The Wonderful Christian Experience! Part 3

The Wonderful Christian Experience! Part 3

When we look back at the history of the Church, especially from the birth of the Church in A.D. 32 to the year A.D. 98, when John, the last of the Lord’s Apostles died, the entire history of the early Church comes alive!

There is much to learn about the early Church and how the Christian life really began in those early days. At the time of the ascension of Jesus, there was such great excitement among all His followers. We should ask the Lord to take us back in time to those beginning days of the time of salvation and the birth of the Church.

GOLD & GLORY FLASHPOINT 1:

Lately, the Lord has taken my focus back to those beginning days of Christianity. As we talk about living a life of experiencing the Spirit of the Lord, I am asking the Lord to give us a sense and feel for what it was like for the disciples and all they were experiencing in those days of the Lord’s arrest, crucifixion, death, and the astonishing earth-shaking experience of Jesus’ sudden resurrection to eternal life.

Through the traumatic events of Jesus’ arrest, the horrors of His trial and all the beatings and physical torment must have been unbearable for all who so tenderly loved the Lord at that time. Many hearts were shattered into a million pieces no doubt. What an incredible experience the disciples must have had for 3 ½ years, being eyewitnesses to this amazing person, a man, one of them; yet He was not like any man ever before. Can you imagine being there with Jesus every day for 3 ½ years and witnessing the absolute, unimaginable, and miraculous display of wonders? Here is a man who came from heaven, who has a human body, but who is God on the inside. He is an example of all perfection, every word, every action, every prayer, and every miracle…the man is a God, He is the Lord, the living Person of the eternal word of the almighty God!

The night Jesus was betrayed, he informed His disciples that soon after He had paid the price of the sins of man, that He would ascend into the heavens in His eternal glory and continue to be God for ever and ever, along with His heavenly Father and the omnipresent third person of God, who is Holy Spirit. On that evening, Jesus offered the Christian life to His disciples and for all who would come to believe in Him as Lord and Savior.

The negative effect of this message was no doubt the fact that Jesus would not be around for long after His resurrection from the dead. It took a while for the disciples to absorb the announcement of His death, which He said would end in a triumphant resurrection. Despite all the miracles, signs and wonders of 3 ½ years with Jesus, the announcement of His suffering was greatly troubling to the disciples.

So the night of His betrayal, Jesus wanted to have this special Passover meal with His disciples. (Over the next few weeks, I want us to take a closer look at the proceedings of that greatly important evening of the Lord’s new Passover with His disciples.) As Jesus ate the Passover meal of His own death and sufferings with His disciples, He introduced and personally delivered to them the Holy New Testament of His body and His blood. Following the sacred time of the Passover where Jesus gave His disciples the NEW TESTAMENT, the evening was not over yet. Oh no, for the final two-plus hours of that evening, Jesus explained the future to His disciples. This future is their own future, as well as every person’s future who would ever receive Jesus’ eternal life through exercising faith in Jesus as Lord and eternal Savior.

We’re going to look deeper into this amazing message of Jesus introducing His Holy Spirit to His disciples. This was the time when Jesus, at great length and much detail, introduced the third Person of the eternal God to His disciples. I am trusting the Lord to take us back in time so to speak and sit us around the table with Himself and the disciples as it was that night. I pray that we would experience some of the great gloriousness of the atmosphere and truth which Jesus shared with His disciples that night. May we learn some wonderful things about Jesus Himself and the closeness of His relationships which He had enjoyed with these disciples for 3 1/2 years together.

Then we will go on to Holy Spirit Himself and the great promise which Jesus gave His disciples about Holy Spirit, the Great Comforter of the believer, the Friend, the closeness of a brother which the Lord desires for us to enjoy personally with Holy Spirit.

The teaching of the principles of the New Testament of TRUE Christianity are so vital to our entire existence, for they are the secrets for us to know how to live the Christian life. Holy Spirit is our divine teacher, teaching us individually how to relate to Father God and the Lord Jesus through Himself, and how to live a life of fellowship with His own person on behalf of the person of Jesus who is personally with the Father. Here is the greatest truth of the Christian life, which is the fellowship experience of relating everything to God’s Holy Spirit to pass on to Jesus and the Father in heaven. Right here is the place that for two thousand years the devil has been able to blind the Church to our personal relationship experience with Holy Spirit.

Again, going back to the early days of the Church, as we walk through the years and the pages of the Christian Church, we begin to see so many ways, methods, attempts and deceptions from the devil to rob the Church of the personal walk with Holy Spirit.

The saddest reality in this world is that billions of people are still without Jesus’ salvation. Second only to that is the fact that two billion Christians today are still being robbed of the personal, private and powerful, close relationship which they can have with Holy Spirit in person.

GOLD & GLORY FLASHPOINT 2:

Today, time is short! The events of the last days are before us…and I sense in my spirit… that the opportunities for extensive times of teachings will soon become limited.

I feel the compassion of God in my heart to yield to the Lord’s Spirit and ask Holy Spirit to walk us into more than teachings and practices of the Christian life, but to help us to experience some very personal heart-to-heart things with the Lord for ourselves! This is the motivation which the Lord has placed in my spirit, as once again we consider our relationship with Holy Spirit and the Christian experience that we are enjoying with Him. The prayer of my heart for every one of us is this…that we may encounter fresh experiences with God’s Spirit, that the Lord would open up to us the rich treasure of His marvelously glorious personality and His person. Through the course of this study, may we experience new experiences with Holy Spirit…may we hear His voice clearer…may we feel His love even deeper in our hearts…and may Holy Spirit show us new and wonderful things about our Lord Jesus and our heavenly Father. For truly we are of God. We are born of Jesus’ life through the work of His Holy Spirit who lives in us, and who offers us the riches of the greatness of His fellowship today.

So as we continue in this series of messages about the wonderful Christian experience, we are seeking new and wonderful encounters from the Lord for ourselves. Always remember, as Paul wrote in Ephesians 1, we were preselected by the Lord before time when we were chosen by Him and pre-appointed by Him for a destiny of greatness and love for our lives on earth in these last days of the Church. This is the TRUE predestination which God had chosen for us before all time which God predetermined to manifest in us in our lifetime, even today and until we see the Lord coming for us in all of His glory. The choice of our lives and to create us was agreed upon unanimously by the counsel of Father, Son and Holy Spirit before time began, according to Ephesians 1:11. They decided to choose us, to create us, and to have us. Our life today is a JOY unto the Lord because He chose to create us and to have us unto Himself.

I pray that as we continue in this series of messages that you may have a brand new experience of your Christian life and that it will truly be a wonderful Christian experience every day in Jesus name to the glory of God. Thank you and God bless you!