Okay, beautiful, beautiful people, family, how are you doing? I believe we are live now and it is an
honor to be with you. So exciting what God is doing. So exciting hearing all the testimonies
of how God is touching people's lives. And yes, so, so honored to be with you right now. So
yeah, just as you come on board, let me welcome you. Let me give you a royal welcome and may
the love of God fill you and flood you and consume you and burn in you. Let me,
as we jump into this session, this session is going to be a really dynamic, wonderful,
exciting session. So let me just start with this in this session. You're going to get
just amazing baptisms in the love of God. We're going to go real deep. We're going to go real
deep into the origins of the gospel, the dynamics of the gospel. I'm going to actually probably
for you open up a can of worms of a lot of questions, a lot of like, whoa, what is this?
But it's going to be really powerful. And the whole point is to empower you to step into the
divine dance like never before. We're going to break the orphan curse and we're going to break
the three big lies that produce the orphan curse in our life and in our lives and that have been
producing the orphan curse in lives for generations, for over 1500 years. It's really, it's the whole
story of humanity. We're breaking the curse of humanity, breaking the orphan curse. So
let's pray. And let me start with a scripture that I'd really love to just read over you as
we get into this, because the heart of this is all about being launched back into the divine
dance. So if you've got your Bibles, you can turn with me. We're going to Ephesians
3. I'm going to read it to you in the amplified version.
And it's just beautiful. It's all about the divine dance. So
here you go. I'm just going to start reading from verse 16. May he grant you out of the riches of his
glory to be strengthened and spiritually energized with power through his spirit in your inner self,
indwelling your innermost being and personality so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith
and may you, having been deeply rooted and securely grounded in love, be fully capable of
comprehending with all the saints, God's people, the width and the length and the height and the
depth of his love, fully experiencing that amazing endless love and that you may come to know
practically through personal experience, the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge
without experience, that you may be filled up throughout your whole being to all the fullness
of God so that you may have the richest measure, the richest experience of God's presence in your
lives and be completely filled and flooded with God himself. Isn't that wild? This is so
critical to the journey that we're going on because Paul is saying that your entire experience
with God should be founded on being completely, radically, outrageously, supernaturally,
powerfully baptized into his love, that you would be founded and grounded on your whole Christian
experience, would be rooted and established in the supernatural experience of the wonder of God's
limitless love for you and as that love infuses you, it would infuse every part of your being and
the whole core of your being would be flooded with the richest measure of God's presence
possible. Wow, that is the divine dance and Paul's heart here is that we would all be founded and
grounded in the divine dance, that would be the beginning of our story, the middle of our story,
the end of our story, that was Paul's hope, his declaration, his aspiration, his goal
as he was preaching the gospel is that to bring people
people into the divine dance and they'd be swallowed up in this radical,
radical, supernatural experience of God's love.
Wow! That there is the heart of the gospel that Paul preached,
that Jesus preached. It's the core of the gospel.
It's the beginning of the story.
It's the middle of the story.
It's the end of the story.
It's Genesis 1.
It's the desire.
It's the reason God made us in his image so that we could participate
equally as dance partners with the Trinity in the divine dance.
Perfectly receiving divine love and giving perfect expressions of
divine love.
That, my friends, that is the heart of the gospel.
So let us, let me pray.
Let me pray for this baptism of love to fill you, to flood you,
to overwhelm you, to undo you, and then we are going to jump
into a wild, beautiful session.
Oh, Abba Father.
Whoa! King Jesus.
Holy Spirit.
You are perfection in every way.
Wow! Your wonders know no end.
Your glory is indescribable in its perfection.
And I thank you that your desire for us is to be swallowed up in
divine love, to be consumed in the divine dance, and to know
every moment of every day, the wonder of fellowship with the
Trinity in all its fullness, in all its wonder, in all its glory.
And Papa, this divine dance, this baptism in love, I release it
right now.
May that baptism in divine love swallow you up like never before.
May the fires of divine love go deeper, deeper, deeper.
May the intensity of the fires of divine love be turned up like
never before.
May the flames of divine love consume your body and soul and spirit.
May they consume your conscious mind, your subconscious mind, your
unconscious mind.
May they go into the deepest part of your being and infuse everything
that you are, every fiber of your being, body and soul and spirit.
May it be baptized and marinated and immersed and completely
swallowed up and consumed in the wonders of this divine love.
May the perversion of divine love break out in every part of your
life. May the power of divine love manifest in every part of your
life. May the wonders of divine love amaze you like never before.
Whoa, in Jesus name.
Amen.
Oh, wow.
That is beautiful.
How beautiful is this?
You know, we've talked about, you know, like God search me, bend me
on this journey that we've been going on.
We've been saying, leave no stone unturned in me.
We've talked about the renewed mind is an open heaven.
And I tell you what, the best way to go on that journey is just to get
undone by the fires of the love of God.
He is an all-consuming flame.
The very flame of the Lord is the flames of love.
And as we receive an outpouring of his love into our hearts like never
before, that all-consuming fires of his love consume everything that
veil Christ in us so that Christ can be revealed.
So beautiful.
Well, fam, we're going to get into session five.
Well done on journeying with me.
This has been a powerful, powerful journey, and I'm sure that this
is going to bring questions.
So I've actually created a bonus session tomorrow.
Our last session for the Open Heaven Intensive is 3 p.m.
today, but I'm creating a bonus Zoom room conversation for tomorrow.
You can jump and bring any questions.
I'm sure this session is going to bring up a bunch of questions, but
every great question has a great answer.
And to just give context on this session, this is bringing truth
to you that ended for me years of the orphan existence.
So years of, you know, I was born in Indonesia in the jungle as a
missionary kid.
My parents came back to New Zealand when I was two and they became
pastors.
My first job was working for a church.
I've been in Christian ministry pretty much my whole life.
And so I've been saturated in religion and it hasn't always been
helpful.
In fact, it was in this context.
I mean, even if you're not in religion,
you're going to pick up the orphan lies somewhere.
But the gospel became the my whole life was the gospel.
But what I didn't realize is that there are lies
that have been embedded in the gospel for over 1500 years
that were producing orphan dysfunction and orphan curse in my life.
So I hated myself.
I struggled with sin.
I struggled with shame.
I struggled with inadequacy.
I struggled with disconnection with God and getting connected with God.
I struggled with all of this internal dysfunction and chaos
pretty much most of my life.
And I was like, ah, you know, isn't freedom supposed to look like something?
The truth supposed to set us free, right?
We're supposed to have freedom.
But I didn't have freedom.
I had dysfunction because that freedom is supposed to look like an open heaven.
It's supposed to look like heaven on earth right here, right now.
It's supposed to look like the divine dance.
But for me, it was dysfunction.
It was chaos.
And so my heart really, really went after seeking it out.
Like, how do we actually get free? What's the issue?
So what I'm sharing with you now is a snippet, just a little like a little bit
of over over well over a decade of intense research and study,
you know, like over 10,000 hours in prayer.
You know, I've just spent thousands of hours in prayer
and in the woods seeking God, trying to get free.
And what I'm sharing with you now has come out of that massive journey
that that I've been on.
So I'm excited to go deep in this with you.
I'm actually going to put on a
slideshow to start with.
So give me a second here.
I'm just going to share my screen.
Let me share my screen with you and.
Couple of things that we don't need here.
Right. OK, so let me hit this for you.
Oh, I'll break out of that for a second.
This is the right thing, but let me get right to the start.
OK, right. Oh, so we're going to jump into this.
And I'm pretty sure you can see that.
And as we get in, it's awesome to be with you.
So let me know where you are joining from today.
Let me know how you're doing.
Let me know if there's anything that you have found of real value so far
in the journey. I'd love to hear that.
So let me just double check that this is working for us
the way that it's supposed to.
OK. Right, it is working.
OK, so here we go.
Where did our gospel come from?
We're going to talk about stuff today that is breaking the curse,
breaking the orphan curse.
And we have to understand the context of our gospel.
There's a lot of beautiful things about our gospel,
but our gospel came from somewhere.
It's been on a journey for centuries.
And I want to share with you where it's actually come from
and how we got the gospel that we've got today
and the structural issues with it that are actually producing the orphan curse.
OK, so here we go. Where did our gospel come from?
Let's have a little journey into the history of the gospel,
where it's come from.
And just give a few snapshots here of the gospel.
So an action. Righto.
So we're going to go right back.
I'm going to start with this little picture here you like.
We'll start at 19A, the close, Lickfield, Staffordshire in the United Kingdom.
So check out this little picture here.
This is the cathedral in Lickfield.
And here is an amazing statue of the seven fathers.
So here's the seven fathers, a little bit more of a close up.
You've got some people here.
You may or may not know them.
But on the left, you've got St.
Augustine, St.
Jerome, St.
Ambrose, St.
Gregory, St.
John Chrysostom and St.
St. Athanasius and St.
Basil. OK, so St.
Athanasius and St.
Augustine are really the two most influential
father figures of church theology.
OK, so this is three men.
The two men, St.
Augustine and St.
Athanasius are two of the most influential men in history
in the history of Christian theology.
So we're going to realize that nearly everything we believe
actually traces its way back to these two guys in one way or another.
So that there is St.
Augustine and this is St.
Athanasius.
There are two main men.
And so to understand these, who these men are
and influence their thoughts have had on history,
we'd better go back a little bit further.
OK, so let's go all the way back to the beginning where you'll know this guy.
Let's start with Jesus.
Ta-da! This is a picture by Akiana.
OK, so we start with Jesus.
And then after Jesus, we've got his most trusted.
disciple John, right? Yay, John, we love John. Well, John had a cool guy that he discipled. So,
John lived 6 AD through to around 100 AD, okay? But he discipled a guy named Polycarp. And
according to St. Jerome, John ordained Polycarp as the Bishop of Smyrna. There we go. This is
Polycarp. Polycarp was burned at the stake. He was martyred, and the flames didn't burn him,
but they stabbed him to death. That's pretty awesome. Polycarp was the man, okay? He was a
real legend. And then here's Irenaeus. So, Irenaeus was born in the early...
Hello. Sorry, mate. Irenaeus was born in the early 2nd century and died around 202 AD. As a young
man, Irenaeus used to listen to Polycarp preach, and he was a Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul, or that's
Lyons now in France, okay? And then after him came Athanasius of Alexandria, okay? So,
what I'm doing is I'm sharing with you the main guys that were in the church that were leading
the church, okay? So, then came Athanasius, right? And Athanasius is a superstar of the gospel. So,
296 to 373 AD, that is Athanasius, okay? And then after him, you have St. Augustine,
okay? St. Augustine, he lived in... He was the Bishop of Hippo. So, Algeria, North Africa is
where he lived. So, St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, 354 to 430 AD. So, these are you guys.
Now, listen. St. Augustine was the most influential theologian in the history of the
Western church and perhaps the whole world to date. Well, after his death, his teachings were
key in the East-West schism. So, I'm going to talk about that in a moment. And he's the father
of the Western church. So, you cannot underestimate how much influence he has on your psychology.
He was held a hero in the West. In the East, he was respected for his contributions to the faith,
but his theology was considered at best controversial and to many, heresy, okay?
So, over here in Algeria, this was considered the Western church. And in the Eastern church,
they respected him, but they were like, no, man, we're not down on what you're teaching. Because
actually what happened is you've got all the other fathers. You've got John, Jesus, John,
Polycarp, Irenaeus, Athanasius, they're all preaching the same gospel, right? And then
Augustine comes in and he brings in a brand new gospel. Before Augustine, this was not the gospel,
but Augustine brought in a whole new gospel and it caused major, major issues in the church,
which actually took centuries to unfold. So, let's check it out. So, here was the points
that St. Augustine brought in and what was disputed by the Eastern church. So, he brought
in this concept of original sin. He redefined baptism. He talked about predestination and
irresistible grace. He talked about no free will, especially in regard to salvation.
And he was in conflict with the Nicene tree regarding the definition of the Trinity. So,
points of St. Augustine's theology that the Eastern Orthodox church found controversial
or heretical and never embraced as Orthodox. So, these are the points of
Augustine's theology that the Eastern church struggled with. Original sin, redefining baptism,
predestination, irresistible grace, no free will, especially in regard to salvation,
conflict with the Nicene Creed regarding the definition of the Trinity. Everything, okay?
Everything. So, this is polar opposite. So, you've got this guy, St. Augustine coming in
and the Eastern church, which is the guys all the way back who are the main church,
all of a sudden, Augustine comes out of nowhere, creates a new gospel. And these guys are like,
every single point that's your main point, we think is craziness. It's heresy. We're not into
that. That is crazy, right? They're like, we do not buy that. They honor him because he does stand
for the church and he does a lot for the church. But they were like, no way, we are not into that.
So, every single point that was his main points were rejected by the Eastern Orthodox church.
That's a big deal to realize that there's this guy comes in out of nowhere, creates a brand new
gospel. It becomes the mainstream thing in the Western church. And everyone who's preached the
gospel before is like, no, man, none of that. We don't buy any of it. So, let's look at this.
The Eastern Orthodox church never embraced Augustine's theology because it was completely
detached from the theology of the early church fathers. The Eastern Orthodox church maintained
the gospel as preached by the early church fathers, such as St. Clement of Alexandria
and Athanasius and Polycarp and Irenaeus. They were like, we are not buying this, Augustine.
But it seems as though the whole Western church came under the enchantment of Augustine. So much so
that all of the core doctrine and theology of the Church Fathers was discarded and the whole
Western Church began to follow Augustine as if under a trance and a whole new gospel began to
emerge through Augustine's theology. Augustine has been called the great teacher of the Church
and the doctor of grace because of his influence on the doctrines of the Church.
His voice was so powerful that a simple Augustine Dixit, Augustine says,
settled all arguments. I'd say it's a quote from Chuck Fisher, a theological historian.
So Augustine's influence on the Western Church seems to have surpassed even Paul's influence
because it is not the apostle Paul's theology that is found in the Western Church, it is
Augustine's interpretation of Paul's theology. Okay, so I hope you're catching the fact that
this is a big deal. So Augustine's Greek way of thinking meant that he believed that knowing God
should be attained through intellectual knowledge as opposed to the Hebrew perspective of knowing
God through intimate experience. This Greek mindset became the normal way of thinking
in the Western Church and knowledge through intellect rather than intimate experience.
So can you see how this is a collision, like a crazy space where, you know, Paul was all about
baptizing people into the divine dance, the whole gospel, the early church fathers were all
about baptizing people into the divine dance, into experience of God, into an encounter, into a
living relationship, and Augustine's like, no, head knowledge is enough, right? Just knowing about God,
you actually have to know who he is. Okay, so it gets wild. And Augustine lived a life of double
standards and corruption, okay? He advocated violent persecution of people with different
theological perspectives, especially a group called the Donatists. There was bloodshed, there
was violence, and Augustine was like, this is how we should deal with anyone who disagrees with
me, all right? Can you understand that that might be an issue? He bribed a pope, right? He was into
bribery and corruption to get his own way, to get other people labeled heretics, okay? He was
all about like, if anyone disagrees with me, I'm going to bribe a pope, I'm going to have a court,
he had a trial against this one guy, he wasn't even, the guy didn't even turn up on,
his name slips my mind just right now, but he had a trial without him even being there,
he bribed the pope to have him declared a heretic, why? Because he couldn't stand anyone who had a
different theological perspective to him. So anyone who had this, like the perspective of
the early church fathers, he would discredit them, he would go to extreme lengths, he would persecute,
okay? So he is a man of extreme double standards. He taught that, you know, people who got married
were second-class citizens because he was celibate, and if you ever wonder why the church has
struggled with sex and sexuality and thinking that sex is wrong or evil, well, he was a good
proponent of the concept that sex is bad. So what happened is, you had, so over the next 500 years,
this dynamic of the eastern church holding to the early church fathers and Athanasius and Irenaeus,
and then the western church all coming under this trance of Augustine, it starts building up and
building up and building up, and eventually it creates the east-west schism, and it's a complete
split, right? They split the church here, so not many people talk about this, but this is the first
split away from the western Catholic church, okay? So they split geographically,
monetarily, politically, there was wars, so it's a complete split, and basically all the church
doctrine of the early fathers got almost put to death, pretty close to put to death. That's the
doctrine, basically, of the divine dance, right? Got put to death in the church, and Augustine's
brand new gospel supplanted it and became the new mainstream gospel of the western church, okay? So
that is what was going on. Beautiful thing is for the Celtic Christianity, is on the other side
of the world, not influenced by Augustine's theology, okay? So Celtic Christianity through
Saint Patrick is breaking out through the world, and when you've got people with Augustine's
theology, right, you don't have the radical evangelism, you don't have the divine life,
you don't have the ecstasies, you've got the saints and those that are in the
Catholic church because it's the universal church, but they have to transcend Augustine's theology
if they want the divine life. I hope that makes sense, let's boost on. So if we fast forward to 1517,
we have the Protestant Reformation, right, where the Protestants break out, break away from the
Catholic church, but this was primarily a reformation of systems, they didn't have a problem with the core
theology of Augustine, right? So their issues were with systems, how things were worked out,
and there was some theological stuff, but
core theology of Augustine, which was the core theology of the Western Catholic, you know,
the Catholic Church, they didn't have a problem with it. So they actually carried that out. So
John Calvin and Martin Luther are all about Augustine. John Calvin wrote one book where
he quoted Augustine 400 times. So, and here's the points. So Calvin came up with this thing
called Tulip, right, which is just another way of paraphrasing Augustine's teaching,
which is one, total depravity. So knowing that you are absolutely nasty, you're completely
defiled and corrupt, also known as original sin, unconditional election. We'll just race
through this because we'll talk about this again. But unconditional election, limited atonement,
or unconditional election. This is also a predestination. Let me just quickly touch that.
So it's a predestination basically. So not only are you, not only did God before the foundation
of the world predestined who would be saved, he also predestined who wouldn't be saved. And so
if you think about it in the way that they do things, you know, a tiny percentage of the world
is predestined to be saved by God, but the vast majority of humanity is predestined,
predesigned by God to suffer unspeakable, unending torment in hell where God himself
is the one torturing them and taking pleasure, torturing them throughout eternity. All right.
Now that right there is a major, major issue because that makes God look more like a demon
than a loving father. All right. Let's put your hand up if you know that God's a loving father
and he is not a demon, right? That is complete insanity that God predestined the majority of
the world to suffer unending, unspeakable torment and torture at his own hand and that that would
give him great delight and pleasure. That my friend is that, I don't want to disrespect, but
that is like, that is psychotic. Okay. That is not okay. You can't be teaching your kids
that God takes pleasure in tormenting people with unspeakable, unending torment that somehow
gives him delight. That is not okay. We cannot have that in the church. Then limited atonement
basically means that only a few people, you know, like the cross was not, you know, the atonement
wasn't for, everyone was only for a few select people. Irresistible grace talks about how if
God's decided that you're going to get saved, you can't escape it. And then perseverance of the
saints is basically that if you're predestined to be saved, then there's nothing you can do.
There's no, it's not even possible to backslide or whatever. So also knows once they've always
there. So, and then you've got this other guy who's an important character who doesn't really
jive with all of Augustine's stuff. So this is Jacobus Arminius and he lived from 1560 to 1609
and he came out of Calvinism with this concept of Arminianism. And if you don't know what that is,
the, well, we'll just say that pretty much every church now is in the Arminian category. If they're
not, if they're not a Calvinistic, they're probably Arminian and they've take their roots back to the
sky. So we're just trying to race through. So Greek Orthodox though, that's the early church. Now,
because there was such a massive split, right? Because it was a split of, you know, geographical
split, a financial split, there was wars, there was political split. The gospel of the early
church fathers never really came back to the West for a long time until this guy, Karl Barth.
Okay. In 1886 to 1960, oh sorry, 1986, that shouldn't, I should say 1986 to 1968, Karl Barth,
who was regarded as one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, actually started bringing
the Eastern Orthodox beliefs back to the Western world. Yeah. So, and that is in the Eastern
Orthodox Church, it's just called Orthodox, you know, it's just called theology, but we would,
in the West, we kind of, it usually gets labeled Trinitarianism. So here's a quote from Karl Barth,
he said, the best theology would need no advocates, it would prove itself. Okay. So skipping through,
right, we're going to stop the screen share, and we're going to come back here. Okay. I hope that
is just giving you a little bit of context. Okay. So what we're in right now is a massive
reformation with something that was lost to the church, you know, 1500 years ago, where the early
church fathers, the gospel they carried about the divine dance, when that was getting shut down by
Augustine, we're now in reformation right now, where God is bringing back the divine dance,
okay, he got us is going about the destruction of the orphan curse on humanity. Okay. So there are
three massive lies that we have to address in this process. Okay. Three big lies.
that produce the orphan curse. Okay, so the first one is having a false image of God. Okay,
that's the first big lie. When you have a false image of who God is, it will cause you to just,
like, it will warp your whole perspective of the world. Now, if you need a refresher on how
they saw God, you know, in that perspective, here is that quote again that I shared yesterday from
Jonathan Edwards about how, you know, this is a little snapshot of the image of God from the
message Sin is in the Hands of an Angry God. Let me read this again. You catch a little bit of
their revelation of the Father, their revelation of how nice God is. The God that holds you over
the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you.
That's another way of saying He hates you and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you
burns like fire. He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire.
He is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in His sight. You are 10,000 times more abominable
in His eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. Right now, this is crazy,
but what we have to understand is that this way of thinking is really actually at the core
of our history. You know, our gospel still has the smell of this, and our gospel still has
some of the key beliefs in it. So what we're going to talk about is, you know, so the first
slide that produces the orphan curse is a false image of God. So we have to address, and we're
going to talk about that in the session, a false image of God, because Jesus, you know, His
passion, His calling, His focus, His ministry was the revelation of the Father to actually restore
an accurate image of God. Now, when you have a false image of God, it warps everything, okay?
If you've got a false image of God, it warps, like, the entire way that you see the gospel. So
we're going to address this false image of God. Then we're going to address a false identity,
right? Because there's three things that we're going to address here. A false image of God,
a false identity, right? A false understanding of our identity, and then also a, this,
it's an interesting concept, but performance-based reality, okay? Say performance-based reality. These
are the three things that we're going to hit, because these are the three, like, the three
core things that produce the orphan curse in a person's life. A false image of God,
a false understanding of your identity, and performance-based reality. If those three
things are functioning in your life, you will not be able to participate in the divine life,
in the divine dance, in the life that you were created for. You won't be able to participate
in your birthrights. So, here's where I'm going to say, like, get ready, because I'm going to go
for it on some reformational stuff. I'm going to call some questions, but all great questions have
great answers, and I've wrestled with these, so I've got answers, because I've struggled through
this, and, you know, like, this process of struggling through this, the beauty of it is
that it put to death the orphan curse in my life. There's still journey, for sure. I'm still praying,
God, take me beyond where I am, but something I can promise you is that this, what I'm sharing
with you right now, will swallow up the orphan curse in the divine dance. You'll be able to,
you know, these are the things that will empower you to step into effortless bliss, effortless
ecstasy, effortless oneness and union. So, I'm going to say as well, like, a warning on this,
you know, when people hear some of this stuff, because it conflicts and jars with our mainstream
Christian theology, we sometimes go, ah, but let me ask you, do you think after what I've shared
with you right now, that it's possible that there might still be some lies in our mainstream
theology? You've seen the journey where the church has come from. You think it's possible, just maybe,
just maybe, we might not have it all down yet, and God might still want to take us on a journey. God
might have some greater revelation that he wants to deal with, and things that he wants to address
in us. So, one of my friends, as he was hearing this for the first time, he went away, he was so
angry that this night, we're doing several days, he's at one of our schools, and he just came back
the next day, he'd been up all night, angry. He just wanted to punch me in the face, right? And so,
this, he's just like, ah, because it was messing with him. It was just challenging his mindsets and
his views that he'd grown up with his whole life in church, the same views that I had. So, these
are the same things that I wrestled with. But then, right, the freedom of it, the life of it
started coming, and it started swallowing up its orphan existence with the divine dance. So,
he's very happy about it now, but at the time, he did want to punch me in the face.
So, let's get into it. Okay, so false image of God, it's going to cause us to see the whole
gospel story completely wrong, okay? If we want to, we have to start, right, when we want to,
if we want to see the gospel story accurately.
have to start with the divine dance, all right? But the Western Church doesn't start with the divine
dance, okay? The Western Church starts with sin, separation, wrath, and judgment, okay? That's where
they start the gospel story. And how do you see that? You see that because there's this classic,
so an Arminian way of presenting the gospel is this. You've got the two cliffs, right? On one
side is God and on the other side is humanity. Let me know if you've seen this presentation or
if you've given this presentation. I've like seen it, given it, for sure. There's these two cliffs
on one side there's God, on one side there's humanity, and then there's a great chasm of
separation between. Some of the presentations have little flames down there, but then this
cross comes, and ta-da, the cross bridges the gap of separation between humanity and God,
and the little guy can walk across the crossbeams and, yay, get to the other side and have relationship
with God. So the whole premise, right? Let me know if you think this is an issue. The whole premise
of the Western gospel, the Arminian way of articulating it, is sin and separation, right?
You are sinful and you are separated from God, and Jesus came to resolve that. He came to bridge
the gap. He came as the solution to humanity's sin and separation. Without that, there's no way
that man could get to God and have relationship with God, okay? Jesus is the bridge, and before
he came, you couldn't, you know, Jesus coming was the thing that made it possible for you to have
connection with God. The problem with that, right, and now this is not a small thing,
the problem with that, when you say that, is that you have to forget the entire Old Testament.
Think about this for a second.
This is the premise, this is the foundation of the gospel in the Western church, that Jesus came
as the solution to bridge the gap of fixed sin and bridge the gap of separation to God,
and that's how it's preached all the time. But to preach that, to teach that, you have to forget
the entire Old Testament, which was a story of extreme intimacy with God. Think about nearly
every hero in the Old Testament, they have radical intimacy with God. Moses face-to-face, Isaiah
sucked to heaven, Enoch walked with God 300 years, and then he was taken into heaven. Elijah is just
taken into heaven. All the prophets who constantly hear from God and have amazing intimacy with God,
David, Samuel, the list goes on, okay. So this is a major false foundation right there, saying that
that's the issue, and saying that the reason Jesus came is to fix sin and separation. That's rubbish.
I'm sorry, my friends, but that is not true, it's not helpful, and it comes from a false image of
God, a false understanding of what the heart of God is. The heart of God is to bring you back
into the divine dance. He wants you swallowed up in the divine love, He wants you swallowed up in
divine love, He wants you in effortless bliss, He wants you in the bliss of sonship, He wants you in
the ecstasy of oneness and union with Him. So if Jesus wasn't coming to deal with sin and separation,
what was the real issue? What was Jesus coming to do? Now on this point, let me just say that Jesus,
right, Jesus preached the gospel in all its entirety. We'll come back to that in a moment,
but Jesus preached the gospel in all its entirety. But let's go back a little bit and go, well, what
are the real issues, okay, what are the real issues that humanity had that Jesus came to fix?
So if you want to look at the real issue, we go back to the fall, we go back to Genesis 3,
and what you'll see in Genesis 3 is the fall, okay. Now the fall should give us an indication that
the problem didn't start at the fall, right, the problem didn't start at the fall. Adam and Eve
didn't all of a sudden have a problem at the fall. Adam and Eve were an exact, they were a typical
picture of what it looks like when someone is living in the identity crisis of an orphan, okay.
Adam and Eve were walking as orphans before the fall, and that's the only reason that
they fell. So what is the orphan condition? Well, it's an identity crisis. Where does an identity
crisis come from? Well, if you understand John 8, 32, that Jesus said, you will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free, then what you understand is that everything has a root,
every behavior has a root, and that root is either a truth or a lie. Truth will produce freedom,
which looks like the divine dance, and a lie will produce dysfunction, all right, or an identity
crisis. So identity crisis that we suffer, right, as humanity, an identity crisis comes from not
knowing who we are, believing a lie about who we are, and we believe lies about who we are because
we haven't got an accurate image of God, right. It's having an accurate image, an accurate
revelation of the Father that gives us freedom.
us the blueprint for our own divine design. Jesus isn't just an example for us. He is an example
of us. Jesus is an example of us. He came to reveal the Father. The issue that Adam and Eve
had is despite the fact that God loved them so much, he created the garden for them, he put them
in Eden, everything was perfect and beautiful and abundant. Despite all of that, they still had a
misperception of who God was. So they walk as orphans before the fall, which is why they fell.
Let me help you understand this. They, in one conversation, broke covenant, right? They broke
covenant with God in one conversation with Satan. That would be the equivalent of if I was downtown
and I saw a girl that I'd gone to school with and she came up to me, we started chatting,
and then just that one conversation, I decided to leave my wife, leave my kids, break my covenant,
and shack up with her and go into a life of adultery with her. Now, does that sound like
I'd be in a healthy marriage? That doesn't happen in healthy marriages, right?
That type of stuff happens when someone's already not happy in their marriage, okay? So here's the
ultimate example for you. Here's the ultimate show for you and revelation for you of the fact
that Adam and Eve walked as orphans before the fall, right? The fall was fruit of the fact that
they were already living in an identity crisis. The fall wasn't when the problem started. Here's
how you can see it perfectly. Genesis 3, we see that, and in Matthew 4, we see Jesus in temptation
in the wilderness. Adam and Eve demonstrate what orphans look like. Jesus, in Matthew 4,
is the exact opposite. It's a parallel moment, and He's demonstrating what sonship looks like.
Jesus demonstrates that when we know who we are, when we're walking in our sonship, when we're
walking in truth, when we're walking in a revelation of the Father and a revelation of our identity,
what happens? Satan comes, and he gets what? A denial, okay? Satan comes again. What does he get?
Another denial. Satan comes again. What? Another denial. And what does Jesus reveal to us and
demonstrate to us? He demonstrates and reveals to us that when we're walking in our identity,
when we're walking in sonship, we always walk in freedom. It's John 8, 12. Jesus said,
whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, okay? He has said that darkness belongs to the
orphan curse. It doesn't happen when you're walking in freedom. When you're walking in
freedom, you are dancing all day long. So what was the issue? The issue is not sin and separation.
Those are issues, but they're not the main issue. They are a symptom, not the cause. And the problem
with the Western gospel is it's taken a symptom and made a misdiagnosis, thinking that the symptom
is the root cause, when the symptom of sin and separation is just a symptom. The root cause is
a misperception of the image of God, a false revelation of who God is, and a false understanding
of our own identity that produces dysfunction and leads us into that world of darkness.
All right, how are you going with that? Let me know how that's feeling. What's that stirring up?
What's that raising up? So what's the solution? Okay, because remember, where does
Jesus want to take everyone? Back to the divine dance. That's where he wants us to take us. So
in John 17, 26, this is what Jesus said, I have made your name known to them, or your nature,
or I've revealed you to them, and will continue to make you known, so that the love with which
you have loved me may be in them, overwhelming their heart, and that I may be in them. That is
the divine dance. That's what Jesus is talking about there. And he said, I've revealed you to
them, and I will continue to reveal you to them, in order for what? In order that this radical,
wild, outrageous love that we've known since before the foundation of time, this love that
has swallowed up my heart, my body, my soul, my mind, my emotions, my entire being, this love
that baptizes me and consumes me, may consume them. So Jesus came to reveal the Father.
And what we have to understand about Jesus is that Jesus preached the gospel in its full
entirety, the whole thing. Jesus preached the whole gospel, right? Matthew 4, 23, Jesus was
going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the
kingdom, and healing every kind of disease, and every kind of sickness among the people, right?
So he was already preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He already had the whole gospel. This
is really important. Not only that, in Matthew 24, 14, Jesus made a prophecy, a powerful prophecy.
He said, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony
to all nations, and then the end will come. So understand this, Jesus preached the gospel in all
its entirety. Jesus taught his disciples to preach the gospel in all its entirety. Jesus
prophesied that the gospel that he preached and the gospel that he taught his disciples
was the gospel that would be preached to the whole world and then the end will come.
So why is that so important? It's so important because Jesus preached the entire gospel
before the cross. Okay, think about that for a moment. Jesus preached the entire gospel,
not part of it, the entire gospel before the cross. So if you want to understand the gospel,
you don't look in the epistles, you don't look in Acts, you don't look in those places,
you look at Jesus. If you want to understand the gospel, you look at Jesus because Jesus preached
the whole gospel. The problem is people look at the cross to discover the gospel. Jesus preached
the gospel before the cross. So what is the cross? The cross is not, you've got to hear me real
carefully on this, the cross is not new information about the gospel because Jesus has already
preached it in its entirety. He's already taught the gospel, the disciples the gospel in its
entirety. He's already prophesied that that gospel that he's been preaching and teaching
is the gospel that will go to the whole world. So the cross is not about new information being
added to the gospel. The cross is about the greatest exclamation mark, the greatest underscore,
the greatest emphasis, the greatest shout out, the greatest declaration of the gospel that he'd
already been declaring. And what was that gospel? That gospel was the revelation of the Father and
the cross is the single greatest revelation of the Father that humanity has ever had. See,
in the context of perfection and Eden, Adam and Eve didn't get the whole nature of the Father.
They still didn't get the revelation of the Father, despite his love being lavished on them,
and even there in their dysfunction, in their beauty, in Eden, in the midst of all of that,
they didn't catch a revelation of the Father. So God's like, I'm going to take this to a whole
new level to reveal my nature. And so what is his nature? His nature is love. So he's like,
I've got to take this to a whole new level to reveal love because they're not getting it now.
What am I going to do to create the ultimate revelation of love for humanity? And look,
the fullness of love. See, in Genesis, God's love for Adam and Eve was never tested.
That was never tested. His love, the power of his love was never tested. It wasn't put on display.
They could doubt it. They weren't sure. They could doubt it. I don't know. Does God really
love us? They had room to doubt it. But God's like, okay, right, we're going to create the
greatest revelation of my love that the world has ever and will ever see. And it's going to be the
cross because it's only in the context of the full force of hatred that the full power of love
can be revealed. So here's Jesus, God, the Father. Jesus, listen, Jesus came to reveal the Father,
not change the Father. His whole life, Jesus said, I have revealed the Father. If you've seen me,
you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. I do only what I see the Father doing. Everything
that Jesus has done is an exact mirror of the Father. If you've seen Jesus, you've seen the
Father. I and the Father are one. Just before Jesus goes to the cross, he says, I and the
Father are one. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. All right. So
he's spat on, he's mocked, he's publicly disgraced, he's falsely accused, he's whipped, he's beaten,
he's mocked, he's flogged, he carries his own cross, he's crucified naked in front of them.
And crucifixion was common for your bowels and your bladder to involuntarily purge. So he's covered
in his own blood, most likely covered in his own feces and urine and naked, hanging in front of
everyone with a fake crown on, put there to mock him. And here's everyone gathered around him saying,
if God loves him, let God save him. So they're still mocking him. They're gathered around him
in a circle mocking him, right? And what is happening is that this is the greatest revelation
of love, the greatest revelation of the Father that humanity is ever hearing.
You know, in those times they had this, the Romans, they liked a little bit of hygiene,
right? So they would actually pay people to scrub their butts after they'd been to the toilet,
they'd pay them to scrub their butts. And they had these sponges on sticks that would be soaked
in wine vinegar. And they would pay these poor people to run around and scrub their butt
afterwards with these sponges. And you know what? One of those, that's what was rubbed in Jesus'
face when he was on the cross. Can you imagine that, having that rubbed in your face? At what
point do you think your love would flinch? You know, when someone nails your first hands to the
cross?
would your love flinch at that point? Would you start raging? Would it be when they nailed your
second hand? Would it be when they nailed your feet? Would it have been when they, when Judas
first betrayed you? At what point would your lover flinched and stopped and withdrawn and held back?
At what point would have you turned to like and raged out? You know, like, I tell you what,
I don't know if I would, how I would be going after the first nail was put in my hand. That
would bring, that would cause me to trigger, right? The second hand would cause me to trigger.
If all of that failed, being stripped naked in front of everyone, I'm pretty sure that would
cause me to trigger. Rubbing something gross like that in my face, that would cause me to trigger.
But Jesus never once does his love flinch. Never once does his love flinch. You do not have to
question whether the love of God is going to flinch for, over you. His love is unconditional.
His love is unconditional. His love is never stopping, never relenting. His love will not
flinch. It will not falter. It will not be restricted or minimized. His love is stuck
on full volume for you. God, God created you because he didn't have one of you and he created
you to be loved. And the ultimate calling on your life is to be perfectly loved. This is what the
purpose of the divine dance is to smother you, saturate you, infuse you with divine love.
This is the revelation that Jesus is bringing right now. The revelation of the father on the
cross. Now, let me read to you because some people think that, oh, wasn't the father abandoning Jesus
on the cross? Rubbish. Wasn't the wrath of God being poured out on Jesus on the cross? Listen,
the Greek word for wrath is the word, you know, one of the main words for wrath is the word orge,
all right? And it should not be translated as hatred. It shouldn't be interpreted the way
it's being interpreted. It's translated by people who have an angry father, an angry God,
as their picture of who God is. The Greek word orge is the root word for the word orgasm. Now,
that is crazy, right? But was God pouring out his orge on Jesus on the cross? Listen, what the
word orge cannot even be separated from love. Everything about God is love, even the wrath of
God. And I'm not saying God doesn't have wrath, but I'm saying the definition of wrath is intense
desire to the point of shaking, intensely reaching out to possess a thing to the point of shaking.
In 2008 in Wyoming, there's a guy, Ron Leeming Jr., and they're out hunting out,
and a bear attacks them, right? Ron Sr. fires an arrow at the spear. They're out bow hunting,
fires an arrow at the spear as it comes out running after it, gets his son, right? It's just tearing
his son up. It's tearing his son up. And so the father, Ron, he runs after the spear and he attacks
it with a bow. The spear could have just turned around and cut him in half with one swipe, but
the father is thrashing the spear, thrashing him, thrashing it, thrashing it with his bow.
What's that? That's orge. That's wrath. That's love expressed as wrath because wrath attacks
anything that destroys something that you love, okay? And then this bear, it just wandered off,
and that one arrow that he'd shot had actually gone right into its heart. The bear fell over and
died, and the son survived. But wrath is an expression of love. It's not hatred. So Jesus
was on the cross, right? But the wrath of the father wasn't being poured out. The father was
being revealed, okay? So the father wasn't abandoning Jesus on the cross. Let's read Psalm
22. What does Jesus say when he's on the cross? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Everyone's
like, hasn't, didn't the father forsake him? Listen, let's think about this. My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? Let's look at Psalm 22. What does it start with? My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? What is that? Listen, Psalm 22 is a messianic psalm that was one of the
most famous psalms in the entire of the Old Testament. It's one of the most famous things
to the Israelites is Psalm 22. You had the regular psalms, and you had the messianic psalms, and the
messianic psalms were the psalms that were like the most famous, the most popular, the most sung
psalms, okay? So Psalm 22 starts with this. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from that my anguish, my cries of anguish? So what
Jesus is saying when he's on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's not saying,
my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, as though he has now separated from the father,
as though the father could somehow be separated from him. He's saying Psalm 22. Check out Psalm
22. Look at Psalm 22. It's like this. If I start singing this. Amazing. What's next? Grace, right?
You finished it in your own head. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. You know that song, and that's
exactly what it was like for the Israelites. So it took them to one place, Psalm 22. My God, my God,
why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? So
Jesus is feeling what it feels like to be separated. As much as you can feel separation, Jesus
felt it, and he's dealing with his feelings, right? We've got to tell our feelings the truth.
day but you do not answer by night but I find no rest yet you are enthroned as the holy one
you are the one Israel praises and you our ancestors put their trust they trusted and you
delivered them they cried to you they cried out and were saved and you they trusted and were put
and were not put to shame but I am a worm and not a man scorned by everyone despised by the people
all who see me mock me now you start watching this and start seeing how relevant this starts
getting to the people who are standing at the cross all who see me mock me they hurl insults
shaking their heads he trusts in the lord they say let the lord rescue him let him deliver him
since he delights in him yet you brought me out of the womb you made me trust in you even
at my mother's breast from birth I was cast on you from my mother's womb you have been my god
do not be far from me trouble is near and there is no one to help many bulls surround me strong
bulls of bastion encircle me roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against
me I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint my heart has turned to wax it
is melted within me my mouth is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to the roof of my
mouth excuse me one second dogs surround me a pack of villains encircles me they pierce my hands
and my feet all my bones are on display people stare and gloat over me they divide my clothes
among them and cast lots for my garment but you lord do not be far from me you are my strength
come quickly to help me deliver me from the sword my precious life from the power of the dogs
rescue me from the mouth of lions save me from the horn of wild oxen
I will declare your name to my people in the assembly I will praise you you who fear the
lord praise him all you descendants of Jacob honor him revere him all you descendants of Israel for
he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help from you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly
before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows I will pour the poor will eat and be satisfied
listen listen to this guys listen what we're seeing and what we're hearing right now
is describing exactly what's happening at the cross
this is this is crazy um you know if we go back here a dog surround me a pack of villains encircles
me they pierce my hands and my feet all my bones are on display people gloat uh people stare and
gloat over me they divide my clothing among them and cast lots for my garment you know this psalm
22 there's only one thing that this can be speaking about is speaking about the cross so
jesus want to say my god my god why haven't you forsaken me he's saying psalm 22 and when he said
psalm 22 it brought all of those people to that place in psalm 22 they all knew that song they
knew it off by heart word for word so it brought all the people that were standing at that cross
to psalm 22 and they realized oh my gosh we're standing in the fulfillment of one of the greatest
messianic psalms but you lord do not be far from me you are my strength come quickly to help me
deliver me from the sword my precious life from the power of the dogs rescue me from the mouths
of lions save me from horn the horns of wild oxen and so he starts off in this place of
disconnection but he finishes off like not based on feelings but based on reality and truth and
starts getting crazy victorious i will declare your name to my people in the assembly i will
praise you you who fear the lord praise him all your descendants of jacob honor him revere him
all you descendants of israel for he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted
one he has not hidden his face from him you hear that he has not despised or scorned the suffering
of the afflicted one he has not hidden his face from him right he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help this is crazy right everyone thinks that jesus was abandoned
the wrath of god is poured out on jesus on the cross and that jesus is separated and god can't
look on his sinfulness what would that say about you and your worst moment in your darkest hour
could god not look on you in your darkness that's not what we see in the story of the lost son and
the good father right in luke 15 we see the story of the good father the story of the good father is
the ultimate parable about the gospel and what do we see there in a son's lostness and in his darkness
we see a loving compassionate father running to the son who embraces the son listen at the fall
god it's not like facebook right we say you might unfriend someone on facebook god didn't unfree
like unfather humanity at the fall god was always our father god didn't unsan us at the fall right
and we see
See that in the story in Luke 15,
the son was always as son as a son can be.
The father was always as father as a father can be.
And the son, though the son was lost,
the father's heart didn't stop beating for him.
The father's heart didn't stop loving him
despite his lostness.
It didn't matter how lost the son was,
he was always a son.
It didn't matter how lost the son was,
the father remained a father.
And God doesn't abandon you in your point of darkness.
And he didn't abandon Jesus in his point of darkness.
And this is where he says it right here.
He has not despised or scorned the suffering
of the afflicted one.
He has not hidden his face from him,
but has listened to his cry for help.
From you comes the theme of my praise
and the great assembly.
Before those who fear you, I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied.
Those who seek the Lord will praise him.
May your hearts live forever.
All the ends of the earth will remember
and turn to the Lord.
Now he starts getting wild,
declaring this is gonna turn into global revival.
Every part of the world is gonna start following him.
He's starting to get real victorious.
All the ends of the earth will remember
and turn to the Lord.
And all families of the nations will bow down before him.
And for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.
All the rich of the earth will feast and worship.
All who go down to the dust will kneel before him.
Those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him.
Future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn,
he has done it.
Or other translations, it is finished.
So Jesus says two things out there.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And it is finished.
It's the first line and the last line of Psalm 22.
So when he's saying, my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me?
He's not saying, God, why have you forsaken me?
He's saying, I am the Messiah.
Look at this.
I am the Messiah.
I'm fulfilling the single greatest messianic Psalm
and prophecy in the whole of the Torah.
This is wild.
I hope you are loving this, right?
So Jesus didn't come as a sacrifice
to appease the wrath of God.
He came as a revelation of the Father
that when you see him, you will see the Father.
And when you see the Father,
you will discover who you really are
because Jesus isn't just an example for you.
He's an example of you.
We were made in the image of God
and Jesus demonstrates what that looks like,
what it looks like to be made in the image of God.
All right.
So that's powerful.
We're running out of time, guys.
So I'm gonna fast forward some things real quick here.
Let me know if you can handle a little bit more of this.
Okay, so that's the first point.
You're made in the image.
Jesus came to reveal the Father.
Our first big lie that produces the orphan curse
is a false understanding of who God is.
The second thing is a false understanding of who we are.
Let me tell you a story.
Psalm 139 verse 14 says,
I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.
You'll know that, right?
I was reading that one day
and I had this argument with God, right?
Where I said to him,
isn't it a bit proud to go around?
You're like, if I got a t-shirt made that said,
I'm wonderful, I went around wearing that.
Wouldn't that be proud?
I know that all my Christian friends would say
that was pride and that there was all sorts of,
there's a lot of things wrong with that, right?
But he said to me, where's the real pride issue?
Is the real pride issue in believing that you're wonderful
or is the real pride issue in refusing to agree with me?
And it's in that moment that he spoke to me
and he said, humility is simply to agree with God.
Now, if God says you're wonderful, you are wonderful.
And humility is simply to agree with God
and pride is to disagree with God.
So if God says you're wonderful,
if God says you're perfect,
then pride is to disagree with who he says you are.
So being made in the image of God,
you can't get more perfect than that, my friend.
2 Corinthians 5, 21 says that you are the righteousness
of God in Christ Jesus.
You can't get more perfect than that.
How much sinful nature does the righteousness of God have?
So let me look at John 17, 22 with you.
John 17, 22.
So here's the thing, right?
You can tell that you have an identity issue
that will produce the curse of sonship in your life
if you believe that you are less than perfect in any way,
right?
You are perfect.
Now, let me share with you a little bit more
on how that works, but you are perfect, my friend.
And if you are not fully persuaded
that you're exclusively defined by God,
that you are exclusively defined by the Trinity,
it will produce the orphan curse in you.
In John 17, 22, Jesus said,
I have given them the same glory that the father gave me
that they may be one as we are.
are one. What is that? So first of all, that they may be one as we are one. That's the divine dance,
right? Jesus is giving us a secret here, a key to stepping into the divine dance, to stepping
into the bliss of sonship, to stepping into the ecstasy of oneness and seamless unity.
I've given them the same glory that the Father gave me, that they may be one as we are one.
That word in the group, glory, is the word doxa. Now, some amazing things here. He's speaking
about you and I, and he said, I have. So past tense, right? In the past, he said,
this is a present reality. This is truth. This is reality right now. Jesus is saying that this
is reality right now, but just all the way back then, Jesus is saying, this is the truth about
your identity. I have given you the same glory, the same doxa, or the same identity that the
Father gave me. What's that? That's Genesis in action, Genesis 2, 26, that you've been made in
the image of God. So the word doxa there is a really interesting word, okay? So first of all,
here we go. I've given them the same glory that the Father gave me. So that is perfection. That's
who you are. You're exclusively defined by God. Nothing else can ever steal your identity from
you. You're exclusively defined in the image of God. No failures you've been through, no words
spoken against you, no sin, no trauma, no abuse, nothing that's been affected on you. None of the
lies that have ever come upon you, none of them have any authority to redefine what God has
exclusively defined in his image. And what he's said is that you are exclusively made in the image
of his glory. If we take that word doxa, I've given them the same doxa that the Father gave me,
that they may be one as we are one, right? So the key to walking in the divine dance, the key to
living in the divine dance is understanding your doxa, your glory. The key to understanding your
glory is getting an accurate revelation of the Father. That's why Jesus didn't come, Jesus dealt
with sin and separation as a symptom, right? But the core issue of humanity was we lost sight of
the Father. So his main focus, his main ministry, that's why the cross is not about changing God,
but revealing God. The core focus is to, of Jesus' whole ministry, his whole mission,
for God so loved the world, he sent his only son, right? So why? God was already crazy in love with
you. That's why it was his crazy, outrageous love that sent Jesus into the world, right? And Jesus
came to reveal that crazy, outrageous love, that his longing to have you sucked back up into the
divine dances. Jesus came to reveal that love of the Father in Luke 15, who he hasn't unfathered
you, he hasn't unsunned you, you're as son as a son can be, you're as loved as love can be,
the Father is after you with a burning heart. And Jesus came to reveal that love of the Father so
that as you see the wonder of who the Father is, as you see that the Father is love, as you see
the most beautiful revelation of who God is that you've ever seen, you could at the same moment
have a revelation of the blueprint of your own divine design, that in that moment you could
see your own identity. Jesus is the fusion of humanity and divinity, and when we see the Father
fully revealed in Jesus, we fully see who we really are, we see our own glory, we see our own
doxa in that moment. Now, John 17, 22, I have given them the same glory that the Father gave
me because that's a key. Revelation of the Father is a key to the divine life, revelation of your
own perfection is a key to your own divine life, and that will release you into the divine dance.
But Romans 3, 23 is probably going through some people's minds. For all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. What does that mean? So, first of all, sin is an archery term, okay?
To sin is to miss the mark. You look at an English, Greek, Hebrew, always means to miss the mark. So,
if to sin means to miss the mark, it means that there is a mark. So, what is the mark?
So, here's the mark. For all have sinned, for all have missed the mark, for all have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God. What is that glory? That's the Greek word doxa again, okay? For all
have sinned, for all have missed the mark of the doxa. What is the doxa? That's your own identity,
and so you could say this again. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. You
could say it like this. For all have missed the mark and lived outside of their own identity, okay?
That it's not saying that you're not perfect, and it's not saying that you're not
glorious. What it is saying is that anytime you live outside of who you are, that is sin, right?
You missed the mark. Anytime you live outside of the divine dance, you're missing the mark. Anytime
you live outside of the revelation of your own perfection, you're missing the mark, all right?
Anytime you miss the mark, it's going to produce dysfunction and chaos. You're called to live in
the mark, and the mark is you're exclusively defined by God. Now, let me share with you one
of the ways that broke the mindset that wouldn't allow me to participate in that, is what I didn't
realize is that...
God does not weld performance and identity together, okay?
For God, in God's mind,
identity and performance are totally separate,
but the church has in a dysfunctional way
that produces no life welded performance
and identity together, all right?
So this moves now into the third point, okay,
of what produces the orphan curse.
First of all, is a false image of God.
Second is a false image of our own identity.
And thirdly, is performance-based reality, okay?
These are the things that produce the orphan curse in us.
So performance-based reality
is what we're gonna go into now, okay?
Because this is one of the major, major, major issues
of the church right now,
not the church of 1500 years ago, right now.
This is one of the biggest problems in the church right now
is performance-based reality.
In John 14, six, Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life.
Revelation says,
Jesus was the land that was slain
before the foundation of the world.
Truth is not something that your behavior makes true, okay?
The truth is the truth before you believe it.
Whether you believe the truth
or you don't believe the truth,
the truth remains the same because Jesus is the truth.
The truth is not just a doctrine.
The truth is a person.
The truth is something that is set in stone.
The truth, and your believing the truth
or not believing the truth doesn't make it true.
It just makes it powerful in your life to set you free
and liberate you into the divine dance.
If you don't believe the truth, there will be no freedom
because the truth, it doesn't just say the truth.
Jesus didn't say that the truth will set you free.
He said, John 8, 32, then you will know the truth.
And that means to have an intimate experiential knowledge
with the truth, right?
Then you will know the truth
and the truth will set you free.
Just because something's true
doesn't set anyone free, right?
You can have people that are totally bound,
but is Jesus still the revelation of the father?
Yes, that doesn't set anyone free
until they have intimate experiential knowledge
with that truth.
And when you ingrain that truth into your being,
that truth will set you free.
So it's not the existence of truth.
The existence of truth doesn't set anyone free.
It's your intimate experiential knowledge of the truth
that will produce freedom in your life.
So what we have to understand is truth
is a present reality, say that with me.
Truth is present reality.
You can't make truth, truth.
Truth is a present reality, okay?
The truth is a truth before we believe it.
That's the same thing about your identity.
You believing who you are in Christ does not make it true.
It makes it powerful and it liberates you
to participate in the divine life.
But who you are, you were always made in the image of God.
John 17, 22, Jesus said over 2000 years ago
that he's given you the same glory, okay?
God said from the very beginning
that he made you in his image.
Sorry.
So let's talk about present performance-based reality.
See, I didn't realize that this was true.
I thought my acceptance from God
was dependent on my performance.
I thought that my identity was dependent on my performance.
I thought that intimacy with God
was dependent on my performance, right?
Not just dependent on the truth.
So what I've done and what the church has done
is it has welded performance to reality.
And there's a thing, a crazy thing in the church
which I call performance-based reality.
So performance-based acceptance.
Now, I struggle with this so much
because I just thought that I was unworthy.
I thought the way that it worked
was Jesus behaved perfectly.
So he got 10 out of 10 love, okay?
And I didn't behave perfectly
and my behavior would have been less
than a one out of 10 on the scale.
So I just got the scraps of love,
maybe a one out of 10 or less.
You relate to that?
Thinking that you're unworthy of being loved by the father
just the same as he loves Jesus, right?
Well, fortunately for me,
I'm forgetting what that feels like
because that was terrible.
I thought I was unworthy because,
and my unworthiness came from this belief
where I attached performance,
my performance to my acceptance.
That is not true.
You, right now, there is nothing about your performance
that could get God to love you more.
You're as loved as love can be right now.
The father in Luke 15, he loved the son on full volume.
God's love for you has always been stuck on full volume.
It was John 3, 16,
for God so loved the world.
He loved you before the fountain,
before God so loved the world.
He loved you in your darkness.
He loved you in your chaos.
You know, when we were the enemies of God,
God loved us, right?
This is the crazy beautiful thing is
there is nothing about your acceptance
or the love of God that is performance-based.
It's a present reality.
Right now, you're as loved.
love can be. It's the same with identity. Your identity is not performance-based, okay? We've
welded performance and identity together, thinking they're the same thing. That's why we think that
if we sin, we are a sinner. That's not true. God says you're the righteousness of God in Christ
Jesus, whether you're sinning or not. We sin and then we take, you know, the reason that we're
sinning is because we don't believe that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Because
every fruit has a root, okay? And the fruit of sinful behavior is the root of believing that
you're not perfect, believing that you're not exclusively defined in the image of God. So when
you discover that you're perfect, guess what starts happening? You start getting free. When
you start becoming fully persuaded that you're exclusively defined by the glory of God, oh my
gosh, it starts getting really, really easy to participate in the divine dance. But the problem
is the church has welded performance and identity. So you think, oh, I sinned, I'm a sinner. Rubbish!
That's not true. It doesn't matter, right? And on that whole thing, so it uses that
concept that if you sin, this mindset, if you sin, you're a sinner to justify the lie that you
have a sinful nature. You do not have a sinful nature, all right? The sinful nature is an illusion.
Even if you look at Colossians 2, Romans 6, everything that it does say about the sinful
nature is that it's been cut off, that it's been circumcised, buried in the grave, and you've been
resurrected to newness of life. There's nothing in the New Testament that actually says that you have
a sinful nature. That's not what it says. It says that anything that you thought was a sinful nature,
anything that you thought was a lie about your identity, it has been cut off, circumcised,
buried in the graves, and you've been separated from that illusion into the reality, the present
based reality, that you are the righteousness of God and Christ Jesus, okay? Now this produced
spiritual schizophrenia in me growing up because one day someone would say I have a sinful nature,
then they'd say I've got on the righteousness of God and Christ Jesus. I had a spiritual,
I was like a spiritual schizophrenic. I didn't know my identity. The truth is you're exclusively
defined in the image of God. It's not dependent on your behavior at all, okay? But what happens
is when you start believing it, it starts getting powerful, all right? And your behavior starts
changing. We start believing and being fully persuaded you're exclusively defined by the
trinity and that you are as, you know, you are defined by the glory of God. What happens is you
start breaking out into radical, radical, radical levels of freedom, and John 17, 22 is fulfilling
you. I have given them the same glory the Father gave me, that they may be one as we are one, and
you effortlessly participate in the divine dance. It's swallowed up by divine love. The third thing,
the third performance-based lie is performance-based intimacy. All right, now let me tell you again,
this is a lie. There is no such thing as performance-based intimacy. Let me give you
a beautiful scripture for this, and then we're going to be coming close to wrapping up. This
is in Acts 17, 27 to 28, and it's a total flip of the lid of how Paul used to preach the gospel
versus how people preach the gospel today in the Western church, okay? This is how the Eastern
Orthodox would preach the gospel. This is the Trinitarian message of the gospel. This is the
gospel of the early church fathers. This is the gospel of Paul. So Acts 17, Paul is in the Arapagos
in Athens, and he's preaching to all these Greeks who they are sin-loving, demon-worshiping,
totally immoral, pagan, unrepentant sinners who have never heard the gospel, okay? So as far as
what the Western church would say, you know, you can be far from God. These guys were as far away
from God as the Western church would say you could get, okay? But this is what Paul says to
people who the church nowadays would say they're far from God. This is what Paul says in Acts 17, 27.
He's preaching the gospel to them. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out
for him and find him, though he is not far from any of us, for in him we live and we move and we
have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his children. And this is a declaration
of present reality. Say present reality for me because Paul's, the way Paul preached the gospel
is he preached the gospel as though it is present reality, okay? Present reality. Now,
there's a process that goes through, okay? So present reality. He speaks to these people as
present reality. He says, look, you're as son as son can be. You're as loved as love can be. Even
he says, look, for in him we live and move and have our being. That's talking about
oneness with God. That's talking about divine union. That's the divine dance. He said you're
already in the divine dance. That's what he's saying here. If you understand what he's saying,
you're already as innocent can be. You're already as loved as love can be. He's already as father
as a father can be, and you're already as a son as a son can be, okay? Now, believe
the daughters as well. Sonship is just a, you know, it's a non-generic term. It's not about
gender. Okay. It's just about your identity in Christ. Okay. So,
but listen what Jesus said about the truth. So this is the truth, what Paul's saying about these
people, but it's not powerful. It's not that this is the truth about them, but it hasn't changed
their lives. They didn't even know it. They've never even heard that. And Jesus said, you will
know, you'll have intimate experience, your knowledge of the truth and the truth will set
you free. But the truth is the truth before you believe it. So Paul, his declaration of the gospel
to them is a declaration of present reality. He prophesies over them, right? This is the world.
This is the people that are sinners. This is the dodgiest people. This is the craziest people. This
is the people that hate God. This is the people that are far away. So you imagine those people in
your world. And this is what Paul says about them. He says, he is not far from any of us,
for in him, we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his
offspring, or we are his children. He is our father. We are his children.
Okay. And so some of them actually believe him. And what do they have? They have a
born again experience, or it's actually a born from above experience. They have an awakening
as Paul speaks the truth that's already true. They have an awakening to a present reality
that's already true about them. Boom. They wake up to this blissful new reality. Like, whoa,
some of them didn't believe and nothing changed for them. Some of them believed,
responded to Paul's declaration of their identity, Paul's declaration of the fact that they are
already one with God. Now, at Western Christianity starts off, you're a sinner and you're separated
from God. That is the exact opposite of the gospel that Paul preached. Paul preached,
you are a son right now. You're as loved as love can be. You're as one as one can be. You're as
in as in can be. You're as loved as love can be. Come on and join the divine dance party.
That was Paul's gospel, right? And when people believe that they're like, whoa, and they got,
they had an awakening into the divine dance. When we preach, you're inadequate, you're a sinner,
you're separate from God. Then what happens when people respond to God and they come to a
relationship with God, they have these massive, they come into a closed heaven, right? That gospel
produces a closed heaven where they think that they've got, they're born into an identity crisis.
They're born into disconnection, right? Whereas Paul's gospel, the declaration of present reality,
you're born into an open heaven, okay? So when you declare this over people and they get born,
they have this born from above, born from heaven, this awakening, this revelation,
they have an awakening into the divine dance. How wild is that? Well, fam, that's as far as
we're going to go for right now. We're going to go deeper in our next session.
And in our next session, we're going to talk about how we can actually launch into this,
actually, like, what can we do to start putting things in place? Because this goes
deep. How can you practically get this outworked in your life? And how can the word become flesh
in you? I hope that this has been a real blessing for you. And let me pray, and we'll wrap up. Let
me pray this Ephesians 3 over you again from the amplified version. So here we go. Let me pray this
as we wrap up. And this is Paul again, right? This is his heart. This is what he was birthing people
into. And remember, we're going to have a question and answer session tomorrow at 3pm New Zealand
time. So you can bring your questions to that. Massive love to you all. Ephesians 3.16 for you.
May he grant you out of the riches of his glory to be strengthened and spiritually energized with
power through his spirit in your inner self, indwelling your innermost being and personality
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And may you, having been deeply rude and
securely grounded in love, be fully capable of comprehending with all the saints, God's people,
the width and length and height and depth of his love, fully experiencing that amazing endless love,
and that you may come to know practically through personal experience, the love of Christ, which far
surpasses mere knowledge without experience, that you may be filled throughout your being to all the
fullness of God, so that you may have the richest measure of God's presence in your lives, completely
filled and flooded with God himself. Amen. Papa, thank you for this time. We thank you for every
person here. And I thank you for an awakening into an open heaven for every person here. I thank you
for awakening, Lord, an awakening that births us into the wonders, the beauty, the ecstasy
of divine love. I thank you for an awakening that births us into seamless union. I thank you for an
awakening that births us into that level of intimacy with you that the saints of old knew.
Thank you, Papa, for an awakening that takes us into a realm beyond what we've ever known
or walked in before.
Awakening, awakening, awakening, Papa, in your beautiful name.
Amen.
Love you, fam.
Plenty more to come.
Bless you, and we'll see you in the next session, 3 p.m. New Zealand time.