News and Updates
October 1, 2014
David Copeland · October 1, 2014
Newsletter · Volume: 14 Issue: 10
Luke 4:18,19
18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
Recently I was reading Luke’s Gospel when Holy Spirit highlighted this famous verse that has been used by practically every young man & woman who has ever accepted a call from God to Ministry.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…
A great truth that has been lost in the last 1700 years of Christianity is that Jesus WAS a Jewish Rabbi. To this day He is STILL God of the Jews first, then to the rest of the Gentile world.
As Jesus began His earthly ministry after enduring forty days of temptation in the wilderness, battling satan over His humanity, His Divinity and His Authority ….I am convinced He deliberately delayed His arrival into Nazareth until the very Sabbath in which the day’s Scripture reading would come from Isaiah 61.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…
And if that wasn’t enough, after reading the scripture passage for the day, He sat down (symbolizing His confidence in His identity) and had the audacity to say, “…this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”
Without a doubt He surely had everyone’s attention now!
One of the great struggles that men face is a lack of identity. For many years I struggled with who I was and who God had made me to be. Because of a lack of Godly Fathers and spiritual fathers men of every generation seem to feel they have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to who they are in Christ. When we get the rhema we are now in Christ, all our understanding will change for the better.
Our enemy satan surely doesn’t want men to find out who they are in Christ. The enemy knows when a man finds his true identity, who he was destined to be from the foundation of the world, our families will come into order, marriages will find new life and new love, divorce will dramatically decrease, and churches all across our country will find a peace they’ve never had.
Two reasons men struggle with their God identity:
1.We know our own inner struggle. Men struggle with anger, lust, greed, position, addiction, pride, jealousy and a host of other “issues” like women do. Religion has told us, if we are struggling with any sin then we are not truly in Christ. Friends, our struggles don’t mean we are not in Christ, it simply means we don’t yet have the rhema that Christ died to make us free. COMPLETELY FREE. If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed! John 8:36
When we say we cannot accept our identity as a son of God we are saying our sin is greater than the sacrifice of Jesus; and now we must add our struggle to His sacrifice to be delivered. It’s basically a slap in God’S face telling Him what He did wasn’t enough.
2.We’ve heard others declare their identity, but it seemed to be laced with pride & arrogance and not the humility of Jesus. Jesus declared, this day this scripture is fulfilled in your ears. Then He sat down. He didn’t sit down out of pride, nor because He had a flare for being dramatic: He sat down because He KNEW Who He was, what He was sent to do and where He was going.
You are anointed to reach someone for Jesus no one else can. God has raised you up for such a time as this to be an answer to someone’s prayer and to be a miracle in someone’s life. You ask, “how can that be?” Have I arrived at some super-spiritual plateau?
No. It’s because the Spirit of the Lord is on you….
His Spirit makes all the difference in the world!
Many Blessings!
David & Pam