In the Old Covenant, the people of God could walk in favor with God and man based on promises that the Lord made through His prophets (example: Deuteronomy 30:9-10). The problem for the subscribers of the Old Covenant was and is that the favor is linked to behavior. But that is the problem for everyone, isn’t it? I know it is for me. I think things like “oh, I can’t (fill in the blank), because I (fill in another blank).” Honestly, it isn’t about us. Steve Thompson said last night at our new Saturday night meeting at MorningStar, something like “Your standing with God has nothing to do with you doing things right, it has to do with the One Man who did things right living inside of you.” *pause for dramatic effect.
The other day, I was with a group of about 30 first year students at MorningStar University. I was leading a morning “spiritual fitness” time, basically training people in the program how to connect with the Lord and transform their minds and hearts so that they are more effective in their life. I woke up that morning having not put any thought into what we were going to do, even though it started in like 12 minutes. I had a quick idea about worship.
When I say worship, most people’s first thought is something concerning music, singing and maybe dancing if you are from that kind of denominational bent. But the worship that the Father is looking for, desiring, longing for is from those who will worship Him in “spirit and in truth”. For me, that indicates that worship is a matter of your spirit over-flowing with honest and real declaration of who God is. This can be done through songs, or by painting, or by writing, or by weight-lifting, or by golfing.
*Funny side-note: also last night, JohnMark McMillan said something prfound. He said “Because Christ is in you, if you don’t go play golf, He doesn’t get to play golf. If you don’t go pray for the sick, He doesn’t get to go pray for the sick. Everything you do, He does.”
Anyhow, back to the morning training. So what I had everyone do was take 20 minutes and write down everything that we can think of individually about the Lord. After about 8 minutes most of us had run out of Biblical things and had to just go with who He REALLY is to us. I had things on my list like “sneaky, hysterical, un-offended, invested, aggressive, unreserved, never indifferent”. So with a long list, (mine was like 7 dozen things) we all at once, in a small room, just told God what we thought of Him. We “read our lists” but it was more than that, we were talking to Him. After all, He was more in that room than we were. I was only in the room once, He was in every single one of us, so He was in their like 40 times.
Needless to say, it was pretty powerful. But then, in the spirit of Jahovah-Sneaky, I brought up two verses that flipped us upside down. Second Corinthians 3:18 says that as we are beholding His glory, we are being transformed into His likeness. This means that as we are considering the truth of who He is, we are changing into that very same thing. Then I read First John 4:17, which says “we are as He is in this world”. That means that we are on this earth, walking around just like He is up on His heavenly throne next to the Father. We are of the same nature, the same authority, the same lineage, the same spirit. So everything that we had just told God about Himself, He was telling it to us about us. As Becky Langford saw in a vision the next night, we are throwing praise at Him and He is batting it back in our faces, telling us that we are only talking about ourselves.
Now, here is the real kicker for me.
The same night that Becky shared that vision at our Friday night School of the Spirit meeting, Stephen Alls (the pastoral advisor of our school) talked about turning to the Lord. When he did, I remembered a verse about something good happening when we turn to the Lord. But I couldn’t remember where it was. It turns out that it is only 2 verses befor the Second Corinthians 3 verse about us being transformed into His likeness by Beholding His glory. It says that whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away from our faces and we shine with glory. But something really hit me when I realized WHERE the Lord is to be turned to.
Whenever we think of turning to the Lord, or looking to the Lord, we tend to think UP. But Colossians 1:27 says that Christ is IN us. So when we turn to the Lord, which removes the veil that hides our glory, we are turning IN to the Lord. then I thought “Holy Smokes! It isn’t turning inward towards the Lord, it is turning INTO the Lord!” We become the Lord, we fulfill the truth of being as He is, we are transformed into His likeness and we walk in His power, His grace, His authority.
We run around trying to gain favor when Favor lives in us. We search and manipulate our way into influence when we have power greater than an Atom Bomb, we have a “Last Adam Bomb” in us. We have the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead RESIDENT inside of us. One of my friends, Bethany Oiler, is a worship leader here at MorningStar. She recently wrote a song that has a great line that says something like “I am God’s house and He is always home.”
