Any effort to fathom the more profound mysteries of our Father and His love becomes a journey worth taking. When we are ready for such an adventure, get ready because we will confront a living fountain that showers benefits over every area of our lives. For a moment, imagine if this fountain were to cease. A desolate state would thrust the House our Father built into a hopeless place and vanquish it of purpose and power. You see, we can't live without this fountain of love any more than our physical bodies can live without fresh water. This brings us closer to the original statement that was made earlier: The family of God is perhaps not the love-saturated Bride that we hold her up to be. But before we explain this, I wish to provide a personal testimony regarding His love.

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PERSONAL

EXPERIENCE

 

Over 25-years ago, my life was swept into an extraordinary, a river that was so prominent that it still carries me today. As the years have passed since the Toronto outpouring, I recall driving home from a meeting after being profoundly touched. 

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    One time during my drive back to the states following service, I felt as though I was driving not on a concrete highway but in and through the vastness of the Father's heart. There were no detectable borders, and every nation, people group, and tongue comfortably fit within it. I saw an innumerable host of people flowing into God's heart. It was enlarging to accommodate them, so no one was left out.   I considered the size of God's heart and then thought of climbing the highest mountain to see if I could get above it. I couldn't. I peered out upon the horizon, but I couldn't comprehend the vastness of it. Then I thought of plummeting myself into the deepest ocean. But when I reached its depths, the bottom was always beyond my reach. This season marked me profoundly that I am forever grateful for the journey. It left me unsatisfied with what I understood about my Father's love and left me desiring more of God in increasing measures. I came to understand the resident presence of our Lord, which I term His Divine Center—my eyes were opened more fully, and my ability to hear Him heightened. Never were these faculties sharper, nor my internal environment more vibrant. 

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     Revivals are infamous for this. They re-center people's lives. Indeed, the day that I was born-again, the Holy Spirit started the gravitational pull of everything in my life towards the center of God. Our spiritual center begins to consume the waste-filled places and valleys of our emotions, and it renews our minds and spirits. A good self-image is restored, literally and genuinely, and our entire life becomes God-centered and purposed once again. 

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     You see when one's spiritual center is weak old mindsets and patterns stay rooted. It is the cause of many hazards in the House of our Father. It can spawn Jezebel spirits on one extreme, spirits of control in another, and insurmountable spirits of rebelliousness and independence. The middle spectrum of behavior is low self-esteem, the most common behavior, although this latter spectrum can be the least visible!

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YOUR PERSONAL

GROUND ZERO 

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As we build upon this topic of our Father's Unfathomable Love, I wish to introduce you to a place within your heart and emotion that I call your personal ground zero. It is where the Spirit does its reconstruction work and where a war wages by our adversary. Perhaps you have heard these dark declarations:

You're unworthy;

You feel unloved and unappreciated.  

Does this sound familiar?

 

 Maybe you are an individual that always feels disconnected from people. Perhaps, you feel the need to defend yourself or retaliate for what someone did, and even dishonesty can arise due to fear of others. Beloved, only the Father's love can right this emotional ship and restore correct identification that will settle your internal environment. As long as our self-identity is out of balance, not rooted firmly in Him, unhealthy emotions pose open doors daily that the adversary can enter. But when faith and love invade our hearts, one discovers their true self; Faith births an awareness of heirship and right identification. So, let's explore further what it means to be an heir to God's kingdom. 

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LIVING

AS HEIRS 

(Romans 8:18-17)

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We have maintained to being an heir is an extraordinary gift that comes through adoption. If you received Jesus as your Messiah, adoption has happened to you irrespective of your feelings.

    But are you living it?

    Has it regenerated your image of yourself?

    Have your thoughts reached that higher plateau of what adoption and being an heir entails?   To the ordinary person, an heir is something associated with royalty or even the Royal family of England, perhaps. An heir of the living God is much higher, nobler, and more enduring. God-given-heirship is nothing less than an impenetrable fortress of God-centered living. It alleviates the downward pull of low self-esteem, so our self-identification can rise to its God-given state. Notice how this process works powerfully in us and how the Father's love begins to transform us. 

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     Upon salvation, the Spirit travels down to the base of operations (or ground zero). There God begins the reconstruction process as He reaches down where all the world's damage has been pent up. Perhaps we've been damaged through sin and rebellion, or life's experiences have left a dark residue upon our hearts and minds. This process of descending, Yeshua modeled, when He traveled down into the bowels of the earth following His death. He walked on "ground zero" of the spiritual realms and set the captives free just as He set us free. However, when we come to faith, the Spirit naturally wants to descend there, but we're not ready. I say the Spirit is always willing, but we are reticent and often uncooperative. We want to leave certain areas of our hearts and lives out of reach of the Holy Spirits' work until we are ready. Sometimes we are never prepared for what the Spirit desires to lift us out of. 

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ASCENDING

And Descending

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    When the Spirit descends into the depths of our minds and emotions, the reconstruction process begins. We begin to grow stronger and more resilient, and even more peaceful. The enemy's lies no longer have power over us because we start to live as new creations. This remarkable transformation is proof of a living God and the supernatural power of the Lord's Sacrifice. New life begins to take actual shape. When Jesus descended following His death, He ascended above the power of darkness. The higher he went, the smaller and weaker the devil became, until his strength was utterly impotent. At that point, death lost its sting. You see, descending and then ascending has been the pattern of transformational life ever since. Have you learned that one must go down to go up?

    We must kneel to rise.

    We must serve to be used.

    We must humble ourselves to be elevated. Finally, we approach what it means to have real abundant life through this process. And the question remains, what is the Abundant Life? 

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READ PART II:

THE ABUNDANT LIFE