OikosMinistries

Doctrines, 6

#100 - The Doctrines of Christ, Part 5, "Faith's First Duty"

#99 - The Doctrines of Christ, Part 4, "Faith Defined, Faith Derived"

#98 - The Doctrines of Christ, Part 3, "The Foundation of Repentance from Dead Works - Part 2"

Repentance from dead works and faith toward God are foundational doctrines undergirding everything that is.Some of us never get to the bedrock of Christ because we've never established the foundations. Repentance is a supernatural change of mind as we change our thinking to think more like Christ. Repentance is the message that makes us ready to receive the Lord. When we try to put Jesus in an unrepentant life with the absence of this preaching, there’s such a faulty foundation that people crumble and fall. The gospel begins with the message of repentance.It is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance., and the first move of grace in our life is God drawing us to change. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/bk3Dr_ate4I

It was once the common understanding that once a person was discipled, they would be able to take what they had received and give it to another. This is how the church functioned. Faithful men would teach faithful men. But today there is a difficulty bringing people to maturity. Many are in perpetual spiritual infancy and never grow up or bear fruit. Those who have been in the Lord for years seem to never advance in their spiritual growth. If we have received, then why can't we give? Or the real question might be why won't we give?We need to be a good steward to what God reveals. In this series, we will make sure our foundation is proper as we learn the principles of the doctrines of Christ. It's time to dig deep. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/F_wOhIDrI7A?si=XrP634bOyWt88xqY

We have to awaken to the idea that we are in a spiritual war. We are not wrestling against flesh and blood. We are fighting demonic entities that have usurped godly creations, and we cannot fight in the spiritual arena with carnal means. It's time to open our eyes to the spiritual forces around us.We are in a spiritual conquest and there’s a battle raging for our souls. It’s time to get full of the Holy Ghost and fight like you're going to win. We are victors when we are fully dressed in the whole armor of God. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/auqec_4eivQ

The devil is a real adversary and foe who is after your soul. He's doing everything to mess you up, thwart your efforts, ruin your witness, and make you blaspheme. Our human strength is no match for the demonic. This is a reality of the Christian walk. When we face the enemy, we are to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Our strength will fail but God will never fail. As a Christian, you will experience spiritual warfare. God is readying and preparing us, but we have some duty in putting on His armor. We must make sure we do our diligence to sink into the armor of God so that we have the divine protection we need for battle. God is greater than any adversary that we will ever meet. In Christ, we are well able to stand. We need to let our inner man agree with that, rise up, and stand in victory. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/qIWIpmgQn9w

Christ has called us to servanthood. We should serve others like we are serving the Lord. Our jobs can be seen as the mission field as we aim to reflect His glory well wherever we go. Even in the workplace, we can make a difference and be witness and a real testimony for Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was known as a servant. He served everyone He came in contact with. The Spirit of God will not rest on our pride and spirit of independence. It is vital we keep a right spirit. When we become servants of the Lord, we must walk in a certain humility, knowing who and what we are. We are people under mercy. We were granted mercy and given a new opportunity. We need to treat others the same way. As a Christian worker, we must ask ourselves whether we work with sincerity of heart or grumble and complain. It is the will of God we serve with gladness. Christians should make peace and be the ones who up the morale and the atmosphere of the work environment with our good attitude. God has called us to a good work, and the first part of that good work is to shine His character. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/2xbaWoyyj4A

The family is under unprecedented attack. We must look at the warfare going on in the family, and in particular in regard to our children. We must train our children and help them navigate through these perilous times that we live in right now. It takes hard work. It’s time for Christians to really take to heart the stewardship God has given us in our children. We have responsibilities and duties to our children as their parents to raise them, instill Christian value, and do everything we know how to bring our children to Christ. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/2wuiErFw1kw

We've lost all Christian conviction about covenant because blood covenant is not appropriately taught from the pulpit.We need to understand, in the Christian home, that we are first submitted to Jesus Christ through a blood covenant. Then also, through a blood covenant, we are connected to our spouse. Both of these relationships are nurtured through communication. When we keep our hearts soft before the Lord, we can keep our relationships intact. Marriage vows should not be taken flippantly. Why doesn't our Christianity translate into good relationships? If there's any place the love of Christ should show up it's in our home. God wants to bring peace into our home through divine order once we are first mutually submitted to Jesus Christ. When we have a true spiritual covenant with God, we have forsaken all others. We belong to Christ - us in Him and Him in us. This is the unity of faith, and we should see the same devotion in the covenant of marriage. YouTube Link: https://youtu.be/XyBhfDzrpnk

Come to Christ, come through the cross, die to who you were, get a new life, be born again, and then the Spirit of Christ will reside in your heart and the Spirit of grace will lift you up in a higher law than sin and death. It’s called the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We are under a higher law. He didn’t lower it. He raised it above human reach. He put it out of the capacity of human ability and in divine ability. The Spirit of grace is there to empower us to live out what Christ wants us to do. Grace is not a crutch to live subpar to where Christ calls us to be. We are in a new covenant made in the blood of Jesus Christ. We are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God moves in us. There’s a light shining in us and it’s the character that comes from the new birth as we become partakers of divine nature. We become the light of the world. Some of you need to hear this, awake, and rise from the dead and God will give you light.

The book of Ephesians is filled with the word walk. Our walk is our manner of life. It is the way we live. We are to walk worthy of the calling. There should be a lifestyle change that aligns to what God has called us to. It is not that we walk in a rigidity of commandment or a lifestyle cleanup, but we are to walk in the love of God. The gospel should affect the way we live our lives. This is the new birth as God the Creator makes us new. The divine power of God comes into us; and as the old man comes off, the new man comes in. In the salvation of God, He has foreordained that we would be recreated in Christ Jesus for a good work. The good work is for us to walk in this physical body in this present age in a way that manifests the Spirit of Christ. It's the greatest work that can be done. We are to walk in the full transfiguration of Christ Jesus and affect everyone around because of the power of God that is upon us.

Every one of us in Christ has been given a measure of Christ’s gifts. Jesus Christ Himself gifted men to be gifts to men. These ministry gifts are to equip the ministry; however, they are the biggest things tradition stole from everyone. This demonic thief of tradition steals the priesthood of every believer. It is a grief that we have taken these gifts and squeezed them down to one thing: Pastor. It is a detriment to the gospel that all the church be in the hands of pastors. The paradigm is shifting back to an apostolic model with relational ministry led by the Holy Ghost. We need a fresh wave of powerful apostles and prophets who will set the foundations properly of Spirit and truth. Spirit and truth must come together in the very foundation of Jesus Christ in these New Testament churches. The measure God wants us to walk in is fullness. It is the absolute goal and aim in the Christian walk to be filled with Christ. Let’s be a vessel who says, “Empty me out so I can be filled with You.” We are to ask, seek, knock, and persistently pursue a fuller life with the Holy Ghost in us.

There’s been a huge paradigm shift where God no longer dwells in temples made by men. He now dwells in men. He's building Himself a house, and it’s those He has brought into the new birth and are being intertwined relationally in love. When we come together in that assembled love by the Spirit of God, we become a dwelling place for God. It is there God promises to manifest His presence. God wants to do a mighty work in this new paradigm. He wants you to come to the mountain alone with Him where He can transfigure you. You are invited to meet with God until He strengthens you with might in your inner man according to the working of His power and He fills you with His glory. God wants to come into you to save, heal, deliver, and transform you so Christ can live in you. It's all done through faith in His word. Faith pulls this out of heaven into your heart. Instead of trying to find God in a temple, let Him find you in His temple and change you from the inside out. Hear Him and become the tabernacle of God, a holy sanctuary, where He is pleased to dwell in you.

All throughout the history of the church, every revival has resulted from the Holy Spirit blasting through existing orthodoxy and disrupting the standards and norms that were in control. We are in this sort of paradigm shift now. The Holy Spirit is not looking to occupy a physical building. He is wanting to live in the hearts of men. God wants to live inside redeemed vessels. Immanuel in the heart of every soul. That’s the fullness of the gospel. Currently there‘s a lack of experiential Christianity. We need to encounter the presence of God in a powerful way where we don’t remain the same. We are the tabernacle of God only when He transfigures us through a divine encounter with Him. Where faith comes alive, the Word begins to change you, and your mind is renewed. It’s called repentance. We must take care to build according to the New Testament pattern. The building blocks of the New Testament are ransomed vessels who have received Christ in such a divine encounter they are transformed, and the Word of God continues to transfigure them throughout their life, so they are conformed to the image of Christ in all of His fullness. And then we are joined together relationally, one to another, and build a community of faith and friendship that the world looks at and knows we are His disciples.

The building of God is not an organization of brick and mortar. It is a living organism, filled with people who are filled with God’s praises, with Jesus Christ as the Chief Cornerstone. However, the builders have rejected God’s design and the Chief Cornerstone. God wanted the New Testament church to be structured relationally, not bureaucratically. Instead of the relational church God intended, many worship in an old paradigm, trying to mimic the Old Testament temple. We must start anew in the true new paradigm, where we are the temple of God. We are to build carefully according to the pattern that Jesus gave His disciples. God wants to live in the hearts and minds of men, not in physical buildings. We are meant to worship in a relational church, where we are built together in relationships to be a habitation for be Holy Spirit. There are so many American believers who have gotten disenchanted and fallen out of church. There’s another way. You can have church right there in your homes in the relational structure God intended. If you are sitting out of church, it’s time to get the vision.

Grace is the divine influence upon the heart reflected in the life. It is powerful when God’s grace comes, and there’s a manifestation of it in the life. Many argue that it is either grace or works, but it is actually grace and works. We are not saved by good works, but we are kept by them. Don’t pervert grace by saying you can live however you want to now and still be saved. It’s a false doctrine. We are predestined to reflect God’s glory on earth and do a good work. He is raising up a people who are zealous about good works and want to do the things that glorify Him. The commandments have not been done away with. If God’s grace doesn’t empower you to keep His commandments, then you are under a false grace. If you are trying to live in lawless deeds, calling your continued sin liberty and grace, then you are frustrating the true grace of God.

There are so many people who have had real encounters with God who have never known the fullness of Jesus Christ in their life. God wants to change you with His fullness inside of you. We are His Church, His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all things. Jesus Christ was filled with grace and truth, and He wants you as full as He is. We need the fullness today. Why aren’t we pressing in to see the Church filled with the Holy Spirit? A spirit of slumber has rested on the churches. The gospel is way bigger than what we have made it today. It is a powerful gospel that wants to save you: spirit, soul, and body. God wants to do a work in you and fill you with the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead; and when God fills you with Himself, you cannot be the same. There is an abundance of God’s Spirit that He wants to fill you with. Some don’t even know to ask for His fullness or to pursue more of the Holy Ghost. We have left so much on the table.

When the eyes of the understanding become enlightened, it means we are able to look at things with our spiritual eyes wide opened. As the knowledge of God revolves in the head, it drops down into the spirit and becomes understanding. The heart sees something that is way deeper than the mind is able to. In Ephesians, Paul prays for the spirit of understanding in three areas: The hope of His calling, the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe. Join us as Teryl Hebert explores the powerful truths in each area.

Paul prayed for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. The spirit of wisdom implies a continual unfolding of abiding, residing, and living wisdom. This is something we are missing in the church today. We have overemphasized the knowledge of the cross without connecting with the brokenness that comes from the cross. We have heads full of cognitive transfer, but this knowledge has not dropped into the spirit or changed the hearts of men. We are transferring cognitive knowledge instead of enlarging on revelation. Because of this, there’s no freedom, no healing, no deliverance, and no signs of the new birth. Cognitive transfer does not stick. What we need today are minds enlightened and transfigured from divine encounters. We need the wisdom of God dwelling in the hearts and minds of men through revelation.

Redemption means to liberate someone and set them free at a purchase price. We were captive and bound to demonic forces that held us to sin. But Christ paid the ransom fully; and through His blood, we have redemption. To understand what it cost God to forgive you, we must first understand the righteous requirements of the law and power of the blood. There’s redemption through the blood of Christ according to the riches of God’s grace. But to get this grace, you must go through the blood. The redemption in His blood is what gives us the legal right to have our sins forgiven

One of the greatest needs we have is acceptance. We all have experienced the pain of rejection; and if anyone understands the ramifications of rejection, it is Jesus. Even when the whole world has rejected us, we have the ability to be accepted by God. This divine acceptance is the power of God working inside the life of a person, bringing joy unspeakable that is full of glory. It is by grace we are accepted in the Beloved. Acceptance from God is based on what He has done for us through the blood of Jesus Christ to reconcile us back to Himself. Many people have the knowledge of this, but their spirit has not yet had the revelation. When this is revealed, a flood of life, joy, hope, and peace comes. Seek and hear the voice of God speak to you and confirm in your spirit that He has made you accepted in the Beloved.

To be adopted as a child of God means our earthly life is dead with Christ on the cross. Now it is alive with God in Him. I am in Him, and He is in me. Like marriage, the two have become one. A oneness has been established. Everything of mine belongs to God, and everything that God has belongs to me. That’s how covenant works. To be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law. But a righteousness through faith. It's not what I have achieved, my religious performance, devotions, or appearance. It has everything to do with faith in what God has done.

Christ didn’t die so we would keep sinning; He died so we could die with Him. But instead of being dead to sin, we sit in church dead in our sins. There are many religious seekers of Christ who are still dying in their sins. We have all but eradicated the holiness of God, twisting His glory and truth. Misrepresenting God, we have exalted a humanistic view of His love and seared our conscience towards sin. We must get our blinders off and look soberly at our sin before a holy God.