Are you a son of the slave woman or the free woman?  Ishmael was the son of a slave woman, born out of disobedience and lack of faith.  He was not the son of promise but the son of disobedience.   Issac on the other hand was the son of promise, the fulfillment of  long standing prophecy.   The product of unwavering faith in the truth spoken to Abraham.

Is your mother the one of the flesh or the spirit?  What’s your spiritual family line?

We all start as sons and daughters of the slave woman.  Bound into that slavery by our spiritual lineage of disobedience, selfishness and pride.   We live as though we know what’s best for us, which path is the correct one, who we are.    But it isn’t till we come face to face with our inadequacies and failures that we see we need salvation.   

Our spiritual mother is crying out to us all along to awaken to the Spirit’s call and come home to faith in the Son.  It is only by stepping into the faith in Jesus’s finished work that we will go from being a son of the slave woman to a son of the free woman.

Embrace Jesus, the Son, fully.  Step into your true identity!

“Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me: Then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.”

Psalm 19:12-14 KJV

This walk we have can be arduous when we stray from the narrow path into the swamps of sin.  It is so confusing that we still stumble or even brazenly walk into those swamps.   Aren’t we supposed to be sanctified, effectively free from sin?

Our only hope is the impossible grace of Jesus, that inexhaustible river of forgiveness which flows from the very throne in Heaven.  He demonstrated it so vividly when he poured out his very life for us from the Cross.   As proof, we can’t stray too far away from Him that His arm is too short to lovingly reign us into His bosom.

I grew up hearing the last part of this verse as a benediction every Sunday but never caught the deep significance of it in context.  It was just part of a bigger weekly ceremony I was supposed to take part in.  In reality, it was David’s cry to the Lord for help, to stay on the path of righteousness no matter how many times he strayed away.

May it be our cry today as well. 

In the beginning Papa gave mankind authority over the earth, period.  Through the fall Adam and Eve handed that authority over to the serpent.  Since then satan got very comfortable using that usurped authority to build his kingdom of death and destruction on earth.   We as subjects fell into a slave mindset, like the Stockholm syndrome we just accepted the “fact” that life sucked and then you die.  So for millennia our master was the devil cloaked in all sorts of region.

Then, Jesus!

He began breaking the chains of the enemy as soon as he came up out of the waters of Jordan.  Demons shrieked in disbelief as he cast them out.  Sickness and death bowed the knee to the Lord of All.  But, people rejected Him because they could not comprehend who He truly was.  He didn’t fit their religious mindset of savior.

As believers, we have renewed minds in Christ, not we’re supposed to, but WE DO HAVE the very mind of Christ. It is our responsibility to enforce the Kingdom.  To do that we must completely embrace the change of mind which opens our eyes to the reality of the world.

We as believers in Messiah, followers of His way, are the rightful rulers of this world.   

Stand up in that authority brothers and sisters!!   

Declare Jesus is Lord of All to the mountain tops.

Before Jesus there were idols everywhere, on every doorstep, in every house there was a shrine to some god or even a whole pantheon of gods.  Jesus turned all that on its head and replaced all the idols with His name asserting His total authority over the cosmos.   The former system of offerings and sacrifices was perpetuated on humanity as a way to reach out to the god/gods and appease his/their anger and wrath.   In some cases the gods were much like us with all the same passions and proclivities, so mankind came up with many variations on that theme.  This religion permeated ancient societies across the board under various names but all essentially the same raw deal for man, to reach them one must perform some penance or sacrifice.  Continual striving to appease the angry deity with burdensome and even gruesome acts.

Jesus split time in two with His birth, ministry, death and resurrection.  Christianity caused the societies it touched to turn from their idols (paganism) and believe the truth He revealed. The truth that Love conquers all evil not some twisted system of sacrifice.  As a result there was time before, ruled by paganism and time after, where Jesus’ actions on earth cancelled out the old systems of death and blood by proving to mankind that the perfect man was more than willing to take our place in our own evil system of death and bring it to a final close.

Unfortunately the church became a system essentially like the religious systems before it.  Man still had many rules to make his own path to god.  So, over time Christianity was watered down to the point where it looked much the same as the old system and we were faced with the insidious return of paganism.

However, the ascendancy of the true believers with the unveiling of the full gospel brought about the church standing in the way of this downward spiral.  We are now walking into the Kingdom age, ushering in heaven on earth, taking back our rightful dominion over the enemy and all his evil pagan plans.  Becoming the beautiful bride Jesus is coming back to marry.

There is now no more need for sacrifice and striving to reach the gods.  Jesus was sent here by Papa God to reconcile us to Papa by His abolishing the religious systems we built to stand  between us and our loving Father.  He did not just fulfill the written Law of Moses, He effectively overturned it, abolished the need for any type of sacrificial system by showing how utterly useless it was to achieve fellowship with Papa.  Papa/Jesus reached out with the kind of power only a creator could, the absolute power of Grace and Love, cancelling all guilt and accusation leveled against us.

Let’s rejoice in the fact that religion is dead Love conquered all.

Jesus said to Peter “Keep alert and pray that you will be spared from this time of testing.  For your spirit is eager enough, but your humanity is feeble. ” Mark 14:38 Passion

We are subject to a divided existence while we walk the earth in this body.   Our spirit is capable of meeting Holy Spirit and walking in full victory and revelation just Like Peter did when he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah or when he stepped out on the water.   However we are wearing this suit of flesh which is weak on its best days and downright obstinate when it falls away.   We tend to be just like Peter, afraid of being identified as one of Jesus’ disciples.  Afraid of being too diferent from the rest of the world….

I love brother Peter, he was ultimately used mightily by Papa God in spite of his failings.  Jesus even went out of His way to reconcile with Peter after the resurrection.  We can look to his example as well as Paul’s as patterns of living a redeemed life no matter where we came from or what darkness we walked in formerly.   It is the hope of our salvation and the endless forgiveness of God’s amazing grace that empowers a victorious life. 

Let us live by the Spirit of God who dwells within.

We come to Jesus, broken and beaten down by the weight of our sin and shame.  It is a moment of total humility and utter despair when we come to the realization that we are wandering through life, lost without Him and separated from the God of the universe by our own actions and will. 

But glorious peace and joy come as we surrender our will to His plan for our lives.  It is out of total failure to make our own way that we come to salvation through Jesus.  Life as a believer is a path through ecstatic joys and deepest tragedies we walk in daily victories and failures because we are not perfect as Jesus is.  

The key to a successful life is to stay on the narrow road, to keep getting back up when we fall and forge ahead when we stumble.  Because the Spirit of grace is always there giving us the strength for the next step and the cloud of witnesses is cheering us on to reach our goal.   

Jesus will never leave us or forsake us!!

We fail our way into the kingdom of God. It starts with grace, and it ends with grace. Like the Word says, grace is not an excuse to fail or to sin.  It is there to cover us, put our feet back on the straight and narrow, and mold us into sons and daughters. He is looking for availability and a teachable, sincere heart. Remember, it’s “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord!””  Lonnie Frisbee

As the fields and trees begin their day early with worship lifting up

We see the mists of the morning arise in glorious praise to the King of Kings

Ascending up in heavenly whisps we sense the pleasing aroma of life and shear joy of the creation

Up off the surface of the lakes we see evidence of the spirit moving over the waters

Sometimes barely perceptible other time a cloud of glory rising up.

But everyday a new bounty of praise and worship from His creation

Let us join in the symphony of praise which rises up with the Sun as every creature lifts their voice in songs of praise to our Lord.

For to Him belongs all our wonder, worship and glory

The woman with the issue of blood touched the hem (fringe) and was instantly healed.  The crowd that gathered after Jesus walked across the lake of Galilee was likewise healed and delivered just by touching the fringe. 

Why the fringe?   Was there something holy about that fringe of His garment?  Was it endowed with special anointing because of the traditional meaning?  Do we as believers all need to wear prayer shawls so that healing will flow through us as well?

The prayer shawl tassels (fringe) were of special significance in that they were intended to serve as reminders of the commandments.  The tallit was to be worn at all times as a constant witness of the covenant between the Lord and His people.   This symbolism has been quite significant to the Jewish people down through the ages. 

While the tallit had unique and special significance in Jewish culture it was more a point of contact for those seeking healing from the master.   The honor given rabbis was great and Jesus reputation as prophet and healer was widely known.  His  touch was known to be all it took to receive healing and deliverance.    Touching the hem of his garment (fringe) was seen as a way to not “brother” the rabbi and stay humble in his presence. 

But the power was not in the knots of the fringe or the special prayers of the one who crafted the tallit.  The real healing virtue and delivering power were in the faith of the one who reached out.   It was the silent answer to the questions Messiah asked so often.  “Do you want to be healed?”  “What do you want from me?”

So, whatever you need; healing, deliverance, provision, by faith reach out to Jesus.  Grab ahold of Him, He’s not too busy or too important to care about you.  Just as He did for Peter, cry out to Him and He’ll save you from drowning in your sea of fear.

The very life of God is in us all.

It is the force that continues with each breath we take.

We take for granted our continued consciousness.  

The next moment of life is expected to continue like the last.

But we are literally held together by the will of Jesus.

It is in Him that we consist, that our very molecules maintain their impossible balance.   Atomic forces in perpetual harmony and yet perpetual conflict.   Opposite forces carefully maintained on a microscopic scale yet harmonized and integrated into the whole body empowered by the very breath of Yahweh. 

We move through this life sensing the call of the Lord and walking on the precipice of His overwhelming love.   We must step over into His welcoming arms of love which have been stretched out to us since our beginning. When we dive into the baptism of the Spirit we come fully alive and begin to spread His life abroad in our every step. His Spirit bubbles up in our spirit and becomes yet another stream of His life flowing into a world in desperate need of Him.   Let that unstoppable power of love flow out of you always. 

It is the very act of letting that power of love flow out of our innermost being which is the bubbles of His life being spread abroad.

We’ve been told we are the sum total of our genome and our experiences.  We were either born that way or someone/something has bent us in that direction.   It is common to blame our parents or society for the things we do and believe.  But the passage below from  missionary E. Stanley Jones really cuts through all that mindset.  The mindset which breeds division based on things like circumstances of birth.   And the cultural baggage of our various societies. It goes to the root of the question “Am I the irrevokable result of my past experiences or is there hope for a new day of freedom from my own engrained mindset.” 

“In the genealogy of Jesus was this item: ‘Solomon was born of David by Uriah’s wife.’ Did that ugly patch in his ancestral past break Jesus or cloud him? No, for he was more conscious of his heredity from his Father God, the heredity upward cancelled the heredity backward. You can have a blood transfusion from the Son of God that will cancel the tainted blood of ancestors. You can be born from above and not be born back there.”  

There is no reason to remain tied to the past, to continue beholden to the curses of your family line or “your people”.  Whether those curses are poverty, pride or prejudice, they are all washed away in the blood that flowed down the cross on Calvary cleansing all.  Jesus has offered a new and better life for us going forward if we just accept His gift and step into who you were meant to be.