A relationship with the Almighty God was enjoyed by very few under the covenant of the Old Testament. Even from the beginning of time, before the Old Testament, few are mentioned as having had a relationship with our heavenly Father. Jesus came to break down the middle wall of partition that was keeping us out of the presence of God. It is not a future event, but it is something that takes place in our life when we give our heart to Jesus Christ, when we call upon Him, when we realize that we are a sinner, lost and undone. We need the purpose of God in our life because we cannot control the things that we are doing. We need His control. First we call upon Him, “Lord, forgive me a sinner, I call upon your name, I believe in your resurrection power from the dead. I believe God has raised you up and that you are now the Father and you give birth to the new creation.” Then we need to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as the Spirit of God gives us utterance. The power of God comes to us through the Holy Ghost. This is what gives us the ability to begin to live and do the things we need to do in the kingdom of God.

There is a purpose for us being on this earth. I want to tell you that all things work together for our good for we are called according to His purpose. He has laid His hand upon us that we might see beyond the walls of tradition that we might see the purpose of God. But the heavenly things are not a future event. The heavenly things of God and the callings of God are right now. Praise God for that. After we come into the baptism of the Holy Spirit and we begin to explore His word under the inspiration of the anointing of the Holy Ghost, the revelation of His word is unfolded before us. We begin to see the truth of these wonderful scriptures that are given to us in His word.
 
“Blessed in heavenly places.” There is really no such word as heavenly, it is what we interpret the Greek to mean. Actually it means heaven places. We are blessed of God in heaven places, or in the place of the heaven. The day you received Jesus Christ as your Savior and the day I received Jesus Christ as my Savior, we entered into a new arrangement with God. It is called the New Testament. We see that He has given unto us the glory of walking in the treasures that He has provided for us, the church, with Him as the head of this church The word of God is not a future event to begin to take place in our life, but it is one that takes place from the very moment we received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. When we received that power into our life, we began to see the principles of the word of God are ours. The power of God is ours. I remember the first time that I laid my hand on a sick person and prayed in the name of Jesus. The power of God came down and touched that person healing them, making them ever with whole. The excitement filled my heart as I saw blind eyes opened, broken necks healed, and broken backs healed by the power of God. Sometimes it was frightening as the people began to pull off their casts believing that God had healed them; and sure enough, God had touched them by His power.

As we preach the Gospel and the people begin to make their way forward to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, their faces are hungry and thirsting after something. We realize we have the answer and the solution because we have the gospel of Jesus Christ. We can speak to them and lead them into the kingdom of God. We have in Jesus that ministry of reconciliation, spiritual blessings not only to receive, but spiritual blessings to give. I have preached and taught on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. As we were teaching on prophecy and the prophetic utterance of God, the importation would go forth into the congregation and the people would begin to receive into their life the gift of prophecy and would be able to prophesy. As ministry went forth they would be active in the gift of tongues and interpretation which are in God’s word. As we prayed for the sick, God would heal the sick and the anointing would reach out and touch the members of the congregation and they would come back the next day testifying that they had prayed for people that day and the Lord Jesus Christ had healed them. The church is coming to ministers to be healed when it needs to be reaching out and touching those who are sick and afflicted and laying their hands on them. As we impart healing, healing comes to us and it flows through us. It is one of the promises of God. The Old Testament says, “I am the Lord that healeth thee.” In the New Testament it says, “By His stripes ye were healed.” Jesus on that glorious day of agony and suffering and persecution showed all the signs of deliverance for you and for me. As he hung on the cross and spoke with His Father, as railings and accusations were shouted at him, He claimed an eternal victory for us. He opened the door into the very presence of God.

Just before this third verse, the Apostle Paul says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” The grace of God is something that is almost impossible for believers to comprehend. Unless the Spirit of God reveals it to us, we couldn’t possibly understand it. For the natural man, it is impossible to understand the grace of God. Only when you accept Jesus as your Savior can you come face to face with the reality that His grace is sufficient, that He has forgiven, that He has caused us to be delivered from the curse of sin and the curse of death by fulfilling the law and the ordinances and bringing in the Holy Spirit. Thank God for the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. Jesus told His disciples to tarry at Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high. “You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you.” That is what happens when the Holy Spirit comes into our lives. It takes us over. Praise God for that take over by Jesus. I am glad for the anointing of the Holy Ghost. I would not want to walk outside of the Spirit of God. To be lead by the Spirit of God, the word tells us, is the sign that we are the sons of God. Romans 8:14 declares,  “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” Are the sons of God, not going to be, but are the sons of God. Why then would we try to organize ourselves to try and please our relatives who are ungodly? Why should we organize ourselves to do what society expects of us? By pleasing society you may have the praise of man for a moment; but I tell you that when you please God, you will have the praise of God throughout eternity. Thank God for that eternal purpose He has given to us. We are not what we used to be nor will we ever be again what we were. What we were was not pleasing to God, but what God is doing in our life today, is pleasing to HIM. He is a God who knows how to do things right.

Let us get back to Jesus. I hear a lot of people talking about god. Who is your god? For those who are true believers, we know that our God is Jesus. He is the Father who has birthed the New Testament believers into His eternal kingdom. The kingdom of God, according to the teaching of man, is something off in the future. The anointed vessels of God who have been ordained by the Holy Ghost know that the kingdom of God is not a future event but is at hand right now. Others can touch it, but we live in it. It is present because Jesus is not going to be King of kings, but Jesus IS King of kings reigning in His kingdom.

The fourth verse says, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” Notice the word “world” here. It is the Greek word kosmos which speaks of the “arrangement.” I want to tell you that before this arrangement, before this New Testament came about, God loved us. Jesus was reconciling things for us. When the vail in the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, the door was opened making access for us into the Holiest of all. The Holiest of all is a very special place to be because that is where God dwells. That is where we find the completeness of Jesus Christ. I like this completeness because not only can I receive Jesus as my Savior, but I can live in His presence. I want to live in the day of the Lord. This is the day of the Lord, if we can receive it. God is raising up in our day a chosen generation, a people of men and women who will obey God and will trust the Lord. They shall be a mighty anointing, a mighty army of God, moving throughout the earth to heal the sick, cause the lame to walk, cleanse the lepers, open blind eyes, and open deaf ears. He is in the same business He has always been in. Sometimes people preach messages as if they think God has changed. God has not changed. It is our minds that change. It is our purpose and our hearts that change. Pray that our hearts never change from the purpose of God. Pray that we stay on the firing line; keep us believing in the healing power of Jesus Christ. When you are believing God, relatives will always point you to man. Why will they always point you to man? Do they think man is more powerful than God? Is the creature more powerful than the creator? There is nothing more powerful than Jesus. His power exceeds beyond the expectation of the minds of men. It amazes man when God does a simple thing and he calls it a miracle because man cannot do even those simple things that God can do.

“Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,” (Ephesians 1:5) It is God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, if we will receive it. God’s kingdom is an anointed kingdom. It is not worry and stress and distress, but it is an anointed kingdom. We can see that God is doing a new thing for us, not new from His word, but new for us. We can be encouraged that God is once again raising up the voice of the prophets in the land and they are beginning to speak the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord is coming to the body of Christ as it did in the days of Isaiah, “Arise and shine. Thy light is come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.” When God speaks, it is not in future tense in the sense of the blessing of the Lord. He spoke even there in the Old Testament book of Isaiah through Isaiah, “Thy light is come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon thee.” Could we receive that today? Jesus, our light, has come. The revelation that reveals to us the purpose of God has come and that revelation is Jesus Christ. He wants to speak to us afresh. Thank God.

You will often hear people say, “I’ll be glad when God does” this or that. Two thousand years ago Jesus bore the pain and the suffering and the agony to bring forth a victory for us that we can enjoy if we will. It is a victory that we can use if we will, that we can minister with if we will. He made it possible for the very nature and purpose and anointing of the Almighty to come and dwell within these earthen vessels. Without Jesus we could do nothing. The Bible says that in natural man there dwells no good thing. There is none good but God. But once Jesus comes in there is good dwelling in His people. His name is Jesus. Some people want to see Jesus in the clouds or off in the eons to come; but, I tell you for me it is a daily experience. I would not want to go through a day without knowing that Jesus is with me.

I can’t make it on my own. When I was lost and undone, when I was unable to cure what was ailing me, when I thought the only solution was to end my natural life, Jesus came to me. Many times I wished I had never been born because I did not know Jesus. I had been picked up by groups and taken to Sunday school classes but they talked about everything except Jesus. When I was fifteen years old I came face to face with Jesus. I did not think I could ever be saved because of the hardness of my heart and the wickedness of my life. But I want to tell you that on that glorious day, Jesus looked beyond the hardness of my heart and He looked beyond the wickedness that I had committed. I heard the words of a song, “Just as I am without one plea but that Thy blood was shed for me.” I remember thinking, “Jesus, you want me just as I am?” Everyone else was wanting me to change. From the early days of my childhood, I can remember my mom and dad trying to make an actor out of me. They told me to act right, act nice, act like I had sense. Friend, I want to tell you that is exactly what it was; if I ever did appear to be nice, it was an act. If I ever appeared that I had sense, it was an act.

Then one glorious day Jesus accepted me and washed my sins away. He touched my hard heart and softened it with compassion. I have traveled the length and breadth of this country preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ because I want others to have a chance to be able to experience what I have experienced in my own life —the forgiveness of the Almighty God. I want others to receive the grace of God, the redemption through Jesus Christ that they might be filled and empowered with the Holy Ghost. That they might become able ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today as we carry this Gospel forth, there is but one goal in mind, that those who have not received Jesus Christ might come into the kingdom of God and those who are in the Kingdom of God might be lifted up a little higher and realize what it is that we have. The Bible says, “...whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” When we are first saved we call upon the name of the Lord because out hearts are needing to be touched by God and our lives are needing to be cleansed by the power of God; but later on, after we have walked with God for a while, we forget that the principles still work. We still need to call upon the name of the Lord; we still need to pray and worship Him and delight ourselves in Him.

There is a Psalm in the Bible written by Solomon. He says, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” Why were the prayers of David ended? He is talking about on this earth. David was gone. Little did Solomon know even though he appreciated the printed page and writings and books, little did he know that the prayers of David would live on to reach around the earth. In fact, the prayers of David would cover the earth. David was crying out to God. David was calling upon the name of the Lord that he might be saved from his enemies and from those things that were oppressing him. Praise God! Sometimes instead of saying, “Why doesn’t God heal me?”  We need to call upon that saving power that does heal. Not just for a healing, but for God to save us from what is causing the problem.

The disciples were Jesus’ special friends and yet, in the midst of the stormy sea, they cried out to the Lord, “Save us least we perish.” Why would they who had seen the five thousand miraculously fed with five loaves and two fishes leaving a remnant of twelve baskets of fragments be fearful? Why would they who had seen the miraculous power of God as blind eyes were opened, as deaf ears were unstopped, as blood issues were healed, why would they feel as if they were perishing? I do not know how to explain it except that no matter how long you have walked with God nor how many miracles you have seen, there comes a time when you need to be saved because circumstances, stormy seas all around you, worry and distress on every hand, cause fear of losing your possessions, fear of losing your job and, lately, the greatest fear of all, Christians fearing that sickness is going to kill them. Jesus had delivered us from the killer — sin and death. Not sickness and death, but S-I-N is the killer. If you want to stay alive and exit this life into the presence of God in victory, do not let sickness turn you into an unbeliever. We must not let sickness turn us into unbelievers. Call upon the name of the Lord and His saving power will come and rescue us. He will tell us we have been blessed with all spiritual blessing in heavenly places. He will remind us of the grace of God that brought us out and will even extend it to us again.

Notice in the first verse of the chapter (Ephesians 1), to whom the Lord God, through the Apostle Paul, is addressing this letter. “To the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” Saints. These were not people who were dead that had done miraculous things. These were people who were alive on the face of the earth at that time. They had been sanctified through the blood of Jesus. Thank God for the sanctification that comes through the blood of Jesus. Friend, we need, today, an old fashioned sanctification. Sanctification through the blood of Jesus.  Let His glory and His anointing and His precious cleansing blood purify us and make us ever with whole that we might live. He has given us life, not death. I have never heard a prophecy come forth, “Thus saith the Lord, you have cancer and you are going to die in six months.” I have never heard God speak that. He always speaks life and purpose to people. I am not saying there are not people who will depart out of this life because there comes the appointed time of the Father. When that time comes we will be in His presence. I want to tell you that the false prophets are the ones who prophesy death because of sickness. The Bible speaks of life because of Jesus Christ. I want to encourage us today that we start claiming the purpose of life and leave off death. We have the power to resurrect the dead. I am not talking about when they have given up their final breath in this life. I am talking about while they are walking in sin, dead in trespasses and sin. We have the power to resurrect them through the ministry of reconciliation. Introduce them to Jesus. When we were in the miry clay, He lifted us up and planted our feet on the solid rock. The solid rock, the word of God brought forth through Jesus Christ.

Let us look at some more. He predestined us to be accepted as sons of God, the children of God by Jesus Christ to Himself. (Ephesians 1:5) We are not here by accident. We are here by the good pleasure of His will. Verse six says, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” Made us accepted in the Beloved! I have noticed that even when people are forgiven, even after receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit, they have a hard time fitting in with other believers. For one thing, they have never before been accepted in anything like the body of Christ. It is not easy to fit into a new program, but one day they will realize they are a part of the glorious body of Christ along with other believers who are a part of that same body. Together we form the Church of the living God. We are the beloved of God. Oh, how He loves us. He loves His people. His love is tender and pure and alive. If only we could comprehend His grandeur, if only our hearts could once again believe there is nothing impossible with God. As the Bible says, “All things are possible.”

If you are faced with an impossible situation this day, I want to tell you it does not have to continue to be impossible because Jesus has made the way. You may say, “Oh, Preacher, you don’t understand. I have done this, and I have messed up, and ... .” Listen, Jesus found us a mess! If He was going to cut us off and destroy us, He would have done it in the beginning. He found us a mess! He does not want to cut us off and destroy us. He wants to save us from self–destruction. I do not know what you are going through right now, but if you have listened this far into the message, you are not in this life by accident. You are chosen of the Lord. He is the Redeemer and He wants to do things in our lives today. I have to zero in on this; He wants to do things in your life, personally. He wants to move for you in your life. He may not always do the things we want Him to do, but He does the things that we need. There are definitely things that we need. Let Him reach us today. Call upon His name.

Oh, sweet Jesus, I call upon your name. I thank you for your love. I thank you, Jesus, that you forgave my sins as I called upon your name. I know that you live and I know that I live because you live. You have made it possible for me to have life, and not only life, but life more abundant. You are more powerful than any name. Why would I want to name other names and tell people how I am being fought by other names when I am being blessed by the greatest name, you Jesus?
God bless you Saints of God.

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