Anyone can be ordinary

 

Do you have a stand?

 “Let me ask you a question: Do you have a standard by which you govern yourself and keep your circumstances from dictating your actions? Your answer depends on your morals and character, does it not? If you lack morals or character, your ethics may, and often will, change to suit your circumstances. But if you have morals, ethics and character combined, you will stand up and say, "I do this because I choose to, because I made a commitment to do it, since it is the right thing to do. It does not matter whether anyone else is doing it. Regardless, here is where I stand." This is integrity talking. 

A man of integrity takes integrity personally. He is his own person. He does not do something simply because he sees other people doing it. He follows the guide that is within him—not the crowd. He lets this guide, not his circumstances, lead him in developing his ethics. And he has such character, such intestinal fortitude and self discipline, that he will consistently do what he knows is morally right despite the consequences. This is what it means to be a person of integrity—and it takes morals, character and ethics, which is why these are inherent in the very meaning of integrity. 

Now you should be able to see why people like Daniel endure and rise above the consequences, while those who roll right through stop signs typically fall victim to their circumstances. Integrity makes all the difference in the world.”

Dr. Frederick K.C. Price Sr. 

Integrity

 The Voice of Integrity

“The voice of integrity says, "I don't know what you're going to do, but I know what I have to do. This is right, and this is wrong." When people try to say, "Yeah, but everyone's doing it." Integrity still says, "So? Here's where I stand." Even if others claim, "Yeah, but popular opinion is..." integrity does not change its mind. People may try to coerce you by saying, "You're going to be standing out there by yourself," but integrity points out, “Regardless, here's where I stand.”

Dr. Frederick K.C. Price Sr. 

What you say....

 Everything you say yes to over and over again gains power over you and enslaves you, anything you say no to over and over again loses power over you. Disagree with the enslaving power of sin in your life and appropriate the grace of God through giving your life to Christ and seeking power through His grace to live above the sin traps of the enemy. Grace is unmerited favor from God not giving us what we truly deserve. That is a beautiful aspect of grace but the part of grace that you don't hear of in pulpits much is that it is also divine empowerment to do what truth demands and live above sin. Grace is not given as a license to sin but as enablement to shake off wrong actions and sins and obey God. God loves you! You got this!

-Jacque

Doctrine of Christ

Jesus Christ is the eternal, beloved Son of the Father, who shares all things with Him in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Athanasius, in his treatise Against the Arians, quotes the Presbyter Arius’ book Thalia saying that “God was not always Father. He was God alone and solitary, before He was the Father, and afterwards He became a Father.”

 The implications of such a conception are staggering and multi-dimensional. In 325 AD the Council of Nicaea was convened to address this question directly, and concluded that the relationship of the Father and the Son is not created but divine and eternal. Jesus Christ is not a creature, but “Light from Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of the same being as the Father” (homoousios to Patri). This critical phrase is enshrined in the heart of the Nicene Creed. For Athanasius there was never a time  hen the Father was without His Son and Spirit, existing alone as an abstract, nonrelational, single-person deity, simply god and not Father. As he stated bluntly: “The Holy Trinity is no created being.”

 And as Hilary of Poitiers declared:   

I call to mind that the very centre of a saving faith is the belief not merely in God, but in God as Father; not merely in Christ, but in Christ as the Son of God; in Him, not as a creature, but as God the Creator, born of God.

Here we stand before the beautiful mystery of the very being of God. Three divine persons completely dwelling in one another in indivisible oneness without loss of distinct personhood—perichoresis. There is no dimension of divine being deeper than or beyond or before the communion of the blessed Three, who live forever in indivisible oneness and love. This relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit is not new, not a mere form that the hidden and unknowable God assumed during the incarnation; it did not begin on Christmas morning. This is who God is and always has been and always will be. And this divine  relationship forms the womb of creation.

- Baxter Kruger

Jesus Christ: The Mediator of Creation

 When most of us hear the name of Jesus we think of an individual man who lived, died on a cross, and rose again. According to our tradition Jesus was and is a real man. He did live and die and rise again and ascend to the Father. What I call our great blind spot in the West is not so much here, but in the fact that we do not see any real connection or relationship between Jesus and ourselves, and between what happened to him in his life, death, resurrection and ascension, and us. Although we readily assume that the whole race of humanity fell in Adam, we see Jesus’ death only as an act of God for us, but not as an act that involved us—all of us, and all of creation. His death and resurrection were things that happened to him, not to us. To be sure, they were intended for our benefit, but humanity was a spectator to these events and is in no sense connected or related to him in his death and resurrection—until we do something to bring Jesus into our lives today.

This assumption of separation between Jesus and us is, in my opinion, one of the fundamental failures of Western Christianity. The blind spot of separation begets and perpetuates a multitude of ‘us-them’ divisions, including and especially religious divisions, that are destroying our lives and the planet. Moreover, this assumption necessarily makes our faith a work we do that relates us to an absent Jesus, rather than a mind-boggling, liberating, hope-begetting discovery of the reality of his union with us and with all creation.

Such a Jesus may make perfect sense to us in our individualistic mindset, but I contend that it betrays the Jesus of the apostles and of the early church. The apostolic Jesus is the Father’s eternal Son, and the One anointed in the Spirit, and he is the One in and through and by whom all things were created and are constantly sustained. These three fundamental truths about Jesus Christ have rarely been held together with the incarnation. And failure here has fueled the oppressive racial, relational, sexual, ecological, environmental, religious, and political and social hell we find ourselves in today.

Baxter Kruger

Cross or Throne

 Seated with Christ

First Corinthians 6:17 says, “but he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” We are one with Christ. We are as Christ. We are seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high. All things have been put under our feet.

The trouble with us is that we’ve preached a “cross” religion, and we need to preach a “throne” religion. By that I mean that people have thought they were supposed to remain at the cross. Some have received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, have backed up to the cross, and have stayed there ever since

We’ve sung, “near the cross, near the cross.” Yes, we need to come by the cross for salvation, but we don’t need to remain there; let’s go on to Pentecost, the Ascension, and the Throne!

The cross is actually a place of defeat, whereas the resurrection is a place of triumph. When you preach the cross, your preaching death, and you leave people in death. We died all right, but were raised with Christ. We're seated with Him. Positionally, that’s where we are right now: we're seated with Christ in the place of authority in heavenly places.

Kenneth E. Hagin

Redemption

 People are thinking, feeling, willing beings. That is to say, our basic nature consists of cognition (mind), affections (emotions) and volition (well). Together these constitute a living soul. Human beings also have a body, relating us to the external world, and we have a spirit, through which we can relate to the spiritual realm and to God. We are thus tripartite beings - spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5; 23).

God is concerned with the whole person. It would be difficult to over emphasize this point. Many of our problems come from the mistaken idea that in salvation God rescues one part of us - our spirit - from general ruin, and abandons the rest. Nothing is further from the truth. God has always dealt with the whole person. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. Sin as radically affected not only our spirit, but our mind, our will, and our emotions. But the wonderful news is that redemption reaches and recovers all those areas that sin has ruined.

Tom Marshall

Substitute

 The Substitute – Curry Blake

Jesus gave us His Name (the authorization to use His total authority over ALL manner of sickness and ALL manner of disease) so that we could substitute for Him while He is gone. Jesus came to remedy the sin situation (and everything connected to it), He came to show us the Father’s will and to show us how to walk so as to fulfill His will. Then, He commissioned us as His representatives to continue His ministry and mission until He returns. Then, He returned to HQ (Heaven) to wait until we finish our job. Healing is victorious warfare against our enemy, the devil, which happens to also be God’s enemy. Healing is not an added benefit, it is part of the salvation Jesus purchased for us. In the area of theatre, the main star always has an understudy. The understudy has to learn the same part, the same lines as the main star so that they can fill in if the main star isn’t available to play their part. Everyone knows it’s not the exact same person, but it is the same role. This is the position Jesus put us in. This is still His ministry, its just Act 2 of the same play (literally Acts 2). 

Years ago, there was a movie in which a Country Music star quit performing, and since there were concerts still contracted to perform, they had to find a “stand-in” to imitate the star. This person literally had to impersonate the original star. Again, this is similar to the position Christians are in today. I know my analogies aren’t perfect, but remember, I’m just the stand-in. Jesus was the master at parables. In 1981, I had a poster board tacked to the inside of our house front door, it read: “You may be the only ‘Jesus’ some people ever see.” It was a reminder as I left my house of how I was supposed to behave and speak. 

Too often, Christians remain captured by the traditions of men in the area of our relationship with God. Instead of being true “New Creations” with the Heavenly Father, they simply live as “old covenant” proselytes with a God. Usually, the God they serve is more like Zeus than Jehovah. This kind of Christian differs very little from the the religious Jews that were always trying to “not make God mad” rather than living in the freedom of a Son. As “New Creations,” we get to live our lives with the same power and joy and freedom as Jesus did. We get to do the same works Jesus did. We get to do even greater works than Jesus did. This is not some burdensome yoke put on us by some cruel taskmaster. This is the freedom to enjoy living life without fear or worry. Living life like this is having so much life in abundance that we are able to go about doing good and healing ALL that are oppressed of the devil, FOR GOD IS WITH US! Imagine if your mind was so renewed to God’s Word that when you saw a need, you simply reached out to help without wondering “What if it doesn’t work?” 

The apostles in the Book of Acts went about doing good and healing, setting captives free, and preaching the Good News, just like their Mentor, Jesus, did. They were just substituting for Him. They knew they weren’t “Him,” but they believed Him. They believed what He said strong enough that they obeyed Him and did what they had seen Him do. You never see them wondering if it was God’s will to heal the lame man at the Beautiful Gate. You never see them talking to God about healing someone. They just did it. Then, they told people that Jesus was the One that supplied the power to do it. Why did they have such conviction? Because they believed what He had said to them. 

I remember back from years ago, when everyone was saying “What Would Jesus Do? That’s all the apostles did. They went around doing what Jesus would do if He were there physically. Guess what? He is here physically, in you. You are His Body. If you don’t lay hands on people, they aren’t going to have hands laid on them and they probably won’t get healed. Be His substitute. Some might say, “But you don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. To which I say…“You don’t know what Jesus did!!!” Whatever He did outdid whatever you did. Get over yourself. Get you off your mind. Do what He said to do. Become obedient. Jesus didn’t say, sit around and remember all the stupid bad things you’ve done. The Scripture says, “Think on these things…” (Phil. 4:8). The Scripture says, “Looking to Jesus…” (Heb. 12:2). The Scripture says, “Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus…” (Phil. 2:5). He gave YOU His Word, His power, His Spirit. He, Himself, has supplied you with everything you need to get the job done that He has given YOU to do. Be His substitute… at least until He gets here.