Peter-David Aston |
Your average thirdleveller at the moment is 50-80. I crashed into the basic revelations by 30, but I was sooooo disillusioned with the system at 12, I had that at least going for me. At 12, I had everything. Two teacher parents who gave us holidays all over the place as a family every two minutes (teacher holidays). We lived in a nice area in a nice house, and they brought me up to do very well at the highly academic Dr Challenors Grammar School. I'd just got 11 A's.
But my insides screamed....THIS IS NOT IT!! THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE.
Well 12 years Methodism clearly wasn't the answer, so I became an atheist. Ofcourse I had no idea at that point that Methodists were renegades. They had all rebelled against their founder John Wesley and nolonger believed in being regenerate. They sold their entire revelation foundation for a gospel of works and helping your fellow man. But Buddhists do that. And now, through Comic Relief so do atheists. Methodists deserve to be trodden underfoot as Jesus said. Lose your saltiness and become winter roadcover!!!
Back to young'uns...
I once met a thirdleveller fresh from the Gulags. He was only 22 or something and he warned us the KGB would probably get him and say he committed suicide. This happened in America. His name: Sergei Kourdakov.
MaryMagdalen seemed to become a thirdleveller in no time at all. She, unlike the socalled "apostle/father figures(1 John 2) actually listened to what Jesus said and turned up at the tomb on Easter Day!!!!
Third levellers KNOW THAT THEY KNOW THAT THEY KNOW that apart from God they are nothing. They know they were never self-powered....that this entire delusion was a spirit masquerading as them called "sin in the flesh".
Now try and listen to this...especially some of you really cynical Facebook types.
Try and get this.
Recognising "sin in the flesh" is not A PARTICULAR WRONGDOING.
Secondly it is not saying "THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT". and flatout not taking responsibility.
It is saying something horrific.
It's saying that while I knew something to be evil...yes evil...when my best intention was to say no....somehow I still wholeheartedly did it anyway...WHY...because my self - powered delusion is now exposed, and I see that that whole condition doesn't exist...for it is really to be glovepuppet for "another hand or power" inside me, which clicks into place as soon as I make myself "god of my own destiny".
I cannot do that. Humans are not made to do that.
We either LIVE BY CHRIST...THE ONLY PURE SOURCE OF LIFE in the UNIVERSE....or we live by the power of a fallen angel, who himself is only living a twisted form of God's own life...since the devil also cannot live "of himself"...being a created being also.
The disciples were kind of firstlevellers to begin with. They were Jews. They understood faith towards God. That there was a God. In our western world, just coming to that conclusion takes a certain amount of time now.
But these 12 guys said Yes to having Jesus invade their lives 3 years continuously.
The equivalent in general living terms is decades and decades.
HERE'S THE NEXT BOMBSHELL.
Yesterday I put a basic principle of how things work up in the form of a spoof B movie where the credits are longer than the film. http://youtu.be/oJVhQu_clhY
Here's another "ALL of LIFE" principle in one sentence.
Matthew21:"Jesus said Jesus asked them, Have you never read in the Scriptures: The very Stone which the builders rejected and threw away has become the Cornerstone; this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes?
43 I tell you, for this reason the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce the fruits of it.
44 [u]And whoever falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom It falls will be crushed to powder [and It will [v]winnow him, [w]scattering him like dust]."
I put in the whole context....and this was after the parable of the vineyard workers killing the son of the whole estate owner...
so I meant this sentence:
whoever falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom It falls will be crushed to powder [and It will [v]winnow him, [w]scattering him like dust]."
This is about as hard a sentence as the John 6 one people all walked away over.
But it is actually our LIFE STORY.
We are encouraged to love God with all our hearts and love each other...and this, as well as being the petrol for the engine of our spiritual life...is also the ANAESTHETIC for some of the radical surgery that needs to go on in our life if
we are ever going to stand for more than a second in front of God and feel comfortable.
God hasn't made it easy for us. It has been made a lot harder by our own choosing. We chose Darkness and we continue to love Darkness rather than Light.
But here's the good news about REDEMPTION.
God replaces our inner centre WITH HIS PURE SELF. This is being BORN AGAIN.
Then, a bit like riding a new bike, we have to learn HOW THIS NEW INNER CENTRE WORKS.
It works by faith.
It works by believing everything God speaks.
But it is also INDESTRUCTIBLE containing the very LIFE OF GOD HIMSELF.
Here's the TRICK though. We have to learn to operate our WHOLE LIVES, IN FAITH, FROM OUR INNER CENTRE.
IT is ONE THING to HAVE an inner centre....1John 2 the Child stage
It is another to become FIXED in our whole identity of our new INNER CENTRE, that is the "young man stage".
But to WALK FROM, AND OPERATE CONTINUALLY FROM our inner centre, including many "tricks of the new trade"....as ADOPTED SONS...where the word adopted is the Jewish meaning for
TRAINED SONS NOW ELIGIBLE for their Father's business concerns.....
Hah....that's something else.
But that which seems so dastardly and awful and hideous when you first hear Matthew 21:44 above doesn't explain things like...only the independent self delusion doesn't survive!!!!!
It is a circumcision.
A circumcision of our heart.
We STILL get to keep the rest of our heart.
This is all going on in our spirits.
Other people may or may not pick up our new behaviours.
Jesus brothers never noticed Him for example...so I don't want to raise your hopes too much!!!
BUT in the Spirit it is absolutely real.
And our redemption story WILL look like the stories in the Bible.
Before we ourselves are circumcised we love to look on St Peter, or Moses hitting the Rock twice...or other disciples of Jesus and think..."Wallies". Or perhaps there are other Christians we know. "I will never be like that".
God doesn't get a kick out of us looking as stupid as possible. Most things He speaks to our hearts and hopefully we listen.
BUT THE REDEMPTION STORY in our lives WILL BE WRITTEN THOROUGHLY.
Only Satan and our flesh have a problem with that.
The Father views it matter of factly. He KNOWS us since before Creation began.
IT is us that think we need figleaves, just in case He sees.
He is about removing our figleaves...NOT to laugh at us...but to cover us WITH REAL REDEMPTION. To build into us HIS VERY SON. To DO WITH little old us what angels have NO IDEA OF.
In STAMPING US with HIS GLORY He didn't want what happened to the Fallen angels...their rising up in Pride and the foolish delusion of their own independence...
SO THIS TIME...He has decided to create a people out of clay, a people of lowly estate, to UTTERLY STAMP THROUGH in our weakness, WITH HIS INTERNAL CHARACTER....which will TAKE HIS GLORY that He wants to crown us with.
HE iS AIMING for people LIKE HIM, who feel happy to be around HIM...for eternity.
Some of the elders in the book of Revelation haven't actually done much yet. They are just so over the moon at being in the constant Presence of the Lord...and FEELING OK THERE. They haven't done anything for thousands of years now, except say "Holy Holy Holy"...and then like some HUGE spiritual/holy orgasm or something it completely wipes them out and they fall to the floor again. I think their eventual aim is to actually do something else in heaven...just that every time they see CHRIST popping out afresh in a human, they fall on the floor again.
REDEMPTION does involve things like looking stupid.
Making big Peter sized mistakes.
AND everyone knowing about it.
AND psalm 66.12 "people riding over our heads"
AND Song of Songs 5 Watchman stripping us naked in the streets....
BUT ALSO it involves taking very ordinary people and packing them out with God explosive to detonate nations for the glory of God....
It involves learning the Jesus and Paul trick of the trade of looking hopelessly defeated while all the time the unlimited POWER of the LIVING GOD is streaming out of you to create huge new portions of the KINGDOM.
IT involves you learning about how the Hebrews 13.13 walk works....GOING OUTSIDE....like Arthur Blessitt did...almost as a scout for 38 years trudging out the new territory of the CROSS....
NAMELY THE WHOLE EARTH!!!!!
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