December 10, 2010
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Becoming Bearers of God’s Image by Apostle William Epps
On Sunday we were so blessed to have a visitor from Akron, Apostle William Epps. He spoke at both services, giving so much information that I am going to split it into several posts.
God brings us to our divine purpose and connects with us to bring us to the full liberation of Christ. God wants us to build our relationship with Him and to work according to His purposes.
We are created in the image and likeness of God, and as we grow closer to God we begin to look more like God, becoming a bearer of His image. God establishes us in a position of power. We don’t recognize the full impact of His Word as He gave it to us so we don’t function in the fullness of the power He has provided for us.
In the Garden, God created man in His image and likeness. God gave man dominion over everything.
If man is operating in God’s image and likeness, man can do what God says man can do. If God says you can do it, He has given you the grace to do what He says you can do.
When God said that we were to have no other Gods before Him, it meant that we were not to worship an idol or put an image in the place of God. If we worship an idol it subverts the and destroys the image of God within us. It weakens us which is why God does not want us worshipping idols. We are given a specific purpose and plan by God. We don’t want to cloud that by idol worship.
In the 1960′s man was questioning, why am I here? What is my purpose in life?
God has given us a purpose from the foundation of the world. God is not confused. When we are in confusion and need to know about a thing, we need to go to the one who made it, God, to find the answers. God has put everything we need inside of us, it’s already in you.
Jesus came to the earth in the full image, motive and character of God. Jesus said: John 14:7-11 “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.“
Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the express image of God, His image, likeness and glory. Hebrews 1:3 who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Colossians tells us that He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Colossians 2:9 For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily;
1 John 4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world.
As Jesus is, so are we.
John 10:30 I and My Father are one.
John 5:19 Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.
John 10:36 …do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?
If Jesus says He is God, He possesses everything that God possesses.
If we worship idols we are worshipping the product of our own hands, but that does not have the fullness of power that God has.
satan is after your worship. The enemy wants to destroy the plan and purpose of God and hurt the Kingdom of God.
God gave us motive and character, and we want to operate as He would.
The truth is that we are religious folk. Religion has taught us, in error, that we have a place in God; but that we can never be as God is. We say things that confirm in our minds that we can never be the fullness of everything that God says. For example, some churches say that God is not looking at our wonders, He is the wonder.
The truth is: Jesus is in us and the Kingdom is in us. And therefore we are not limited, we can do everything the Word tells us that we can do. Miracles have not ceased with the apostles.
1 Peter 1:22-23 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,
We are born of incorruptible seed – the seed is perfect and the seed is voice activated. Our trouble is not with the Spirit, the Spirit is perfect. What is done out of the Spirit is perfect, it is our flesh that gets in the way. God put the seed in us. God put mysteries in our spirit.
Sometimes what people perceive as us acting crazy is really us acting in the Spirit, and we just don’t have the understanding about it.
The Spirit of God with our spirit opens up the mysteries of God. God put this in us before He made the world.
Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.
Psalm 139:15-18 My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How great is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; when I awake, I am still with You.
We are all born of God, our Creator. God knows our frame and all that we need is in us. What happens is that how we develop what God has put in us is the process. Sometimes as part of the process God needs to work something out of you so that there is room for Him to put something else in us, according to His plan.
There are 12 components in functioning as a standard bearer. (Apostle Epps will detail these in the next teaching). He has written a book about this.
Praise and Worship can defeat the enemy and give God a way to work within us. God also uses dreams to communicate with us. We do need to discern because the enemy can use these things as well. The enemy wants to steal our praise and worship and give us false dreams and visions. We need to examine the content of our worship and dreams and visions to make sure they line up with the Word of God and the character of God.
We can have dominion over all that is created as long as we are in right standing with God. Jesus provided that righteousness to us with His incredible gift of salvation. God has given us everything needed to carry out His plan in our lives. We are not lacking.
As we learn and apply the principles of Scripture we can function in the power and authority that God has given us.
Deuteronomy 4:23 Take heed to yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God which He made with you, and make for yourselves a carved image in the form of anything which the LORD your God has forbidden you.
We are all operating in covenant. When we were saved we were reborn in the image and likeness of God.
The Will of God speaks to the seed in you. For us to hear, we need to quiet our mind, emotions, and will, and let God have His way. The light of God brings us into compliance, speaking to our Spirit. The head (mind) cannot hear God, only our Spirit. Our soul (mind, emotions, will) wants to do what we want to do, often in opposition to God’s best for us.
Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?
The heart of man is desperately wicked. The heart of your spirit, the heart part of your soul, connects with your spirit. God places in our hearts our interests and desires. He deals with us through the Spirit. You need to know the Word of God so that your Spirit can hear from God for He often speaks through the Word. We need to cut out those areas of pride to get to the point of sanctification. The Spirit tells us the Will of God, but the Spirit talks to our Spirit not to our physical will.
We have a choice to do God’s will, or not. Who are we going to listen to our believe? The devil wants to cast doubt in our minds. He went up to Eve and asked her, “Did God really say?” He tempted Eve to desire to be as God. There is a conflict there, because Adam and Eve were already made in the image of God, they could not be made more like God through the disobedience of eating the fruit. Their disobedience took them away from the image of God.
We make excuses for our disobedience. Apostle Epps told us that people always come up to him and Pastor Don saying, “But Pastor you do not understand.”
The issue is that if God tells us to do something, we have the perfect nature of Christ in us that gives us the power and ability to do what God wants us to do. What trips us up is giving way to our soulish nature, thought, or desire.
We have an issue with pride. We need the grace to be able to allow the Word of God to correct us so that we can manifest His perfect will.
The anointing we walk in is determined by what has dominion over our lives.
For example, do you have a root of bitterness? The Word of God speaks of circumcision, which is more than the removal of the foreskin. It is also a circumcision of the heart, where we cut away that bitterness. It is a process. What do you need to cut off? We want to cut away anything that prevents us from manifesting the full anointing of God. The grace of God enables us to cut out bitterness. We can rest in the perfect nature of Christ.
Matthew 5:48 Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.
If Jesus tells us to be perfect as the Father is perfect, we can be. God will not tell us to do something in His Word that He has not equipped us to be able to do.
We are in the Spirit 24/7, but we are not always aware of this fact in our natural mind.
We need to be aware that our first nature is spiritual. We are more aware of our spiritual nature when we are in worship.
Adam was given dominion over the animals and was told to name them. When Adam began naming the animals did he name them out of his natural mind or out of the Spirit of God? God in Adam gave him the wisdom and understanding. When the serpent convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit nothing happened until she convinced Adam to eat. Adam knew God’s desire and ate in disobedience, going against what God said.
We are only given one choice. We want to think that we are free moral agents able to pick and choose what we think and do. But the only choice we have to make is who are we going to serve? Are we going to serve God or the devil? If we are not serving God, we are serving satan.
Apostle Epps speaks more about the seed in us and how to activate it through the Word. I will continue this teaching in my next post.
This teaching blessed me so much, I pray it blesses you.
Heather
