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Spring 2010
PASSOVER
– LEAVING THE CONDEMNATION ZONE
Leaving The
Condemnation Zone
The believers at the
end of the age will learn to live in a realm
where there is no guilt, frustration, regret,
shame or sense of unworthiness! This is a
realm of confident living in God’s love
where we joyfully accept His mercies. It is
the realm of His GLORY, which we call “THE
NO CONDEMNATION ZONE.”
Since the days of
Adam, man hid from God in shame. Embarrassed
to draw near, we pulled away from Him and
gone our own way. “All we like sheep
have gone astray have turned everyone to his
own way but the Lord has laid on Him the
iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53)
However, the greatest fact of History is that
God has placed on Jesus ALL of our guilt,
blame and shame so that we can return to His
presence and to the realm of His glory and
love.
The gospel is the great invitation to leave
the CONDEMNATION ZONE and to return to the
bright sunshine of Our Father’s love and
presence. We are all invited to live
there and can live there because of what
Jesus has done for us. “Therefore,
brothers since we have confidence to enter
the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by
the new and living way that he opened for us
through the curtain, that is, through his
flesh, and since we have a great priest over
the house of God, let us draw near with a
true heart in full assurance of faith, with
our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil
conscience and our bodies washed with pure
water.” (Hebrews 10:19-22)
God has already done the work - it simply
remains for us to believe, return and
receive. Our responsibility is to accept THE
GREAT INVITATION, which is based on THE GREAT
FACT of what God has done for us in Jesus.
When we do this we are “justified by
faith” and enter the NO CONDEMNATION
zone. We can now stand in God’s
presence, accepted and loved, without any
sense of guilt or inferiority.
Jesus charged us to proclaim to all the
nations that God has provided full atonement
for their sins and invites them back to His
presence, love and care. “Go into all
the world and proclaim the gospel to the
whole creation. Whoever believes and is
baptized will be saved, but whoever does not
believe will be condemned.” (Mark
16:15-16)
He does not condemn
those who do not believe in Him. He simply
declares they are already in the zone of
separation, and cannot escape until they
accept His invitation and help and believe on
His work the Cross.
The Second
Condemnation Zone
The sad truth of
Christian experience is that most believers
return to the condemnation zone, lose the joy
of their salvation and their experience of
God’s blessings.
How does this
happen? Having been reconciled to God the new
believer determines with all his heart and
strength to live the Christian life. When he
begins to TRY to live the Christian
life in the power of his natural effort, will-power,
good resolutions and disciplined behavior, he
becomes exhausted, exasperated, miserable and
condemned. He slips, flounders and fails to
live by the high standards of the gospel.
“For I do not do what I want, but I
do the very thing I hate.” (Romans
7:15) and finally he cries out ‘wretched
man that I am who will deliver me from this
body of death’ (Romans 7:24)
At this point the
devil, The Accuser, ‘who
accuses the brethren night and day’ (Revelation
12:11) has trapped him a SECOND condemnation
zone. He begins to feel estranged from God
all over again. This condemnation puts a
wedge between him and God. The second
condemnation is the zone of the struggling
believer.
God
does want us to live righteously, but He
knows that we are utterly incapable
of living by the standards of the Bible. His
solution is to come within us by His Spirit
and to live His life in us. Real Christian
living begins when we realize that we are
accepted to God NOT on the
basis of our behavior and draw completely
from God’s life, and not our own, to
live by His standards.
This
is what God showed Ezekiel “I
WILL give you a new heart, and a
new spirit I WILL put
within you. And I WILL
remove the heart of stone from your flesh and
give you a heart of flesh. And I
WILL put my Spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes and be
careful to obey my rules.”
“There
is therefore now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus, for THE LAW OF
THE SPIRIT OF LIFE has set you free in Christ
Jesus from the law of sin and death. For
God has done what the law, weakened by the
flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,
he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that
the righteous requirement of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans
8:1-4)
Today in spite of
the great growth of charismatic and
Pentecostal churches there is actually an
under-emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Without
His life and activity the Christian life is completely
impossible. When we ignore Him we are
left STRIVING to live, by
natural effort, a life that is beyond our
ability. To walk in the flesh does not only
mean to be controlled by selfish drives. It
simply means that we rely on natural strength
and ability (good or bad) rather than on the
ability of the Spirit.
As we stop relying
on the strength of our own character and
acknowledge its complete inadequacy and lean
on the Holy Spirit, the law of the Spirit of
life will cause the character and fruit of
the Spirit to come forth in our lives. Jesus
gives a ‘one-two’ blow to sin. He
releases us from the zone of condemnation and
implants the law of the spirit of life within
us.
When we cease from
all self-righteousness and religious law
keeping and lean on the Holy Spirit, His life
in us produces “the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
self-control; against such things there is no
law.” (Galatians 5:22)
The antidote to sin
is not moral resolutions or religious efforts
to live by the high standards of Jesus but it
is the gift of Jesus - the Holy Spirit who
implants a life and power greater than sin
within us. This life spontaneously produces
the fruit of the Spirit within us, when we
cease from all self-righteous striving.
The Negative
Effect of the Law
Paul declares
that sin is actually empowered by the Law “The
power of sin is the law.” (I Cor 15:56)
By law he means not
only Jewish moral law but also all moral law
including the high moral standards of Jesus.
Religious striving to achieve moral
righteousness actually strengthens the power
of sin in the lives of those who try it..
Self-righteousness is actually a breeding
ground for sin. Religious striving empowers
sin rather than liberates from it. The law
always puts us back in the realm of human
striving and therefore under the power of
sin. Faith in the Holy Spirit takes us out of
that realm. Most churches (Catholic,
Protestant. Pentecostal charismatic etc.)
keep people struggling by natural power to
live by a moral law that can only be lived
when we cease from fleshly strength and lean
entirely on the Holy Spirit. “I was
once alive apart from the law, but when the
commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
The very commandment that promised life
proved to be death to me.” (Rom.
7:9)
The purpose of
the moral law, as described by Moses and
Jesus is to show us our utter failure at
living it. This failure drives us to the
forgiveness and reconciliation that God
provides in Jesus.
Law gives power to
sin because it brings us under condemnation,
back into our natural strength and back into
self-righteousness. Condemnation drives a
wedge of separation between God and us. So
when we get under condemnation we get into
separation, and when we become separated from
God His life is hindered from flowing through
us and we cannot produce His character. Law
also gives power to sin by causing us to look
at our selves instead of to God.
“Those who
are in the flesh cannot please God.”
(Romans 8:8) As long as we expect
everything from the Holy Spirit and nothing
from self we will experience His victory and
stay free from condemnation, and His life
will produce the fruit of the Spirit within
us.
The Holy Spirit
strives to make us see the Blood of Jesus and
the acceptance we have through it. His second
work is to empower us with the supernatural
attitudes of the divine nature that produce
the fruit of the Spirit in our hearts. The
Accuser tries to get our eyes off the
reconciliation we have through the Blood of
Jesus and to cause us to rely on self to keep
God’s standards. God does not
condemn us for not living the perfect life
but instead He comes to live it in us in the
person of the Holy Spirit. This is the great
revolution Christianity. It is the end of
condemnation, the end of self-righteousness
and the release of God’s Spirit.
#3 The Third
Condemnation Zone
The third condemnation zone is where the
believer who is zealous to be fruitful in
ministry, in service and in good works can
easily enter.
Many try to fulfill
the great commission and embark into ministry
trying to do a work FOR the
Lord. They study, work and pray hard but the
fruit seems so little. Then they exert even
more effort, and become even more frustrated
and condemned. This is the condition of much
of the church today. We desperately want to
see God’s work advance and as we lean on
our natural efforts it seems less fruit
happens.
Such believers are
in the same state as Abraham and Sarah who
were called by God to bring forth a son for
Him. As the years went by and nothing
happened they were tempted with frustration.
(Gen 16)
The more we feel the condemnation of our
barrenness the more we strive to make things
happen. A vicious spiral of striving,
failure, comparison, and condemnation occurs.
There can never be real fruit when we try to
bring forth spiritual fruit with natural
power. As Jesus says, ‘what is born
of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of
the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:6)
To the
barren and the weak God says. “Sing,
O barren one, who did not bear; break forth
into singing and cry aloud, you who have not
been in labor! For the children of the
desolate one will be more than the children
of her who is married,” says the Lord.
(Isa 54:1)
“God takes
the weak things of the world to confound the
strong.” (1 Cor. 1:28) Jesus says. “Without
Me we can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Without Him we are not expected to do
anything. He wants us to make our energy and
resources available to Him, but at the same
time He does not expect us to do anything
unless He initiates it and carries it all the
way.
Most of us are
too strong in our natural power for Him to
use. God waits for us to discover the
bankruptcy and inadequacy of natural effort
before we can discover his fruitfulness.
He yearns to see His
people liberated from the condemnation zone
created by the pressure to perform and by our
own ambition and to rest in Him to perform
His work though us by His power. “Not
by might nor by power but by my Spirit sys
the Lord.” (Zech 4:4)
Amazing Effects Of
Tongues
Dr. Carl Peterson of O.R.U. in Tulsa, OK is a
brain specialist and was doing research on
the relationship between the brain and
praying or speaking in tongues. He
found that as we pray in the Spirit there is
activity that begins in the brain. The brain
releases two chemical secretions that are
directed into our immune systems giving a 35
to 40 percent boost in the immune system.
This promotes healing within our bodies.
Amazingly, this secretion is triggered from a
part of the brain that has no other apparent
activity in humans and we don't use it. It is
only activated by our Spirit-led prayer and
worship.” (Dr. Kluane Spake)
From “Do, Do,
Do” To “Done, Done, Done“
“The old covenant of law is based on you
shall not you shall not you shall not while
the new covenant of grace is the Lord saying
“I will” ‘I will” ‘I
will "..the emphasis and demand of the
covenant of Law is on YOUR performing, while
the emphasis and demand on the covenant of
grace is on God Himself performing. He will
do everything on our behalf. Jesus has
already died on the cross for us, He has
already done everything on our behalf.
Christianity is ‘done, done, done,”
not ‘do, do, do’ Jesus came
to establish the New Covenant of grace, and
under this ,God is no longer angry with you,
because His anger and wrath have been
exhausted on the body of Jesus on the
Cross.” - Joseph Prince
“Destined To Reign”
“The
outpouring of the Spirit has no relation to
your merits or mine, but only to the merits
of the Lord Jesus. The question of what WE
are does not come into consideration at all
here but only what HE is. … All is
because of Him; nothing is because of me the
Holy Spirit has not been poured out on you or
me to prove how great we are, but to prove
the greatness of the Son of God.”
-
Watchman Nee “The Normal Christian
Life”
“If
you ignore the Holy Spirit He will become
grieved .. You’ll have a dried up
ministry, because in the ministry whatever is
not born of the Spirit is FLESH.”
–
Pastor Cho “Successful Home Groups”
The Realm Of The
Spirit
“You have read that the letter kill, but
the spirit gives life’ (Cor 3:6) I
have a deeper revelation of this truth if you
can receive it. For the spirit operates in a
different realm from the Word. The Word
deals with you on the plane of your every day
living. It governs your conduct in daily
affairs. It guides you into the knowledge of
the doctrines of God, the understanding of My
divine will, and instructs you in the walk of
the Christian. But in the Spirit there is a
life awaiting that would draw you out beyond
the confines of the natural world. The Spirit
of God operates in the realm of the
supernatural and the infinite. “
-
Frances Roberts “Come Away My
Beloved”
˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜
Dear
Friends
We
pray that all is well with you since we last
wrote. We believe the message in this
month’s Reconciler is important if we
are to embrace the gospel of the kingdom and
enter the full anointing and purpose of the
end time believer.
Our year has
been off to a busy start. In January we had
the privilege at speaking at the first
all-Ireland conference on Israel the Church
& The Kingdom of God organized by the
Irish Christian embassy. There was an unusual
release of the spirit of God at the
meetings and we believe it was a breakthrough
meeting.
We have been
speaking weekends at several churches,
including “South Florida
Healing Rooms” in
Coconut Creek, Living Waters Church,
Jupiter , Florida,
“Haven of Hope Church”
in Port St, Lucie, “Friendship
Baptist Church “in Ft. Pierce
and “Grace
Covenant Church” in Chicago. Our
Tuesday morning Bible study, “The
120 Club” is meeting
St. Peter’s Ministry Center on
Jenkins Rd. Ft. Pierce and we have also
been teaching a Thursday evening Bible Study
in Stuart in the home of Chris &
Kate Farrell.
We
leave at end of March for our annual ministry
time in Ireland. We have an itinerary
of about 70 meetings. Our vision is to see a
renaissance of Christianity in Ireland that
will transform the land and greatly impact
the whole of Europe.
In
July we have been invited to minister
again in Finland, and this will take
us to many churches throughout the land. The
fabulous people of the Finnish Christian
Embassy arrange our ministry there.
In
August we were invited visit to
minister in Chile but are not sure how
the earthquake disaster will affect our plans
to go there this year.
In
October we return to Israel as usual
for our annual visit there. We would love to
have you and your friends join us
As
you can see we need prayer for the strength
of the Lord to accompany us and for lives to
be transformed and refreshed from His
presence as we minister. Our ministry stands
on the prayers of our intercessors.
With deepest
thanks to all of you who help us with your
prayers and financial support, which we truly
appreciate - we need you! Let us know if we
can serve you in any way.
One in His great love and service,
(Feel
free to copy and share this newsletter)
JOIN
US ON OUR ANNUAL TOUR TO ISRAEL
$1,695
(Land Only), October 1-11, 2010
Includes
Breakfast & Dinner Daily and Touring
Deluxe Hotels in
Galilee, Jerusalem & the Dead Sea
