REMEMBER WHOSE YOU ARE

Think about this.

In the Gospel records of Matthew chapter 10, Mark chapter 6 and Luke chapter 9, Jesus gives His disciples the authority to do what He had been doing: healing the sick, cleansing lepers, casting out demons and raising the dead. The disciples were sent out by Jesus and returned in amazement and great joy that what Jesus gave the authority to do…they DID.

It’s not longer after this that Jesus took James, John and Peter up to a mountain where He was Transfigured and they saw Him as He is. That revelation is remembered in Peter’s second Epistle.

It’s then amazing that later in Luke 9, Mark 9 and Matthew 17 just after Jesus and the three disciples who were with Him on the mountain come down to the other disciples, a man is there pleading with Jesus to cast a demon out of his son. He told Jesus that he had asked the disciples to cast out the demon, but they couldn’t. Jesus chided those disciples who had been left behind for their unbelief. Jesus had already given them authority in His Name to do what He had been doing and they had exercised that authority. They seemed to have forgotten what the Lord had said to them and the call He had put on their lives.

The man with the possessed son understood that a disciple of a Rabbi would be able to say and do what their Rabbi was saying and doing. That’s why he brought his son to them. The disciples forgot what Jesus had said to them and what He had given to them to do, even though it wasn’t long after they HAD done just that. They had stopped believing that what He had said was still true.

In the Book of Acts, you never read of a conversation between any of the Apostles when faced with a ministry situation saying, “I hope this works!” They simply exercised the authority Jesus had given to them and in His Name continued to DO what Jesus Christ had been doing in His earthly ministry.

Jesus Christ has given the same authority to His church, His followers, His disciples of today by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to continue His ministry as He directs it. We are not to doubt that He is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine by His Power now at work within us. The Holy Spirit is the One Who manifests the Power and ministry of the Kingdom of God through His followers…even today. Have we forgotten what Jesus Christ has given to us? Is our confidence in what we can see, how we are feeling, or what our experience has been to date OR is our confidence to obey in the Lord, Himself, and in His Word when He leads us to exercise His authority to manifest the Kingdom of God in the “here and now”?

The Father has sent the gift of the Holy Spirit through the Son upon the church for all time to empower it to carry on the work of the Kingdom to dismantle the works of darkness and to reverse the effects of sin. We are to be healing the sick, cleansing lepers, casting out demons and raising the dead both literally and figuratively as the Holy Spirit leads us.

People are still “living” with sick and dead spirits. Sin has made them functioning lepers numb to the ongoing destruction of their true selves. The demonic spirit of the age is deceiving, controlling, and motivating the self-centered, narcissistic and easily offended minds of so many who long to be know and yet are isolated from themselves and others. Rather than having the real relationship with God they were created for, they are isolated even more by “virtual” relationship where they never have to remove their well- crafted “masks” and have their lives really changed for the better.

There is a desperate need in the world that only the Kingdom of God holds the answer to. The church, all true followers of Jesus Christ, has been empowered to demonstrate the Word of God in the Holy Spirit’s power to impact the world with the goodness of God.

Please remember Whose you are!