The life beyond dreams comes from a broken self-life

The life beyond dreams comes from a broken self-life.

Friday, February 6, 2009

a. In verse 19, there is great blessing beyond gnosis.
b. In verse 20, there is great power beyond gnosis.
c. In verse 21, there is great glory beyond gnosis.

1. For the Church Age believer, for every member of the royal family of God, there is a life which goes beyond anything for which we can ask of anyone, whether God or man.

2. For every Church Age believer as the body of Christ, there is a life beyond our dreams and imaginations. It is a fantastic life. This is the ultimate, and is what God expects from every believer. For this goal God has made complete and total provision.

3. Dreams are often an escape from reality, but there is nothing but reality and indescribable blessing in the life beyond dreams. The life beyond dreams doesn’t escape from reality, but it is fantastic, indescribable reality.

4. We do not even have the imagination to dream or the power to ask for the things which God has prepared for us in the life beyond dreams.

1 Co 2:9
“However, as it stands written, No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
ISA 55:8 “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are My ways your ways,” says the Lord.

God has done some thinking way beyond our thinking. His thinking becomes a reality for us once we enter the life beyond dreams.

ISA 55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

In the life beyond gnosis, the Church glorifies God through the attainment of spiritual maturity. In the life beyond dreams, the Church glorifies God through receiving their escrow blessings for time.

These dreams are associated with happiness symbols.
a. Greatness or success.
b. Approbation from people. (People dream about being respected and receiving approbation.)
c. Money and security.

d. Social life and romance.
e. The possession of materialistic things which are coveted for pleasure or which are desired as a status symbol.
f. Achievement in some field in which they are interested.

g. Possessing beauty, strength, attractiveness, and-or health.
h. Being married to the ideal person.

Dreams can express arrogance, lust, desire, insecurity, covetousness, inordinate ambition, or inordinate competition. Above all, these dreams represent what we want, what we want to have or possess, and what we want to be to the extent that our imagination can project.

God has provided for the mature believer a life beyond dreams, beyond imagination, and beyond our greatest solicitation to self-interest.

To choose the plan of God results in a life beyond our fondest dreams and imaginations. But to choose our own plan is blasphemy.

Sooner or later the servant of God discovers that he himself is the greatest frustration to his own spiritual life.

The outer man or old man will not be subject to the rule of the HS and cannot walk according to God’s righteous demands.

The Lord must deal with this outer man in time, but He can only do so if you choose to let Him.

EPH 3:16
that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;

2 Co 4:16
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

God resides in the inner man, but unfortunately for many believers the inner man is occupied by the outer man and remains trapped.

In order for a believer to execute the PPOG the inner man has to be released.

God has a plan tailored for each individual believer by which He can break the outer man so that the inner man can be released.

Our flesh has been crucified with Christ in position, but we must choose in time to treat the self life as what it is, dead!

We can’t just reckon the outer man to be dead, we must be fully convinced that it is.

LUK 14:26 “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

The true servant will be with Christ in the place of obedience to the great power experiment of the PPOG.

Life is in the grain. However, there is a very powerful shell outside of the grain that must be broken so that nutrients can flow to the inner grain.

The action of temperature and moisture of the earth, analogous to suffering for the believer, results in the breaking of the shell.

That day, a little more of their outer man was broken and a little more of their inner man grew and they could more enjoy the calm sea afterward.

It is not a matter of whether or not the grain has life, all believers do, but whether the outer shell is broken.

In order for the inner life to be released, the outer life must suffer loss.

For those who make BD their #1 priority God can break the outer shell and the life of Christ within can be released.

For all of us we have amazing power within and for some of us that power is locked up within us because we choose us instead of Him.

The Lord is ready and able to bless every one of us beyond what we could think or imagine, but if His life is imprisoned within a self life then He must patiently wait to pour out these blessings.

ISA 30:18
Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you,
And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
How blessed are all those who long for Him.

If the outer man is not broken we can never be a blessing to the church and the RFOG, and we can never expect the world to receive God’s grace through us!

MAR 14:3
And while He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head.

Unless the alabaster vial is broken the ointment of pure nard cannot be released, which is a fragrant aroma to the Lord.

Alabaster is costly, but not as important as the perfume inside, yet some admire the alabaster vial more than the perfume. Some think the outer man is more precious than the inner man.

The Holy Spirit never stops working. We face one trial after another and another. He has one goal in mind in all His disciplining work: to break and dismantle the outer man so that the inner man can break forth.

Often, as soon as God’s hand is on us we become unhappy.

2 Co 4:7-8
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing;

Let the affliction and defeat and confusion do what it is meant to do; release the surpassingly great power of God within.

When the Lord opens our eyes, we will see everything that has happened to us throughout our lives as meaningful.

First He breaks us in a cumulative way, and second, He breaks us in a sudden way.

We cannot reduce the time this breaking takes, but we can extend this time when we murmur and complain in negative volition.