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Understand Your Union with God

Bertie Brits - (March 18, 2012) When we start to understand how God functions, we will start to understand how we function. When God spoke to man to explain Himself, He used the intimate terms - things like marriage and family. There is nothing deeper than a husband and a wife - two individuals becoming one in flesh. He does not use slavery and bondage to explain His union with man. I love what Paul says when he talks about marriage. He says, "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." (Eph. 5:31,32) It speaks of Christ and the church, of our union with God. To understand the principles by which God functions, we must look at the Trinity. Now, If I go to a South African and explain, "When I was in America, I ate something that tasted like..." I will use familiar South African flavors to describe the taste. If I try to explain something truly unique, it will be difficult for me to find something we can both relate to so that he can understand. In another sense, it is like explaining the color blue to a blind man who has never seen color. How do you do it? Attempting to explain eternity is like that. We try to explain in terms of "time that cannot end," but we miss the focus of eternity when we emphasize time. Eternal life speaks of the quality of God's life perpetually. "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ." (Jn. 17:3) The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different personalities, yet all God. It is in the same way that we are a spirit, soul, and body. If the question was asked, "Is Bertie three or is Bertie one?" most would say, "Bertie is one." Yet, I am three. There are three parts to me, yet they are one in one body. One of the most wonderful scriptures says, "God is one."(Gal. 3:20) We have often only interpreted scriptures like this one to say, "There is only one God." Though that is gloriously true, it also speaks of the three parts of God being One. The wonderful thing is, if God is One, then we who believe in Jesus are in the One. The union between the Father and the Son is now the union between us and God. We are not workers in the throne room of God only overhearing the communication between the Father and the Son. No, we are "on the board." We are in the God head, included into who God is, into His kind of life. Before anything was created, God existed. In God's existence, He is love. He is someone who can stand in awe of another person. Now, we cannot say "someone is love" unless he is loving someone. Meaning, if you say "someone is speaking", to whom does he speak? If you say "somebody loves," whom does he love? So, since God is love, He said, "...Let us make man..." (Gen 1:26) When I was in Chicago, I witnessed the splendor of the sun coming up over the city. Though it was beautiful, I was alone. I needed someone of my kind to share it with - someone who could experience what I was experiencing. So, God said, "Let's make a man to experience Our kind of life, Our quality of life. A being who desires to have fellowship. A being who desires to love and be loved." And He blew the breath of life into man, which was the Holy Spirit, and he included man into the Trinity so that we can have the kind of fellowship that

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the Father has with the Son. Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that we are Jesus, but what Jesus is to the Father is what we are to the Father. Let me tell you how I believe the "conversation" happened between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit when God said, "Let us make a man." To explain, I will share with you what I shared with Helena as we were driving one day: "Imagine we only have one son and we have a wonderful relationship with him. We are the kind of family who people look at from the outside and say, 'Man that family loves each other. They are in unity.' We believe in each other, we love each other, we are open to be known by each other. It is not a master and slave relationship. Rather, we honor each other and see each other for who he really is. So, we say, 'Listen, with this high quality of life, it's unfair that we are alone! Let's share our heart. Let's adopt a child. We will bring him into our family so that he can experience the same quality of life as we experience. Unless he becomes our son, he cannot have that same quality of life.'" So, when God made Adam and Eve, He said, " So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Gen. 1:27) Now, what does this show us? In making Adam a companion, it revealed God's relationship oriented nature. He wanted to have somebody who could experience his kind of life. Now, let's look at the fall of Adam and Eve. This is what the Genesis 3:1-7 says, "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." What happens here? This is a very beautiful thing. Before Adam could partake of the law, the relationship between Adam and God basically had to end. The only way for it to end was this: if Adam could not believe in God anymore. "And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Gen. 2:16, 17) Then Satan showed up and what did he do? He attacked the very core of existence. The core that leads to God's kind of life, which is belief in God - belief that God is not hiding anything, belief that God has opened His whole being unto us. It is belief, it is faith! That is why Satan always had an issue with faith because that is the very beauty in the Trinity. He wanted to bring in something called the law because the Bible says the law is not of faith. "And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them." (Gal. 3:12) So, Satan first brought to the mind of man a question mark over the very person of God.

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In the Old Testament, you will see the words faith/believed forty-three times. Whereas, in the New Testament, they are used four hundred sixty-three times. Under the law, belief was stolen from us. We could not believe in God anymore. When Jesus came, He restored man. Took away all of our guilt so that we can now believe in Him. A relationship cannot be defined outside of believing in the other person. The basic building block in the Trinity is belief. The Father believes in Jesus, and Jesus believes in the Father, and the Holy Spirit is personified in the Bible and is shown to believe in Them. They function from belief in each other. And without belief there cannot be relationship. If someone came to me and said, "I saw a picture of your son smoking marijuana." It would bring a doubt in my heart about who my son is because that is not the picture I have of my son. The union I have with my son is in what I believe about him. Every connection we have had with people in life has been based on what we believe about them. When God made Adam He said, "Adam, you are now included into this relationship we have with each other. All the life you now have in you is Our kind of life. This is a life of love and belief - eternal life. See eternal as quality forever. We give it to you. It is by the Spirit. I will come in the cool of the day and we will fellowship with each other." The whole thing was based on belief, love, and trust. That is why it is so dangerous to hear a lie about God. When we hear a lie about God, we cannot trust Him anymore. The moment we cannot trust Him anymore, we are not experiencing eternal life. We then experience death, condemnation, judgment and all those kinds of things. From there, Satan can come and sell us any recipe to kill us. When Adam and Eve were made, they did not believe God for anything. They were in the garden, the garden provided for them, who God was provided for them. They did not believe God for food or for clothes. Their belief was in who He was the very person of God was that which gave them peace of mind for future provision. But, the moment they could not believe in God anymore, then Satan could tempt them with "do's and don'ts." So, Adam and Eve partook of the law system that brought forth death. They found their identity in their ability - even the very ability they had through the Spirit of God. He said, "Man will be like God, not on the basis of trust, belief, and love, but man will find his life in what he can do." When he did that, not even God could override man. Why? When God decided to make a man, He was sovereign. Sovereign basically means, "No one needs to tell me what to do. I will do whatever I want." If He made man in his image, then man had to be sovereign as well. Meaning, man also has the ability to decide if he wants to be a part of something or not - to believe in God or not, to be in a relationship with God or not. Adam, as the representative of all men, decided that man would not have God's quality of life based on union with God. From there, man died. Then, as we know the story, God came in Christ and incarnated Himself as the man of death, died as the man of death, rose up as the resurrected man Jesus , went and sat in the God head as a human being representing every man and is now the way unto the God kind of life. The fact that Jesus rose up and sits at the right had of the Father does not mean that everyone has a God quality of life. Why? Because, having that life is based on belief. Now, Adam and Eve saw their inability. Genesis 2:25 says, "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." What does nakedness mean in that sense? Nakedness means an inability to be like God by yourself." But, they were not ashamed of it

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because they were clothed with God. But the moment they said, "I can't believe in Him anymore," they saw who they were, free from this wonderful relationship where God believes in you and you believe in Him. When man removed himself from that and he saw what kind of a being he was outside of that kind of a relationship, he found he was naked. When God went to Adam in the garden (remember, God had not changed), what did Adam do? He hid from God. Sin consciousness made Adam hide. Then God proved, for 4000 years, that it is impossible for man to partake of God's kind of a life when he feels guilty. In Adam's shame, he employed human effort to make fig leaves or "designer clothes." Today we have brand names for these fig leaf clothes called: breakthrough, worship, all night prayer, binding the devil, spiritual warfare. All these brand names are just fig leaves that we use to try and clothe ourselves because we feel so naked. We feel so filthy and guilty that we need to do something to clothe ourselves instead of dressing ourselves in the very Trinity. And, we are so proud of our clothes, "Look at what I've done! Look at all these abilities!" God's plan was always for us to be a people seated in the Trinity. Having the very same Spirit that indwells God. The Bible calls it the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit brings to us the very principles by which God lives called the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, meekness, temperance, faith. Those are the kinds of things God has between Him and Jesus. That is the God kind of life. And, instead, we have set up rules that we need to obey to satisfy an "Angry Father." My goodness, that has NOTHING to do with God. The first thing that happened to Adam was: he became guilty. Let's, for a moment, look at this in the context of finances. When I realized what Jesus is to the Father is what I am to the Father, financial stress left me and I came to a place of "eternal life" in my money. These were the words that God spoke to me that set me so free, He said, "Bertie, as sure as it is that Jesus will have tomorrow, that's how sure it is that you will have." That's God's view of my provision. I received God kind of life when I think of my future. Did I have more money? No. But, I had peace! Stress left me! His quality of life, peace, the emotion of not being in debt, entered my life. God knew the only way for us to have the God kind of life called eternal life - which is also forever - is by removing guilt. Now, removing guilt does not mean you have the God kind of life. It means you now have an open door to have a God kind of life - which is believing who He is and what He has done and believing your union with Him. To believe means to have your heart at rest at the integrity of God portrayed in Jesus. When we believe, we find His life of love, peace and joy flooding our hearts. God is not interested in paddle-beating your old life. But rather, He is interested in introducing you to His kind of life. In the measure of our guilt, we are robbed from life. Jesus has no consciousness of sin. Through one sacrifice He has taken away the sin of the whole world so that no man has to stand guilty before God. Now we can come BOLDLY to the throne of grace. The fact that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father does not mean everybody has eternal life. It means, through Jesus, that whosoever wants it can have it. When we make use of the way unto the God kind of life, we receive the Holy Spirit. We receive the born of God experience. I am not talking about the gifts of the spirit or speaking in tongues. You experience the new life entering you. These days people get so intellectual, they say there is no such thing as a born again experience. For the law influenced brain, it is

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very hard to grasp because we want to see God sitting high above, hard to grasp, difficult to please. The Bible says, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." (Jn. 1:18) He is declaring the union of man with God in a place of fellowship in the Holy Spirit. So, when we believe, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit - it is the very same Spirit that the Father and the Son have today. There is only one Spirit. The first six days of creation, God worked and worked. While He said it was good, He could not rest. The fact that it was good did not give Him a place to rest. When God created man, then He rested because we are God's resting place. Imagine your life was so good that you said, "Man, I want something else to enjoy this life too but there's nothing else! So, let's take this nothing and make a something so the something can feel how good it is to have Our kind of life." Religion has watered it down to servanthood and slavery, guilt and condemnation, and trying to work ourselves up to get God to smile over our lives. Breaking news: God was always happy! He wants us to know that joy! The Holy Spirit's purpose was not to empower you to keep the law. No. The law was not needed in the Trinity. Why? Because, who He is is more than enough. The law is not the safety net for grace. God is not interested in "getting you right." God is interested in you discovering your innocence. Then you will discover His kind of life and that life will manifest in you. Maybe this is the first time you have read my materials. Whether you are reading this immediately post-publishing or twenty years from now, I want to invite you to experience this God kind of life. This is how you do it: The Bible says, "that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."(Rom. 10:9-NKJV) Meaning, He rules over death, the law system, the system of disqualification and places you on a platform of no guilt so that you can accept Him as your Lord and receive the Holy Spirit and be seated with Christ in the heavens.