Embracing our true identity guarantees living in a new reality. Paul wrote several times in his epistles to the churches about the life that we, the believers, ought to live before God and before the world – we are ‘in Him’ and ‘Christ is in us’. For God, there is no other way He will ever treat us and relate to us but in and through Christ alone.
Here are some of the reasons: God has accomplished His Eternal Purpose in Christ (Ephesians 3:11), in Him He chose us before the foundation of time (Ephesians 1:4) and our lives are hidden in Him (Colossians 3:3) and that in Christ we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:3).
Jesus talked of this reality to His disciples before His arrest and crucifixion. He told them to “Abide in Me and I in you” (John 15:4). There is no other way to live our Kingdom life but to always abide in Him. We can never experience the fullness of the Kingdom of God apart from remaining in Christ – in spirit, in consciousness, in desire, in heart and in an organic, living and intimate way. As for the Father, what is true with His Beloved Son is true of us because we are in Christ. It is therefore illegal for us to ever think of any thoughts or imagine ourselves contrary to God’s intent and love towards Jesus Christ.
In John 17, Jesus closed with this statement packed with great revelation, “I have declared to them Your Name and will declare it, that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” Jesus declared the Name of God to them- ‘Abba’ Father. And He promised to continually declare (reveal) it to them. God is so much a Father to us as He is to Jesus. And because of this, the perfect love of the Father towards His Beloved Son is toward all of us His children – in the same depth, measure and intent. Pause for a while and meditate on that one. Our finite mind could only infer the surface of this revelation of the Father’s great love to us.
And because of this love, Christ resides in our innermost being by the Holy Spirit. No wonder Paul prayed, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height- to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19). The Father’s Love is the master key to experiencing the fullness of His Glory.
The eagle is the king of the air. It is known for its ability to soar above the storm. With sharp vision it can spot its prey from miles away. Covered with majestic feathers and armed with powerful talons, they are designed to perform extraordinary feats.
Several times in the scripture the eagle is mentioned as a metaphor to describe God’s nature and intentions. Speaking to the nation of Israel, God said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” Exodus 19:4. Likewise, as believers, we are likened to eagles. We can read in Isaiah 40:31, “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
We all go through seasons in life like eagles. Every season has its promises, challenges, and blessings. Molting season for eagles is that time when they shed their feathers, their vision blurs and their beak and talons break off. It is one of the most painful times in an eagle’s life. It is a death process. However, it may seem an end but it is actually a renewal process so they can lead a longer life.
I went through a molting season in my life. It was a difficult time that affected all aspects of my life including my ministry. It was a life-defining transition point for me. It is my desire to share to you some of the nuggets of wisdom that sustained me through my ‘dark night of the soul’.
What do we do when we are in the middle of molting? I find great inspiration from David’s experience. David’s molting season came abruptly. One day he was in the courts of the king the next day he was a fugitive and an outcast because King Saul, driven by jealousy, wants him dead. David escaped to the wilderness of Judah and found refuge in the Cave of Adullam. That was his molting spot. During the hardest of times, when everything is being stripped away, the core of David’s heart was revealed. Like a flint, He postured his inner being towards pursuing God no matter what his external circumstances may have been. And this is what sustained him in his molting- he learned to navigate the hardest season internally. We see a glimpse of this in Psalm 63 that he wrote during the chase with King Saul.
- Divine Desperation
O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly; My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (v1)
We can just imagine David exhausted from running, thirsty, emotionally drained and alone inside a cold cave. Yet despite the hostile environment, he cried out to God in desperation, not for food, safety or a softer bed, but for the ultimate desire of his heart-His Presence. Desperation is a raw expression of a deep longing for God from a place of humility, hunger and total dependence. With his heart, David used his external circumstance to push him deeper into God’s presence. Divine desperation aligns our internal reality with the eternal reality of heaven. When this happens we are transformed to bring transformation to the world around us.
- Remember your history with God
Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and glory. (v2).
David’s desire is to pursue God no matter what. Growing up he’s had moments with God that marked him for the rest of his life. In the most difficult time, David remembered his history with God of how, in the secret place, alone in the wilderness, he played his harp for the One, standing in His sanctuary and beholding His power and glory. When we don’t know what God is doing in the now, our history with God becomes a clear compass to where He is leading us next.
- Lift Him Up
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You. So I will bless You as long as I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name. My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth offers praises with joyful lips. (v3-5)
We praise God all the time, especially during hard times. Praise and worship help us focus on who God is and who we are to Him amidst our circumstances and failures. When we declare His character in the midst of our difficulties, we are aligning our whole being to His heart and affection toward us. As we keep our heart in the right position we find ourselves empowered by His grace and encouraged by His goodness. We begin to see from His perspective not ours. This will keep our heart in the right place through the uncertainty and pain of molting.
- Rest in God
When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches, for You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy. (v6-7)
In rest, silence and solitude we become more aware of His Presence. Rest positions us to hear and receive from Him. This is so important because oftentimes when we go through difficult seasons we react in a number of ways: escape, isolate, fight or blame others. To meditate on Him is to be immersed in Who He is and understand that He is with us and for us. Rest is making room for God to work a work that He only could do in us and through us.
- Hold On
My soul clings to You; Your right hand takes hold of me. (v8)
During the difficult times much of the work of God happen deep in us. During those times, His promises and His Presence will be our sustenance when we don’t have the capacity to see what’s ahead and the confidence to continue. His Word will be the bedrock on which we anchor our hope in the midst of the storm. What a revelation David had about this, that when he clings to God with all that he is, he sees himself embraced with His mighty hands. No wonder he ends his song declaring, “But the king will rejoice in God.” (v11) Who was the king he was referring to? Certainly, it wasn’t Saul. Nothing has changed, he sees himself the anointed king although there was no throne at all inside that dark, cold cave. He was king by heart. God said it and he hold on to Him and His promises. Nothing and nobody could change that.
When I went through my molting season, I was desperate and broken. I was doing ministry for 16 years. I’ve seen many amazing things that God did through me in the past. Yet during that period I felt I was fading, passionless, helpless, exhausted from years of striving. But all that shifted in one moment of encounter with God, in May 26, 2006. I was attending a conference with my wife Ahlmira. It was the first time we heard Leif Hetland who later on became our spiritual father. Through the revelations from his messages on the Baptism of Love, The Three Chairs and the Molting Eagle, our eyes were opened. We experienced a powerful impartation that moved us out of the molting season renewed, revived and transformed. He prayed over us and we received a life-changing baptism of love that continuous to come to us in waves. It’s been 14yrs from that moment and we are still overwhelmed by all that happened in us and through us since that molting season that prepared us for a life-altering powerful encounter with the Father. Indeed, the deep work God is doing in us during the molting process prepares us for the greater work He’s about to do in the next season.
Rest is God’s idea. We learned that God rested from all His works and delighted in them. He devoted a day to delight and celebrate in the beauty of His amazing creation. If we are to look at the significance of Sabbath through the Scripture, we will come to realize the richness of blessings this day of rest brings.
God blessed all of creation because He loved what He created. God delighted in all He did. He loves the world and all the mysteries and wonders in it. And in His sovereign love, He created man in His image and likeness, His offspring, to represent Him. He blessed them as He loves them unconditionally.
Rest is holy. Sabbath day, the seventh day of God and the first day of man is blessed and holy unto the Lord. It’s important to understand that God did not bless a temple, or a certain special location where He will rest. He blessed and made holy, a time, a day. And not only this, while the rest of the days of creation, from day one on to the sixth day, the Scripture clearly highlights its beginning and its ending by these words, “there was evening and there was morning…”, the seventh day is quite unique. It doesn’t have the distinct boundaries of day and night. It is as if eternity can be found and experienced in a special time, in that moment of rest. It is the moment where heaven and earth became so one. God’s space, the heaven, completely becomes one with man’s space, the earth.
We find God delighting in us and bestowing His blessings, dreams, abilities and life as we enter His rest. We find ourselves face to face with God and resting in His arms of love because He is our Father. We rest in Him as He delights in us. This is where God is inviting us to be in.
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:1-2
Change begins within. The starting point of a genuine transformation is to yield to Him. To surrender to Him is ‘to let go and to let God’. It is saying “not my will but Yours be done”. He is the Potter, I am the clay. To the degree that I am yielded and surrendered to Him will be the measure that I am influenced and filled by Him. For change to be lasting I must fully embrace and engage it. I should willingly let go of the old to receive the new, the lasting and the things that are of God.
A yielded life is an offering. It is the fullest expression of worship. Picture a sacrificial lamb on the altar, dead, cut open, nothing hidden, everything yielded and ready to be burned with Holy Fire. This is the kind of offering that yields a sweet smelling aroma to God. Such is an offering of life that gives glory to Him. God willingly demonstrates His Will and His Nature to the one who surrenders all. Therefore, as we yield to Him we are also postured to receive from Him. The place of surrender becomes the place of great exchange. Temporal things give way to things eternal in the yielded heart.
As we nurture the things of God in our hearts, our minds should come into submission and total alignment to what we have received from Him. We have to shift from thinking ‘as the world thinks’ to the way our Father in heaven thinks. We need to be conformed into His thinking to be transformed into His image. This is what seals the process of transformation in our lives- our minds and hearts are fixed on the things above, anchored in the Nature and the Promises of God. When the mind is set on God’s reality the supernatural becomes the norm. The impossible is possible. We are changed from glory to glory.
