Emanuel, God With Us - by Gina Duffey

I'm not trying to teach anyone anything, I am sharing what I believe. You do not have to agree with me and if you don't, it's totally okay.

I don't perfectly understand it all, but this one thing I know. God did not send his little boy to die for us...at least not in the sense that it is commonly taught. God came himself to save us.

We have such a hard time understanding how God and Jesus could possibly be the same, considering Jesus prayed to the Father, and called him Father, and so on. The way I understand it is that... it is God in human form that is the son. When he came as a man he chose to live as a man, so was a son with a father. God the Son, God the Father.

Explained another way...

God is a spirit.

This spirit has a voice.

This voice is the Word of God.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The Word of God is Jesus.

This is why it says in John that the Word was in the beginning with God and was God, and everything was made by him. The spirit is God. The word (voice) is God. There was no "body" that was God. Yet.

God overshadowed Mary and caused her to conceive of his spirit. That was his very own spirit he placed in her womb. That's why Jesus was fully human yet fully God.

It's hard to wrap my finite mind around an infinite act. But I can't refuse to believe it because I can't wrap my brain around it. I also can't grasp how God "spoke" the sun and moon and planets into existence. But I believe it.

God gave me a picture years ago... If you take an empty bucket to the beach and scoop out some water from the ocean and set it on the shore, is the water in the bucket still the ocean? Does the ocean cease to exist? IF water could talk, could the water in the bucket speak to the water in the ocean? Do you get the picture? One day, when it is all over, God will be all in all. (Pour the bucket of water back into the ocean?)

God did not cease to be fully God even when he placed his spirit in a human body.

John 8

56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. 57 Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 58 Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus could not have made this statement if his existence didn't begin until he was conceived in Mary's womb. His human body may not have existed before then but his spirit certainly did as it was the one and the same spirit of God.

Jesus repeatedly stated that he and the Father were one. Many say that means "of the same in spirit" but I think it means the same exact spirit. There are not two spirits of God, or three, there is only one. Jesus is Emanuel, God with us. He is the voice of God, the speech of God, the Word of God...talking to us in person.

This is what I believe, but I still pray that as I grow in faith and grace that he will continue to shed more light on who he is. I trust him to keep me in his way.

Is The Promised Land Heaven? - by Gina Duffey

The Promised Land is not Heaven when we die.

The Promised Land is...

a new heart

a purified heart

a circumcised heart

an undivided heart

a perfected heart

a new creation

a new nature

However you put it, it's when we have died to self and Christ has moved into our "heart land" and is seated there now, ruling and reigning. His kingdom set up in our heart ... that's the land of promise.

It's Heaven here and now. It's an invisible realm but it's citizens see and recognize it. Such people are done with sin and self and their will has been sacrificed and burned up on an altar. Self has been crucified by being denied to death!

One major thing most churches teach falsely is that all this applies at conversion. This is a deception. The truth is this promise is only available to the believer....this new life and new heart can only be pressed into by a truly converted, repentant believer. But they have a wilderness to cross first. They have a will and a self life that has to die first.

Ask God to know you and show you....and to lead you to his path of righteousness. Accept without defense what he shows you and obey him!

Follow the Spirit....love the truth.....deny your flesh...lay down your will.....strive to enter in! Press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The goal is not Heaven when we die.....

The goal is the Promised Land.

The goal is Christ in us to the full.

The promise of the Father....

Ezekiel 11:19-20 And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 36:25-28 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God.

If our heart is still divided and our nature is still carnal and soulish, and we don't do what we know we should and do what we know we shouldn't...then the goal is still ahead of us...PRESS IN!! take it by force...do violence against the flesh life! Don't let the "but its a free gift so I don't have to work at it" false gospel keep you in bondage to sin/self and from the freedom the Lord was raised to share with us!!

But trust in the finished work of Christ...they say.

His work was finished on the cross, but it did not start there...

Jesus was laying down his will and taking up his cross every single day of his life (which is what he is telling us to follow by the way) until one day he took up a physical cross where he laid down his physical life. Then it was finished and the veil was rent in two. We know what the veil represented so we know what it meant when it was ripped in half by God.

A new and living way to the Father was made. The way into the new covenant. The way to the new heart, the new life.

Yes we have to trust in the shed blood for remission of sins...but please realize that this is not the goal, it's only the the starting point! Yes it's extremely important as the new life in Christ cannot even be grasped at by someone who has not trusted in the work of the cross.

There is a gospel of forgiveness of sins out there, but it's HALF a gospel. The FULL GOSPEL is that he died for our sins and was raised for our LIFE! Again...this does not mean Heaven when we die, it means an abundantly full life right here. (abundantly full means FULL of the life and spirit and nature and fruit of JESUS) (not houses and cars and jobs and positions, and blah blah BLAH)

When the Hebrew children "looked to the blood" on their doorposts, was that it, was that the finished work, was that the goal?... or did they still have to follow the leading of the spirit through the wilderness? At the end of the wilderness, was it now finished, was that the goal?...or did they have to believe that God would still yet bring them into the promised land of rest?

Remember that 10 people went in to spy the land, two said we can take it if we trust in God but eight said we can't take it. So many people died in the wilderness and never entered the promised land of rest because of their unbelief.

This is still happening today...many do not believe these precious things that few talk about. They instead choose to believe what the many talk about, especially church leaders and teachers, that all these promises apply to you when you "give your heart to Jesus" and "get saved". They say "we can never be set free from sin in this life...that happens when we get our new body...you have to have faith that it's true in the spirit realm and that God only sees Jesus when he looks at us." DECEPTION!!! I know they say this as I heard it for years. NAYSAYERS. I never heard the truth until I got out of those high places!

MANY there be that are going to destruction....FEW there be that find life.

MANY there be that tell lies and FEW there be that reject them!!

GOOD NEWS!! Jesus came to forgive AND to set free.

We are set free (from bondage to sin and self will) by receiving a new nature and a new heart that has God's laws written on them. Until we receive this promise, we deny our flesh, continually looking unto the Lord to bring us in. And he will...but we have to believe!!