The New Wineskin of the Body. Am I In or Out?

No one thinks they are fighting what God is doing, but all people do that naturally:

Galatians 5:17 NKJV — For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

God’s kingdom is God's responsibility.  It's His idea. It requires HIS plans and power.  That makes man's job, if I want to agree with God and stop competing with Him to save the world, to die to the natural ways I would try to help God!  

This is what “casting down crowns” at Jesus’ feet is about.

Adam and Eve tried to "help" God with His plan to make them like Him over time, in their own impatience and delusional ideas that they could be God and be God's at the same time.

We cannot.

My natural ways of trying to get the world around me to see God, love God, experience God, and ultimately submit to God, are completely incompatible with my own submission to God!  To submit to God is to let go of trying to win the world.  If I try to win the world, I will forfeit my OWN soul.

It's only in embracing my lack of power to bring heaven to earth that God begins working through me. God won't compete with me for control of the world... He waits in the truth until I come to the truth.  The truth has massive circumstantial consequences.  My life simply gets harder when I don't yield to what is true.

I have to lose the wrestle of control to God.  That BEGINS with my little world… my 3-square-feet.  My flesh literally cannot be helpful to God until it is restrained by me. I restrain it, not by gritting my teeth to obey God better... That IS the flesh delusion, or hanging onto control while believing I am giving up control... But by opening my heart to the truth that I cannot restrain my flesh on my own.

This means PRAYER is the only way to power. 

John 6:63 NKJV — “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

This happens most effectively in repentance-focused, musical, prophetic, corporate prayer. Why?

Because it is doing this with other people... Other people that also want to bring the kingdom of God to the world... Seeing how weak, broken, incapable, selfish, impatient, beautiful, creative, anointed... The whole mix of God and flesh... and then choosing to see things from God's perspective... Loving our neighbor as ourselves as we give ourselves to gazing on God... And learning to be patient with others as our faith in God grows.

We see in others what lives in us.  

The goal is to see Jesus living in other broken and weak people like me.

My flesh naturally wants to pick good guys from bad guys, which makes me the bad guy by default.  The good guys don't do that!  Its only learning to see that God is the only good one that I begin to lay down my pointing of the finger at everyone else and ask God to put His finger on MY need to change.

God only has weak and broken people to work with.  Those who are maturing grow in authority as they embrace the true goal of the gospel: God's personality manifesting in themselves, rather than seeing everyone else "submit" to a God they barely rest in themselves.

This is the point of 1st Corinthians 12, 13, 14, and 15.

• 1 Corinthians 12: We need the Spirit, not for ourselves, but for each other.  We must learn to see others as Yeshua's immature-but-maturing body, not in the way of Yeshua's plans.
• 1 Corinthians 13: The point of all this is individually learning to live in a corporate setting. Prophecy will fade. Works are meaningless. Sacrifice is much less valuable than obedience.  Love is the point. Not for others, for me.  I learn to not parade myself when there is a flesh parade beckoning me in, not in my study with the door closed.  I learn to consider others better than me, believe all things, hope all things endure all things WITH others FOR Jesus.
• 1 Corinthians 14: this is practical, not theoretical, and real church is only really pleasing God when it manifests in the 1 cor 14 type of meetings Paul describes as being a fruit of 1 cor 12 and 13:

1 Corinthians 14:26-34 NKJV — How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church, and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.

• 1 Corinthians 15: this ^ embraced to the point of maturity is what Jesus will offer to His father. Nothing less:

1 Corinthians 15:24-26 NKJV — Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

The church is experiencing a significant deficit of mature, authoritative, leadership because immature striving to be relevant has overtaken the Gospel goal to count others BETTER than ourselves.  I cannot "market" myself and grow in the Spirit at the same time. These are incompatible ideas.  Satan is the one trading power for brand loyalty, not God. God likes humility.  Many of us have bought into the lie that God will win the world through better marketing rather than hearts changing.  The world HATES the Spirit of God changing hearts… it doesn’t love it.  The true body of Jesus will never save the world, it will be a witness to anyone who wants to come OUT of the world.

An ANTIChrist Spirit that wants to save the world is rising up and trying to replace the true kingdom of Jesus.  It will not prevail, but it will mislead many,

1 John 2:15-19  Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  (16)  For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.  (17)  And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.  (18)  Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.  (19)  They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

The Antichrist comes out of the church in this false vision of loving the world, which is to truly love oneself more than God.  GOD so loved the world that He sent Jesus.  Those that love Jesus don’t’ try to replace Him, they come out TO Him.  They look weak and foolish to the world, but these are the ones God will us because what we need isn’t a better world, we need GOD back on the throne of our hearts!

1 Corinthians 1:27 NKJV — But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;

If Jesus is ruling over our meetings, then selfishness, jealousy, self-seeking, attention seeking, apathy, lethargy, striving, gossip, backbiting, complaining about a lack of reception of our ideas/ministry, etc.... Fleshy pushing of ideas... is put to rest in our hearts and meetings.  

The result of the Spirit winning the war against our collective flesh is a people committed to soft-hearted receiving of leadership from God because they AREN'T good, rather than hard-hearted pushing of ideas onto one another as they parade themselves as good.  No one thinks they do this, but almost all do. The wise embrace that THEY do this and repent as a lifestyle until their internal rebellion is dead.

God literally accepts nothing less than the fruit of the Spirit of His Son growing as we meet together more and more as the day of His return approaches.

Hebrews 10:19-26 NKJV — Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

This ^ is what it means to “be in Christ.”  Jesus has a head AND a body.

Romans 8:1 NKJV — There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Galatians 3:3 NKJV — Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

Everyone thinks they agree with these passages. It's simply the Bible. BUT, I don't agree with these passages until I personally set them as my goal and vision and find a practical way with God to work them out.  That can only happen corporately, because people only provoke our flesh when we see their flesh.