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understanding of our union oneness and relationship with Jesus Christ. We are His Body and members in particular, wherein His divine life ows through us. And we are told that as His Body we are the fullness of Him which lls all in all. We (respectfully and most honorably) complete Him. Body dynamics is where I we lack the most in understanding. Its no wonder, most of us understand very li le of our own physical body; how it works, how it functions together, how interdependent every member of our body is, that there are some extremely critical functions that are designed to operate automatically, less we mess it up and cause fatal consequences. If the Holy Spirit of God said that we are the Body of Christ and members in particular, that se les it. Now we must grow in understanding body dynamics as it relates to the Body of Christ, the church. If we know very li le of how our physical bodies operate and thereby cause harm to ourselves, how much more are we lacking in understanding how the Divine Spiritual Body of Christ operates? Jesus lays before us quite a statement when He tells us that He is in us and we are in Him just like He is in the Father and the Father is in Him, and that there will come a day when we will know this. We will know that we are in Him and He is in us. We will know that we are one just like He and the Father are one. I believe He had more in mind than just containers. Please share your thoughts. What are you learning about Jesus that is leading you to a clearer understanding of your oneness with Him? | 3 Comments FEBRUARY 3, 2011 BY DON CURTIS
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would like to really encouraged our older, mature brothers and sisters in Christ who can help those who are younger in understanding who our older brother Jesus Christ is as our indwelling Lord and life. Please feel free to share some of your journey that has open to you a further knowledge of the Christ within us. (h p://christinyouroundtable.les.wordpress.com /2011/01/joyful-praise-dancers-5.jpg) I have been considering our Lords childhood in that the wri en accounts leaves us with ideas that He was like any other child, teen, young adult. He t in with everyone around Him. He did not look any dierently; He did not dress any dierently than His peers. The thing that made Him dierent was His ongoing growing relationship with God His Father. He knew God. No one else knew God. Because He knew God as His Father, He knew who He was, and lived with this understanding that grew as He grew. He saw the workings of God His Father. He could look at the birds and know that His Father fed them. He heard His Father speak to Him. He shared a life with His Father that no one else knew about and therefore could not share in. His knowledge and shared life with His Father had profound impact on His total life. It aected what He did , how He did what He did, when He did what He did. He grew to delight in His Father. His meat, what sustained Him was to do the will of His Father. He had no other goal or desire in life outside of His Father. He loved His Father to the point that He was willing with joy to suer death on the cross so that the Fathers will and desire to take away our sins and the sins of the world would be accomplished. This was the height of His love for His Father. He had come to deeply enjoy the presence of His Father, and just the thought of Him being separated from His Father as He became sin for us meant agony for Him. Yet his relationship of love with His Father, made Him say not my will but your will be done. This is who is in us!! Yet this is only a small part of who the Christ is who is in us. Again it will take your input and my input along with all of what we read in the scriptures and still others until the end of time to fully describe the One who is within. For we are told that the world could not contain the number of books that would be needed if all of what Christ did was wri en. Yet we are encouraged to grow in grace AND the knowledge of Christ. So our journey as the Body of Christ must continue as we together come to know the Christ within. What has been wri en is to be experienced by us as the Word again becomes esh and lives within us. I expect that since all of scripture really centers on Him, we will be continuing to grow in our knowing of Him. I am looking forward to other saints, other sons of God, other believers to share what they have been taught and what they are learning about the Christ within. I say this not looking for book facts and head knowledge, but rather heart and spirit connections with the Christ within, and the tutoring that only the Holy Spirit of God can reveal. After all it is His glorious work to take the things of Christ and show them to us; to open our eyes that we might see what already is and has been true about the Christ within, and most importantly to enable us to walk and live in His life, to come to the place of knowing that for us to live is Christ! Please share with us. This is Body work that only the Body can do, as each joint supplies nourishment which it has received from the Head, Christ who is within. We would love to hear from you and invite you to pass this on and encourage others to read and share. | Leave a comment JANUARY 25, 2011 BY DON CURTIS
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us that He has with Christ Jesus. God does not want each of us to develop our own relationship with Him. Our eorts of relating to God in our own personal ways will never lift us up to where Christ Jesus is as He relates to God. Our eorts might satisfy us, and if it does the truth is that it only lasts for a short time then we are wondering where is God or what happened. What did I do to lose what I had with God. No, no a thousand times no. All of our eorts to develop our own personal relationship with God will fall short of the glory God has for us. So God sends the Spirit of Christ into us so that through Christ we can now relate to God as He relates to Him. Christ as Son and God as Father is a very very special relationship that Jesus modeled for us in the Gospel accounts. They do not give a full view of their Father Son relationship, but we do get glimpses. (As I am writing this, I dont believe that we will get further than Christ the Anointed One as the Son of God in this posting. We will add to this later, Lord willing). It is obvious, but yet extremely important that Christ Jesus knows that He is the Son of God. No one else knew this fact. It took revelation from God Himself for Peter to answer the question who do you say I am. So for us we must know that we are sons of God. We must also know that our Father has sent the Spirit of Christ into our hearts so that we can know what being a son of God really means and how Christ in us will live it out in the everyday activities of our lives. Jesus as He walked around saw His Father at work in many ways. One day He spoke to the crowds and asked them why they were so worried about what they were going to eat and what they were going to wear. Now we see that Jesus was never concerned about what He was going to eat, or what He was going to wear, or where He was going to sleep that night. It was not because He had American Express or VISA, or Mastercard. What He did have was a knowing of His Father. A relationship with His Father as the Son who knew His Father. The crowds did not know that it was their Father who was taking care of the birds who neither sowed nor reaped, there was no tithing, no seed sowing, there was no praising going up so that blessings would come down. No none of that, just God their creator taking care of them. Jesus asked them an insightful question that we need to ask ourselves and one another, are you not worth more than birds? Yes we are. We are His children His sons. God is our Daddy and He cares for us more than we know and more than we can ever know left to ourselves developing our own relationship with Him. He is not a dead beat father who has to be taken to court to make him take care of his children. No, He knows our needs before we ask!! God has declared that He has sent Christ into us so that we might relate to Him just like Christ Jesus relates to Him as Father knowing Him the way Jesus knows Him. Please keep in mind that you can be a son and yet not know much about your father. In fact you can live with your father and work with your father and eat with your father and still be very limited in your actual knowing of him. That is one of the points in Jesus telling of the parable of the Prodigal Son. I rather see it as the parable of two very dierent sons who neither one knew much about their father. And because they were very limited in their knowledge of their father, each of their own personal relationships they developed with him were deeply wrong. Each had a personal relationship with their father, but neither of them really knew their father. What both of them needed was the Spirit of Christ in their hearts whereby they could know their Father as He really is to them. So, who is the Christ that is in us? Firstly He is the anointed Son of God who has come to be alive in us with the same relationship He has with God who is our Father. His presence in us enables us to now know God as our Father in the exact same way that Jesus knows Him, not like the two sons in te parable, or even like anyone else no ma er how spiritual they may be in our eyes. There is only
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one person who is ordained and anointed to give us the one and only relationship with God as our Father that pleases Him. Thanks for Christ in us, the Anointed Son of God our very life and access to our Father that we might be the sons of God that pleases Him. Please share any thoguhts you may have with us. | 4 Comments DECEMBER 28, 2010 BY DON CURTIS
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One of the Holy Spirits teachings through the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 is that one member can not say to another member I have no need of you. I focused my a ention on the fact that Paul said CAN NOT. He did not say should not say I have no need of you, but rather he said CAN NOT. It seems that it is impossible for any spirit lled member of the Body of Christ to say they have no need for the other members of the Body of Christ. This understanding is vital for us in the Western part of the world where individualism is king. The mindset that now that I have Christ I dont anybody else is extremely dangerous, and shows a level of childish understanding of Christ who is both Head and Body. There is a very serious issue Paul pointed out to the Church at Corinth. Even though they were members of the Body of Christ, and had all of the gifts of the Spirit, they lack one major thing. They could not discern the Body of Christ. As a result of not discerning the Lords Body, Paul said that many of them were weak, sick and some had even died. WOW. Paul stated this in chapter 11 just before he began to do some serious teaching about the Body of Christ in chapter 12. One of the dangers for me and for you is to think and act like we dont need other members in the Body of Christ because we are complete in Christ. It happened to many in Corinth and the result was that many persons who were complete in Christ became weak, became sick and died because they did not consider their union with one another in their union with Christ. Their view of Christ had not matured to see Him in all of the other members who were vital to their own functioning and life. Many today can remain childish in their understanding of being complete in Christ and leave the fellowship of other members to express their freedom. Its a childish teenager thing. Freedom is not a location, nor a se ing but a state of mind based on the truth of Gods word that is discovered in Christ. It is a living fact no ma er where we are or the circumstances we are in; we are free because of Christ living in us. He that the Son of Man sets free is free indeed! It does not ma er if you are in a house church or traditional church se ing, or no church se ing. Certainly Jesus was free as He sat in the temple listening to the Pharisees wrongly teach the scriptures. Paul was free when he was si ing in jail. The se ing never denes who we are, except for our place in Christ where the Father has set every one of us. There are many everywhere who need to nd the freedom in Christ we have received. There is another very special thing about the Body of Christ. The dierent types of members. Not all of the members are the same. We do not look the same, we do not act or behave the same, we do not even grow the same. Using the human body as a factual illustration opens up great lessons for us. And all of us have one, so we take this great classroom around with us and we have the greatest teacher in us. Who can take the things concerning Christ and reveal them to us. We have many members that make up our one body. Our eyes are not our ears. Our eyes do not look like our ears. Our eyes do not behave or act or function like our ears. In fact that is one of the major reason that they are dierent for the glory of God. Dierent members are needed for dierent functions. This is huge in my mind to discern and appreciate the many members in the Body of Christ. It helps me not to compare myself with anyone else, and to not judge others as well. I can not understand why some members act the way they do, just like many can not understand why I act the way I do. We are dierent but have the same life of the same Christ in us. My eye does not understand my ears. But they work together and I am glad that my eyes see and my ears hear. This can be the source a lot of misunderstanding. When we think that everyone else should do like us; act like us, grow like us. We can forget that most of the other members of the Body are not like us at all. God has designed them to be dierent in order for Christ who is the the Life and the Head to express Himself through them. The only thing that is the same about every member in the Body of Christ is agape, love. It s the only thing that gives anyone the evidence that we are real members of the Body of Christ. I John 4:7,8. At a later time maybe we can consider the dierent functions of the Body of Christ and the fact that each member supplys to the other members what it receives. We are very limited in our understanding of how the members of our physical body works. How much more are we limited in
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our understanding of how the members of the Body of Christ works? But we need to understand so that the Body of Chrst can be built up to the maturity of the fullness of Christ. And this is what is happening within the Body of Christ. I want to shout right now. Father you are wonderful!!! You are beyond words!!! You have any thoughts about this? I would love to hear from you. | 5 Comments NOVEMBER 30, 2010 BY DON CURTIS
Christ In Me??
Paul is an amazing man. I like his honesty. When he looked at himself he declared that he was the chief of all sinners because he wasted the church. And he said that he was ignorant when he did it. Not giving an excuse, but just telling it like it was, he was ignorant. He did not know who God really was, and he had really misunderstood Jesus Christ and what He was all about. What a breath of fresh air it would be for all of us to say the same thing. We were ignorant. Just did not know. I thought I knew, but I really missed the whole point. Therefore I wasted the church with wrong teachings and wrong understandings about God and what Jesus was really all about. It would do all of us some good if we would just admit it. My hand is raised. How about yours? Well Paul is also an amazing man because of what God showed him. Paul was taken back to his birthday, the day when he was born into this world. He has a very dierent view of it years after his conversion, born again experience, receiving Christ, or however one might say. He saw that God was in the delivery room, and not just present, but he saw that was the one who had separated him from his mothers womb. God was running the show. I dont know who was there, I am sure they were not down at the general hospital in the maternity ward. But one thing is certain, God was on the scene, actively involved in Pauls physical birth. God was there due to the fact that there was an established plan, purpose and down right reason why Paul was born. I feel a shout coming on as I write. God was present when you were born. God was actively involved with your physical birth. You may were down at the general hospital in the maternity ward. But unbeknown to you God was right there. Oh He had an established plan, purpose and down right reason for you when you were born as well. I hope you feel like shouting or whatever it is that happens when you can hardly contain yourself for the joy that is in you when you hear great news. God was also there when the man who was blind from birth was born. No body understood why this blindness happen to this man. Many thought it was because of sin. Some body had to sin for this to happen. They sinned in a way that caused this blindness. That was what many thought. They had concluded that either the parents had sinned or the man himself had sinned (I guess before he was born?!?). Jesus had to bring a ray of understanding that no it was not sin, but it was for the glory of God. I am not going to act as if I understand all of what that means. I will say this. There was reason and purpose beyond the understanding of everyone there including the man himself. Jesus opens the door just slightly to say Gods glory is a mystery in many instances beyond our sight. Healing happened. Paul receives an understanding that is wonderfully powerful. He states that God had separated him from his mothers womb and called him to reveal Christ in him. In other words Paul was saying that
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God wanted to unveil, to make known, to show o, to present His Son in Paul. This was radical thinking. This was radical truth. This was radical teaching. It still is today. You are here, I am here and everyone around us are here so that God might reveal His Son in us! Some have not heard the call yet. Others know that they have been called, but dont know to what they are called or why. they were called. While others have discovered this amazing truth that God wants to reveal His Son in them. (h p://christinyouroundtable.les.wordpress.com /2011/01/dcp_0240.jpg) Paul needed to know this before he could preach! Otherwise all he could preach would be dead doctrines. Stu that had been handed down to him. He was taught by the best. He had the best genealogy, from the tribe of Benjamin. He had the highest authority, a member of the Sanhedrin and le ers from the High Priest. He had the greatest zeal above his contemporaries. But he did not have what it takes to preach Gods good news. He needed a personal revelation of Gods dealing with him even his being here, and he needed to see what God had done in him. He had to know that in order for Gods Son to be revealed in him, he needed to know that Christ was in him and he needed to know how did Christ get in him. This was an absolute necessity for Paul. It is an absolute necessity for you and for me. You can tell the dierence between someone who has a head knowledge of the Word of God. They have been taught the doctrines. They have been tested to see if they can recall what they were taught. They can remember certain ways to recall and to present the major points concerning certain doctrines. What is missing is what is absolutely necessary, a personal revelation of Gods dealing with them in such a way that they know that Christ of a truth is in them and that they must have Christ revealed, displayed, shown, made know through them. Only then can one speak. Only then does anyone have anything worth saying. It is Christ in you the hope of glory. It is Christ alive in you. Please notice that this was so radical that Paul did not go to Jerusalem and meet with the other Apostles right away or soon thereafter. What he had revealed to him would have surely been watered down and maybe even challenged by the others. No Paul spent three years le ing this God-given revelation take root in his spirit and soul. It rearranged all of what Paul thought he knew about the scriptures. It gave him a new way of seeing everything and everyone. He saw himself radically dierent. God gave him an understanding about himself that no one else could give him. It was so radical that everything that he had treasured and had gained as a result of his hard work and privileges that came with his advancements he saw and counted them as garbage when compared with the knowledge of Christ. Paul understood that the more he knew of Christ the more he knew of who was in him and who was being revealed in him. What about you? Have you come to know that Christ is in you? Have you taken the time alone with God to let the truth about you take root. It took Paul 3 years in the desert after he saw Jesus. How long will it take for you with all of the distractions all around? Whatever it takes, please take time to think about who you really are and God;s involvement with you. Be ready for some radical changes in your thinking about God, yourself, other people and the circumstances around you. You may have started, but been distracted. Dont worry about that. Just take some more time. Take a li le today and a li le tomorrow. Those li le times will added up. Remember Christ is in you and He delights in revealing Himself to you as well. And the Holy Spirit is there to take the things of Christ and show them to you, for they are yours. If this has been a help to you, please share it with others, and let me know your comments.
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It is one thing to be born of a woman, in fact it is the only way we come into this world is through a woman. however, anyone and everyone born of the Spirit of God is greater than John the Baptist or anyone else born of a woman. Oh, this really elevates the status of all who are born of the Spirit of God. Have you given much thought to your status as a Child of God born of His Spirit? Have you considered and received this truth that you are greater than John the Baptist? There is so much all around us that works against tnderstanding this kind of truth. The biggest hinderance is found in religion and religious systems. The separation of Gods children into classes of clergy and laity hinders the reality of what Jesus said about all of those in the Kingdom of Heaven. What would happen if all of us understood who we were and understood how God sees us? For one thing we would shake o all man-made religious systems and practices that treat us like we are less than John the Baptist. In fact many religious systems that I have had some contact with treat you like you are just a sinner saved by grace, who needs deliverance or something more. I thought Jesus took away the sin of the world. If He took them away then Oh thats another story. This truth that Jesus spoke needs to be spoken over and over again. We need to hear what Jesus says about us. We need to hear how God feels about us in light of Christ living in us; in light of us being the very Body of Christ; in light of us si ing together in heavenly place with Him; and in light of us being sons and daughters of God. I earnestly believe that more understanding is needed about the magistry, glory and wonder of the new birth. More is needed about the richness of the life of Christ that is in us, and what His life in us makes us to be. Not something that we shall be, but what we are right now. I know that we shall be a lot more than what we are right now, but I believe that many are lacking a fuller understanding of what we are right now. As Paul stated there is a glory of what we are right now and there is a glory of what we shall become. But there is a present time, right now glory that Jesus has given to us. Every one of us born of His Spirit has it. Pauls prayer for the church was that they would have wisdom, knowledge and understanding of the hope of Gods calling, of the richness of their inheritance, and of the exceedingly greatness power of Gods towards them. I thank God and I am excited that many are coming once again into a fuller understanding of Christ in them the hope of glory. We could pray that we might know that we are greater than John the Baptist and how we might live with that understanding as the greater one Christ Himself is in us right now. Please pray that for me and for those who we gather with us here at Christs Church in Maryland as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. | 2 Comments OCTOBER 14, 2010 BY DON CURTIS
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even the angels were trying to look and see what God was up to as He dealt with man down through the ages. Paul comes along as Gods messenger with a very amazing word from God that reveals the mind of God concerning you and me. This revelation is not o the beating path of Gods Will. Rather it is an illumination, a bringing to light of what God had planned before He created anything. What is exciting to me is that God hid this from everyone during the past ages, and decided that He would make it known in the times of the New Testament, which includes the time in which we are living right now. God wants His mystery to now be known by the church and everyone that is a part of the church, the one and only Body of Christ. What excites me is to know that God wants me to know something very special. So I can ask Him to continually make it known to me. i can go directly to Him and say, Father I am open to hear and receive your amazing mystery, please make me see it, receive it, and live in it. It is exciting to see and hear of brothers and sisters from various nations coming into an understanding of this wonderful mystery of God. Many are nding great grace, and great peace, and great joy, and great freedom as they hear and receive Gods mystery of CHRIST IN YOU, THE HOPE OF GLORY!! (h p://christinyouroundtable.les.wordpress.com /2011/01/wall-move0006.jpg) The gloried, living Jesus Christ in you and me is Gods mystery that He is revealing everyday to some heart that has been in bondage to religion and religious systems that all fail to present anyone faultless and blameless in the presence of God. Even many who for years have been trying to live right, to live as Christ in following His example have come to see that it takes Christ in them to have life. It takes Christ Himself in you and in me to men and women created in the image of God. It takes God in us to reect God out of us. It is so simple. But it seems to take us a long time to come to it, and to really come to Christ. There are some folks in the Body of Christ who have helped me see what I heard the Lord say within me; I am not a part of your, I am your life. I will never forget that day when si ing in a mens retreat session, I began to thank God that He was a part of my life. He told me, no He was NOT A PART OF MY, BUT HE WAS MY LIFE. It took several years before I really began to understand what that really meant. I am still learning and I am thankful for those He has used to further my understanding and to conrm what He has already given me. He said that He has given us everything that we will ever need for both life and godliness. I just did not know it. Some of these folks are: Steve Pe it, Jim Fowler, Major Ian Thomas, Peter Wade, Bill Freeman, Malcolm Smith, Frank Friedman, Dan Stone, Fred Prui , John Bunting, Boyd William, Paul Anderson-Welch, Steve McVey, Bertie Brits, and just connected with Frank Viola. They are from the U.S. to South Africa. Those who have web links are listed among our links on this blog. It is amazing how God uses various other brothers at various stages of our growth. There were many who helped in other stages of my growth that I am just as thankful to God for them. i guest you have noticed that I have used the word amazing a lot. Our english composition instruction would tell to use other words the same one over an over agin, but it is amazing what God has done and is doing. Hope this was helpful to you. If so please pass it on to your friends family and co-workers. Love to hear your comments, and checkout the links.
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| 4 Comments Christ In You Roundtable Follow Blog at WordPress.com. The Misty Lake Theme.
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