an excerpt from Keys to Brilliant Focus
by Graham Cooke (to be released Oct 1)
When we receive the Lord Jesus at salvation we inherit everything that He is and we learn progressively how to walk in His fullness. The work of the Holy Spirit is to empower us to be firmly rooted and comprehensively built up in Him. All our circumstances are designed to enable us to be established in our faith and to be overflowing with gratitude.
As we remain in His fullness we learn how to stay vulnerable to His fullness and are therefore not to be subject to the world around us and its principles and practices. There is a completion in Christ so powerful that it empowers us to move in His authority and rule in all life situations.
All that was formerly against us has been summarily dealt with by the Cross of Jesus. All the debts and decrees against us; every hostile act upon our person have been removed from us by His sacrifice. We are dead to it and we have the gravestone to prove it. We are raised up to walk in newness of life. Nothing from the past can affect us unless we allow it (Colossians 2:6–14, my paraphrase).
Sin, with all its consequences and effects, has been powerfully removed. We are learning only about the fullness of Christ in His heavenly form. He came to earth as the Son of Man to live a sinless life and be our sacrifice. He now lives in us as the victorious and glorious Son of God to commission us to walk in His grace and favor. There are no negatives in Him. All curses are broken. He is our ancestral line. We inherit His fullness and are no longer subject to a past earthly heritage. All negativity has been displaced by His death on our behalf. We are becoming ever more aware of our freedoms. Our starting place for life in the death of Jesus and all that He provides in Himself.
We never fight a negative; we simply look beyond it and move into our freedom. We do not battle fear, we embrace the love that belongs to us in Christ. Our favor in Christ allows us to find the opposite of any negative and embrace that as our attitude, mindset and lifestyle. In every situation of life it is our pleasure and privilege to incorporate all that Jesus is, into all that we are not. He is our medium of exchange. In Christ, the Father replaces old with new. There is no requirement for us to work on the old but simply to put it away and put on the new person we are in Jesus. When we see any believer living in fear we know that the problem is not the negative lifestyle. That has been dealt with at the Cross. The real problem is that they are trying to overcome fear when really they need to be experiencing perfect love in Christ (1 John 4:18).
Have fun moving in the opposite spirit! We are learning to live as though a negative cannot be part of our life experience. The nature of God has swallowed up every form of death. Life in Christ has radiance so bright that all the dark shadows of negativity become sunspots of brilliance. Whatever God is, He is relentlessly. The Holy Spirit is relentless in making Jesus real to us in every single circumstance of life. Our ministry is to learn the beauty of exchange, firstly for ourselves, then to apply those truths relentlessly to others so that they can be set free.
