Salt and Light

You are salt and light but if the salt has lost it’s flavor what good is it but to be thrown out?

Enoch was not for God took him. 

Be perfect as your Father is perfect. 

You are a new creation in Christ. Old things have passed away. All things become new. 

See no man after the flesh. Once you knew Jesus after the flesh but not any more. 

If you are resurrected with Christ, set your mind on things above and not the things of the earth for you died and your life is hidden in Christ in God. 

These are a few of many verses that in order to receive the truth of what is being said one must think from a place “not of the earth” or “not in the natural.”  In other words, until one is born of the Spirit and the Water they are elusive and even mystical to the natural man. Those who don’t have the Holy Spirit living in them revealing how life lived in the Spirit, even while we’re in the body, makes you a stranger and an alien in this world can’t see the truth let alone live in it. The “above ways of thinking” are veiled. They are blocked from natural understanding. 

When the Temple veil was rent from top to bottom… when the man, Jesus, died for whosoever would follow Him as the resurrected Christ, “natural understanding that comes from our natural order of living as all of mankind does” is no longer the rule. “We’re only human” can no longer be claimed as truth in the case of living as “Sons of God. “

Once we “totally surrender” which is to say, “once we totally let go of the natural life” or “natural thinking, acting and even feeling” “if we truly die to this natural order in our thinking, acting and feeling” the same Spirit that rested on Jesus, the same Spirit with his seven powerful characteristics listed in Isaiah 11 and that same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead can rest upon each of us and raise us from the dead. Here is the critical thing that has to happen for that to happen. We have to die. 

Dying a physical death is easy compared to dying to living for oneself. Until we come to the reality of what a surrendered life looks like we will continue to “live of the earth” just like all mankind because we refused to step into our birthright as a Son of God. In Psalms 82 it says it like this. I made you to become (magistrates) like your Father who is God but you will die as mere men because you didn’t step up. . Every desire (a nice word for lusts) we have to live for must be surrendered or sacrificed to become what He desires for us to live for. We will never experience the resurrected life of Christ in us, the hope of glory, until we move in this direction. 

We don’t believe it’s possible to be perfect as Father called us to be because we haven’t stepped into it. Our definition of perfect is not His definition. Once you step into obedience and surrender we experience what scripture has been speaking of. That is the experience of being changed to His likeness. We are being consistently changed in our thinking, actions and behaviours and even our feelings to live in the standard that Christ presents. Every time we are obedient to Christ’s direction we are living in perfection. He is perfect. In Him, in Him, in Him we are perfect. 

When we don’t obey the word of Jesus we aren’t achieving perfection, and Jesus said “if we don’t obey we don’t love Him.”

He’s not holding our “missing the mark” against us if we fail because His blood covers our failures; however, failures are not our standard. Our failures are just the place we move away from He is my non-changing standard to move toward.  His goal is for me not to “miss the mark” and if my heart is in the right place and I am living for Him and not myself I won’t fail. My goal is to always determine to obey Him because I love Him until the standard which is Christ is formed in me. In this way I become perfect because my Father is perfect. 

Because we have been deceived by an enemy that has replaced the Kingdom of God with more palatable religious ideas where we can have everything the world offers to satisfy our lusts and pride and we will be safe to go to heaven when we die we don’t have to face the truth that we have loved the darkness the world offers more than the light of Christ. 

We “can” live in a resurrected life but we won’t until we surrender to let Him have His way in everything!!!  We can’t be salt and light. Only Christ in us can be salt and light. He’s waiting for us to let Him be that in us. 

Our Father is waiting for us to surrender. For the most part we’ve come into Christ through a watered down gospel that gets us inside the gate and the pasture land within the boundaries of His Kingdom is never touched. We have to pasture in the Kingdom to grow. (Mature) We cannot grow from what we do not eat. We want to be in the Kingdom of God and eat of mankind’s pasture (our own way). 

We have to eat His flesh and drink His blood. What does that mean???!  We have to taste His death to live. He consistently showed us how to deny ourselves by His life lived on the earth. The ultimate denial of Himself came when He had to pour out His life to save us from us. We all want the blood that washes away our stains but we want to bypass death. Well, we cannot live a resurrected life apart from dying. We cannot correctly live in thinking, acting and feeling in “an above natural life” without dying. Everyone wants to wait to get to heaven to die. 

What is our flavor?  In the metaphor of salt and light I submit to you that we have power to bring healing…not in the sense that we lay hands on the sick and they recover, even though that is true if that is what Father is doing through you. 

When I am with another Son of God who is living a resurrected life, Christ’s strength, encouragement and even admonition flows from them because they live as a new creation. That same strength, encouragement and admonition which is the very light of our Father in them heals me. How does it heal me?  

To live as a new creation among mankind in Christ is to be separated. One grows to have nothing in common with mankind. We don’t fit anymore. We aren’t supposed to. Where do we fit? We only fit in God’s family. We go through the same motions as anyone else on earth but we are different. We are “needy” for “salt and light” from one another. That “salt and light” in each of us is “Christ, in us, the hope of glory. 

What is the glory. The Spirit of Christ lives in my flesh and causes me not to follow the lusts and pride that naturally controlled me before I became a mature Son of God.” When am I not mature?  Every time I follow my own way that caters to what my lusts and pride dictate. It’s impossible!!!  Is it?

How do I do it?!!  I follow Christ. He does it. I just have to stay in the place He prepared for me in Himself. Our struggle is real and I submit to you that salt and light in you is the salt and light I need to keep me on track. We are here for each other. Christ in you is here for me. Christ in me is here for you. If we look like the world how will we be there for one another. We’re good for nothing but to be tossed out!!

Of course we don’t replace Him. We shouldn’t be able to tell ourselves apart from Him when all is said and done.

There aren’t very many of us that are here for one another who are of the same womb.  We’re so busy trying to get people “saved” while our Father wants us to live a resurrected life. Our Father will bring those who are His to us to guide them to Him and His way if He wants that. We can’t save anyone!!!  The religious world has told us it’s our responsibility to save people and no one can do that except Christ and they have to want Him for Him to save them. Most are not going to want a resurrected life. Why?  You have to die to have His light live in you and through you. 

Alas, even Sons of God are still so attached to natural ways of mankind that it is so hard to let go of it and we just don’t. Thus, we live in a half-baked way. We look like children who have a little bit of understanding playing dress-up and pretending to be adults. 

We don’t believe we can be perfect as our Father directs us to be because we hold on to the natural that blocks our ability to “see” that with God all things are possible. The more we lay down as if we are dead the more He can stand up and be the perfection He requires of us. 

When we finally come to maturity in living out of a resurrected life we will be like Enoch. He was “not” for God took him. The more anyone sees Christ in us, it will be because we are “not” for God took us. 

Y