You have been granted immunity!

A couple of nights back, I woke up about four times. Each time it was like someone was rousing me, and the word “immunity” was rattling around in my mind.

In the morning, I had a proper conversation with Jesus as to what this was about. Knowing He doesn’t do fear, nothing I had come up with in the night had been landing comfortably. A couple of things then came to mind.

The first was the idea from television game shows where a person is “granted immunity”. The second was a question:

“If you knew you had immunity, what would it be like?”

Immediately I felt His joy and I knew the answer:

FREEDOM!

As I looked further into the understanding of what immunity can mean, three things came to the fore.

In law, to be granted immunity means not being punished.

In health, having immunity means not getting sick.

In the tv shows, being granted immunity means you get to stay in the game.

While many of us would probably like to know we had immunity to a certain virus-that-shall-not-be-named, I don’t think God gave me this word as that sort of promise. I sense that it is actually about having immunity to the WORLD and all the dis-ease that it carries.

So what does this mean for us as followers of Yeshua?

It means those same three things:

We are freed from condemnation and punishment.

We are freed from the sickness of fear, worry, despair and hopelessness.

We get to stay in the game so we can help others to walk in the same way.

This Easter, when so much is different and for many, so much is so difficult, our freedom is so much more important to understand. But it is not freedom as the world sees freedom. It is not about freedom to do as we please or to break out of our “stay at home” regulations. It is freedom in our relationship with God to come before Him, to have true and ever deepening relationship with Him, to experience the depths of His love, His grace, His mercy, His joy, His hope for the future in spite of all we see going on around us.

At Easter, we remember what Jesus won for us on the cross, that through His death and resurrection, we are set free from the effects of the virus of sin and brokenness. No matter what our past, what our struggles, we can find freedom from them as we can now come before the throne of grace and mercy with complete confidence of our acceptance there. The blood of Jesus is more than enough to set us free from all the world would like to throw at us.

So I take this word, “IMMUNITY” and I throw it out to you to claim as your own, as a special Easter gift from King Yeshua.

Feel free to take hold of it, ask God what it will look like for you to live in immunity and pass it on to someone else who needs it! You can’t lose.

Blessings to you and yours this Easter,

Ruth.

“This is why we do not lose courage. Though our outer self is heading for decay, our inner self is being renewed daily. For our light and transient troubles are achieving for us an everlasting glory whose weight is beyond description. We concentrate not on what is seen but on what is not seen, since things seen are temporary, but things not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor 4:16-18 (CJB)

(If you are struggling to experience this freedom, I would like to encourage you this Easter to seek God, to set aside time and ask Him to show you the next step, or even to take away those things that hold you back, that keep you stuck in the fear and despair cycle. And if you are really getting nowhere, please message me. I have some tools that can help, and if needed we can still meet over the internet. Don’t stay stuck – there is so much more coming in the days ahead, so much that God is wanting us to partner with Him in as we see His Kingdom come on this planet. Don’t miss out!)

Christianity: Powerless, Small and a Little too Sanitised

As we sat in our Good Friday service this morning, I found my eyes drawn to the wooden cross that is placed on the platform at Easter. Quite unexpectedly, I found myself wondering at its dimensions.It suddenly seemed small and a little too sanitised. I found myself wanting it to be made of heavy cross beams, rough cut and less regular, rather than two pieces of neat, clean 6 by 4.

Do we sanitise our faith?

It made me wonder: Do we sanitise our faith? Do we reduce it to meet our experience? We have been disappointed before, so we don’t want to expect too much. Yes, we are happy to hope for eternal life when we die, but we’re not looking for or anticipating much, here...now...today.

A verse that has been prominent in my thoughts the last week or so is from Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I have been reading Dutch Sheets' book “The Power of Hope”, where he discusses the results of living in a place where we feel as though hope has been deferred too long, too often, which include loss of faith and courage. We stop believing for big things, and the things that seem big in our lives grow bigger again, with a life of their own, becoming bigger than God Himself in our perception.

One of the songs we sang this morning is “The Power of the Cross”. At Easter, we celebrate that Jesus overcame the power of death, and yet, we struggle to believe that we, through Him, can overcome the power of our limitations, struggles and sin here and now. It is easier to live small and defeated lives, because, underneath, we believe the adage, “Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed”.

But this was not what Jesus promised; this is not what He came for, and certainly not what He died for.

When Jesus said that He had come to bring life that we might have it to the fullest, when He said that He had come to give the blind sight, to make the lame walk, to set the captives free, this was far more than just physical (although that would blow most of us away). He came so that we could see the reality of what it means to be sons and daughters of the Most High God, that we could walk, leap and run without being weighed down by our experiences of the past, and that we could live the free and abundant life of knowing we are loved unconditionally, that there is nothing more we have to do.

I don't want a faith that lacks power, and I don't want it for those around me, either.

If we are serious about wanting to make a difference in this world, we cannot afford to continue to accept mediocre, wishy-washy, ‘expect little’ faith. If we are serious about wanting to make a difference in this world, it is time we get things back in proportion, back to the size they should be. 

If the cross (and I mean all that the cross signifies) is central to our faith, then we need to make it real and make it big in all its power and force and beautiful ugliness. It has to match with the reality that death was the last obstacle Jesus overcame to give us abundant life here and now. 

Are you prepared to come to that place where you get real, get down and dirty, and lay it all on the line with God? 

Because it is here, and only here that transformation begins and it is only from here that we connect with the power to transform the world.