The fruit of unity

I used the marriage covenant a few days ago to illustrate the unity with Jesus that is necessary in the fruitfull use of His Name. In meditating on this, I began to see a deeper fruitful promise than just the answer to our prayers.

I think one of the most misunderstood experiences we see in the Scriptures is sanctification. For years I thought it was a growing experience and could not agree that one received an "experience" of sanctification. The reason I felt this was the many I saw in counsel who had lost faith in God because they did not see the fruit of sanctification in their lives after they had been told they had received sanctfication. (However, that has also been true of salvation and baptism of the Holy Spirit! If a person has to be told he has received, he may have only a mental acceptance!) But I saw something deeper in this passage after I wrote about it a few days ago.

Seeing the unity of the Father in Jesus when He was in our likeness on earth, I saw the miracle that revelation could bring to us. Seeing that He came to bring Life, and that more abundantly, I saw the flow of God's Life to each person that received a miracle. John 14:11 NIV 11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. This verse in the NIV shows a deeper inspection of the miracles than just considering Jesus doing works. The NIV is a balance between word for word and thought for thought and is parented by the American Standard Version, a word for word translation which is now out of print but can be viewed on the Internet. ASV 11 Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works' sake. They had seen Jesus doing the works, so it was not that He did the works, but that the works were an evidence of the Father in Him. The very Life of God--the essence of the Holy Eternal Being--was flowing through Jesus into cells of this creation of God to restore and control. When the disciples would come to see it was this Life of God flowing in Jesus, with whose flesh life they had been most acquainted, and realized Jesus was telling them they could do these same works with the same flow of God in them, this would be a revelation that would bring instant change. After the resurrection of Jesus when He breathed on them to receive the New Birth He had purchased for them, Jesus told them to wait until the Holy Spirit had come into them before they went out to witness of His resurrection. On the Day of Pentecost, these men began to do the works of Jesus. They knew the difference of seeing Jesus as a man and seeing Him as the Son of God. They knew the difference of going out to do the works Jesus sent them to do and doing the works because the Spirit of God was in them.

I believe that sanctification is knowing Who Jesus is and who you are in God and resting in that knowledge to be the vessel God works through to accomplish His will. Not only God's Nature is seen in you, but His Power and Love flow through you.