MESSAGE HIGHLIGHT:

Having Therefore Boldness Part 9: Boldly Separated Unto God – Ps Sharon Bendixen (JHB)

Your Word changes me, it inspires me, it strengthens me and causes me to realise just how a wonderful life I have because of You.

The very choice that I made to make Jesus the Lord and Saviour of my life glorifies God and glorifies the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

The point of being a Christian is not so that I can just make heaven my home and be eternally connected to heaven, or to God and the life of God. The point of being a Christian is that while I’m on the earth, my life must represent the life of God so that others can choose the same life. There is no one else that can represent the life of God other than the Christian. The point of being a Christian is so that I can be spiritual. I can become a representative of the life of God. What’s the point of being spiritual? So that I can make the life of God demonstrated on the earth. My job is to follow the instinct of the new creation and the instinct of the new creation will continue to lead me closer to Jesus.

10That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10-11 NKJV). The Gospel of Jesus Christ includes three things. It includes the cross, it includes the resurrection and it includes the Holy Spirit. If Jesus didn’t die on the cross, there would be no salvation for me. My sins were nailed to the cross with Him. Without the resurrection, there is no power of the cross. Without the Holy Spirit, there is no power for me to live in resurrection life.

I have been given the Holy Spirit to help me live in the God-kind of life. 8Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant, dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash; I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ. Everything that I have going for me, all of the good stuff that everybody adds so much importance to and gives so much relevance to, it might be so seeming, so significant – none of that stuff is really of any value to me compared to knowing Jesus. That stuff is just like dog poop to me because the knowledge of who Jesus is – is so beautiful. It’s so amazing, it’s so powerful, it’s so wonderful that that’s all I want to live for. 9And be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ, God’s righteousness (Philippians 3:8-9 MSG).

I hate religion because Jesus is about relationship and the power of what I have in Christ is about relationship.

10I gave up all that inferior stuff so I could know Christ personally, experience his resurrection power, be a partner in his suffering, and go all the way with him to death itself (Philippians 3:10 MSG).
11If there was any way to get in on the resurrection from the dead, I wanted to do it (Philippians 3:11 MSG). Paul is saying that if there was a way that I could live in a resurrection life form while I’m on the earth, I would do it. So great is the power of God.

10And I continually long to know the wonders of Jesus more fully and to experience the overflowing power of his resurrection working in me. I will be one with him in his sufferings and I will be one with him in his death. 11Only then will I be able to experience complete oneness with him in his resurrection from the realm of death. 12I admit that I haven’t yet acquired the absolute fullness that I’m pursuing, but I run with passion into his abundance so that I may reach the purpose that Jesus Christ has called me to fulfill and wants me to discover(Philippians 3:10-12 TPT). I can’t discover my purpose; I can’t discover the fullness of God’s abundance until I experience the fullness of His resurrection power in me. 13I don’t depend on my own strength to accomplish this; however I do have one compelling focus: I forget all of the past as I fasten my heart to the future instead (Philippians 3:13 TPT).

I have no power in myself to save myself, neither do I have any power in myself to live in the abundance of Christ, I count on the same power that resurrected Jesus from the dead. It was God’s power that raised Jesus from the dead; it was not the perfection of Jesus life. Jesus trusted in the power of the Heavenly Father to declare Him righteous, and then call Him from the dead. He had to trust His Heavenly Father. His perfection had nothing to do with it. It was the reason the Father could call Him from the dead, but He Himself had no power to raise Himself from the dead. I have no power to lift myself out of my humanity, I have no power to lift myself out of my sin nature, but Your grace gives me all of the power through the Holy Spirit. The same power that You exercised to raise Jesus from the dead, is the same power that You exercise over me to raise me out of my weakness, out of my daily life where I am incapable of changing myself.

16If the dead aren’t raised up, that would mean that Christ has not been raised up either. 17And if Christ is not alive, you are still lost in your sins and your faith is a fantasy (1 Corinthians 15:16-17 TPT). Faith in the resurrection makes my faith real not just the death of Jesus. 18It would also mean that those believers in Christ who have passed away have simply perished. 19If the only benefit of our hope in Christ is limited to this life on earth, we deserve to be pitied more than all others! (1 Corinthians 15:18-19 TPT). The power of resurrection, not only gives me benefit of life on the earth, but it gives me benefit eternally. 20But the truth is, Christ is risen from the dead, as the first fruit of a great resurrection harvest of those who have died (1 Corinthians 15:20 TPT).

My faith is not a fantasy. My faith is grounded in the power of the resurrection of Jesus. I can’t receive the fullness of resurrection life without the Holy Spirit helping me.

God, I ask You and I trust You that Your life would shine through my weakness and that the life that You live through me would touch my children more and greater than the life that is in me because my own humanity will destroy my children’s future.

I’m open with my kids and I always direct them to Father God because that’s my hope – is that my children will live in the Father God more than they will live following me. That’s the greatest freedom that I can give them – is not to become like me, although they will. My hope is in God that they become more like Jesus and more like the Father God than they will be like me, and to that end, I plead the resurrection power that God the Father exercised over Jesus to raise Him from the dead and then I say, “May that same resurrection power rest upon my children that will raise them up from even the human weakness they have and the ones they’ve learned from me, that it will raise them up beyond their humanity and they will excel and exceed what they think they can become in Jesus.”

Not only was Christ resurrected but I too am resurrected. I am raised; I am lifted up into a new life because I am in Him. I live my life in Him.

I represent the life of God, I am a messenger, I am a light carrier. My testimony is not how great I am; my testimony is about the great God that is in me and regardless of how well I perform or don’t perform on the earth, the greatness of my God is undiminished, it’s unchanged, it cannot be subjected to my weakness. He is much greater than that and so that gives me boldness and confidence to go about my life and openly declare my Christianity, openly declare my walk with God, regardless of their intellectual conversation or their disregard for my life testimony because ultimately, it’s up to God that gets them saved; not me. I do the presentation. I can’t be good enough. This is liberating to me because my life can’t be good enough.

Not only does God guarantee that I can have eternal life; He sends the Holy Spirit so that I can live life on the earth, in power, free from all of that self-stuff that I think is so important to me. It’s the only way I get free. It’s not because I am so self-willed and so self-disciplined.

What I speak out of my mouth and what I believe in my heart will guide my life and I will eat the fruit of it, either for life or for death. I don’t speak life as a formula that just becomes a practiced ritual. I believe it in my heart and I speak it with my mouth, and my life changes. If I don’t believe it in my heart, I keep speaking it and Holy Spirit; You make it real to my heart. That is where the power of resurrection comes in.

I have access to a completely different dimension which I can see and others don’t see and I have the power to live in what I do see. I’m born again and I have the ability by the power of my born-again spirit, to see things that others can’t see. I know that I am saved eternally. I know that I have an eternal destiny. I can see something that someone else can’t see.

I have a confidence about my future. It’s an underlying confidence that I just know. I just know that when it all comes to the end; I’m going to be with God forever. I’m going to be with Jesus forever. There’s a confidence there. I see things that no one else can see. I receive the power of His resurrection and I say, “I have that same power that’s daily resurrecting my mortality into spirituality. Daily I receive the power that raised Christ from the dead. I receive that power daily. The Holy Spirit energises me through His partnership with me.”

The Holy Spirit’s partnership with me – He’s my helper; He’s my advocate; He’s my standby; He’s my teacher; He’s the One that always leads me into truth. The Holy Spirit’s partnership with the power that raised Christ from the dead – He’s living in me – raising me up from my mortality into spirituality every day – I now can see things that other people can’t see. I live in a power band, I live in a space with God that even allows me, while I’m living in this human body to press towards a living that raises me up to such a high standard that other people marvel at the standard of Christ’s life that I live. Not because I’m great but because He’s great.

My life stands as a testimony. Through the power of God’s life in me, that life allows me to see a way of living that I can’t live by myself. His resurrection power resurrects my seeing from a poverty mentality to a prosperity abundance living mentality. He lifts me there, not myself. I live in a way of living health and I speak that, He lifts me into health. The resurrection power of Christ lifts me into a God standard of relationships.

In Christ, it’s the person that we love together that binds us together. It’s the resurrection power of Jesus that binds us together. It’s the life of Christ in me that talks to the Christ in you that draws out the Christ that’s in you. It draws you and it draws me into a higher dimension of relationship.

I pray the will of God into the whole earth. I pray the will of God into my nation and into my government and into the leadership. God is requiring for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to be known today, because this is our hour where we can make a difference regardless of all the barriers that this disease is bringing to us, this is my hour to make a difference right now. I talk to people about Jesus and I tell people about Jesus and I am ready to put my life on the line so that I can put out a message of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus.

Jesus, I ask You to cleanse me from all my twisted ways, from all my wrongdoings and I thank You, Lord, that because I’ve asked You, You now cleanse me and You bring me completely to righteousness. From this day onwards I receive Your redemption power. I receive the power of the Holy Spirit to help me live my life in strength and in power. In Jesus name. Amen.

I have my full trust in the power of the Holy Spirit to protect me from sickness and disease and part of my confidence in God is that I do what the Government tells me to do. You protect me by the Word and the blood of Jesus. You protect me and that no weapon formed against me will prosper. No sickness, no plague, no disease will come near my dwelling place and I thank You that even in these difficult times that You will cause me to prosper. You will cause me to enter into new doors of opportunity and I will see things that other people won’t see and that the power of the resurrection will resurrect my business, will resurrect my finances, will resurrect me to beyond what the human system thinks I am capable of and in this time I am free from that. Wherever relationships are taking strain, households, families, relationships, wherever those relationships are now under stress because of this, I thank you, Father, You resurrect that life. You resurrect them with Your power so that in my daily life I will be free of all of those stresses in my life, Father. I thank You that Your ministering spirits, the angels, are going right now into my life to help me and to cause good things to come into my life, in Jesus name. Amen.