Loving Like God

Reposting this old post by Jay Ferris, in light of the current season we are in…

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.”  Isaiah 9:6-7

Isaiah introduces this as “great light” to a people who had been living in darkness – which would be us. This “great light” comes to us in a number of ways: “a child,” “a son,” “a governor,” “a Wonderful Counselor,” “a Mighty God,” “an Everlasting Father,” and “a Prince of Peace.” All of this comes to us packaged in the first born of a new creation. It takes some time to open so many Christmas presents, to say nothing of coming into some intimacy with and understanding of them all.  In any given moment of eternity, brought to us by The Spirit of God, we may find ourselves with any one of those qualities or personalities wrapped in the flesh of another person.  In short, and in the now, Christ may give Himself to us in another person, as whatever we need at that moment.  We can learn more from having a child, for instance, than we can from going to college. I think you can figure out the rest.

It takes spiritual discernment to receive Christ or the things of Christ in another person.  It is a spiritual matter, and Jesus Christ is Lord of it all.

And so with Great gratitude in our hearts, we can say with Paul to those whom The Lord gives us: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”  1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20

Love!

“Relationships that come from God is like a perpetual Christmas! As long as we are willing and able to properly dispose of the wrappings we can go on opening the packages all life long.”

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The following clip by Jay Ferris is from a conference Q&A, and is only 5 minutes long.   Press the play button to listen to the audio, and follow along with the written transcript.

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Written Transcript

I’m going to try to be brief but I didn’t want to take even as much as five minutes to presume on the very precious time that’s here.  As I came down this morning I thought, you know, holy ground can oftentimes be holy time, and I felt this was holy time and I wanted to be very careful to be a good steward of the preciousness of it.  But there were several things, especially in the wake of a really blessed spirit and time that we had last night.  It was really a high point that was wonderful, where it seemed like every tension that had been in the room from time to time in our conversations had gone, and it was just the favor of the Lord. You could feel the Lord’s pleasure.  This morning the sky kind of opened and I’ve often had to say to God, “You’re supposed to be moderate.  And You pour out this stuff and it’s more than I can handle!”  So I made a couple of notes, fearful that I wouldn’t be able to keep them in mind.

There were three things that struck me, and the first one came to me as, ‘This is where it all goes wrong.’   For we’ve seen time and time again when we’ve been on mountaintop situations and we’ve had wonderful revelations that are part of an ongoing reformation that has taken us from wrong ways into another path.   What I was mindful of was what happened with the “Shepherding” phenomenon.  I don’t want to say anything negative about that without first expressing my appreciation for those men, four in the first instance and then five with the addition of Ern Baxter later.  I was never in the Shepherding Movement but I was certainly touched by it. The closeness that existed between those men to begin with was a testimony that was glorious. I felt like the Lord was wanting to restore relational integrity to the Body of Christ and that was the real heart of the message, that they were as a sign for us.  But very quickly that message got twisted to, “This is what God did for us and you ought to go out and do the same thing.”

Once we start doing it, it becomes shakeable, and it produces children of the slave woman that wind up making war on the children of the free woman. So, we need to be very careful to guard our hearts from doing something or misrepresenting what God has done in the first instance and what God must continue to do.  I just wanted to say that, and express my appreciation for Charles Simpson, Bob Mumford, Don Basham, Derek Prince, and Ern Baxter. They paid a high price to teach us something to be very careful about.

The other thing that I felt I needed to say was, I wanted to step into my heretical garb once again and say that in Christ there’s neither male nor female. If it’s in Christ, it’s in effect gender neutral.  And that there is evidence of spiritual mothers in the Scripture. If there has been a dearth of spiritual fathers there’s also been a dearth of spiritual mothers. So I want to encourage the gals that are here.

I’m reminded of what the response was of the believers that Paul ran into that said, “Well we haven’t even so much as heard there be a Holy Spirit.”  Well, there ‘be’ such a thing as a spiritual mother, as well as spiritual fathers.  There’s a lot of people running around with orphan spirits, gender neutral, who need mothering as much as fathering.  These things are equally important, and without that balance then we’re out of balance.

Then the other thing was the faith of Abraham that had already been talked about; the difference between an Ishmael and an Isaac. God makes the promise and He keeps His promises, and when we mess with them that’s when the children of the slave women are produced. If we start messing with the promises of God, helping Him out, we will wind up producing children of the slave woman.  And they’ll make war against what God’s intention is.  So we need to be very careful of that and I think those of us who are getting older and whose minds are beginning to fail are really identifying with Abraham’s desperate need at the end. Not for any other blessing except a place to put what he already had.  So what I need is an heir, and all I got is a servant.  So God said, I’m going to give you an heir. And Abraham believed God. And by the time he got done…he just had one.  But he saw in that one the stars in the sky.

You don’t have to have a whole lot of Isaacs because one of them can be the stars in the sky.  And I say that for the women who are here as much as for the men.

The following clip by Jay Ferris is from a conference Q&A, and is only about a minute long.  Press the play button to listen to the audio right now (or on your computer by right-clicking and downloading it).  Enjoy!

Track32

Written Transcript

I’d just like to just add, maybe at risk of life and limb, one other thought to that.  I think it’s important to learn not only from the written word of God, but from the invisible things of God that have been built into the things that are created.  If we are going to transition from “church” to “Kingdom”, we need to be born. Another kind of birth needs to take place.  Jesus said we’ll neither see nor enter the Kingdom if we don’t experience this other kind of birth.  And the old creation tells me that if there’s going to be another kind of birth there’s got to be a pregnancy, and if there’s going to be a pregnancy there’s going to be an impregnation, and if there’s going to be an impregnation there needs to be a seed, and up until the time that Jesus died there was only one. That to me is so important because there is a difference between adoption and birth. Even the old creation knows that. Adoption is a legal matter but birth is a matter of life. So, I think this is something to take into consideration as we think about that, to make our understanding consistent with what life has revealed.

For more that expounds on the difference between adoption and birth, see the following posts:
Compatibility With God / A New Creation / Adoption & Birth

Also see Audio Gem #1