Bulletin Article October 2024

Strategicresourcetraining   -  

by Natalie Holmyard

The Nature & Character of Our Saviour

Lion King and Lamb Priest.  How have you wrestled with this teaching?  Has it landed in you?  Have you had to work it out with fear and trembling? Have you talked about where your understanding is with your spiritual elders?
 
I have found, over the years of working this lesson out in my life, that Father has taken me/us (David) on a journey of reckoning. Nothing has alienated those who don’t stand with us like this teaching and the scriptures that support it.  Has that been your experience too?“When you preach the gospel of the Kingdom, it calls violent men and women.  It calls people who are going to make something happen.  Jesus is not just King of pastors; He is King of Kings.  The sound of the King makes you want to enlist and get up and do something.  Jesus is a man whose mission is worth dying for.”  Dennis Peacocke LLGW Chapter 8 – Living as a King and Priest.

Wow.  Every time I read this paragraph; a small shiver runs through me.  It calls violent men and women.  Men and women who want to make something happen……..
 
The lion and the lamb aspects of our Lord and Saviour are not personality traits.  They are not an either/or option.  They are not up to our personal preferences.  They are absolutely the nature and character of our saviour – ones that we are called to embody this side of Heaven. We are to be conformed to His image.
 
Romans 12:2 says, “and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect”.As maturing believers, we must accept that our minds, thoughts, wills and actions, largely trained by the world, have been conformed by, and to the world – not to the inerrant word of God.  When we come across scripture or teachings that challenge us, and our natural state is to reject it – we need to sit in the pain of the challenge and meditate with the Holy Spirit and the counsel of our elders to help land these new truths and allow them to renew our mind.

2 Corinthians 10:5 says, “We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ..”. Be encouraged to keep going. The struggles you are facing are worth every bit of effort in the Kingdom of God. As Dennis says, truth will cost you.  Are we willing to pay the price?
 
God bless you.