Jesus Our Freedom
In the secret place with God, we come into a transforming encounter with Jesus, where our inner world is re-scripted with the TRUTH of God’s perspective by having an intimate, experiential encounter with Him and re-focussing our thinking and believing on who He is, who we are in Him and what He says about our lives and circumstances. We essentially replace our carnal, earthly view of life, and ’cast down’ previously held perspectives with the identity of Jesus and the words He says to us.
It’s our literal experience of His words that cause ‘the memory verse’ level of our understanding of scripture to become enlivened, Holy Spirit inspired, frameworks of LIFE and LIFE MORE ABUNDANT.
This is how we experience God's freedom. His freedom fills our existence with abounding life. The realisation that we know that we belong to God and that we are His prized possession fills our heart with assurance. I believe that it is this assurance, that we hear personally from the very heart of the Spirit of God, that is the most precious commodity, the most prized possession a human being can ever carry in their heart.
This assurance was the safe place of Adam and Eve’s original design. It is the womb of all the thinking that streams from the very heart of God, and into the thirsty heart of humankind. This assurance heals. This assurance empowers. This assurance brings a security that releases peace and joy in abundant measure. For Adam and Eve, knowing God and living in the ‘felt realisation’ of His assurance meant their very being was filled with affirmation. God wasn’t just Creator - He was Father. And He didn’t just LOVE them - He LIKED them! They knew, in the deepest place of their being, that they were the object of God's personal delight and breathtaking blessing. They weren't filled with anxiety or dread. Instead, knowing God bathed their insides with peace and a deep abiding security. His pleasure, which they felt in themselves, filled them with this powerful force of assurance. This assurance generates the freedom to move out of self and embrace God, embrace others; fully give and fully receive; to expose and be vulnerable; to be known. In other words, assurance gives way to perfect fellowship, which is the life of Divine love.
Assurance transforms mere existence - into abounding life. This is the place before the Father that Jesus experiences. And He wants to share His relationship with us.
Jesus said in John 15
“Abide in Me and let My words abide in you.” The word - abide - comes from the Greek word – meno – which comes from its root word - mone.
mone means seamless union;
meno means to continue to be present in seamless union. It speaks of a renewed, perpetual, conscious awareness.
Therefore, abiding is active. Abiding is participatory. When Jesus said abide, He literally meant: “Dwell where I dwell. Stand in a renewed, perpetual, conscious awareness of where I stand. Locate yourself in the same identical place that I locate Myself in. Let My shoes, My position before My Father, be your position too.”
As He was giving us these words - He was also giving us an illustration from Creation. He likened our relationship with Him like a Vine and a Branch. If you have ever seen the way a branch comes out of the Vine, there is an almost imperceptible movement from the thicker, main stem of the Vine, to the many multiple strands of Branches that proceed from this stem. In fact - at times you will find it hard to discern the difference. And, the same flow of life-giving nutrients that flow through the Vine’s inner transport system, flow out effortlessly to the Branches. Out of the Vine, comes the Branch and the entire fruit of the plant hangs on the Branches, not the Vine. The Vine IS the plant - as much as the Branch IS also the plant. There is a common connection, yet different functions. But all need each other for the plant to exist and thrive. And, the entire plant stands on the same footing with the same root system. In other words, it abides together as ONE UNITY, and recognisable not as Vine and Branch, but as the ONE UNIFIED CREATION.
It’s a powerful metaphor. To abide in Jesus, we need to be a people that live in a renewed, perpetual, conscious awareness of who we are in Him. A continuous awareness of our ‘native place’ in Jesus, as Jesus in the world, in unbroken fellowship with the Father, by the power of the Spirit. This is the way of Jesus. The way of the Son. Therefore, it is our way.
The renewal this true identity and purpose in Christ is built on ‘waking up’ to the truth of who we are, that comes from the ‘vine’ of who Jesus is. One unity before the Father in this world.
And then, His words become our assurance. When His words become part of our inner belief frameworks; when we cast down all the other rogue ideas and delusions that are trying to exert their authority and pre-eminence over our sense of self; we start to see, believe and act in accordance with our true design and ‘classification.’
Jesus didn’t come to teach us about the Father. He came to share with us His personal communion with Him. The serpent’s lie was that Adam wasn’t in union with God. He needed to do something more to attain this. The Fall is therefore, at its basic level, not a moral failure, it was primarily a delusion. Whilst it involves our morality, it begins in our misplaced understanding of God’s nature and our place of standing. This is why Jesus comes to us; to re-envision our hearts with our original design.
We had to see it, so we could begin to believe it, to be able to return to it. The mission of God from the very beginning was to get inside the darkness of the fallen mindset of separation that Adam had accepted, and give to the human race a new set of eyes to see with.
The Apostle Paul saw it and added another metaphor to help us catch the process we need to follow.
He wrote in 2 Cor 3:18 NKJV
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
What do you see when you look into a mirror? Your own reflection - of course. By taking away the veil of our sin consciousness and delusion of separation from the Father, and looking into the mirror of the glory of the Lord, we become transformed by what we behold. The critical understanding in this passage is what is the glory of the Lord that we are gazing into?
The glory of something is the essential nature and character of a person, place or thing. The essential nature and character of Jesus includes so many things. Things like:
• His face to face relationship with the Father;
• His unending capacity for love and acceptance of others;
• His continual, undefeatable peace that passes all understanding;
• His joy that overflows in all circumstances and in all situations;
• His hope for tomorrow;
• His power to heal;
• His faith that frees the captives and sets at liberty all who are oppressed…
And the list goes on…
‘Walking in the way of Jesus’ comes from a lifelong desire to behold Him and value above all the riches this world can offer, the priorities of His Perspective and His Kingdom. Not in our striving but in our realisation and rest. As we behold Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God, the separation in our hearts from God is healed and our orphaned delusions are washed away.
The testimony of Jesus shouts to us:
“YOU CAN NEVER BE SEPARATED FROM ME. AND IF YOU CAN NEVER BE SEPERATED FROM ME, YOU CAN NEVER BE SEPERATED FROM MY FATHER BECAUSE I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE.”
