Do you know a Lordship that IS, not a Lordship that DOES? Losing your life to Love brings you into a Lordship that IS.

We have looked at Simon the Sorcerer, who although he believed and was baptised, was still in the bondage of iniquity. His heart remained untouched by Love – the Lord.

Acts 8:22-23 Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity.

When God who is Love makes His home at the epicentre of our being, the hidden part, Lordship in and to Christ is established. In other words, Lordship is an outcome of receiving Love within us.

Simon followed the religious practices (believe and be baptised), but he had not yet encountered the living Messiah within his inner most being. Are we any different?

Lordship isn’t about what you do or don’t do, but who He is in you. Lordship is the most beautiful and freeing position one can be in and under in Christ. It is His perfect design. If we are not in Lordship we are outside of His design and to be outside of His design is to be outside of Life.

If the word Lord or Lordship invokes any negative connotations, feelings or thoughts of dread and loss, then this is evidence that one doesn’t know from God’s perspective what Lordship is. We only have our version of His truth, and our version is death and not life. Our version of Lordship has us rejecting Him as Lord.

Saved into Lordship

For me personally, Jesus loved me unto my death. He loved on me until I was finally willing to lose, to relinquish my life unto Him, for His sake. It was through this encounter, I received Love and Life, a brand new life in Christ. I was saved instantly into Lordship, a Lordship that IS.

Lordship is a state of being we come into due to the crucifixion of our will which is demonic in nature, through the surrendering and loss of the nature we are all born with.

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

While Paul didn’t physically go to the cross and get resurrected with Christ, in the spirit he experienced a spiritual crucifixion and resurrection by Christ, who is Love, which meant was no longer controlled by the intruder within him.

Colossians 2:11-12 and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

Romans 6:4-6 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

This doesn’t just sit in a physical dimension. This is Paul describing what happened to him by the power of the Spirit in the hidden place within him.

2 Peter 1:3 seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.

We are to have this exact same work done in us by the Spirit if we are to know and experience this true posture of Lordship.

This is not something we receive by mental or verbal agreement, it takes more than just saying “I believe by faith.” Just because we go through the physical act of baptism, does not mean we have received the tangible, life altering work of the Spirit within us. Anything less than this internal, spiritual work of transformation is pointless.

When we are crucified and raised up by Love we are enabled to live lives of Love. The ability to keep the eternal commandment of Love is the way to Life and is one of the key evidences that we are in the kind of Lordship declared in His scriptures. A Lordship that IS.

Luke 10:25-28 And a lawyer stood up and put Him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And He said to him, “What is written in the Law? How does it read to you?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”

Why is this the case?

Because God is both Love and Lord, so when Love moves in, the Lord moves in and takes up residence. Man can no longer be the lord of his own life when he has Love, the Lord Himself, at the centre of his innermost being. This is not some theoretical place we say yes to, but an experiential reality we live from.

This may not be your reality or reference point for Lordship, but it certainly exists.

The work of the Spirit’s power within us removes us from being the controller of our own lives and establishes another as the controller and that controller is Love; the Lord. Our demonic will has been destroyed by Love and we now have a brand new will in the place where the old existed, enabling us to enter into this brand new posture of Lordship. A posture of being.

2 Corinthians 5:14-15 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

Without this living reality, this living testimony of this work being done in us through the Spirit’s power, we will still be the ones firmly in control of our own lives, and not in the true Lordship that IS. Living for ourselves, using His name to do our own will, no different to those mentioned in Matthew 7:21-23.

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

As mentioned previously, we cannot claim this reality by faith, without experiencing and receiving the same internal work of the Spirit that was accomplished within Paul. A position that just IS, much like Love.

2 Corinthians 5:14-15 is Paul’s testimony of the work of the Spirit in him. The position of Lordship has been established within him.

This is not a theoretical position he declared he was in because he saw it written in the law. This is the living, breathing reality that he is now able to testify of, demonstrate and live from.

1 Corinthians 2:4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,

This is only made possible by receiving the Messenger, who IS the embodiment of the Message. The Lord who is Love, as opposed to a verbal agreement with the message.

It’s Christ as the message that changes us or gets revealed in us, it’s receiving the Messenger by the revelation of the Spirit within us, which does this work of life, and brings us into this Lordship.

Galatians 1:15 But when God, who had set me apart even from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me so that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood,

As we receive this powerful work of the Spirit, Love is implanted into us, and we now find ourselves in this spiritual dimension called Lordship.

Hebrews 6:19-20 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

As stated previously, this isn’t something you claim but something you experience through your divine fellowship in Christ Jesus, who is Lord.

We will know beyond a shadow of doubt we have received an eternal transformation within us and we will never be the same again. We have received and entered into a new reality. Whether anyone else believes it or not, we know we have been the recipients of this work of the Spirit as we are now able to live in a manner we were unable to live before. No one can take this from us or convince us otherwise.

We stand strong and firm in this new reality, where our lives are built on the new foundation we have just received, known as Lordship. No matter the circumstances we stand firm in Christ Jesus, bringing glory to the Father.

Matthew 7:24-25 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.”

We have been rooted out of lust and re-rooted into Love. The foundation of “i” has been replaced with a brand new foundation, and our lives are being built upon it. This foundation is Christ Himself, the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. The Alpha and the Omega lives, breathes and is alive at the very core of who we are. This is true Lordship.

Once again this is not a doing reality primarily but a being one.

Acts 17:24-28 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.

It is in the receiving of incorruptible Love and Love alone, which empowers this Lordship to God of which this chapter testifies.

Having Lord as primary and Saviour as secondary

Look at the order, which the Scriptures declare in relation to this truth.

2 Peter 1:11 for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.

2 Peter 2:20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.

2 Peter 3:2 that you should remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour spoken by your apostles.

2 Peter 3:18 but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

Isaiah 43:11 I, even I, am the Lord, And there is no saviour besides Me.

Is this the order in our hearts? Jesus as Lord first and Saviour second? Or is it Jesus as Saviour and Jesus as Lord doesn’t really figure into it and if He does, it is only in words?

When Paul received Jesus Christ, he received Love, the Resurrection, the Life and the Passover. Paul was resurrected out of death (Saul) and into life (Paul), all in one go. His new creation life was birthed, and his old life was crucified, so his will no longer lived. Love, the Lord Jesus Christ now controlled him, and he entered into the Lordship that IS.

This is why Paul writes in his letters, Lord first and Saviour second. Receiving Jesus as Saviour was a by-product of receiving Jesus as Lord. Paul was instantly propelled into this spiritual position of being in Lordship, because of the One He received and where he received Him.

This doesn’t mean he knew everything and was perfect, or that there wasn’t much more for him to come into in Christ, but the intruder (self/i, pride, his will) inside of him had been put to death by receiving Love. Paul was crucified by Love, the Lord.

The work God had begun within Paul, the work of Lordship, would be the work God would continue to bring to perfection and completion.

Philippians 1:6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Lordship and obedience are not the same thing

I think it’s clear to see from what has been declared so far, that Lordship and obedience are not the same thing. Lordship will inform and define obedience to Christ.

As stated previously, Lordship is an internal heart posture of being, while obedience is an external demonstration of doing what the Father asks of us. Although they are not the same thing, they can work in tandem with one another, and this is in fact the very goal, while at the same time being fully possible to operate separately to one another.

There are many dynamics when it comes to Lordship and obedience and it is imperative that we understand these dynamics, so we flow continuously in and under the blueprint of heaven.

I want to take some time and explain what these dynamics are, so we can ask ourselves where in fact we sit spiritually in our knowledge and understanding of this truth.

Dynamic number 1

It is fully possible to be in the heart posture of Lordship as described above, but still find ourselves not being obedient to either some or all of God’s instructions. Obedience to what God instructs isn’t the primary evidence of our will being removed. Losing one’s life for His sake and being released from the control of one’s life is. The complete letting go and abandonment of one’s being, due to the spiritual circumcision of one’s heart, is the evidence of this.

Deuteronomy 30:6 Moreover the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.

Romans 2:28-29 For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God.

Circumcision of the heart via the spirit leads to Lordship in the heart.

Admittedly being released from the human demonic will, the spirit of self, called the intruder, will ultimately lead us into obeying what the Father asks, but it is not the primary evidence. There could be a number of reasons as to why we may not do what the Father asks even though we are in Lordship.

These reasons can be anything from not knowing His instructions, not knowing how or where to start, or just being afraid to, etc, etc.

Dynamic number 2

It is fully possible to obey the instruction of the Father and still be the lord of your own life. This is no different in the natural as well, between a parent and a child. The child may do the will of the parent in a situation, but given the opportunity, they would do their own thing every time.

I think a classic example of this is Peter. Let’s have a look at three separate passages of scripture where we see Peter doing what he is instructed to do by Christ, while at the very same time being unable to do what he said he could do, which was to go where Jesus was going.

Luke 5:4-6 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered and said, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break;

Matthew 19:27 Then Peter said to Him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?”

Matthew 26:31-35 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” But Peter said to Him, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too.”

Matthew 26:69-75 Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant-girl came to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.” When he had gone out to the gateway, another servant-girl saw him and said to those who were there, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you talk gives you away.” Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a rooster crowed. And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

We can see from the passage in Luke that Peter does what Jesus asks of him even though he had been out all night and caught nothing through his own efforts. He is willing to act on the instructions of Jesus and his obedience to Jesus’ instructions produced an abundance of fish. Simple obedience can unlock the resource of heaven, but this doesn’t mean you have within you the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and we see the demonstration of this in the passages in Matthew.

One would have hoped Peter learnt this from the miracle we read about in Luke. Or that he entered into the true reality of Lordship as his words suggested, but this was not the case.

Luke 5:8 But when Simon Peter saw that, he fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Peter knows Jesus as Lord externally but not internally. Calling someone Lord and having them as Lord in your inner most being, can be two entirely different realities. This is why one of Jesus’s first questions was “Who do the people and who do you say I am?”

Many highly functional people and high achievers fall into this same category. The spirit of function sitting at their core is still firmly in control. The insatiable need to “do” of this spirit is all-consuming and never-ending. It sits in stark contrast to the spirit of fellowship which is free to be still and know He is God.

It is impossible for this person to receive from God the teachings of His kingdom and operating system. The functional spirit operating within them simply cannot allow it. To receive what God is declaring would be the end of this spirit’s control so it cannot afford to hear and receive what He is saying. This is a key reason many followers of Jesus are void of the kingdom life within them.

They unknowingly refuse the way of heaven and deny the very power of God for their complete salvation of spirit, soul and body, all while doing some of the external works Jesus asks of them. It is important to note that the majority of these followers still pick and choose the works that they want to do based on their own will, as opposed to His will.

Matthew 7:21-22 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’”

We see from the passage in Matthew 19, Peter making the bold declaration that he and the other disciples have left everything to follow Jesus.

Peter had left his wife, friends, family, his job and his home, but had he actually left everything, as he so boldly declares? What do we notice about all the things listed above? They are all external. The one thing Peter was unable to leave or lose, is the very same thing the rich young ruler and many followers of today have not and cannot leave or lose – one’s inner self. In other words, being the lord of your own life.

Dynamic number 3

The third dynamic is a person who has been greatly impacted by Christ but remains outside of Lordship and obedience to what He asks. A great example of this is the nine lepers Jesus healed, or the blind men that called Him Lord but after receiving their healing proceeded to do the exact opposite of what he told them to do.

Luke 17:11-18 While He was on the way to Jerusalem, He was passing between Samaria and Galilee. As He entered a village, ten leprous men who stood at a distance met Him; and they raised their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they were going, they were cleansed. Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks to Him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered and said, “Were there not ten cleansed? But the nine – where are they? Was no one found who returned to give glory to God, except this foreigner?”

Matthew 9:27-31 As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed Him, crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” Then He touched their eyes, saying, “It shall be done to you according to your faith.” And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them: “See that no one knows about this!” But they went out and spread the news about Him throughout all that land.

When we, like Simon the Sorcerer, are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity, we are still living from the position of self. Water baptism doesn’t automatically deal with the deep issues in the heart of man. It is the circumcision of the heart by the spirit through God’s power, which releases us from these deeply rooted strongholds.

We come to Christ for what He can do for us, what we can get from Him or even do for Him, but we have no passion or desire for Him to be Lord of our lives or for us to do His will. Everything is about us, period.

This position is still common today within God’s people.

Dynamic number 4

The fourth dynamic is the dynamic we all want to pursue and enter into. It’s Christ’s dynamic, the place of ultimate life.

This dynamic is in direct contrast to dynamic number three, where we see how Jesus lived His life in relation to being in and under the Lordship of His Father, being obedient to the will of His Father as an outcome of this Lordship.

John 14:31 “but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here.”

Right here we see Love, Lordship and obedience working as a trifecta. As we have mentioned in the previous chapter on incorruptible Love, when this Love enters into us, being perfected in our inner most being, the reality of Jesus as Lord is established within our hidden place.

Where self once reigned as its own lord, the Lord has overthrown this little lord and taken His rightful place on the throne. Or in other words we as the lord of our own lives have been dethroned.

Obedience to the Father and His way is a direct outcome of this. The primary position of obedience is an obedience motivated by love and activated through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the position Jesus lived His life from on earth and it is to be our position as well. It is this position, which makes obedience an absolute honour, joy and privilege, no matter what He asks of us.

The secondary position of obedience is an obedience motivated by discipline and activated through trust in Jesus Christ. This position is still good, but it is not the position of delight. If we find ourselves in this position, we are to live from it, while seeking and asking the Father to bring us into God’s primary position through the hearing, eating and drinking of His Word.

Lord of all or not Lord at all

Because Lordship is an internal posture of being where all rights and authority have been surrendered to Christ there is no partial Lordship. Either God is Lord of all of you, or He is not Lord at all.

The reason we find this so confronting and challenging is that we see Lordship and obedience as the same thing. We believe when we are obedient to God’s scriptures we are in Lordship. As we are not always in obedience, we have created this concept that Lordship is something we gradually enter into piece by piece. Let me give us an example.

We believe when we start giving financially to God that we are in Lordship in this area, meanwhile we constantly prove with our actions that we love our children more than Him, so we’re not in Lordship in this area. When we are obedient, we are under Lordship and when we are not obedient, we are not under Lordship.

We see Lordship through the lens of our doing and not our state of being, and as we have already described, Lordship is a heart posture of being, a Lordship that IS rather than does first.

This isn’t a Lordship issue, but an obedience verses disobedience dilemma. When we don’t do what He asks we are being disobedient to God’s instructions or His kingdom patterns and conclusions. It doesn’t have anything to do with being in the position of Lordship I am testifying to.

Please don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that obedience doesn’t flow from Lordship, but as stated previously, just because we obey God’s instruction, doesn’t mean we are in Lordship.

In the absence of Lordship idolatry exists

This can be a confronting reality and hard to swallow, but is in fact the truth. Those who truly have Jesus as Love and Lord in their inner most being, don’t have idols in their lives. It’s that simple, while at the same time extremely profound.

Why is this the case? Because Jesus is more than enough to complete and fulfil every aspect of our lives, He fills us to overflowing. When He takes up residence in our hearts there is no room for anyone or anything else. He constantly fills us with His Life and Love keeping our hearts full and overflowing with Christ.

This can be likened to a sink with the plug in, when you turn the tap on there is a constant flow of water. It fills the sink until it can’t contain any more water and overflows pouring water onto the floor until the entire house begins to fill with water. God desires to fill His entire house with this overflowing dimension.

It’s important to note that if we are in this posture of life and growing in it, that it doesn’t mean we don’t still struggle with areas of the flesh. We haven’t arrived, and it doesn’t mean we won’t still face struggles in our lives. Paul’s life is a great example of this. A man who lived from this life I am testifying to and yet still had his own fleshly struggles.

Romans 7:18-20 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

This is the “ALL” position from which we are to love God. Remember it is only those who truly have Him as Love and Lord in their inner most being that will have the capacity to live and love from this “ALL” position. It is only when we have surrendered all that we can know this reality.

If you do not know this reality of life in Him, can I encourage you not to justify it away by saying things like:

“That’s very lofty and not realistic”

“I don’t believe this is of God”

“I don’t believe this is possible”

“You don’t understand I need other things”

When we justify ourselves out of His reality for us, because we have no reference for it, we instantly sabotage any chance we have of coming into this kingdom of God Life within us.

What we see as ideology and something that can’t be attained, God sees as His reality. This is what makes God, God. He invites us into the impossible but fully possible life in His Son Jesus Christ. What we see as ideology, God sees as His reality.

It is impossible with man but fully possible and attainable in God.

Idolatry is the outcome of self still being the lord of one’s life. In other words, the symptom of having the spirit of self as your root system is idolatry.

If “i” or self is not crucified by Love the outcome is self is lord. Unable to satisfy its longing and need for Love, “self” will attempt to fill the void with, people, possessions, purpose, principles, passions and other priorities. Having no true understanding of Who Love is, “self” is unable to enter into and experience God as Love or Lord through divine impartation.

Idolatry is the natural outcome of “self” being lord of one’s life, as it seeks fulfilment. The goal is not to try and get rid of all the idols in our heart, but to pursue Love relentlessly until we receive His incorruptible Love, that will propel us into Lordship. This will empower us to lose our lives for His sake just as is testified of in scripture, removing us as lord and any idols we have accrued as the lord of our own lives.

This is why love is the “more excellent” way and we are to pursue it.

It grieves me to see how many followers run away from this work of the Spirit, justifying their behaviour in His name, and denying the work He wants to do in them. Declaring it is man’s truth and not of the Holy Spirit.

John 6:60-61 Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, conscious that His disciples grumbled at this, said to them, “Does this cause you to stumble?”

John 6:66 As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.

Look at the verse from Deuteronomy below in relation to finding God as Love and Lord and then ask yourself how does this verse from Deuteronomy relate to the losing of one’s life for His sake from the Gospels?

Deuteronomy 4:29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you search for Him with all your heart and all your soul.

Matthew 10:39 “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”

Let’s unpack this verse from Deuteronomy and see how it relates.

The Scripture says, “but from there”.

What is this “but from there” position? When we look at the context of this passage from Deuteronomy, the place Moses writes about is a very dark, bleak and absolutely helpless and hopeless situation, in which the Israelites find themselves. This place is a place of destitution, despair, desperation and death, and it is from this place that God says you will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart and soul.

This place is both a physical and spiritual dimension. It is not just a physical state or place but a matter of every human being’s heart posture from birth.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

For the majority of humanity this physical state of destitution, darkness, despair and possible death, is the place we all need to arrive at, before we are truly willing to relinquish the control of our lives to God for His sake.

It’s arriving at this place that we are made absolutely aware of the brokenness of our true earthly state.

King David found this posture of heart within himself through the conviction of the Word of God, delivered to him by Nathan. The intruder who lay within him had just had Uriah murdered, desiring the man’s wife for himself, with whom he had already committed adultery. The Word brought David to his knees in spiritual repentance, and he was made fully aware of the sickness of his heart condition, which inspired him to write this Psalm for the benefit of all.

Psalms 51:1-5 Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity And cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have sinned And done what is evil in Your sight, So that You are justified when You speak And blameless when You judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.

Have we received a revelation through the Word of God, of the sickness and true state of our heart from birth?

Our natural state is evil, prideful, and fallen. It is void of life, value and without hope just as David and Jeremiah describe. Only by the Spirit making us aware of our natural state are we enabled to turn to the Father and truly cry out from the depth of our inner most being.

Psalm 40:1-2 I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm.

Colossians 1:13 For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

Do we, like king David, have a reference point for this reality, this heart dimension? Do we know what it is to be brought out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay?

This is not the place we would choose to arrive at but it is the place we find ourselves in by trying to stay in control of our own lives. We need to get to this place of death and despair, where we have exhausted all our options, before we will willingly lay our lives down and surrender our will unto His, receiving Him as Lord in the place where we currently reign.

If we do not know this “poor in spirit” state of being, we will be just like the rich young ruler, walking away from what we are supposed to be walking towards.

The Clash of the Lords

He attempted to keep parts of the commandments, but ultimately turned away from Christ, because of the one thing he still lacked. He had no understanding of the true posture of his own heart.

In the absence of Lordship, is idolatry. Jesus came to release this young man from himself, just as He comes to release us from ourselves. Jesus does this so he, the rich young ruler, and we, can be free from self and idolatry.

Now if you think it was the giving away of the young man’s wealth which was the main reason he walked away from Jesus, can I encourage you to look deeper than just what’s on the surface. This passage is not primarily an idolatry issue but a Lordship one. This man was lord of his own life, so in turn he was in love with himself, when he should have been in love with Christ. To love oneself or another more than Christ, is to commit spiritual adultery to the covenant God has made with us.

This young man did not hate his own life the way Jesus taught. It was in fact the complete opposite. He loved his life and the life he was building.

Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

John 12:25 “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”

The outcome for this young man was that he walked away from the Lord, who is Love, and threw away the life he could have known. He was unable to become a true disciple of Jesus and it is no different today.

The question we need to ask of this passage and of our own lives then is:

Am I more in love with myself than I am with Christ, just as this rich young ruler was, and therefore end up committing spiritual adultery and idolatry due to the idols in my life?

The god of self and the idols that reside in our hearts steal the devotion, affection and adoration that rightfully belongs to God, and God alone. He has commanded us to love Him with all our heart. The person who is still lord and has idols in their heart is unable to keep this eternal command. Their heart is divided, not whole.

1 Corinthians 7:27-35 Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you. But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened, so that from now on those who have wives should be as though they had none; and those who weep, as though they did not weep; and those who rejoice, as though they did not rejoice; and those who buy, as though they did not possess; and those who use the world, as though they did not make full use of it; for the form of this world is passing away.

But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided. The woman who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. This I say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what is appropriate and to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord.

An idol is anyone or anything we put before God in our lives. This can be in the form of relationships, possessions, dreams, ambition and yes, even ministry unto the Lord. Anything placed before Him that holds a greater value in our heart than Him, is an idol.

Luke 14:16-20 But He said to him, “A man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land and I need to go out and look at it; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused.’ Another one said, ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’”

Luke 14:25-26 Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

Matthew 10:37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.”

We must all take these passages in Luke, John and Matthew extremely, and I mean extremely seriously, because God is speaking to us. Did you hear that? Good is speaking to you and me, not some third person.

We must all stand before the mirror and ask the Father to reveal to us the true state of our heart.

Isaiah 6:5 Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

Isaiah saw the Lord, the King of Kings with the eyes of his heart and confessed that he was ruined. This is the same reality David, and Jeremiah experienced and spoke from.

Revelation brought him to this place of repentance and the acknowledgment of his true state. Revelation is the way to repentance, which leads to the manifestation of life in us. Repentance, which is not informed by revelation is remorse, and remorse doesn’t lead to life, just ask Judas.

Do we know this place of being ruined of heart, in view of receiving our Lord Jesus Christ, who is Love? If not, then we don’t know our true state of heart and we will continue to think and believe more highly of ourselves from the spirit of pride. We will reject the Word that comes to crucify this nature in us, all the while wondering why we are not in the abundant overflowing life of Christ within us, where rivers of living water flow forth.

It is Love that brings us to the reality of the loss of our lives and it is Love that leads us into the new life in Christ we are promised. Love prepares us for the Lordship I am describing in this book.

Matthew 10:39 “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”

Where our treasure is there our heart will be. In other words, the things we love and value the most are who or what we will give our hearts to. Is this still ourselves?

If so, then true Lordship is still not yet our reality and we are breaking covenant with God, we are guilty of spiritual adultery and idolatry.

Don’t you think it is interesting that the commandments, which Jesus told the rich young ruler he had kept, had nothing to do with the primary ones? The primary ones being the ones between man and God and not man and his neighbour.

Until we have been dethroned as the lord of our own lives, we are incapable of keeping the primary and secondary commands of Heaven, the way of the Father instructs.

Unfortunately, too many followers today are only interested in what they can keep and do, just like the rich young ruler. In turn, they miss out on the life that Jesus died and rose again for them to know, experience and live out in covenant. A life, which truly glorifies the Father because it’s a life that only has eyes for Him.

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

It is only those who are no longer the lord of their own lives, and that have been set free from the bondage of the idols in their hearts, who will be the overcomers that will take their rightful place next to Him on His throne.

Revelation 3:21 He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.

John 12:25-26 “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honour him.”

Our lives must become a living manifestation of the reality of God’s truth if we are to find ourselves receiving the prize of inheritance.

Lordship is God’s design for our new lives in Christ

To not know the Lordship I am describing is to not know the life you were created for. Lordship is God’s perfect design for life. It is God’s perfect plan to bring His people into the fullness and overflowing nature of life and godliness. It is this life we were created for, not the life we were born into.

Once again, if the word Lordship stirs up any negative connotations, thoughts or images that cause us to believe Lordship is restrictive and limiting, then we don’t have a reference for God’s version of Lordship through Love. To know God as the Lord of one’s life, is to experience freedom from the bondage of being our own lord and controller of our own lives. This is the most life-giving reality one could ever hope to experience.

This is how we were designed to live and be in fellowship with God.

To submit and surrender your life unto Love, fully coming under His design and doing everything His way and in His timing, is the most life giving and joyous way of living. It’s the more excellent way, the way of Love.

Anything less than this is to sabotage yourself from entering into His perfect design for life as His child. To live according to His design is the most freeing position one could ever hope to find and live from. It is the way of Love, which informs our Lordship.

Great faith empowers great Lordship

We see a great example of this kind of Lordship operating in Matthew 8, activated by great faith, where we see Jesus engaging with the Roman centurion over the healing of his servant.

Matthew 8:5-10 And when Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, imploring Him, and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralysed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marvelled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel.”

The key to Lordship in Christ, which the centurion modelled, is great faith motivated by Love. Jesus acknowledges this great faith within the man, not just faith, but great faith. He had a deep conviction and knowledge of who Jesus was and how his kingdom operates. The centurion understood the order of authority in the Kingdom of God, and we see this in his dialogue with Jesus and in the way he acted.

He didn’t just call Him Lord, he demonstrated what being in and under Lordship was.

The centurion knew and understood how being under authority in the Roman Empire worked, for he was a man under authority, and he had men under his authority. He knew how the chain of command operated in the natural, so he innately flowed in Lordship to the King of Kings in Spirit.

He had the same spirit of faith as Peter, when he wrote 2 Peter 1:1, which is the same spirit of faith that Paul said was written down for us to know.

2 Peter 1:1 Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, by the righteousness of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ:

2 Corinthians 4:13 But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed, therefore I spoke,” we also believe, therefore we also speak,

God defines what the spirit of faith is not us, and God wrote down what faith actually is, so we wouldn’t create our own definition and unknowingly lead ourselves astray in our minds.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

It is the knowledge of Jesus, as Lord and ultimate authority in the centurion’s life, which came through faith that released the healing in his servant’s body. How powerful is that? The faith of the centurion, which empowered him to be under Christ’s Lordship, brought about the healing of his servant.

The impact of great faith submitted to Lordship, will reach beyond our own lives to influence and affect those we are in relationship with. This is truly incredible. This kind of faith comes by hearing the Word of God, by which the worlds were prepared.

Romans 10:17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Now that we have established what true Lordship in and to Christ is, let’s discover how this Lordship informs and empowers true Worship.

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4

true spiritual worship – The third Position

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The reason I have entitled this chapter “True Spiritual Worship” is the same reason I entitled chapter 3, “True Spiritual Lordship”. We as God’s people have redefined what Lordship and Worship are, conforming them into our own image. Much like we have done with the church, by saying it’s a place we go to or it’s a thing we do, rather than it being God’s people, His body.

Worship is not the singing of songs, and the worship team are not a group of musicians who play music and lead others into singing songs. True worship couldn’t be any further from this reality, and yet out of true worship will come a heart of praise and thanksgiving, which may be expressed through song.

What then is true Worship

We need look no further than God’s holy Scriptures to find His definition of Worship. When we are looking to establish the correct perspective on God’s truth, it is always best to begin with the rule of first mention.

The question we ask ourselves is where do we find the word “Worship” used first in the Scriptures and in what context is it used?

The answer to these questions is found in Genesis 22:5.

Genesis 22:5 Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”

The context for worship is the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham’s son. This is a direct correlation of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by His own Father, Yahweh, for all of humanity. We then see the third part of this equation that completes the picture, which is the sacrifice of our own lives unto Him in Romans 12:1 and Psalm 51:17.

Romans 12:1 Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Are we able to see, through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the kingdom pattern that was spoken, written down and modelled for us by Isaac, David, Jesus and Paul? The same pattern we are to enter into and live from. It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Our spiritual service of Worship is the loss of our lives for His sake. Just as Christ lost His life for His Father’s sake, so that we could enter into the process of sanctification. This is the transformation of the inner life by the Spirit and in faith in the truth. The outcome for all those who surrender themselves to this process is they will be presented to Christ, as a holy, spotless, blameless and complete disciple. These followers will receive the reward that Christ brings with Him, which will be given because of the wholehearted, abandoned lives they have lived unto Him.

2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Revelation 22:12 “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”

Those who don’t surrender themselves to this process will, as the Scriptures declare, suffer loss. They will find themselves spending eternity in the presence of God, but without the kingdom inheritance they could have received. Ultimately, they sabotaged themselves while here on earth and will miss out on the role the Father had for them in the kingdom to come on earth in the future.

1 Corinthians 3:14-15 If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

It is fully possible to not run the way Christ intends us to run and miss out on the prize of our inheritance in Christ as mentioned above. I am not talking about the gift of righteousness, but the reward or prize for living a life of righteousness by faith.

It is the divine revelation of God’s mercy towards us through the revelation of the Spirit, not you and I trying to die or be less, which empowers us to relinquish the spirit of self and enter into this process of inner transformation of spirit, soul and body, called sanctification. This is true Worship.

It is this process of sanctification which will have us being made spotless, blameless and complete in Christ. All those who desire to be the Groom’s wife will be on this process, because without it we won’t be. It’s as simple as that.

True Worship is a position of gain and not loss, when it is accomplished in, from and for God’s sake. Jesus modelled this pattern in the garden of Gethsemane and if we are truly going to be His disciples we must model the same pattern.

We are all given the opportunity to partake of the victory that was won, not on Calvary but in the garden. Calvary was the outcome of Lordship. Jesus was fully surrendered and submitted to the Father because of the Father’s Love burning within Him. This is the Lordship motivated by Love that I described in Chapter 3.

What happened in the garden, the sacrifice of Jesus’ very life, is the essence of true Worship.

It is here that I want us to unpack Matthew 26:36-46 in relation to true spiritual Worship, because if we don’t enter into the reality which Jesus is demonstrating for us, there is no way we will be the true worshipper the Father seeks, as John describes.

John 4:23-24 “But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Let’s unpack Matthew 26:36-46

Matthew 26:36-46 Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.” Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more. Then He came to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”

The first thing to take note of is the meaning of the name Gethsemane. Verse 36 says Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane. Gethsemane means oil press. In other words, Jesus and His disciples came to the place of crushing.

Psalm 34:18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

What is it to be crushed in spirit? Do we have any reference through revelation of what this position, or posture of spirit is, because it is the people who have, that the Lord is near and saves.

We are going to witness the most powerful demonstration of Worship in these verses. A demonstration, which will be a living, tangible expression that we must also follow, if we truly will be disciples of Jesus. We too must come to our own Gethsemane. We must come to our own place of crushing.

There is no way around this reality. Many will try to go around it and so in turn do not know and have operating within them the full and overflowing life of Jesus. We must go through the exact same process Jesus did called Worship, which is the loss of our very lives, if we want to have this all encompassing life in Christ.

We see in verse 37 Jesus take Peter, James and John further into the garden with Him, where He invites them into His tribulation, His affliction, which is the cup He must drink from. The three disciples are invited to keep watch with Him, as He is about to go through His greatest ordeal while being on earth. The act of Worship.

Verse 39 and 42, I believe, are probably the most profound and powerful verses in the entirety of scripture. Everything was won through this divine act of Worship that was enabled by Jesus’ Lordship to His Father, which was empowered from Love.

V39 And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”

In other words, is there any other way than this one? The simple answer was no, there wasn’t. Jesus knows true Worship is the sacrifice, the loss of one’s own life, for the purpose of the glorification of the Father’s purposes.

Jesus knew this was the Father’s ultimate predestined purpose for His time here on earth, and so in turn goes to His physical death by faith, knowing that in three days He will be raised from the grave.

It is this kind of spiritual faith that empowers true Godly Worship.

V42 He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.”

It is important to note that the loss of His life was accomplished from being baptised in the Holy Spirit and being full of God’s resurrection power. He accomplished this Worship from being full and overflowing with God’s life in Him. This is to be no different for us as well.

Acts 10:38 You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Your will be done

Four incredibly powerful words. We may say it, but do we live it? There are those who profess these words while never knowing what they are truly saying and then when given the opportunity to live His will out, they deny and reject it, justifying their way out of doing His will. They fail to truly Worship God the way he calls us to. Of course they are not aware that this is what they are doing, and if asked about it, would vehemently reject and deny the possibility of this being true.

Then there are those who not only profess these words but also live these words out, demonstrating, as Jesus did, the Father’s will. These followers are truly His disciples who follow the way of their Lord, the way of Worship.

This declaration needs to be the testimony of every follower. While physically walking with Jesus the disciples had not yet arrived at this posture of heart, hence the reason Jesus modelled to them what would be required if they truly desired to become the disciples Jesus had in mind for them to become.

They are all still very much setting their minds on their own interests, due to them all being the lords of their own lives, so in turn they are all about “their will” being done, and we see the manifestation of this will, in Matthew 26, just before Jesus leads them into the garden of crushing.

Matthew 26:31-35 Then Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you to Galilee.” But Peter said to Him, “Even though all may fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” Jesus said to him, “Truly I say to you that this very night, before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” Peter said to Him, “Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You.” All the disciples said the same thing too.

This is one example of many, where the disciples have no concept or reality for the predestined written dimension of God, which was established in Christ before the foundations of the world. This kind of worship was being lived out right before their eyes and they had no idea it was even happening. I don’t believe this ignorance only existed 2000 years ago, sadly I believe it is just as present today as it was then.

Jesus tells them what will happen before it even happens because it has already been predestined to happen. You and I can’t change what God has already established. What we get to do is enter into this dimension and live from it. The will of Peter, along with the will of all the other disciples, set its interests on itself, so in turn declares another reality, which is completely opposite to the words and will of the Father. This is the false worship position of the flesh and it exists because each disciple still has “i”, or the intruder at the very centre of who they are, as we have looked at.

Luke 9:53-55 But they did not receive Him, because He was traveling toward Jerusalem. When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of;”

Let’s have a look at what Jesus said would happen even though Peter bluntly denied it.

Matthew 26:69-70 Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant-girl came to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you are talking about.”

Matthew 26:72-74 And again he denied it with an oath, “I do not know the man.” A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Surely you too are one of them; for even the way you talk gives you away.” Then he began to curse and swear, “I do not know the man!” And immediately a rooster crowed.

Mark 14:49-50 “Every day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize Me; but this has taken place to fulfil the Scriptures.” And they all left Him and fled.

How can the disciples and anyone else for that matter, truly Worship the Father in the context of what true Worship is, when being the lord of our lives still exists and is highly active? One can’t and the disciples couldn’t either, hence we see them all live out what Jesus said would happen, as opposed to what they said would happen. Their words and their lives were the demonstration of what the predestined Holy Scriptures declared would happen, and their hypocrisy of heart was exposed for what it truly was, hence the crushing of Peter in the temple needed to happen before he could become the Peter Jesus chose and called him to become as a true Worshipper.

The intruder living within them would need to be crushed.

Matthew 26:75 And Peter remembered the word which Jesus had said, “Before a rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly.

The word of God pierced the darkness in Peter’s heart and his will that lived in his soul, was crucified in this moment. Heaven had invaded earth by the word of God, the earth being Peter’s heart and soul. This needed to happen to Peter along with all of the disciples, and it needs to happen in us, if we desire to truly Worship in spirit and truth.

The disciples didn’t have what they needed in this moment to be able to offer their bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord, even though they all declared they could.

They couldn’t Worship the Father and do the will of the Father. Does any of this ring true for us today?

We see this exact same reality take place in the garden of Gethsemane, where they are unable to keep watch and pray for one hour with Jesus in His darkest moment. This time in the garden, of keeping watch with Christ, was a mini test before the macro test, of being able to go to their death with Jesus, and what we get to see is that the disciples failed both. They failed the Worship test because they were still consumed and controlled by self. The test of the loss of their own lives for His sake.

They would be found out on both occasions for what they didn’t have. If they were going to be true Worshippers, which the Father seeks, they would need to be of His spiritual Word, and we are no different.

Matthew 4:4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”

This was the very thing they did not yet have, but the very thing He was continuously offering them, especially before He took them into the garden of crushing.

Matthew 26:26-29 While they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing, He broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.”

The last Passover is much more than just the eating and drinking of natural bread and wine.

This is a physical foreshadowing of something far greater than what they had a reference for at this particular time. We see a very similar reality playing out in John 4, when it came to the disciples having no knowledge of what God’s will was.

John 4:32 But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”

Jesus is patterning something of a spiritual dimension and yet the disciples, like many of us today, are oblivious to this foreshadowing. While we see the physical actions taking place before us we are blind to the spiritual reality playing out before us that we should be partaking of. We live in the shadow instead of knowing the substance.

Colossians 2:16-17 Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day – things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.

All we know is the natural, the physical, and so in turn, we don’t have what we need when we need it. We are overcome by the trial, test, pressure, circumstance or situation, or the behaviour, instead of standing firm and being able to demonstrate the wisdom of the kingdom of God, which is the position of true worship. We unfortunately shrink back and are found retreating and walking away from the very ground we are to be taking, or we are found charging headfirst into what we perceive and believe is the way of God, chopping off ears through our own whipped up zeal. Both positions are a false worship.

This Passover scene is a typology of something far greater, which we must all enter into if we want life on the inside of us, empowering us to live a life of Worship the way God defines Worship. Jesus tells us what this far greater reality is in John 6:53 and 55.

John 6:53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.”

John 6:55 “For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.”

We partake of the natural bread and the natural wine just as the disciples did when we have communion, but do we know what it is to partake of the spiritual bread and the spiritual wine or blood, so in return we have the capacity to live out the Commandments and instructions of heaven?

Failure to enter into this spiritual partaking of Christ leaves us partaking of the natural. When we are working for and eating and drinking of natural food, this doesn’t empower us to Worship God the way we have been instructed to Worship Him.

We are left with a form of Worship coming from our self-effort, or striving in our strength, which doesn’t involve the sacrifice of our lives, but a highly emotional, feelings led and expressed life, where we are swayed by circumstance and situations, rather than true Worship unto the Lord.

If things are going well and we feel good, then we will engage and be found doing what we perceive is the right thing, but if not, we are overcome by these things, unable to demonstrate true Worship unto the Lord.

The other form of this attitude of false worship is the doing of functional works through self-effort that He neither asks for nor expects, which we continue to do anyway to justify our so-called relationship with Him. The harder it gets, the more determined we are to stand out and be the centre of the story.

This is clearly demonstrated in the garden of Gethsemane where we see Peter taking matters into his own hands and from his own initiative, cutting off the ear of Malchus the guard. Jesus rebukes Peter again and instructs him to put the sword back into its place, making it clear in no uncertain terms that what is happening in the garden with His arrest had to happen this way to fulfil the Scriptures.

Matthew 26:54 “How then will the Scriptures be fulfilled, which say that it must happen this way?”

Peter had no capacity to keep watch and pray, the very thing Jesus instructed him to do in the garden, while having all the capacity and passion to do the very thing that came from his own fleshly initiative. The very thing he was not asked to do. Does any of this ring true for us?

Peter had no capacity to actually deny himself and so in turn denied Christ after saying he wouldn’t and being given three opportunities to prove he could live out what he prophesied. This false worship cannot exist if we truly want to Worship the Father the way we are instructed to Worship Him: in spirit and truth.

While self and our version of truth remain the centre posture of our hearts, we will continue to live out Psalms 127:1 and Isaiah 29:13, having no concept we are in fact doing this. We worship in flesh and the false.

Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain.

Isaiah 29:13 Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their words And honour Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.”

When we draw near with our words and honour God with our lip service, all the while removing our hearts from Him, and our reverence for Him consists in traditions learnt by rote, we know without any shadow of any doubt that this is the false worshipper position.

How much of this false worshipper position exists today in the body of Christ? Well, when we start calling those playing musical instruments and singing songs the worship team, this gives us a tiny insight into how big the problem has become.

Peter worshiped God in self and his version of truth for the majority of the time he walked physically with Jesus. We see this completely play itself out in Matthew 16.

Matthew 16:21-23 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

To set your interest on man's interests is to be self-led, not Spirit led, and self then defines and informs what the truth is, not the Spirit, leading you into death not life. Self has absolutely no capacity to Worship in spirit, because self is the complete opposite of spirit and finds itself in opposition to the spirit.

Jesus says God is Spirit and those who Worship Him must Worship in spirit and truth to be a true Worshipper. If a person does not know God, who is Love, through revelation of the Holy Spirit, how can one ever worship in spirit and truth?

John 4:24 “God is spirit, and those who Worship Him must Worship in spirit and truth.”

I ask the questions,

If one is not born of the spirit,

If one doesn’t receive in the spirit,

If one doesn’t hear in the spirit,

If one doesn’t see in the spirit,

If one is not led by the spirit,

How can one Worship in the spirit?

Anything other than this is the false worship position painted up as life, which we all have to ask ourselves if we are in fact in.

We see Jesus address this reality in Matthew 15.

Matthew 15:8-9 “‘This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.’”

The context for this is all about neglecting God’s commandments and truth for your own traditions, where you teach your own traditions as His doctrine. The Jews had come up with their own Talmud or teachings, and these were being taught as God’s Word.

We love to believe that those people couldn’t possibly be us, but we are those people if we are repeating the same patterns they did. Just because we say we believe we know God and may have His Spirit in us, doesn’t mean we don’t worship in vain by repeating these fleshly patterns of living.

You think and genuinely believe what you are teaching is His, when it is man’s precepts, man’s prejudices handed down generation to generation over the years. This is what leads to false worship, where we worship in vain, meaning our worship is purely fleshly and futile to the Father. There is no loss of our old life, but it is alive and well as it ever has been.

Jesus told the religious leaders He desires compassion and not sacrifice in relation to how man treats man. He told them to go away and learn what this actually meant. They would bring their offerings to the temple religiously and without fault, while self-righteously judging and condemning the sinner and the tax collector. This is an example of false worship, where one worships in vain, because one is still the lord of one’s life.

You believe you are doing all the right things in accordance with God’s truth when in fact what you are doing is in accordance with the flesh, or in other words man’s ways and truth.

It’s no different today where people turn up in droves to buildings on a Sunday week after week, singing the songs, praying the prayers, hearing the Scriptures read, putting money in a bucket, taking the notes, and it all looks right, but it’s all in vain, because we are missing the entire point.

There is no loss of one’s life for the sake of Jesus, no laying one’s life down for your fellow brothers and sisters, thinking of them before self and putting their interests ahead of your own. There is no doing the will of God.

It’s just a whole lot of religious traditions and ceremony learnt by rote, where people come to get and have their needs met, getting their religious fix and then going again, until next week. This becomes the never-ending cycle of our lives, going round and round and getting absolutely nowhere in Christ. We have no inner spiritual life to show for all this external output.

This may sound incredibly harsh, and it may sound incredibly judgemental, but I implore you to ask yourself if it is in fact the truth and if it is the truth, then it is not judgemental but a factual reality.

Failure to truly know what it is to eat His flesh, which is real food, and drink His blood, which is real drink, will have you and I, living in and from this false worship posture. The reason for this is because you don’t know what it is to Worship in spirit and truth because you don’t know Him, who is Love, so what you are left doing is worshiping from self or flesh and your version of what’s true to you, but not truth, which is ultimately a posture of death.

You may be covered by Love, but you don’t yet know what it is to experience and live from Love. It doesn’t have to be this way if you truly desire to be changed by God Himself. You must be willing to relinquish your life for His sake, True Worship, and be prepared to go through and not around, and do whatever it means and takes, for God and God alone to do this work.

John 12 is another clear pattern of Worship in the kingdom, which every follower must follow if they truly desire to Worship the Father the way He instructs and receive their full life and inheritance in Christ.

John 12:23-26 And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honour him.”

Anyone who loves their earthly life, the life they were born into in the natural, who choose to live a life of sacrifice unto themselves, will lose the eternal life they were predestined to know. All those who hate their natural earthly life, who relinquish it, losing it for His sake, will gain the eternal life they were created for. Once again this is True Worship.

They in turn live a life of sacrifice unto the Lord, bringing glory to His name by the very transformation and demonstration of their lives and the words they speak. None of this is loss but incredible extravagant gain, because it is for this very purpose that the Father created us.

This inner work of transformation I am testifying to through the Worship of our lives, affects both spirit and soul (mind, will and emotions), and will ultimately empower our physical body to live the way it has been designed to live. This expression of life comes from this posture of Worship to which, I testify.

2 Corinthians 4:10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

It is Worship alone which opens up the realm and reality for our minds being renewed by the Spirit, enabling and empowering us to have His mind and start living and seeing from His divine eternal lens, living for His interests and no longer our own.

It is here that I want to remind us that the Worship I am describing is only possible when one is in the Lordship I described in chapter 3, and that this Lordship is only possible when God who is Love, has been imparted into us through divine revelation, not mental or verbal agreement.

This leads us to Romans 12:2 for this continuous inner transformation.

The renewal of the mind

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.

Once the heart comes into and is informed and influenced by God’s divine power, the mind is now ready to be renewed by the very same reality.

We see here the absolute requirement and need for the renewing of the mind by the spirit, if this Worship and transformation I speak of will ever become our living reality. Each person no matter who they are and no matter what environment they are raised in, are already conformed to the world.

We are born with the world within us. The nature, character, ways, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and demonstration of the world is what we know, and it is all demonic.

We are all born fallen and not one of us is good. We are all born in the image of Adam, hence the need for Jesus to come, die and be resurrected to life, so those He predestined could be conformed back into His image, which is their original created state.

Mark 10:17-18 As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.”

Romans 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

There is a being and a doing of the natural realm or kingdom of the world, which is a counterfeit to the being and doing of the spiritual kingdom of God. What one believes is so innate and the way we are to live on earth, is the complete opposite way to the way we are to live in Him. This is why it is essential our minds are renewed, otherwise we won’t be able to live the way we have been designed to live and Worship God the way He instructs us to.

Many in the body of Christ suffer from this back to front reality without ever knowing they do because they are convinced that what they believe, think and live, is exactly what God believes, thinks and lives. This follower believes with all they are that their position is God’s position, and they have no reference or reality for a God who says, “your thoughts and ways are not Mine.”

One example of this is in the area of family. Living for and prioritising natural family and natural relationships for many are held in a much higher state, than prioritising spiritual oneness with God’s people. Fellowship or spiritual oneness has been superseded by the counterfeit of natural earthly connections.

If we continue in this fallen reality being conformed to the world, there is absolutely no way we will know what the will of God is, never mind be proving it. It is impossible to prove something you have zero reality of.

Jesus said My family are those who do My Father’s will.

Matthew 12:48-50 But Jesus answered the one who was telling Him and said, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.”

To not be doing the will of the Father is to not be part of His family, and to not be part of His family is to not be family members of one another.

It is fully possible to be justified by His blood and still be conformed to the world in our thinking, hence not proving the will of God, which is good, acceptable and perfect.

Jesus came to set us free from this demonic reality, hence the need to lose the life we are born into, and discover a brand new life in the Spirit.

We see the mind of man, or the mind of the world, operating consistently in Jesus’ disciples while He was with them. Let’s take another look at some verses we looked at previously in this chapter. You can’t get a clearer example of this, than the dialogue Jesus had with Peter in Matthew 16.

Matthew 16:21-23 From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”

Peter’s mind was firmly fixed on and anchored in his own best interests. This is a mindset conformed to the world. Self is of the world, while spirit is of God. If you live by the mindset of the flesh, you will reap the flesh and be unable to worship in spirit and truth, the way you are commanded to.

True Worshippers have and are coming more and more into having the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ releases more and more life into us, so we go from one measure of life to another. It has nothing to do with dying or not being enough. All this follower knows is life to life to life, strength to strength to strength, living out God’s will.

If you want another beautiful testimony of true Worship from the spirit, I don’t think you could go beyond the woman of Luke 7.

Luke 7:36-38 Now one of the Pharisees was requesting Him to dine with him, and He entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the city who was a sinner; and when she learned that He was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume, and standing behind Him at His feet, weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing His feet and anointing them with the perfume.”

Luke 7:35 “Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

Worship is the fruit of Lordship and Lordship is the result of receiving Love in you, crucifying the old nature through the power of Love and releasing you to offer yourself up as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

It is these three elements all working in unison with one another, which births, forms and builds His eternal life in us. You can see from the illustration at the start of this book, that the eternal life is on the inside of the Triangle of Life. As we flow in these three elements, God’s eternal life, His Son Jesus Christ, will be formed in us, and every promise concealed in the Christ, will be life unto us.

We will become an image bearer of the Son and express this life in a real and tangible way. In other words, spiritual beings having a tangible experience and making a powerful difference in the lives of others, because they are in the Love that IS, the Lordship that IS, and a heart posture of the sacrifice of their own lives unto Him.

It’s with this in mind that we look at the final chapter of this book called “Eternal Life Now”.

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5

eternal life now

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As we learn to receive and flow in this Triangle of Life from the divine order of Love, Lordship and Worship, we can expect to see an eternal life being consistently and continuously formed and produced within us. This is the life, which Jesus spoke of in John. This is the life He desires for us all to know and live from.

John 7:38 “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ ”

John 4:13-14 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”

This is the goal of every follower and it is the outcome of living in and flowing from the three key attributes of Love, Lordship and Worship. This is the great news of the kingdom message that each one of us can receive, know, experience and live out, if we are prepared to follow Him the way He determines and defines.

We can all be the recipients of this supernatural eternal life in us, where we have the values, attitudes, and attributes of Christ Himself formed within us.

2 Peter 1:2-11 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For he who lacks these qualities is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins. Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you; for as long as you practice these things, you will never stumble; for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you.”

What would the church, the people of God be like if every follower of Jesus had this eternal life being birthed, established and formed within them and being expressed through them?

It’s essential to point out that we do not chase this outcome of an eternal life which exists within the Triangle of Life, but that the eternal life being formed within us, is the fruit of abiding in Love, Lordship and Worship, the way I have testified to in this book.

This life is for all followers, no matter our background, colour, past, culture, upbringing, failings and mistakes. We all get this opportunity and invitation through what Jesus has accomplished and finished. The question then becomes; what are we doing about this eternal invitation?

This is why our focus is to be on Christ and Christ alone, giving Him our full permission and full access into every area of our life for the purpose of transformation. This leads us to ask two questions, which although similar, are still different, even though they both lead us into one dimension. This is the beauty of the mystery of God where the two become one reality.

These questions are:

Who is eternal life?

What is an eternal life?

Let’s start with the “who” question, as the “who” is the first position in God and as we have looked at determines everything. We don’t have to look any further than the living Scriptures.

Who is an eternal life

1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

1 John 1:2 and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us –

Jesus Christ is Eternal Life. Jesus was the tangible reality of what an eternal life is and was. He was the embodiment of a supernatural life even though He lived in an earthly body. His earthly body was the vessel, which housed who He was – Eternal Life.

Jesus is the Eternal One. Everything about Him is eternal. He is the living tangible demonstration of an eternal life. The Love He demonstrated, the peace He modelled, the joy He expressed, the freedom He lived from, the healings He performed, the words He spoke, the prayers He prayed, the rest He manifested, and the power He released.

Jesus was the reflection and the expression of an eternal life on the earth for all of humanity to see and as His followers; we are to be no different.

Matthew 5:48 “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Colossians 1:27-28 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ.

Galatians 4:19 My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you –

If the Christ is being formed within us, an eternal life is being formed within us, because Jesus is Eternal Life.

This leads us into looking at the second question, “What is an eternal life?”

What is an eternal life

In simple terms, an eternal life is the supernatural life of Jesus Christ being birthed, formed and established in the heart, soul, and body of a follower. It is the literal life of our Messiah being built on the inside of us, and being manifested through us, for all to experience and see. It is where we go from being a Christian to becoming Christlike.

This life is formed and produced within our very being, as we flow in and from, Love, Lordship and Worship. This is why knowing who Love is, what Lordship is and what true Worship is, becomes vital. This is what I have termed Personhood living.

The Personhood living reality is built purely through the spirit of revelation. It’s not a life that chases or worries about one’s purpose or principles, earthly relationships, kingdom assignments or tasks or planning one’s five-to-ten-year earthly goals. It’s not based on one’s loves, passions, and dreams, all the while trying to find the so called “will of God” for one’s life.

Personhood living produces Jesus’ life within us, and is only fixed and focused on one thing – knowing Jesus through revelation. This is God’s calling for us all.

Matthew 16:13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

Matthew 16:15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

What do you notice primarily about these verses? Jesus is asking the who question. He’s not asking the why question. He’s not asking the what question. He’s not asking the how question. He’s not asking the where to or the when question. No, He’s asking the who question because He knows with all He is, this is where eternal life begins and ends.

This is why Jesus told Peter he was such a blessed man, because the knowledge he received in relation to Jesus being the Messiah, the who dimension, didn’t come from flesh and blood. In other words, this revelation didn’t come from man or anything of the natural, but directly from His Father who is Spirit.

This is exactly the same reality that Paul testifies to in relation to his own testimony as well.

Galatians 1:11-12 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Knowing Jesus as Love, which empowers knowing Jesus as Lord, and from this reality sacrificing one’s life (Worship) for His sake alone, can only be achieved through divine revelation by grace. This grace alone empowers the reality of this supernatural life, called an eternal life.

1 Corinthians 4:19-20 But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power.

Jesus, who is the power of God, is not to merely be in our lives, He is to be our life. He is to be the very air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink and the clothes we wear. He is to be the source and sustainer of our lives.

Acts 17:24-25 The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things;

Acts 17:28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’

Colossians 3:4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Do you and I know of this internal, eternal, spiritual dimension in Christ? Do we know what it is to have Him as our life and breath, where we are living, moving and existing in Him? If not, then we have to ask why not, as this is the prophetic promise given to us by God.

God’s people are destroyed for a lack of this knowing of Him within them. Look at the consequences for denying and rejecting this knowledge when it is spoken and declared to you. The problem is many don’t even realise they are denying Him and His truth and continue to go about their day completely oblivious to their true state of being and actions.

Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

The Holy Spirit was poured out 2000 years ago, so there can be no excuses for not knowing this in Him reality within us. We constantly hear “the best is yet to come”, or “God is doing a new thing.”

The best promise came 2000 years ago and for many, is still to be realised and laid hold of, hence we hear these words, which sound great, but are just an empty promise.

This is why He says to us in Matthew 6:25-26 that we are not to be worried about our life, food, water or clothing. Jesus is saying if I am in you and you are in Me, then My breath, which is the oxygen you live from, will supply the air to your life.

With Me as your life you will be well nourished, hydrated and covered, being fully able and capable with the fullest capacity of spirit, to demonstrate the eternal wisdom I have called and chosen you to demonstrate, and in so doing, you will glorify Me and bring glory to My name.

If I am not your life, then you will be found oxygen deprived, malnourished, dehydrated and naked, still justified by My blood, but not able to walk in the manner in which I walked.

1 John 2:3-6 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.

The Way is spirit. The Truth is spirit. The Life is spirit. In other words, I am the embodiment of life in and of the spirit. If you want to know who Life personified is, it is I, and I have been predestined to be formed in you, through your knowing of Me. This is an eternal life.

John 17:23 “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

John 17:26 “and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

We are to know and be coming to know the WHO and the WHAT, as this is the true Life, of and in the Spirit. Every follower is called and chosen to seek out and know Him. We come into this Life through the revelation of each element of the Triangle of Life.

To not discover this life as one’s primary objective is to ultimately sabotage one’s own life now and their inheritance in the future.

This is how serious this reality is.

1 Corinthians 3:12-15 Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

It is so easy to be drawn into the counterfeit life, through persuasive words, religious teachings and man-made ways, that sound good and promise much, but never deliver. Without the discernment that comes from the true knowledge of Jesus within us, that Paul teaches, we may all be caught up in the deceit and delusion. It is only the true knowledge of Jesus Christ, revealed within us by the Spirit, that will prevent us from being deluded and led astray from the eternal life Jesus came to bring.

Colossians 2:1-4 For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument.

The values that reflect this eternal life

The spiritual life that I am testifying of in this chapter called an Eternal Life, which is to be discovered in us, reflects a set of spiritual values which I have listed below. It’s these spiritual values operating in our lives, which prove we are the recipients of this Eternal Life. As mentioned previously, we can’t expect to live a life of the spirit while living in and from the flesh. We can’t just think we can transition and apply all the values of the world into God’s kingdom. It doesn’t work like that and never will.

Through the loss of our old life we must leave behind the old operating systems of learning received from the partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and start afresh, just like a child. Coming with a fresh and clean slate, partaking of the tree of Life, Christ. We must come to God knowing nothing, apart from what the Father has revealed to us through His Spirit, and written on our hearts.

Ephesians 4:17-24 So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, 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 you 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 the truth.

The values of the kingdom of God know no limit. There are endless possibilities in the eternal, where the supernatural trumps the natural realm. The natural realm bows its knee and comes into full submission to the eternal dimension.

Mark 4:36-39 Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke Him and said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.” And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.

The eternal is just that, eternal. It has no beginning of days or end of life. It has no bloodline or genealogy, no mother or father. The eternal is of a completely different order and one, which we are to find ourselves living from and for.

The eternal is forever or in other words, infinite. The capacity in the eternal is unlimited and cannot be restrained by anything of the temporal. The reality of the eternal is more real than the temporal. The challenge for us all is whether we are of the eternal or of the temporal. Are we eternal beings or are we still living from our original state of being, which is earthy?

1 Corinthians 15:47-49 The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.

The ability to enter into and live from this eternal life will be whether we adhere to the values of this kingdom domain, allowing them to define and shape who we are and how we are called to live.

So, what are some of the values that govern this eternal life?

Incorruptible Love

Ephesians 6:24 Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love.

The Word of God

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

Sabbath Rest

Hebrews 4:9-10 So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

Faith

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Believe

John 6:29 Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”

Hope

Romans 15:13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Revelation

Matthew 11:27 “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”

Matthew 16:17 And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”

Grace/Power

2 Corinthians 13:4 For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you.

Spiritual hearing

Revelation 2:7 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Joy

John 15:11 “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”

Humility

Matthew 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the values, which govern this eternal life, but as we learn to abide in these values and allow them to shape our very being, we will become the recipients of the eternal life described in these pages. We don’t do the work, but we allow the Spirit to do the work in us. In other words, we are the benefactors of Jesus building His church, due to flowing in this Triangle of Life.

Entering into His rest is a prerequisite for receiving the building of this eternal life in us

The entering into His Sabbath Rest plays one of the most significant parts in this spiritual process of receiving and living from this Eternal Life.

Jesus promises us rest for our souls, which is our mind, will and emotions. Our souls are the operating system, which controls and governs our very being; hence, our souls need to be sanctified through the spirit and faith in the truth, as 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 teaches us. If this work of the spirit isn’t taking place, then our fleshly soul will continue to dictate and determine who we love, how we live and who we live for.

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Sabbath Rest isn’t the same as natural rest, where you take a break or have time off, it’s not even about taking a day off to focus on the Lord. There is nothing wrong with these things, but they are not the same as the Rest that is discovered in Christ. Sabbath Rest which Jesus offers us is a greater dimension of life within Himself. It’s a life that is positioned behind the veil, where Jesus has journeyed and become a forerunner, for all those who will trust Him and enter into this dimension in Him by faith.

As we receive Him who is Sabbath Rest, through divine grace, we find ourselves in a dimension of the spirit. We are free from our souls; He has repositioned us, bringing a completely new way to being in Him and living in accordance with this new life of the spirit.

The reason many do not know this reality as His followers is that they are still to come to Him the way He instructs. They have not come weary and heavy laden of spirit, where their spirit of pride has been crushed, so in turn, they cannot receive this Sabbath Rest.

Psalms 34:18 The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Psalms 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

We come to Him for what He can do for us. He accepts this conditional response, but there is a much deeper work that He wishes to do. For us to receive Jesus, who is Sabbath Rest, in our inner most being (our soul), a circumcision of the spirit must take place. This work frees us from ourselves and enables us to live free from the demonic will and nature we were born with. He frees us from our stinking thinking, renewing our minds unto His, allowing His truth to build within us so that we no longer live in bondage to our emotions.

As this work of the spirit starts to occur in us, we now come into the reality of Jesus’ yoke being easy and His burden being light. In other words, His teachings become an absolute joy, privilege and honour to keep via the Spirit, where we find ourselves fully capable of living out His truth.

Our language changes. Words like, “it’s so hard” or “man He asks for so much in a negative context”, no longer come forth from us. Words like “ought to” and “should” become redundant, and we find ourselves speaking words of life and expectation like, “we get to” and “what an amazing opportunity this is”.

The grace we are now in and is operating in us, is flowing forth from us, empowering us to live out what His truth is calling us to. This is the position of absolute delight, awe and wonder, because we have entered into His Sabbath Rest for our souls.

It is no longer the position of having to actively choose His will over our own will on a daily basis, as if it’s the battle of the wills. It’s not a “do I live for me”, or “do I live for Him” dimension. This doesn’t even come into it. This isn’t a competition or something we compete with God for. This follower who has entered into Sabbath Rest knows the only will they are interested in doing, is the one they were created for- the Father’s.

Now it’s important to note, that this isn’t the same thing as having to take thoughts or feelings captive that are trying to lead you down another pathway which is not of God. We still have to do this, while the process of our mind is being renewed, bringing these things under the authority of Jesus Christ.

I am talking about our human will and the need to be the controller of our own lives, being removed by a brand new will, called the Father’s will.

This follower has discovered the absolute freedom and pure appreciation of being released from one’s self will, all the while being invited into the doing of another will; the will of our Father, His way. It’s an amazing privilege and one we love and get to do, without hesitation or second guessing, no matter if we suffer for it in His name, because we know this suffering produces greater life in us.

Romans 5:3-5 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

As in the words of Peter where he said, “Lord to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). This was Peter’s response to Jesus, after He asked Peter whether he too would leave. Many of His disciples had walked away unable to follow Him because they did not believe Jesus was the Messiah, because they couldn’t believe the words He spoke.

It wasn’t a place the disciples walked away from, it was Jesus Himself. Peter didn’t say “where shall we go” he said “to WHOM shall we go”. Yet again we are reminded it is essential we know the Who, if we are to be able to follow Jesus both internally and externally. If we have not entered into His Sabbath Rest, we will still be trying to work everything out for ourselves.

If the Life I am describing is not yet your reality, can I encourage you not to write off what is being testified to, but to seek this dimension in Him. I guarantee you once you have found this pearl, you will go and sell everything and buy the field.

Hebrews 4:10 is another powerful life-giving verse which is intertwined with Matthew 11:28-30.

Hebrews 4:10 For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.

Did you notice the order of proceedings? As we enter into His Rest, we rest from our works. It’s not that we take a break from doing and because we have stopped we enter into His Rest. We must receive the revelation that all things are finished in Him. We enter into what is already complete, which frees us from our inherent need to do. We are now able to live from this Sabbath Rest, which is eternal. We are able to be still and know that He is Lord, instead of living with the constant drive of function.

This is not a physical rest but a spiritual one. Its impact takes place in the inner realm of our soul. Changing our external does nothing to change our internal. At best, it may prepare you for an internal change, but changing the external alone, means we will always operate the way we are and have been, which keeps us out of the Life He says we can have.

The soul is to be crucified and then birthed, established, formed and built by receiving Love, having Lordship as a way of being and having this Lordship inform true Worship, knowing His Sabbath Rest has defined this outcome. Without this, we are left trying to lose our lives for His sake, out of our choice of will. This reality leaves us in a state of futility and religious striving.

We must receive what we don’t currently have so we are able to live what we couldn’t live before. Be encouraged. This is the Way of the Spirit. 

The Eternal Life demonstrated is the wisdom of God

Luke 7:35 “Yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children.”

Ephesians 3:10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

These two verses declare a reality, which the church is to prove and walk in. The church is to be the living tangible demonstration of the wisdom of God upon the earth, knowing that the wisdom of God is Jesus Christ and His Life demonstrated.

1 Corinthians 1:24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Those who are called of God, both Jews and Greeks, are to demonstrate this eternal wisdom on the earth for the earth to see and experience. This wisdom is to have such a significant impact upon all those of earth, who get to experience the reality of the living God through His chosen vessel, called His body, demonstrating this Eternal Life.

Just as Jesus said, “If You have seen Me, you have seen My Father,” we too are to be able to say, “if you have seen Christ in us, you have seen our Father.” We are not gods, and we are not called to be gods, but we are called to be Christlike. We are called to have the nature, the character and the Life of Christ being formed in us, so we can express the Eternal Life of Christ through us.

2 Corinthians 4:10-11 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

Anything less than this isn’t the wisdom of God. Unfortunately, too many intellectuals have settled for wisdom being a head knowledge about God through the human mode of learning the scriptures, as opposed to it being a living demonstration of God in and through their lives.

This is the difference between being Christlike and saying we are Christians who believe in Christ. Only those who are truly becoming like Christ, who is Eternal Life, are able to demonstrate His Eternal Life on earth, and in so doing prove they are a disciple of Jesus.

John 15:8 “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”

I love Luke 7:35, as the context in the previous verses, is that Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and a gluttonous man, while John the Baptist was accused of having a demon. Both John and Jesus are demonstrating this true wisdom of God and yet were accused of being the opposite. This is a very typical and common response by religious people who don’t believe they are in fact religious.

The flesh is being exposed for what it truly is, and it can’t stand this wisdom being demonstrated as it is threatened by it, so it has to blame and accuse the ones who are demonstrating the truth, to defend and justify its own lack.

The word vindicated means to prove right. We are taught in Romans 12 that we are to prove God’s perfect and pleasing will. This is what it is to live out an eternal life.

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.

In my experience when followers hear the word “prove”, there tends to be a fear of condemnation, guilt and shame which comes upon them, due to a lack of knowing their true identity. Closely connected to this word prove comes the word performance in the mind-set of this follower who doesn’t know their true identity.

This instantly creates a narrative which is motivated by fear, and it tends to go something like this, “but God loves me” or “my God wouldn’t expect that of me, because He has said He accepts me just as I am”, and these statements can be 100% true in the correct context.

The truth is, there is no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ and perfect love casts out all fear, guilt and shame, so if we are having these feelings and are creating this kind of language because of those feelings, we must grapple for the reality of why, because these feelings are of the flesh.

Romans 8:1-2 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

When we live like this, there is every chance we are still living under the law of sin and death, even though we have been set free from this law by the blood of Jesus. At best, we only have a head knowledge understanding of this truth as opposed to a revealed living conviction in our hearts, so we constantly struggle with the feelings and thoughts of not being good enough, or not where we should be, constantly comparing ourselves with others.

This is one toxic and viscous cycle, which we can’t get free of because of the gospel we have received, the gospel of mental agreement and not the gospel of power. When we hear the word “prove”, we shrink back in fear and attempt to cover over our true state by telling ourselves we don’t have to prove anything and that we are loved by God. The sad reality is when we do this we sabotage the very life He came to build within us, an eternal life.

It is ok to not be ok, but one can only be ok with not being ok, when one knows who God really is through revelation, and so in turn, we know who we are.

The good news is that in Christ we can overcome all of these challenges and strongholds through the power of God. As we lose our lives unto Him and for His sake, He as the overcomer will go to work, and establish a work within us, which starts to empower us to live out this Eternal Life called God’s wisdom.

It’s the fruit being produced in us and through us which empowers and enables us to keep the Great Commandments, be living out the Great Commission, and accomplishing the Father’s will, all entirely the way He has instructed it to be done, which proves we are a mature child of God.

This is why Paul teaches us to leave the elementary teachings about Christ and let us press on towards maturity.

Hebrews 6:1-2 Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

We are not to be going over the same ground again and again and again as His followers, but moving on and pressing in towards the upward call which is in Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God is always progressing going from life to life, and if the kingdom is in us, then we will be growing in this kingdom Life.

This is how followers of Jesus glorify the Father, by their ability to live a life, walking in the same manner as Jesus walked, which non-followers can’t and don’t do. When we live this life out, non-followers get to experience the tangible reality of a living God who inhabits His people. They get to see God in us and through us, and be the benefactors of this Life, just like we do.

What an incredible life that we get to know, experience and walk out in Jesus Christ. When we flow in this Triangle of Life by the way of the Spirit, starting with Love first, Lordship second and Worship third, there is no other outcome but to have formed and established within us the Eternal Life of Jesus Christ. There is absolutely no limit to the measure of His life we can know and experience within us, because God has given us the Spirit without measure.

John 3:34 “For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure.”

My prayer is that you would seek and search for this full and overflowing Eternal Life of Christ within you, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and you would not stop until you lay hold of it, just as He has laid hold of you.

Philippians 3:12-16 Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

In conclusion, the Love that IS, which is God and is the greatest element in God’s kingdom, informs a Lordship that IS, which enables the loss of our lives for His sake. This is called Worship and this act of Worship, sacrifice and surrender is the evidence we know the Love that IS, God Himself. As we flow in this Triangle of Life by the power of the Spirit, an eternal life is formed within us, and we find ourselves being able to live out the manifold wisdom of God starting with a Love that IS.