Religion says, “become what you would be with the help of God.” The gospel says, be what you’ve already become by the grace of God.” Where He said “It is finished,” is where we begin in the Christian life. We don’t contend with God for it all; we begin with it all in Christ, and from that place we contend with the enemy. Christians spend so much time trying to get “the more,” when the truth is, at your new birth you got “the all.” It is so liberating and dynamic to understand this most foundational truth in the Christian life, because then you find yourself believing from a place of fullness, instead of constantly feeling like you haven’t arrived because you are always believing for a place of fullness that you haven’t yet received. I believe that God is raising up a new generation, spiritually speaking, who will walk in the old ways, instead of constantly looking for the new thing at the latest conference that will finally bring them to a place of arriving spiritually, so they can have greater impact and influence. The ”Old Way” is the simple truth of the gospel that the first generation Christians walked in. They understood that at their new birth they were made new creations, already complete in Christ, whose very presence in them was at the core of the newness of life in all of its supernatural glory they were to walk in and manifest. Yes, God is raising up not a new thing but the old thing that is all about newness of life. A people so identified in union with the person of Jesus that from their first steps as new believers, or in their last steps as aging believers, they will begin to see reality and opportunities as ones who carry already the complete fullness of Christ, to be experienced in supernatural victory over sin’s power, and to be released in supernatural victory over Satan’s devastation in the lives of other people. I’m not saying that we don’t have encounters with God which results in dramatic acceleration; but it is not an acceleration of accumulating more of the Holy Spirit, who in fulness lives in us to manifest the life of Jesus; instead it will be an acceleration of believing, and therefore manifesting the all in Christ that you’ve had all along from the beginning. God’s ways are not our ways because man’s ways always says if you’ll simply achieve more you can receive more; but God’s ways, the way of grace, is that you received all at the start so that you can achieve all, all the way to the finish.
