Sourced by God

This week we are at a convention called cross style conference. My mind is incredibly overwhelmed with how much I don't know about my Savior. The main speakers this week are Chad Seabright (the guy i'm interning under), Steven Manley, and Jeremiah Bolluck. These men not only have an amazing insight into theology, they also live it out in an intimate relationship with God. A.W Tozer calls people like this spiritual dynamite! I have come to find a very central focus to all of the lessons and sermons that have been spoken this far. If we want to live a holy lifestyle pleasing to God, we have to be completely sourced by him. The perfect example of this of course, being Jesus. What is astounding to me is that Jesus, being God, with all of the attributes of the Deity (which consequently are being self-existent and self-sourced) came to earth, laying those attributes aside to provide an example to us of what it looks like to be completely God-sourced humans.

How amazing would it be to love like we don't know how to love, to minister like we don't know how to minister, to teach like we don't know how to teach, and to live like we don't know how to live. Then when people come up to you and ask you how you do it you answer "I have no idea". And why not? Because your life is so guided by the Spirit that you honestly can only say I'm not really sure how I got to where I'm at or how I did that but it had to have been the Lord through me! an interesting example is in Matthew 4:1 the scriptures say that Jesus was "led up" by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil. The Greek word for "led up" emphasizes the 'up' part. This is intended to have the idea of conveying forward or being carried. In fact, some biblical scholars hold the thought that the place where Jesus was led to was so high up and impossible to get to that he had to have been literally physically moved by the spirit to that place. What if my life looked like that? I think my first example of that was this trip down to South Carolina. Jordan, how'd you end up down here in South Carolina? "Um... well... I don't really know. But I know that God led me here and has better plans for me here than I could ever have made on my own!

What's even MORE impressive is that this temptation that God UNDOUBTEDLY LED Jesus to happened right after his baptism by John. John's baptism's, interestingly enough, are inseparable from the thought of repentance. That's all he ever preached was repentance! So Jesus who lived a perfect life got a baptism of repentance! HOW!? the definition of repentance, as quoted from Steven Manley, is "Giving up a former thought, to embrace a new thought". Jesus gave up his former thought of living the carpenters live, providing for his mom, and being a business man to embrace the thought of beginning his ministry. He just up and left Mama Mary one day and said "Ok, it's time to start my ministy now. My Father is ready for me." CRAZY! This is what is meant by living a life of repentance! Continually laying down your former thoughts to embrace new truths that God reveals to you throughout your life. Repentance has absolutely nothing to do with sin at all! Anyway, after Jesus get's John's baptism of repentance God is so proud His voice booms from heaven in chapter 3 verse 17 saying "This is my Son, whom I love! With him I am well pleased." God is so in love with his son and immediately after this moment he leads his son into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and nights!

Living a God-sourced life will undoubtedly lead to times of struggle and temptation even immediately following times of renewal but it will always be worth it in the end! I'm excited to learn more and more each day how to die to myself and let God take complete control and move through me! It will certainly be painful at times but I can only pray that his spirit will move into the deepest part's of who I am, the parts that no word has ever entered, and bring life from them! I'm enamored by the love of God and by the opportunity that I have to learn about his perfect, pure love.

As I mentioned, my mind is flooded by all of these thoughts and concept of God so I hope that I conveyed the messages I heard in a logical way. I have so much more that I can hopefully blog about later. Thanks for all your support!

Jord