Bible In One Year-Day 317 (Thursday, November 13, 2014)
Commentary: Acts25-28. When God called Abram out of idolatry, He promised him many blessings as he obeyed His call. These promises eventually became a covenant. As far as God is concerned, His promises are just the same as His covenant.
2 Corinthians 1:20 “For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him Amen, to the glory of God by us.”
His faithfulness is what makes them be the same even if promise and covenant are two different things. This means, in essence, that the spirit behind a promise and a covenant matters. The evil spirit stays faithful to the course of the evil covenant while that of God remains faithful to God’s word. This covenant gave hope to Abraham and his descendants. This covenant became the hope of the descendants; hope of glory. The descendants documented the policies binding the covenant in books. Each time they read the scripture, they got hope that God will fulfill His promises to Abraham their father. This was Paul’s testimony before King Agrippa.
Acts 26:6-7 “And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God to our fathers: To which promise our twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to come. For which hope’s sake, king Agrippa, I am accused of the Jews.”
Abraham descendants never knew that what they hoped to attain by serving God day and night was Jesus Christ. But Paul’s experience of the reality of this promise on his journey to Damascus totally transformed him from darkness into light. His life before the journey was absolutely in darkness even though he was well learned in the theory of the promises and the laws. To be well read in the scripture is very good but it is not the life of the other side of Jesus. The life of the other side of Jesus is a thing of experience just as Paul testified before the King, Acts26.
Acts 26:13-14 “At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me. And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking to me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”
Paul mentioned two things in his experience; the light and the voice. The light destroyed the power of darkness and the voice exploded in two in him; the Spirit and the Life. Through the light he discovered the Way, and through the voice the Truth was made known to him and the Life in the voice gave him eternal life that swallowed up death in victory. The moment he received the revelation knowledge of the truth, all he had intellectually acquired (as spoken and written by the prophets) became irrelevant to him.
1 Corinthians 13:8-10 “Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.”
Paul had vast knowledge of the word and knows much of prophecies. But when the perfect word from the God who sent the prophets came, all he had known vanished and a new knowledge and experience was given to him. The appearance of Jesus perfected the entirety of Paul even though he was still a sinner; this is grace at work.
John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
John 1:17 “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”
Paul was a very perfect model of an unimaginably transformed life by the other side of Jesus.
Acts 26:15-16 “And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared to thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear to thee;”
Once the Word enters you, GRACE and TRUTH changes everything in and about you; grace to overcome sin and truth to walk in light. Paul, hitherto, walked in darkness with all his intellectual acquisitions. But the enterance of the Word changed everything he ever knew. He had a better understanding of what he knew. Without the other side of Jesus in you, all the degrees of Bible Colleges will kill and lead people into error just as Saul operated before his encounter with the Light.
When Jesus walked on earth, He was everything to anyone that came in contact with Him, even while in the womb; John the Baptist received his baptism from Jesus while in the womb. While His disciples were in the peril of the waters, He walked on the Sea to save the sinking Peter. At the initial part of His ministry, He was in a wedding and after the wine of their joy was exhausted, He converted water to renew their joy. Jesus can use anything to ensure the joy of His own is full. He used the mouth of a fish to pay the tax for His disciples. Dead Lazarus was restored to life and he, at a time, calmed the Sea. Whatever you have read about Him in the gospels is still in vogue on a greater measure of grace in the epistles. He has not stopped His work on earth but doing it By His Spirit. The other side of Jesus is;
- The “Another Comforter”
- The Helper
- The God in us
- The Sufficient grace
- The Strength in our weaknesses
- The Glory that re-brands our lives
- The Anointing that is working through us
- The Anointing that teaches
- The Inner Life
- The Divine being in us.
- The Law of the Spirit of life that sets us free from the law of sin and death.
- The Greater One in you
- The God that worked Himself into us
- The Power of the Apostles
- The Treasure in earthen vessel
- The Life that death cannot kill; the serpent’s poison reduced and killed the first Adam but could not kill Apostle Paul because the second Adam has worked Himself into him, Acts28.
He is God in you. God the Father worked in Jesus and Jesus as His Spirit is in you, therefore, you have God in you.
John 14:20 “At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.”
Beloved, the other side of Jesus is the life of His Spirit in your spirit. The nature of that Spirit is what the scripture refers to as the fruit of the Spirit; these are the characteristics of Jesus. Once He is fully resident in your spirit, you are changed and rebranded into His nature and you start manifesting His character in this mortal body.
Galatians 5:22-24 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.”
Jesus is the new law that breaks the backbone of the law of sin and death. Once you receive Him into your spirit, you no longer walk in the flesh but in the light of that Spirit because you have understanding. The food of your spirit is the word of God which renews and strengthens you day by day
\2 Corinthians 4:16 “For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.”
This life is given to us to glorify God, not only when things are good, but also in our difficult times, in sickness and in good health, in pain and in comfort. There should be no moment of sadness in us.
The book of Acts really shows us how a life is transformed when Jesus comes in as His Spirit. Many believe Him but refuse to receive Him in their spirit. They are only emotional and religious in their receiving Him. The evidence of His presence in us is the transformed character.
Galatians 5:16 “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”
Ephesians 2:2 “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:”
We become conscious of sin and abstain from doing it, even when under duress. Only by the presence of the other side of Jesus in us could we have hope of His glory.
Colossians 1:27 “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:”
Let us seek for the old path where we could find rest. Let us listen to the trumpet’s sound, wherewith we could escape the calamity to come. Our reading for today is Romans1-4. Keep the fire of prayer burning and alive on the altar of love.
Supo Abayode
+1-302-230-6792
Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries
Delaware, USA
Mountain of Fire And Miracles Ministries Delaware 