Welcome to another day of life firmly seated in Christ at the right hand of the Father far above all the power of the defeated enemy (who gets far more credit than he deserves). You are seated at the right hand of the Father now in spirit and have been given the same standing as your elder brother, Jesus. You share life with Jesus now, and every now that is coming. You have been joined to Him and are now one spirit with Him. Your seat in Christ at the right hand of the Father is the place of highest honor. It is the position of authority, strength, and blessing. Therefore, in Christ, you are resting in his authority, strength, and blessing, and are commissioned to freely give what you freely received. You are residing now in the place of such privileged access to the Father that you may boldly approach Him at any time. Discouragement, anxiety, and defeat melt like wax when we become aware of the rare air we are spiritually breathing. “More than conquerors” is not an overstatement of our condition when we have eyes to see the higher reality. We are seated in the One who said, “It is finished!” and sat down on the throne where we indwell Him as He indwells us. As He is, so are we sitting with Him there in heaven, as he currently is so are we in this world. We are hidden with Christ in God and to live is Christ. This kind of talk sounds so lofty, but it is the talk of the undiluted Christianity that turned the world upside down. These are not just scriptures we give assent to while thinking they are out of our reach. This is not PHD Christianity reserved for the intellectual elite, or type-A personalities, the mystically inclined, or devotional athletes. This is Basic Christianity 101 stuff. What really happened at the cross, the deep significance of the vicarious humanity of Jesus, the way Jesus read the scriptures, the truth about mind renewal, the influence of the Latin shift in the fourth century, faulty eschatology, all of this and more are ahead of us on this journey of rethinking with the Holy Spirit. My religious detox process has been deep, at times disturbing, but oh, so liberating. Everyone says they want to have a new wineskin to contain the new thing God is doing, until realizing that means being willing to change even cherished doctrines or denominational affiliations. Doctrinal flexibility is an absolute necessity unless we already know everything. No matter how much we wish it was so, sincerity does not create truth, and I have discovered myself sincerely wrong over and over and over. With every belief shift, I face the choice to believe the newly discovered revelation or stick with the safe, popular, comfortable beliefs I was familiar with. No matter how much is invested in the old way of thinking, and no matter how much it has cost, I have pursued the truth. This blog is not written to dogmatically tell anyone what they must believe. I am not interested in arguing; I am just throwing out things to consider for those with ears to hear. I would give every earthly thing I possess and more to have known these things 46 years ago when I began in the ministry, and I will not take all I have learned to the grave without sharing them. If I have lived to help restore something for the next generation, so be it. I have endured so much unnecessary stress, condemnation, guilt, shame, frustration, rejection and sense of failure that could have been avoided if I had only known what I know now. I would love to shout all of this to the world from the highest mountain, but at least I can reach a few with is modest blog.
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