RECEIVERS & TRANSMITTERS
Our Heavenly Father’s heart yearns for us to be restored to His favor and Mercy. We were made to be loved by Him – receiving His love and transmitting it to others. This is the basis of the new commandment. “A new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you.”
No matter where we have wandered He invites us to return to His love, protection and care. Because, on the Cross, He transferred our sin, guilt and shame onto His Son Yeshua, the way is open for EVERY single person to return to Him and receive His agape love.
When we return to Him through repentance, we recognize and receive the benefits of what He has done for us in the Atoning Sacrifice we are fully reconciled to Him. Our past sins are no longer mentioned, and we are restored to an unclouded relationship with Our Loving Heavenly Father. We become undeserving heirs of His blessings and provision for every aspect of life. Even more, we are liberated from the bondage of the fallen selfish nature (passed on to us through our heritage all the way back to Adam) and receive a new spirit and a new nature - the Spirit and nature of the resurrected, glorified Jesus. His resurrection life become our life.
This great universal grace is available to every human being throughout the world – but they need to hear about it and deliberately receive it.
What Comes Next?
But we are more than passive receivers of Our Heavenly Father’s love and benefits we are also commissioned and empowered to be active transmitters of His overcoming love and life.
We are invited to partner with Jesus in transmitting to others what we have received ourselves – the love life and mercy of Our Loving Heavenly Father. He restores us to the favor of God, Our Father and then sends us to continue His mission of mercy. “As the Father sent me so I send you” (John 20.21)
In becoming partners with Him we are directed and empowered to love as He loved and live as He lived. As John puts it “As He is in the world so are we.“ (1 John 4.17)
We are encouraged
(1) to make our home in the love and care of the Heavenly Father.
(2) to live by the New Commandment – to love one another as He has loved us… i.e. to lay down self-seeking to be channels of love to all men even their enemies.
(3) to partner with the glorified Jesus to show others how they too can be connected with the love and blessing of God their Heavenly Father and empowered for themselves to walk in His loving ways.
These instructions cannot be carried out by self-righteous effort but only by continuously leaning on, drawing from and relying on Jesus’ life and presence to empower us – by living in total dependence on Him
Two Parts of “Abiding” in the Vine
Once we have received restoration to the love and care of Our Heavenly Father we can now give ourselves to be channels of God’s love, life and peace to others. None of this comes from within ourselves - that would be impossible - but we draw everything from the life of the Glorified, Resurrected Jesus. This is what Jesus shows when He compares us to branches attached to a vine that produce fruit as long as they draw from the vine. “I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (Jn 15.5)
The branch does not produce its own sap - it receives it from the vine, draws it into itself and then passes it up the vine to the maturing grapes. The task of the branch is simply to remain attached, and to receive and pass on the life-giving sap that flows to it and through it.
The branch abides in the vine in two ways. (1) It receives life from the root beneath it, and (2) it passes on life to the fruit above it. For the branch to be fruitful it has to be connected to the root below receiving life and pass this life on towards the grapes.
The believer who has become securely attached to and connected with the love and life of God - Father, Son & Holy Spirit lives and remains in God’s life and nature not just by receiving but also by transmitting God’s life and nature.
We live (abide) in what we receive. We are in what we give out. Some believers try to transmit (give out) without receiving - this is self-righteousness. Others try to receive without transmitting (giving out) - this is self-centeredness. If someone receives God’s love and passes on bitterness and resentment, He is not living in love - he is living in resentment. If someone receives God’s forgiveness and passes on unforgiveness – he is living in unforgiveness. The life does not come from what we pass on, but without passing it on we are not fully living in nor are we fruitful. As John says, "God is love and the one who lives in love lives in God and God lives in Him." (1 John 4.16)
Some believers ignore their privilege and responsibility to transmit the nature, life, words, works and ways of Jesus to others. They focus only on what they can receive without paying enough attention to what they pass on. To live in the highest union with the Father and the Son requires we give ourselves over to continuously receive and pass on His love and life. When these elements come together it creates spiritual contagion. Bringing together both these elements in the life of every believer is essential to advance of the Kingdom of God’s love and life in the world. This will be the major key to the next great awakening.
“Make Me A Channel Of Your Peace”
The prayer “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace” encapsulates this dual aspect of abiding in God by receiving and transmitting better than any prayer. In these words we ask to become channels of peace: to overcome hatred with love, offense with forgiveness, and doubt with faith.
The prayer, however, is incomplete. It can be expanded. Because we are connected to the life and Person of the Resurrected Glorified Jesus, we are empowered to be more than channels of peace and pardon but channels of every aspect of Jesus’ life and nature.
• We are called and empowered to be
• Channels of all nine fruit of the spirit – love, joy (cheerfulness), peace, patience, kindness (compassionate action), goodness (generosity), faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control
• Channels of the life giving words, message and works of Jesus, including healing the broken hearted, comforting those who mourn, lifting up the oppressed and manifesting the supernatural healing power Jesus.
As a channel the believer does not really do these works at all - it is the Father and the Son that do these works with him and through him. He simply yields Himself to draw from and pass on the life of Another. “My life is His Life and His Life is my life.”
The power we receive at Pentecost is the power to be channels of His power. It is not a power that makes us powerful, but a power to be channels of a life and power that are not our own.
Over and over Jesus asserted that the works that He did were not His own and that He could not do them on His own. He was a channel of the words, ways and works of the Father. “The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.” (John 14.10)
In a similar way, as we abandon our selfish agendas and self-righteous energy we can yield ourselves to be channels of His ways, His words and His works. In this way our abiding will be complete and fruitful and the Father will be glorified. The world will see the love and actions of the Glorified Jesus coming through His followers.
‘Let you light so shine before men that they may see your good works (which are not really our works at all) and glorify my Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 5.16)
“In blessing we are blessed,
in loving we are loved
in giving we receive everything from God above.
For it is not the hearing of the word but the doing of it that makes it a reality;
that’s what living in the Kingdom is all about for people like you and me.”
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Be Blessed & Be A Blessing