Restoration, Transformation, Manifestation

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RESTORATION, TRANSFORMATION, MANIFESTATION
Believers have been robbed! Wholesale robbery in broad daylight! While we were worshipping God, attending church and studying our Bibles, the thief came along to steal from us. “What did he steal?” you ask. “My finances are not too bad. Nothing’s been stolen there. So, where’s the theft?”
We’ve been told that when we put our faith in Jesus we are saved, accepted and on our way to heaven. This is true. The thief sees that it is too late for him to do anything about that, so he now tries to rob us from discovering the riches of our inheritance and the hope of God’s calling for our lives on earth. In other words, he is trying to steal our identity and destiny for here and now.
The apostle Paul recognized this problem and prayed that we would ‘know the hope of God’s calling’. He worked tirelessly to instruct and encourage believers to discover all that God has called them to do and be in their lives on earth. For Paul the believer’s life was an adventure of going from glory to glory, from discovery-to-discovery from change to further change.
“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.” (2 Cor. 3.18)
It’s not that we are discovering new doctrines, but we are discovering for ourselves the realities to which those doctrine point.

RESTORATION, TRANSFORMATION and MANIFESTATION.
There are three great components to His work in us for our daily lives: restoration, transformation and manifestation. All three components need our emphasis and cooperation to make disciples. Many believers run with a partial gospel that does not contain these three elements, leaving us with a church of mere believers rather than a church of disciples.

Restoration Through The Blood
The primary message of the gospel is the invitation to be Reconciled and fully Restored to God. Any person, regardless of ethnicity, religion or past behavior can come home to the care, forgiveness, blessing and nurture of God our Loving Heavenly Father. God Himself has made this possible by placing the sin and guilt of the world on Yeshua. His resurrection proves that this has been successfully accomplished. It remains for people to hear and to respond to the invitation to come home to God on this basis of total restoration. As John writes: “And He Himself (Yeshua) is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” (1 John 2.2)
Most of the world does not yet know this. They think Christianly is about joining a religion and submitting to a set of complex rules. God’s invitation to be reconciled to Himself is futile unless people hear about it and accept the undeserved gift of complete restoration to God’s forgiveness, favor and blessing. This cannot be earned or deserved. When anyone accepts this restoration he is transferred from the realm of guilt and shame into the sea of God’s love and mercies, receiving eternal destiny that begins here on earth and goes on forever.
We enter the “no condemnation zone” and the realm of God’s favor and blessing. This cannot be fully grasped by mere doctrinal knowledge. Only the Holy Spirit can show us the full reality of God’s love and grace. This is why Paul, having explained the reality of the Cross, then prays that the Holy Spirit will reveal this experientially more fully to us. Only God’s own Spirit can make us know these things in spirit and truth for ourselves and it will take eternity to fully grasp it.
“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe" (Ephesians 1.18-19)
“That you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3.18-19)

Transformation
Transformation (being changed) begins immediately after forgiveness. Jesus takes our Adam life (the sin life of every human being since Adam is born with) to His Cross. “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” (Romans 6.6) After we have died with Jesus, and put our faith in it, we rise with His new life - resurrection life - even before physical death.
God’s word tells us that He uses all things that take place in our lives (the good and the evil, the pleasant and the unpleasant) to conform us to His own likeness. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those ... who are predestined to be CONFORMED to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Romans 8.28-29)
He plants His own nature in us by giving us His own Spirit to be our new life principle if we receive it. This transforms us from being sons of Adam into sons of God. We are further Transformed when we lay down our old nature with its self-centered goals and choose to live from the new nature of Christ in us.
We are now, not only living in the realm of God's love and favor, but we are also transformed by His Spirit to be like Him in nature. We are sons of God with the nature of Jesus. By going into the ground and dying, He made it possible for His own nature to be reproduced infinitely. Just as one grain of seed, when it is planted can produce a plant with thousands of seeds, which in turn can cover the whole earth. “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” (John 12.24) This means that we too must die to the selfish nature and habit patterns that once controlled us. “Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6.11)

Manifesting Jesus
As Father God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ, He now wants to send us into the world to MANIFEST His nature and ways in all we do and speak. It is only as we choose to yield our lives to Him to become channels of His love and mercy to a darkened and dysfunctional world, that we can manifest Him who is our new nature. This is the mandate Yeshua gave to His Spirit filled disciples “As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” (Jn 20-21)
To manifest Jesus’ nature and only His nature requires death to the desires of the flesh by a daily choice and by drawing on the power of the Spirit. When this seems too difficult we can say “I can't do this, Lord but you can.”
As we make the love commandment to love as He loves the guiding principle of our lives we will indeed manifest His nature.
“A new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 13.34
We will then walk in the unity with God the Father that Jesus prayed we would walk in.
// “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me." (John 17.21)

In the last days this gospel of the Kingdom of God will be preached and manifested to every nation. (Matthew 24.14) The world will see the goodness of God MANIFESTED through the message and lives of Jesus’ followers.
As the Gospel of the Kingdom (not just the message of salvation) is fully preached to all nations they will learn to receive the gift of RESTORATION through the blood of Yeshua, TRANSFORMATION through the Fathers’ love and the gift of the Spirit. Believers will then recover their true destiny to MANIFEST the nature of God in love to a needy world as Yeshua did. They will “let their light shine before men, that they may see their good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)