Rise up, Rise up Now!

I'm here to tell you my testimony. Although I don't think that what I'm about to share is what you're expecting. I could sit here for the next few hours and greatly entertain you with the R rated tale that is my past life. All the horrors of drugs, sex, witchcraft, childhoods and teen years gone wrong told in the style of a Hollywood movie. It would keep you on the edge of your seats. But I won't. I refuse.

You see the real story of my life isn't something I can blame on people, circumstances, or even my own bad choices. The world as we know it is not real. What happened to me and what I've done in the past no longer exists in the eyes of heaven, so why should I bore you with it now. The truth is that somewhere in the real, God had a plan for my existence. Even before he formed me in the natural I was formed in His mind's eye with a purpose and a calling in the Spirit. Somewhere along the way, here in this realm of the natural, an enemy came in to destroy, distract, and deter me from that plan of God. It worked but only for a moment. In the grand scheme of forever that momentary lapse in my existence is petty and deserves little of my attention.

I don't deny that there is a time to mourn, a time to cry, a time to feel sorrow for ourselves and the failures, attacks, and demoniacally inspired activities of our past. But we can not build a home in that place and live camped out there, permanently stalled from all that God has for us. At some point we have to pull up the tent pegs and move on. We have to rise up and we have to rise up now.

This world as we know it is not real. All those people in your past, yourself included, were puppets on a string. Dancing the dance of the puppet master who was given authority to pull those strings. We have to move on and quit blaming those puppets for being used that way. We have to realize that for however badly we were made to feel subjugated, put down, enslaved, they were in fact having all the same done to them. Don't be fooled.

This world is a Spiritual one wearing earthly vestments. The real is affecting us all the time but we don't see the strings, we can't look past the clothes at the truth of what lies behind. The real powers that govern and contend for this universe. They're more real than what our eyes can see. In the spiritual I am not a sinner saved by grace. The sinner no longer exists. I am clothed in the righteousness of Christ and that “sinner” is no longer a part of my identity nor will I lay claim to her. I am once again in restoration with the creator of the universe who once again sees me in that perfect condition of who I was truly created to be. It is the lie of the enemy to trick me into believing anything different.

So we have to rise up, rise up and claim what is ours, what the enemy has tried to steal, what we have let go of. Rise up in the name of Jesus and proclaim the truth of who we really are and quit blaming the past. Rise up in truth, rise up in freedom, rise up in the Spirit.

The Kingdom of God is a rushing river forcefully advancing. We can be in it or we can be on the sidelines watching it flow by but our lack of participation does nothing to stop it. It will go on and only those forceful enough to jump in the stream will get to partake of it. The longer we stay camped in the lies and false reality of the enemy the longer it will pass us by. So RISE UP, and rise up now.