God Dethroned

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Isaiah 14:12-15 (Jubilee Bible 2000), “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst claim the Gentiles as an inheritance! Thou who said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven; upon high next to the stars of God I will exalt my throne: and I will sit upon the mount of the testimony and in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”

That is how it all started. Most of us get angry when we read this. Lucifer wants to dethrone the Creator of the Universe. In his unholy pride, he wants to be God. There is only One who is fit to sit on this throne and it isn’t the Devil. His throne is in Heaven, but there is also a throne in the heart of each man.
Who sits on the throne in your heart?

“The description of the man of sin, when he is fully revealed, come to full maturity, “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he as god, siteth in the temple of God and showeth himself that he is God” is the true self at every stage and in every state: self sits in the temple of God as God. All the sin of heathendom- and how awful it is- and all the sin of Christendom- no less terrible!- is but the outgrowth of that one root-God dethroned, self enthroned, in the heart of Man.”~ Andrew Murray “Within”

Andrew Murray is using part of a quote from II Thessalonians 2 where we are given a description of the Antichrist. Lucifer’s fall and the behavior of the Antichrist…can both be attributed to the same thing, trying to dethrone the rightful King, and enthroning self. He also is very honest in pointing out that it isn’t just the heathen that exhibits this same behavior, but also “Christendom.”

We, like David, need to ask the Holy Spirit to search our hearts

Psalms 26:2 (NIV), “Test me, LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind;”

Are you fighting for your rights, will, and way? Or are you surrendered to His?

There isn’t room for two on God’s throne. He alone can fulfill the purpose of Father. We are so unqualified. Getting on that throne is sin. Not allowing God to be enthroned in our hearts is sin. Thinking we can do it better is sin. He is able, we are not. He knows everything, we do not. Our flesh is weak; there is NO weakness in Him. How can we be so foolish as to think we could ever sit there?

“God is on the throne,” I hear you say. Do you listen to Him? Do you do what He tells you too? Are you too busy for Him and His Kingdom? Do you live like the world? Is your faith in Him, or your own abilities, or the government, or another person? There are many signs that prove a lack of a true king on the throne. These are just a few.

It’s not my throne, and it isn’t yours.

Anyone who sits there besides God, is an usurper, and imposter, a tyrant, and a thief.

Period.

God won’t share it.

It’s not because He is selfish, it’s because He loves us, and knows that He is the best person to reside there.
If you have found yourself there, or any person or thing besides the true King, step down and allow Him to reign in your heart and life.

You’ll be better for it!

Lyrics for “Enthralled by Your Love”

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Enthralled by Your Love

They left me empty and broken.
I searched for the one who could put me back together again.

I could not escape from the pain,
giving myself to the darkness, trying to hide from my shame.

In this hopeless place, you found me.
Instead of piecing me back together, you made something brand new out of me.

Chorus/bridge:
I am you beloved, your bride, sitting in heaven by your side.
Enthroned in your beauty and grace, enthralled by the love in your gaze.

When I was lost, you searched for me.
I found my worth in the price that you paid to bring me liberty.

You saw me for what I could be,
captured my heart with your love, making me into royalty.

Chorus/bridge:
I am you beloved, your bride, sitting in heaven by your side.
Enthroned in your beauty and grace, enthralled by the love in your gaze.

Copyright © by Jodi Woody
August 21, 2013

Living Beyond the Cross: Part Two

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We need to reverence the cross, its work, Christ’s sacrifice of love. But accept your place in the Kingdom, accept his Grace, walk in your God given authority. If you have accepted the atoning work of the cross, then walk through that door into the Throne room. Walk as a Saint, a Disciple of Christ, an ambassador of Heaven, a Son of the Most High, and a joint heir with Christ. Tell sickness to leave, command bodies to be whole, command minds to be sound. Declare your blessings. Are you in a hard place? What do God and his word have to say about it? Speak God’s word over it. Then don’t stop with you and yours do it for others, saved and unsaved alike. No one has to earn it, it’s theirs. The goodness of God turns hearts to repentance.
God just wants to love and bless people. He wants every area of our lives to be blessed, physically, spiritually, mentally, financially and any other area you can think of. He loves to bless his children and he wants his family to grow. Our job is to bring the Kingdom of light, of love to the lost world. We have to accept it ourselves first, “freely you have received, freely give.” The Kingdom is a King, a Kingdom and a Royal Family. It’s about a Father and the love he has for his children. He’s a good Father, wanting to give good gifts to his children. The Kingdom is the all compassing; never ending love of the Father poured out through Jesus and now shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Why? So we can do what Jesus did. Enlarge; add to the Kingdom/family of God. If they don’t become part of our family, then they remain with their father the devil. You are in one kingdom or the other, there is no neutral territory.
So in practical terms, if someone needs healing, we don’t need to explain the whole process of the cross, the stripes, the blood, they can learn the how and the why later. We just need to lay hands on them and pronounce them healed. Tell sickness to leave, tell health to come. Tell bodies to be whole, minds to be sound, debt to leave, money to come, bless people. What’s allowed in heaven? Allow it here. What’s not allowed in heaven? Don’t allow it here on earth. Is God poor, sick, sad, depressed, oppressed, tired…don’t allow that in our lives or the lives of the one’s he loves, (and he loves everyone). What is allowed in heaven? Peace, joy, strength, love, discernment, wisdom, riches, health, the list is too huge to include it all here. We don’t have to wait for heaven to have it. God already brought heaven into our hearts, now our job is to bring heaven here, to earth. The governments of this world can’t do it, the media, Hollywood, economics, education, those things can’t bring us heaven. God’s children, knowing who he is and who we are, we can!
All of creation groans, waiting for us to come into our authority.
“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and if children, then heirs-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time fare not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of god. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the hold creation groans and labors with birth pains together until now.” Romans 8:16-22
I am changing what I say, how I think and how I pray. That’s what true repentance is, changing our minds, turning away from the world and the kingdom of darkness to the love of God and the Kingdom of Light. Turning from out past to our glorious future in Christ. Jesus’ work on the cross provided the way for us to do that, his beautiful, horrible sacrifice…
I don’t want him to remain forever nailed there. Jesus moved past the cross, won’t you do the same?

Living Beyond the Cross: Part One

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We tend to set up camp at the cross, when that was never the Father’s intention. We have come to the cross to confess our sin, accepting Jesus’ atonement…and then stayed there. Some even worship the cross. We have to go beyond the cross. The work of the cross is finished. How do I know that? Because Jesus said, “it is finished!” If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have said it. Notice he didn’t say, “it is being finished”, “the work of the cross is continual,” no he said FINISHED. Period. We respect and reverence what Jesus did there, the price he paid, the blood he shed there, but we can’t live there, can’t stay there. We have to move past. Jesus said that he was the door-we don’t stand in doors, we go through. Jesus was the door to the Father.
So what’s on the other side of the cross? The cross is the door to the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is on the other side-the throne room. Jesus sits on that throne; he isn’t hanging on a cross. The cross couldn’t hold him, hell and the grave couldn’t hold him. He was destined, before the foundation of the world to sit on that throne. We are seated there with him, those of us who have accepted the finished work of the cross (Ephesians 2:5). Who sits on a throne? A king. Who has authority in that Kingdom? The king. The King of Kings sits on his throne in Heaven ruling his Kingdom and what does he call us? “Kings and Priests” (Revelations 5:10). What is the job of a king? To rule and reign, to use their authority to prosper the Kingdom.
I am learning-and trying to walk in this authority. It isn’t something new to me. Our Senior Pastor always talks about “A King, a Kingdom and a Royal Family.” But the word says that “Faith comes by hearing, and continuing to hear, the Word of God.” So sometimes we have to hear it over and over to get it from our heads into our hearts. Faith never takes place in our heads, always in our hearts. What our heads can’t comprehend our heart can believe. We don’t have to understand it all, just believe it all. Even the little Revelation I have received on this subject, I sometimes forget. I go back to the cross…habit, and to be honest I love to remember the love of the cross. Through some classes last week on healing and the Kingdom, some of those wrong thinking patterns were broken. So some of what I am sharing is from those classes. I hope it frees you up the way it has me.
Jesus didn’t “plead the blood”. He never said, “By the stripes on my back you are healed.” He didn’t ask his Father to heal. He prayed often, frequently all through the night, but he didn’t pray for God to heal. He hadn’t shed his blood; the cross was still in his future. But that didn’t stop him from doing his Father’s work. He healed the sick, cast out demons, cleansed lepers the list is endless. He did all of this as a man, not God. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and obedience to God’s will, motivated by their love, he did these mighty works. He knew his position, knew who he was. He didn’t let the fact that he was here as a man stop him. He knew who his Father was and that all power and authority came from the Father. “I only do what I see my Father do, I only say what he says.” He continually told the Religious people of the day that his power came from the Father.
Now, he did die, hang on that cross, shed his blood, went to Hell, took the Keys, stripped Satan of his power, and was resurrected. All of that is true, and wonderful! But he also ascended into heaven where he sits on his Throne of Power and Authority. Before he left he told us to do what he did. He told us to preach. Preach what? The cross? No the Kingdom. The Kingdom is the love of the Father that wants to see his children blessed, set free, stand and walk in their authority. To be on the offensive not just defend. Take territory; don’t just try to protect the little we have. He wants his family to grow! He told us to heal the sick. We do it, through the Holy Spirit working in us. Cast out demons. Not pray them out, cast them out. Tell them to leave. They have no authority. You do.
I know some religious toes have been stepped on and some sacred cows slaughtered. But religion stinks! It’s a set of do’s and don’ts that can only dictate how to behave. It never changes a heart. Relationship with the Father, now that changes our hearts and life’s. Now we do his work out of love for him. I swallowed hard at least a dozen times over the course of this class. I kept hearing this word ‘but’ in my head. Look at it this way, the cross, the beatings, the stripes and the blood, they were all to get us to the Throne of Grace. Important, necessary and wonderful? Yes, of course. The cross was the means to an end. The work of the cross tells us ‘how’ we got in the family of God, ‘why’ we are able to be healed, delivered and saved. ‘Why’ we have our authority. It the reason we can say to the sick, “be healed,” say to those in bondage to sin and the devil, “be free.” His stripes did heal us. His blood did cleanse us. So we are healed and clean. We don’t have to ask God to do these things, they are done. Accept it. Live like its true!
When we keep going back to the cross, it’s as if we crucify him again. Wasn’t once enough? God’s word tells us it was “once for all.” Just think about that for a minute…
Can you hear him calling you from the Throne of Grace?
So maybe you screwed up yesterday, you fell away, stumbled into some old sin…so what? There is Grace in the Throne room of God. Turn from the sin. That’s all repentance is, really. It’s already under that blood. It’s already been forgiven. When we live in the Kingdom, we become his ambassadors. We find that we don’t mess up as often, we stumble less. We are, like Jesus, only doing what the Father said and saying what he told us to say. We are part of that Royal Family sharing the goodness of the King. Who wouldn’t want to come out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light with us? If you are one of those who declare themselves “a sinner saved by Grace,” stop it! God said not to call unclean the things he has made clean. Jesus’ blood cleansed us; we are clean, no more sinners but saints, Sons no longer servants. God said, he never lies.

More tomorrow…