“Love unlocks the mysteries and the realities of the GOD-life.”—Prophet Kya Masango, KOSM Teaching on Sunday 15 September 2024. This revelation was part of a teaching that expanded on the prayer by Apostle Paul captured in Ephesians 1:15-19. Today we look a bit further into this revelation by looking into another prayer for the Church, a prayer made by Paul in Ephesians 3:14-19 NKJV/AMP, where Paul prays to GOD asking Him that ‘(i) we (the Church) become empowered in the inner man (the spirit man), (ii) we allow Christ residence in our hearts through our faith, and (iii) having been rooted and established in love, (iv) we come to understand and to have the practical personal experience of the full dimensions of the love of GOD and of the presence of GOD in our lives.’ The will of GOD could never be that we would gain knowledge in HIM (i.e. in the things of GOD and in the love of GOD), and not partake of them or experience them.
Christianity is distinct from religion in that way. Christianity has to do with experiencing the presence of GOD in your life, personally and practically in a real way. Whereas a life in religion, by contrast to a life in Christ, can only give knowledge but cannot give the experience of the presence of GOD, and this is not what GOD wants for us. The will of GOD is for all those who are HIS in truth to have the experience of the GOD-life spoken of in Ephesians 3:19, completely filled and flooded with the person of GOD Himself. Bearing in mind the Scriptural revelation of the last teaching—firstly, that ‘love unlocks the mysteries and the realities of a life in Christ’ and secondly, that ‘faith and love are the two cornerstones/pillars of being in Christ’—read together with this week’s anchor Scripture, we discover that the faith and love cornerstones/pillars working together are the best way of getting the real practical personal experience in the fullness of GOD, successfully and consistently in its totality.
Paul reminds the Church (us) of the importance of faith and love existing in the believer, unconditionally and at the same time. It is not and cannot be an either-or set-up purely because faith without love means absolutely nothing [1 Corinthians 13:2]. Love is the attribute that GOD desires of us for us to be Christ-like, for us to attain the fullness of GOD (the totality of all the dimensions of GOD), because after all, ‘GOD is love’ [1 John 4:8]. And when we have our being in the love cornerstone, we grow in spiritual maturity and in the knowledge and experience of—(i) who GOD is; (ii) everything that is in GOD; and (iii) the dynamic, multifaceted, many-layered love of GOD. Once we have carefully pondered over these prayers by Paul, one cannot help but think—In the supernatural where do I feature? Where am I in my growth in love (and in GOD)? At what degree of the love of GOD am I? At what stage of maturity in the GOD-life am I? The key thing to it all is for you to really experience the love of Christ, and not just hear, read, or talk about it.
It is the perfect will of GOD for man to know HIM in a real practical personal way, for man to experience HIM. And it gives GOD the greatest pleasure to manifest and reveal Himself to man in this way—GOD wants every believer to have knowledge and real practical personal experience of HIM in this way because absolutely nothing will shake or move such a believer, satan can do nothing to such a person. The follow-up question is this—How do we get to know GOD in a real personal way beyond just knowing about HIM without experiencing HIM? And the answer is this—The experience of GOD is the new birth experience. Paul tells us how the new birth experience comes about in Galatians 2:20. Romans 6:4 echoes Galatians 2:20 on how the new birth experience comes about; It states that man was crucified, killed, buried and raised with Christ by GOD’s glory and that, as a result of this, man should walk in the new nature. The Reality Of The GOD-life is the grace experience, gifted to those who grow into the fullness of the awesomely dynamic, powerful beyond measure, love of GOD in the new nature.
Holy Spirit comes to save man, elevating and infusing man with a new nature, a nature which is of the Spirit. For this transformative infusion with the Holy Spirit to begin and set you on a path to the GOD-life, death becomes inevitable and unavoidable. The carnal man of flesh is the persona that dies in the crucifixion with Christ; And when man is raised from death, he is elevated from the world when the spirit man persona comes to life by the workings of the Holy Spirit. The flesh must first die and man must submit and surrender self to the Holy Spirit. This new birth creation is a born-again child of GOD, who is capacitated, empowered, and strengthened to love in the way that the LORD commands, which is the same way that HE loves us [John 13:34]. More importantly, the Bible calls on those born-again of GOD the Holy Spirit, to “love one another, for love is of GOD, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” [1 John 4:7]. Love is the grace that comes effortlessly and naturally with the new nature, and the new creation cannot help but love, it is in its nature to love.
As believers, we are not supposed to struggle or to battle to love. Likewise, living in the new nature is not meant to be a struggle or a battle. Life as a new creation is a life of surrender and submission to the Holy Spirit. If you still struggle with it, it could be that you do not understand the language of the spirit, the language of grace. Know and understand this—Grace does not come from any effort/works of man; Grace comes from surrender and submission to GOD (Holy Spirit); And you struggle because you are not fully submitted. When the Holy Spirit infusion has successfully taken place in the fully surrendered and submitted new creation, you will not struggle to adjust to life in the new nature because—(i) man becomes born-again in the Spirit (born of GOD); (ii) man becomes completely empowered and immersed in the experience of the GOD-life; (iii) man becomes completely Christ-like completely guided and led by Holy Spirit; and (iv) there will be no telling where man ends and where Holy Spirit begins in the Reality Of The GOD-life.
When we submit and surrender to Holy Spirit, and we allow Holy Spirit to fully effect the death of self, this is how the complete death to self happens. When we have not died to self, we will be self-seeking (seek our own way and self-gratification). When we walk in the newness in Christ, we know that we have been crucified with Him and that we have been graced, empowered, and enabled by GOD to live the GOD-life with all its perks and benefits [Romans 6:6]. More often than not, the fact that we know this, has nothing to do with what I am physically feeling or what my personal human experience is. My circumstances should not discourage me—All I need to do is to confess and affirm what the Word of GOD says about my life, the life that I live in the body of Christ. Paul said it in Galatians 2:20; You and I should likewise be able to confess and affirm that ‘I have been crucified to the world and to the things of the world, that the world and the things of the world have been crucified to me and no longer have any appeal for me’. These confessions and affirmations recondition the mind to stop focusing on worldly things.
Romans 6:11 develops the idea of confessions and affirmations further and urges us to consider ourselves to be already in Christ by faith. As members of the body of Christ, we must reconcile our minds and bring our minds into agreement and alignment with the established complete truth of what the Word says about who we are in Christ. And the Word says that in our new reality in the Spirit we are already victorious because of what Christ has accomplished for us through the cross. This renewing of the mind is a critical step to the process because—(i) the mind is the battlefield for the ever-raging spiritual warfare; (ii) the thing that stands between the old man and the new man is the mind [Ephesians 4:22-24]; (iii) our progressive transformation goes from one degree of glory to another when the mind contemplates and deliberately holds on to the Word [2 Corinthians 3:18 NIV/AMPC]; and (iv) what we set our minds on ultimately determines whether we walk according to the old or the new nature [Romans 8:5-6].
The Reality Of The GOD-life is a construct of the new life born of GOD, a new life born of the Spirit. The things of GOD are revealed, taught, and discerned by the Spirit. And the things of the Spirit are enshrined in the Word of GOD. This is why the instructions on how we can attain and maintain the GOD-life are enshrined in the Word of GOD. This is why we are able to attain and maintain the full experience of the love of GOD when we focus the mind on the Word. When we fix our minds on the Word and on knowing the Word, we set ourselves on a collision course with the full untempered experience of the GOD-life. When all is said and done, at the very core of the matter, there must be a shift and transformation in our mindset (in our thinking) on how we view ourselves in the Word for the Reality Of The GOD-life to manifest into the real practical experience that GOD intended for us and wants for us in the life that we have chosen for ourselves in HIM.
When all is said and done, at the very core of the matter, there must be a shift and transformation in our mindset (in our thinking) on how we view ourselves in the Word for the Reality Of The GOD-life to manifest into the real practical experience that GOD intended for us and wants for us in the life that we have chosen for ourselves in HIM
0 Comments