I want you to know that rest and wholeness are available to you through your High Priest, Jesus.
In the Old Testament, the high priest represented the people to God. And all the standing of the nation of Israel was wrapped up in the high priest. If the high priest was good, God blessed the nation. If the high priest was bad, God rejected the whole nation.
But now the Bible says that Jesus is our High Priest…forever.
That means you can have permanent eternal security in your heart because your standing is wrapped up in your High Priest. When you behold Him, you receive everything He has to offer.
Today Jesus is your High Priest! That means that God is not looking at you to judge you. God is looking at your High Priest to bless you.
Beloved, this is why we must behold Jesus. Second Corinthians 3:18 says…
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as
in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being
transformed into the same image from glory
to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Here’s where it gets practical for you and me:
If God judged us based on ourselves, there would be no rest—there would be no peace.
But when His blessings depend on the finished work of Jesus Christ—the infallible, sinless, altogether lovely One—we can be eternally secure and at rest!
Something powerful happens when you see Jesus…
The Bible says that “…you are being transformed into the same image. Not by your efforts, but by the Spirit of the Lord!”
When you behold Jesus, you become like Him.
The Lord makes it very simple for us: as we behold, the Holy Spirit transforms us…
From depression to peace.
From heaviness to joy.
From poverty to abundance.
From being sickly to being healthy and robust.
From striving to rest.
You cannot transform yourself by your own efforts. But you can enter into a rest where you allow the Holy Spirit to do His work. By turning your eyes and your attention toward Jesus, you open the door for these things to manifest in your everyday life!
Beloved, as long as you keep your eyes on Jesus,
You can rest in His security, His blessing and His supernatural work in your life.
Its never about focusing on self…
its always about focusing on Jesus.
Its not a question of whether you deserve Gods blessings—its a question of whether your High Priest deserves every blessing. Its not a question of how pleasing you are in Gods eyes—
Jesus Christ is your perfect High Priest, and since He is perfectly pleasing to God, SO ARE YOU!
Thats why the Bible says:
Love has been perfected among us in this:
that we may have boldness in the day of judgment;
because as He is, so are we in this world. (1 John 4:17)
What a powerful, life-changing truth: As Jesus is, so are we in this world!
Friend, whatever you are faced with right now,
You dont have to be anxious or afraid, and you dont have to fix it all in your own strength. Just put your eyes on Jesus and remember that as Jesus is, so are you. He is healthy…you can receive health. He is wise…you can receive wisdom. He is accepted and approved…you can receive the Father’s acceptance and approval.
Remember, God is not looking at you to judge you. He is looking at your High Priest, Jesus, to bless you. Fix your eyes on Jesus and rest in that promise today.
You dont have to lead a “striving” life or a “trying” life any longer. The Lord wants you to live the blessed life, the abundant life…the restful life in Him.
Just last night I was writing how I wanted to connect with some of the most accurate prophets and dialogue with them and create an extensive prophetic mind-map to put on my new mind-map site with subdomains like prophetic.spiritmaps.com – and I receive an e-mail today stating “One church leader says “When Terry speaks prophets listen.”If you hear the prophetic journey of IHOP by Mike Bickle, you will hear Terry’s name mentioned in strategic and transitional points of time.” This is from an e-mail I received entitled, “W.L.I.Hawaii 27th Prophetic Class & Conference with Prophet Terry Bennett.” I went to his website, http://www.terrybennett.net/terry.html and looked for his contact information to make contact with him and found his belief statements, so I figured it would be very appropriate to share.
We truly believe that God calls all to believe and put their trust and hope in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, which entails an ongoing, ever-increasing relationship with the Lord Himself; however, our soul, flesh, and the enemy have used man’s doctrines to divide us. Thus this statement is not meant to be another source of division, but simply statements that curtail doubt, fears, and questions which might arise.
1. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, eternal God, uncreated, but the creator, the Alpha and Omega, the I Am, the way, the truth, and the life, the Savior, the King of kings, Lord of lords, and the eternal Lamb of God, the Life of the believer and His corporate people, the rightful heir of His Father, and the establisher of the eternal purpose of God.
2. We believe in the trinity as unveiled and revealed in the holy Scriptures and the person of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; that the Godhead is one Spirit and yet three eternal specific persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that this has been and remains a true mystery, but that God has clearly revealed it.
3. We believe that the Godhead has established His church through the physical death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. We believe that Christ is the singular head of His body (the church) and that the church is His people gathered spiritually by the born-again reality into the life of Christ. Thus the church is not a single group, denomination, or tradition, but a spiritual people gathered in His life, name, and spirit.
4. We believe that hell is literal and eternal and that it is the place of separation and torment of the damned. We believe that all humans who refuse to put their faith in Jesus Christ choose instead the eternal place of separation from Him, which is hell. We also believe that hell is the eternal place of separation for spirits who chose to rebel, including Satan.
5. We believe that Heaven is literal, eternal, and spiritual, that it is the realm of God’s eternal throne from which he rules all His vast creation.
6. We believe that for the believer to be absent from the body means they are present with the Lord; that Jesus Christ is the resurrection of the believer in every sense; that physical death in not annihilation for the believer or the unbeliever, but an eternal step into the eternal realms which, for the true believer, is into God’s continuing eternal purpose and reality.
7. We believe that all mankind has fallen through the sin of the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, who are the beginning of the human creation, and that their sin allowed the sin nature to come into themselves and be passed on to and within their offspring, the human race. We also believe that Jesus Christ, the second man and the last Adam, has been sent forth from the Father to offer reconciliation and salvation to all who will put their faith in Him; that man must be born again or they cannot see the Kingdom of God and Heaven; and that Jesus Christ alone is the way, truth, and life, that no one can come to the Father except through Him.
8. We believe that Jesus Christ will return to this physical earth, though no one knows the exact hour, to establish the eternal throne and kingdom of the Lamb who He is; and that the Lamb’s Bride/wife as defined in the Holy Scriptures will eternally reign with Him from earth over all.
9. We believe that the 66 books of the Christian Bible are the inspired Holy Scriptures, the written word of God, which proclaims and testifies to the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ Himself.