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Limited thoughts on 2013

written by Michael McBane

I heard two phrases since the 1st of January as I have scanned much that is being said about 2013. I will not presume to think these phrases I present and their content have application for everyone or for all parts of the body. I will be cautious to present them without grand inflation therefore. I feel it is more important then ever to walk with what one may feel to be an unction from the Lord in honor to those we share with because God is seeking to bring His life. So many have been turned away from interacting in the church in any way because so much has been echoed so that someone can have a voice in a frenzied environment to speak for God. I really do not want to contribute to that.

We have misunderstood the fear of God but we have also discarded it to a detriment. There is a flippancy that prohibits one from seeing the grandeur of God’s holiness.This is were we have misapplied the message of God’s grace. I think it is a mistake to seek to balance grace but it is equally a mistake to dismiss the awe of God’s holiness that changes us in the weighty content of glory therein. 

Let me address the two phrases I felt I have heard. 

One was Divine delay, and the other was correcting of mistaken Identities. So many are throwing stuff against the wall concerning much that fuels fleshly fear and these are things that measure strongly in speculations gathered from multiple sources. These things do not root anyone deeper in Christ. So I will seek that which roots us deeper in grace. Grace is Christ, it is Christ alone. Christ is the fullness of God fully given to us.

Divine delays would be likened to the patience of God. Which we are told in scripture is for our benefit. So that none would perish. The enemy would seek to accelerate time so that many would perish. God will prohibit much that would demand death. Death is what Christ conquered. That is our beginning seeing God in Christ and knowing that in Christ we shall not die. We must see that that is the foundational issue that God desired to vanquish, death. Everything else is held in the content of expansive eternity. Under the banner of grace. The promises of God do not diminish they expand. 

Much of the divine delays that are perhaps upon us are to allow us to hear with our life in Christ. Our hearing has been shattered within multiple distractions. We have not seen the idols of life that have kept us from knowing the potential of our life in Christ. So the patience of God is revealing the idols of our hearts to free us. This freeing is necessary to allow us to step into the full grace of God. The issue of receiving and understanding God’s grace is a focus of the Holy Spirit in this hour. We have be given over to more then we will accept as sin. But if we are in Jesus we must see that how easily we have divided our hearts.

We can not continue to prop up what God wants to collapse. it is Christ..nothing more.

Devine delays are to allow us to reestablish His purposes by being fitted together to reveal the true administration of God in a collective expression to the heavenliness. This administration is not a man made  appointed government but a functioning of the fullness of God’s grace among us. It is a fitting of each part, a bone to bone. It is a stirring of the dryness of the bones to come forth because the mystery in us Christ is finally being seen for who He is and for what He has done and for what He has given. It is for Him, the promise is not things but Him. When we breathe and eat this as our all in all, all that we have attempted to subject to this will crumble. And what remains will testify to God and His glory will expand. We will become a lasting fragrance.

Devine delays are to align us geographically so that we can be supplied and supply in the coming days. There have been obstructions to much of the movement that the Lord has begun. MAny hearts are full of obstructions that hold them back. The enemy has sought to capture those who have waited in their weariness. God is returning them to hope in Him and to find their satisfaction in Him again. Provision has been delayed and at times it has been a issue of grace. As the Lord has been demanding that all things be subjected to Him in a fresh way. Had we been given much that we have expected we would have established our own strength again. We must see how that would have given us a hole in our armor subjecting us to attack in the days ahead. If we really want to live in Christ we must understand the depth of abandonment God’s love draws us towards.

I believe this can be expanded but feel to allow the Holy Spirit room to speak to you and enlarge His intent.

The second thing God spoke is tangibly woven with the first. It is mistaken identities.

The Lord so wants us to find everything that we are and will be in Him. Our churches have mistakenly robbed us at times of the truth of God’s fullness held in the fullness of His grace. And having God has our totality is not a superficial slogan for a Bible study it is the essence of life. Substance in the spirit is only in the absorption of Jesus Christ as our everything. The phrases that Paul spoke of, I have learned to live with and without, in cold, in beatings, in hunger and plenty yet still I have loved fully in Christ is where we must look to as the horizon of our life. We step out of our flesh and into the provision of a life within us.

We must stand, sit and walk in Christ. 

We are in a season where God in mercy is divinely delaying much so that His mercy can form us into a true identification of our life in Christ. We are being reminded that we began in God’s grace why have we forfeited such to establish our life in this world? We offer wisdom but it is the wisdom that echos the wisdom of this world. There is little to no inspiration that lasts. We if our identity is in Christ will hold sacred what God does. We will reach to love as HE does, we will serve in His strength and not extract our own gain or our own monetary establishment. We cannot identify in ministry or in doing. Everything must become still and we must step away to allow the Lord to return it to us. 

I offer these limited thoughts to you and pray that the Holy Spirit will expand the purpose of them in you. May God’s grace abound.