Programme: Anamnesis Prayer Meeting (Week 2_Day 4)
Date: Friday, 17th November 2023
Transcript Summary
1. “Who by him do believe in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. [22] Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently…” (1 Pet. 1:21-22). We clearly see from this scripture that this church had gotten to the love of the brethren. They had obeyed faith and hope, and their faith and hope was in God. To believe in God is to access the finality of faith; this is the end of the anchor of faith, which is to anchor God. It takes a lot of work for the heart to believe in God; it is not what we do at the beginning of being born again. "Your faith" mentioned in the verse speaks about the faith in the perfect man (1 Corin. 13:11) – one who has arrived at charity. This is the man who can transact in the three things that abide – faith, hope and charity (1 Corin. 13:13).
2. “Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. [9] For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.” (1 Corin. 13:8-9). Faith, hope and charity are not just knowledge; they are truth in Christ. God wants to set these things in order for the sake of clarity. Sometimes, the Lord Jesus can see that our gaze is not sharp enough, and our understanding is not yet concretized, so He would visit the things He has said before again. The “thing” called Christ is a man in the spirit. A thing can be living; this is a noun, a person.
3. “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” (1 Corin. 13:13). Faith, hope and charity are the names of the truth that abide in Christ. Amongst the three, the greatest is charity. Faith is truth, hope is truth, and charity is truth. Faith, hope and charity come through grace. Grace is a spirit life that can be converted into energy. Grace is faith, hope and charity. This means receiving grace is more than receiving knowledge. Knowledge is the doorway/path to connect to the spirit of knowledge. The spirit of knowledge is truth, although it begins with grace. Grace gives birth to faith. Faith, hope and charity are spirits; they are truth. Grace is a way in Christ. Grace is a door for the heart. So when a man receives grace, he is given access to truth. When a man is accessing grace, the aim is to elevate and bless him with a pattern of thinking that is higher than his mind. When all of these begin to happen, we can say that grace is at work.
4. The power of Satan (Acts 26:18) is the spirit in Satan. The spirit in Satan kills. Hence, Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63). By this statement, we can see that Jesus is not just a teacher of knowledge; He also quickens. The flesh in this scripture that profits nothing is not just referring to the outward man, but what Satan gives. Flesh is the spirit Satan speaks; this is why there is no profit in flesh. Man became unprofitable to God because of flesh. Satan speaks spirit, however, the genetic code of his speakings is death. Satan has signed himself as a murderer; He takes out life from everything he comes in contact with.
5. The flesh is the speech Satan instigates. He told Eve in the beginning that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17), they would be as God. The power of Satan is his manner of presentation. His power is exhibited in his wile, cunningness, and evil subtlety. He presents death as truth (Eph. 6:11). Satan entices, but God does not entice (Prov. 1:10). God is crystal clear, speaking what He wants to do. The Church ought to be freed from satanic standards. One of the greatest lies of Satan is the chart of how a man should look like. Satan knows how to paint and preach a kind of man to everyone, including many Christians.
6. “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently…” (1 Pet. 1:22). This church here was obeying the truth. They had experienced the purification of their souls, hence, Peter could admonish them to perfect charity. Perfect charity comes by the doing of unfeigned love fervently. Charity is the highest truth commodity in Christ. Everything about charity is love.
7. “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; [7] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” (1 Corin. 13:6-7). Charity is the seal of the truth that is in Christ. There is something about loving one another as brethren. Since they have purified their souls, Peter admonished them that they ought not to diminish in purity of heart, but engage the pure heart in the venture of charity. A pure heart is garnished with purity. It is a high light-heart in Christ; it has hope and faith. A pure heart can love and keep loving one another fervently. This is where the church Peter was writing to get to – the unfeigned love of the brethren. The next thing for them was to ensure that they explode in charity.
8. The purpose of fervency of soul and purity of heart in perfecting one’s charity is the saint’s response to God. Charity is the bond of perfection. Bonding in the perfectness of charity is done well under a great heat measure; this is because God, whom the saint is being exposed to, is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). This fire can set a man on fire. When one is not having the perfect stature/structure that can withstand the fire, it is a consuming fire. It is only a fiery matter that can withstand fire. One who does not have the capacity for fire may be consumed and not be found.
9. Therefore, charity is done for the purpose of staying in God, finding God’s dimension, coming into God’s disposition, and accessing the provision of God. “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, [21] Who by him do believe in God, that raised him from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.” (1 Pet. 1:20-21). When a saint is in charity, he has the capacity to be in God. Such a saint’s faith and hope are rooted in God – believing in God. Hence, our journey is from Christ to God. A man has to come to a state where his heart has developed the power/capacity to rely and believe in God to get to God (Heb. 11:6).
10. Jesus said to His disciples, “...ye believe in God, believe also in me.” (Jn. 14:1). It is not easy to believe in God. It takes time to believe in God. Believing in God does not refer to having faith in God for things. Faith for things is spoken of in Mark 11:22-23. Having faith in God is the background for saying something and receiving it. However, this is not what Peter was referring to as believing in God. One can have faith to move mountains, but may not be a believer in God. How to tell whether one believes in God or not is by one's hope. Does such a person have hope in God? This is not just to help his needs, but for him to know that God only is his hope, having no other alternative life. Such a one should have enough trust for God to deliver to him a hope of another life (in God) as against the one he is looking for.
11. Everyone who came in contact with God had hope. Abraham had hope, but that was not just what God wanted him to have; that was why God demanded that Abraham believe in Him. This means God had to change Abraham’s hope. When God was delaying Abraham in childbearing, He was killing the hope that was in him to give him another hope (Rom. 4:18). The killing of this hope was necessary because the hope in Abraham is that which Satan planted. God does not give life to such hope because He has His own hope to give. This is what gets people angry when they are following God – the change of hope.
12. Hope is an anchor. If successfully removed from a man, that man has been captured. Some departed from Paul, having loved this present world (2 Tim. 4:10); this was because they had hope in this world. Hence, the eyes of one’s understanding have to be opened for one to see the hope of His calling (Eph. 1:18). We do not come to God to help our hopes. God desires to unhook us from our hopes and give us another hope – a hope in God (1 Pet. 1:21).
13. Before hope can be in God, it has to be of God. Anyone who has had a change of hope is such that can now hope in God. Though one may have faith enough to move mountains, it is important that such also engages the beginning levels of living by faith. It is possible for one to be seen as one who would live this life, but such has a problem—the fear of his life.
14. Nothing can connect to God except that which abides – faith, hope and charity. These three truths can take one to another truth (Father/Jn. 14:6). The Father is Truth, Christ Jesus is also truth. If one has not attained and obeyed truth, such cannot graduate from the truth in Christ into the truth in God. The hope in God is not easily attained. The purpose of Christ's faith is to quicken us enough to be able to believe in God.
15. (1 Peter 1:6-9). When a man has attained the unfeigned love of the brethren, which is charity, such is in heaviness through manifold trials. The trials and manifold temptations are preparations for the receiving of the end of faith, even the salvation of souls (1 Pet. 1:9).
16. Jesus has to appear to prepare one to receive grace. Jesus would initially appear as a purifier of our souls, then as the bringer of grace. The coming of Jesus would bring a ministration and revelation of his fiery work to work on us till we get to the place where we can receive the grace of God. The same Being who purifies us will in turn begin to give us the grace of salvation.
17. “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 1:13). Jesus would not appear to people except those who have attained the love of the brethren. When Jesus comes, He brings His person to us to raise us to a degree where we can be qualified to receive the grace. Grace can come and a man misses it or be completely oblivious of it.
18. When a man puts his trust in the arm of flesh, he would not see good when it comes (Jer. 17:5-8). Hence, one needs to be sober and have the loins of his mind girded up. One also has to be at alert so as not to miss the opportunity of grace. The end is where grace comes. It is also the end of one’s faith. The end of faith comes as the purification. This is the appearance of Jesus to a man until such is so purified as gold tried with fire. Faith, hope and charity becomes better in the fire. Faith should be at a level. While in fire, we should stay till the end because the Lord would not always burn. We must not miss the fiery nature of the Lord. We should stay with the Lord while the fire is burning.
19. Anyone who does not stay through to the end will kill the program of charity without realizing it. A lot of believers have stopped the ministry of Jesus in their lives without knowing. One must stay till the end. Challenges can come from anywhere, but we must stay till the end. The profit of fire is the capacity to reach out and touch grace. A man can hold many things, but it is not easy to lay hold on Eternal Life.
20. Eternal Life is a high-level capacity of grace. It is another skill entirely. Eternal Life is God's raw mercy and if one is not completely a spirit, such will not see anything in Eternal Life when it comes. If the grace of salvation, which is everlasting life, is foolishness to a natural man, how much more the mercy unto Eternal Life?
21. What we are presently discussing is the grace of salvation that is to be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 1:13). Revelation is different from appearing. Appearing is the manifest presence of Jesus in our midst bringing forth purification. It is when this fire has cooled off that there is a revealing of the person of Jesus. Jesus appears to purify; we cannot know Jesus without us being purified by Him. His purification process is to give us eyes to know Him. This is the answer to Paul's prayers (Phil. 3:10).
22. “...that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death…” (Philipp. 3:10). This power of resurrection is the power of making the sons of God. This is how God raises His sons. What many know about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is a mental picture of a man who rose from the dead on the third day and has a glorious body. However, resurrection is far more than that. Paul’s prayer here was more than the prevailing belief in the heart of the believers. He was praying that God would build him the way He built Jesus’ soul.
23. (Isaiah 53:10-11). The pleasure of the Lord is to raise men like Himself. When Paul was saying he wanted to know the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10), what he wanted to know was the nature of how the power works. The power that raises Him is with Him; this is what we see in His members. The power excited the soul of Jesus to a pedigree where it became a quickening spirit. It is not an ordinary power.
24. “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” (Philipp. 3:11). The resurrection of the dead is to come out completely from the governance of death. This means one has become more mature and higher than death. Growing higher than death is our high calling of God in Christ Jesus. When we are higher than death, we would not be under the power of death. The power of His resurrection is the grace that the High Priest has; it is the grace that is with the High Priest. They chose for us a Shepherd that can teach us step by step, height by height (because it is a high calling). Resurrection is the communication of the truth that the High Priest is. The High Priest is an embodiment of truth, an embodiment of persons that destroyed him that has the power of death. Jesus destroyed him that had the power of death.
Blessings!
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