Renewed Hope

Meri Ford……More of Him?  January20, 2020

Over the past few years I’ve found myself questioning a song that I repeatedly hear in worship. And whether I am questioning it or my spirit is objecting to it, I’ve come to realize that God has a fuller understanding available to those who often find themselves singing,  “I want more of you Lord!”   And it goes on to say More, More…

Awhile back a friend and I happened to mention this over lunch, and her comment was “ I have all of Jesus I could possible have, for He lives in me.”   And when I heard this recently, that was my confession/profession…Jesus, You live in me and I live in you! Thank you!! You are all I have need of! Teach me Lord to lean upon you who are ALL in ALL!  You are healer, health and healing, Savior, salvation and deliverance as well as deliverer, you are the sanctifier and the sanctification and you who sanctify and I who am sanctified are ONE.  And for your prayer to Father, I bless you…for you have prayed that we might be one in you as you are in the Father, which was afforded up when Holy Spirit came to reveal you in and through our Spirits when we were baptized in the Holy Spirit!

I liked what an author from many days past used to refer to the work of the Holy Spirit, as the “release of the Spirit.”  

The price for having “More of Jesus”…is dying to our self. A mentor of mine years past said that if you want more LOVE, then one must die…take up your cross…your choice of crucifixion to die into Life in Christ.

Our human nature longs for more of most anything…food, travel, sleep, houses, cars, and “stuff  . It is common among those who are members of Christ’s own body, the ecclesia, to have the human mindset that we want “more and more of Christ” when we have all that we can possibly access IF we are willing to die into Life, casting down every though and imagination that exalts itself before the throne, being renewed in the spirit of our minds, putting off our human thoughts and ways and putting on Christ from the inside out. 

So often we as Christian “want” and our human mentality of “want” is external, meaning mainly we want to feel better, we want to be healed, we want better jobs, we want, we want. I spoke recently with a dear sister who admitted she has low thyroid and is on medicine for it. She sheepishly said to me…But what I really want is Jesus to heal me!  Yet it wasn’t her profession or her confession that Jesus, her healing lives in her and she in him.  She had not come to “abide” in Jesus the healer but wanted “something from Him.”  That is our human mindset. 

My heavenly Father knows that we are humans and weak in so many areas and He often miraculously “drops a healing our way,” so to speak, know we are children and have much growing up yet to do! In all this He is calling us to maturity, to understand Who He is and Who we are in Him, and to build our lives on learning to release Him power out of or “through” our lives not just to our benefit but to the benefit of others around us.  

The Apostles NEVER prayed for God to heal anyone. They released the power of God through the laying on of hands and speaking forth the Word into people’s lives. And that Life is a double-edged sword, cutting and healing us as it goes forth into the lives of others.

This is one aspect of what it means to operate in the “authority of the Kingdom.”

May we learn to grow up in our relationship as children of the King until we begin to manifest or show forth His very power and character, known in scripture as His Glory, the very express image of Who He is.  This is far different from what we “get from Him. It is as different as the food we put on the table for our family, or the clothes we buy for them, or the places we take them. None of it will change the nature of who they are because it is an internal choice a person will have to make. 

May we grow in the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Meri Ford