Run The Race

Henson Lim

“Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.” 1 Cor 9:24

Ask any Christian if he would like to win the prize at the end of his Christian race and the answer is “Yes!” If that is so, how come so few are running the race? Do we not realise that prizes are only given when one completes the race? The sad truth is that many think they are running the race without realising it is the rat race of the world they are running in. Honestly, I don’t remember the Lord ever calling us rats ever since we were declared new creations in Christ (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15). What is the problem then? Allow me to suggest three misunderstandings:

1. Wrong Understanding of the Completed Work of Jesus
That Jesus has done it all for us upon the Cross is indeed true. That simply means there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation except to believe in Him. When we do that by faith, the race didn’t end. On the contrary, that’s when the race begins. Salvation gets us a place in the race. We will still need to run the race that we can finish it well to win the prize!

2. Wrong Understanding of Grace and Works
But what about grace? Does not running the race equate to working for salvation? Certainly not! Working out our salvation (Phil 2:12) is totally different from working for our salvation. In the reality show Amazing Race, the last couple to reach the pit-stop is automatically eliminated because they have not met the mark. As we run the race, we too do not meet the standards of God. When we stand before Him we know we deserve to be eliminated. Yet, God looks at us, sees the righteousness of Jesus imputed upon us, and by His grace declares, “This is a non-elimination round!” That’s what grace is all about. God’s amazing grace keeps us in the amazing race.

3. Wrong Understanding of the Finish Point.
I want to surprise you that heaven is not the object of the race. Heaven is only where the prize presentation is held. Our destination and goal is godliness, to be like Christ. That is why we run with endurance looking to Him as the Author and Finisher of our faith (Heb 12:2). As we run, it is the Spirit who changes us from glory to glory, into the image of the Son (2 Cor 3:18). The closer we approach this goal, the more we are transformed into the likeness of Jesus! To reflect His face is the goal of the race.

Which race are you running in? Are you being pulled by the world and struggling desperately to keep pace? Are you aiming for the prize of fame and fortune? If so, you are in the wrong race then. By the grace of God, there is still time to get back on the right track. Don’t be deceived by the get-saved-and-go-to-heaven theology. Make a decision today to work out your salvation and begin exercising towards godliness which is profitable for this life and that which is come (1 Tim 4:7,8).

Author Profile

Henson Lim

Rev Henson Lim is the Dean of Covenant Vision School of Ministry and the Deputy Senior Pastor of Covenant Vision Christian Church in Singapore.  He managed his own advertising agency for 14 years before stepping into fulltime ministry in 2004 with a passion to spur others to rise above mediocre Christianity that they may live lives worthy of their calls in Jesus Christ.

Born and raised a Christian, he did all things Christian but without the relationship and intimacy with a personal God.  All he had was a belief system and nothing more, resulting in a straying away from God for 11 years where he pursued his own ambitions, dreams and desires in the world.  All this changed when God drew him back in 1994.  With the eyes of his heart opened and a hunger that stirred deep within, he embarked on a new spiritual pilgrimage with exciting and eventful discoveries and experiences with an amazing and awesome God.  It is with this passion that he shares and teaches, urging and exhorting others to know God personally and intimately, beyond mere liturgies, doctrines and credo beliefs.

Rev Henson is happily married to Serene and together, they have seven children.

Rev Henson Lim
Covenant Vision Ministries
154 Tyrwhitt Road
Singapore 207567

Email: henson@covenantvision.org | Website: www.brohenson.org | Ministry Website: www.covenantvision.org

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Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

Kris Vallotton

Devilish Deceptions

It’s been said that God does nothing in the affairs of men except they pray.  Prayer is the catalyst for worldwide transformation.  Prayer incites the angels, restrains darkness, and releases nations into their destiny.  Prayer is the key to revival, building bridges between what should be and what will be.

The devil also knows the power of prayer and he understands that he can’t stop us from praying.  But he is the master of deception and he tries to convince us that his destructive schemes are “acts of God” so Believers will not release the arsenal of Heaven against him!  Unfortunately, satan has been more successful at deceiving the saints recently than he has for decades.  One of the ways he has shrewdly crept into our society is by convincing the Church that it is our responsibility to release the wrath of God against sinners.  This authorizes the dethroned prince of darkness to kill, steal and destroy while we stand aside applauding the demise of these ravaged people. To make matters worse, this evil prince frames the Lord of Redemption for his crimes, poisoning the people of His passion, which causes many of them to reject His wedding invitation. Meanwhile, those who have been empowered to police this property lack discernment and assist these angels of light in their killing spree.

The Reemerging Of The Doomsday Prophets

In the last decade the “Doomsday” prophets seemed to have come out of hibernation. In 1997, my own parents moved out of the San Francisco Bay Area to avoid the wrath of a great earthquake prophesied to strike southern California. This quake was going to destroy Hollywood for its immoral pollution of the media and San Francisco for its homosexual perversion. The word also predicted that northern California would become “ocean front property.” 

My mom and dad relocated from the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe near Nevada, hoping to find a prophetic “no-fly” zone.  Just about the time my folks got settled, several prophets began to prophesy about an upcoming international famine. This became known around the world as the “Y2K bug.” This bug was going to judge us for making our intellect a god.  It was the perfect “God Scheme.”  The whole plan was to be hidden by our foolish confidence in man’s brilliance. It seemed that the Lord had blinded every computer nerd in the world, keeping them from discovering too soon that we would all be starving over the lack of a digit.  What a way to go! There would be rioting in the streets; people would be fighting off the temptation to cannibalize their neighbors and children!  Businesses and governments would crumble next.  Some even predicted this would start the “Mother of all Wars.”  People streamed in mass to buy generators and guns to protect their food in the “Name of the Lord.” Needless to say, these preparations proved to be pointless, and my parents are still driving for hours to reach the ocean.

September 11, 2001 will forever be branded in the minds of Americans as a monument to murder.   America woke up to the sounds of people screaming, many of them on fire as they exited the black smoke of a man-made hell. Explosions could be heard in the background as buildings crumbled and thousands were trapped in would-be tombs.  Weeping and wailing were heard for miles as people wandered aimlessly through the streets looking for their loved ones. Many jumped to their death from these flaming infernos. Deep sadness and fear blanketed the whole earth as the news spread.  Everywhere, people were crying out for mercy for those who were still counted among the missing.  People were glued to their TV sets, praying, hoping and believing that life would emerge from the rubble.

Although the “Prophets of Doom” had not prophesied this disaster, declarations of darkness began to emerge from what was supposed to be the “House of Hope.” Before we could ask ourselves why such a mindless act of horror would be perpetrated on the lives of the many innocent who died that day, numerous Prophets began to proclaim that this terrorist attack was God’s judgment for the sins of our nation.  Their thesis was that God was angry over the abortion, homosexual, and pornography issues, so he decided to kill a bunch of people to make His point. Can you imagine the grief that beset those who had lost loved ones and were now being confronted by an angry God who wanted to kill more people?  This attitude reminds me of something Jesus said, "In the last days the love of many will grow cold" (Matthew 24:12.) 

Slow Learners

It seems that many of God’s Prophets are slow learners as a whole new wave of prophetic judgments are being released over San Francisco, Northern California and Hollywood again. These judgments are predicated on a huge misunderstanding of New Testament prophetic ministry in the Church today. The Church needs to realize that the crucifixion of Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets!  We need to stop doing for the devil what he can’t do for himself!

Let’s take a look at the goal of New Testament ministry and means of achieving it according to the Apostle Paul. He wrote:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17-21.)

Two things come to light in these passages: number one, New Testament ministry is the “ministry of reconciliation”. And number two, the way God reconciles people to Himself is by “not counting their trespasses against them!” In the Old Testament the primary role of the Prophet was to decree judgments for national transgressions because sin required judgment under the Law. But in the New Testament, the crucifixion of Christ paid the price that judgment required, thereby fulfilling justice and ultimately releasing mercy to millions of sinners who didn’t deserve it (people like you and me, for instance).

A Violent Act Of Grace

It never seems to dawn on some Believers that we didn’t get into the Kingdom through our works but through His (Christ’s).  Sinners who discipline themselves into good behavior are still sinners who are in need of a savior.  No one can behave their way into Heaven!  Trying to get into Heaven through disciplined behavior is called self-righteousness and it is ugly to God!

Jesus said, “The Law and the Prophets were proclaimed until John; since that time the gospel of the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it (Luke 16:16). The Law said, “You can’t come into the Kingdom because you haven’t kept all the rules!”  The Prophets continued the same theme, proclaiming judgments on the world for their (our) wickedness. But then, suddenly, something amazing happened; unrighteous people began turning the Cross of Christ into a battering ram and through a violet act of grace they forced their way into the Kingdom!

Shaking Out The Salt

Jesus told us, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men (Matthew 5:13). In Jesus’ day, they didn’t have refrigerators to store their food.  Salt was the primary means by which they preserved their meat and poultry.  Through this analogy, the Lord is teaching us that the Church is the element in society that preserves the culture from the wrath of God and the destruction of evil forces.  A great example of this is Joseph, who released a corporate blessing through his righteous life.  His presence in Egypt caused the Israelites and the Egyptians to be spared from a worldwide famine.

Jesus also said that when salt becomes tasteless, it is not good for anything except to be walked on by men.  In other words, the people of that day would taste the salt and if it was no longer salty, they knew that it would not keep their food from spoiling. It’s important to remember that Jesus is not really talking about preserving meat, but describing the Body of Christ.  So what does it mean to become tasteless?  It implies that we have stopped preserving the world. You can tell when the Church has become tasteless because we begin to prophesy against the people we are supposed to be preserving.

Re-Presenting Christ

Not only is the Church preservation (salt), but we are also revelation (light).  In the book of Matthew Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14.)  What does it mean to be light, and what is it that we are illuminating? We are shedding light on the nature of God; how He thinks and acts in the affairs of men.  We are the revelation of the Father and His love letter to the world.  We re-present Christ to the lost. The world looks to us to understand world events through the eyes of God.  When we misrepresent our Heavenly Father, the world gets a warped perspective of God.

James and John are a good example of how many misrepresent God.  The “Sons of Thunder” wanted to call fire down to consume a city, but Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what spirit you are of" (Luke 9:54-55.)  It is interesting to me that this was this same John who wrote to the Beloved and exhorted us, “Not to believe every spirit, but to test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (I John 4:1.)  I imagine that he received the revelation that even Jesus’ own apostles could be influenced by hell through his own experience of listening to the wrong spirit.

Notice how his exhortation continues in the same chapter: “Beloved, let us love one another . . . There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love” (John 4:18.)  These verses were written in the context of testing the spirits.  In other words, we test the spirits by examining them in light of the virtues of love.  When we read love’s virtues that are spelled out in the letter to the Corinthians, and understand that fear has no place in love, we find ourselves wondering what spirit is encouraging these judgment prophecies.  The greatest tragedy is that the revelation the world receives from these voices causes them to believe that our Father is an angry God who is looking for an opportunity to punish people.

The apostle John laid his head on the chest of Christ and was transformed from an angry, “son of thunder” into John the beloved. It is time for the prophets of God to lay their head on the Masters chest and hear the heart beat of Heaven again.

Jesus said, “If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness” (Matthew 6:23)!  If we are the light of the world and we are speaking against the people who are already lost in night, how great is the darkness!  In the same way, when we represent God as someone who wants to destroy America because forty millions babies have been aborted in our country, we perpetuate the very problem that we are trying to cure.  People are killing their babies because they don’t know or understand the love of the Father.  Does it make sense that we tell people that God is so angry that we are killing our young that He is going to teach us a lesson by killing a bunch more people?  Is our Father so single-dimensional in His being that He only has one response to anything man does wrong?

Can you imagine the negative impact it would have on your daughter if she came to you to tell you that she had an abortion, and in response you flipped out and tried to kill her?  If you reacted out of rage, I would suggest that your lack of love is a large part of her decision to have the abortion in the first place.

When we reveal God to the world, it is essential that we communicate light, life and love.  Love doesn’t punish or create fear.  I personally don’t believe that God is mad at sinners.  I do think that He is grieved over the world’s destructive behavior. But grief and anger are not the same thing.

Love Requires Free Choice

Every time we see the heartless acts of destruction that deeply wound the heart of God, we must remember the depths of God’s desire to share love. The nature of love is that it requires us to be able to choose.  If God took away our choice, people could only behave in the way that God programmed them to.  Wars would cease, hunger would end, and poverty would only be an ancient memory.  But the desperate cry of the human heart that beats with passion for a loving relationship with the most beautiful Being in the entire universe would be gone too.

Day after day, a loving Creator looks down on a broken planet longing for the day when the object of His affection will walk hand in hand with Him into indescribable beauty in the halls of eternity. In the meantime, the destruction continues, not because God is angry with man, but rather because men choose to kill, steal and destroy.  This is the fruit of those who have chosen the wrong lover (Satan).

Meanwhile, a hateful enemy is stalking a wounded and desperate people. He is seeking to paralyze us with fear, demoralize us with his arrogant boasts of destructive predictions, and harden us with hopelessness. Yet still, the future belongs to those who pray.  Prayer is the bridge between what should be and what will be. The diligent prayer of a righteous people will ultimately determine the destiny of our children.  Therefore, it is our responsibility to leave to those yet to be born a world in revival as their inheritance. Hanging in the balance of eternity is the ultimate climax of our Creator – the kingdoms of this world becoming the Kingdom of our God.

Author Profile

Kris Vallotton

Kris Vallotton is the founder and overseer of the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California. He is the Senior Associate Leader at Bethel Church, and has been a part of Bill Johnson's apostolic team for over 26 years. Kris is an internationally recognized prophetic voice, and he and his wife Kathy have trained, developed, and pastored prophetic teams and supernatural schools all over the world.

He is a notable speaker with a vision and passion to equip an "Elijah Generation" for the end-times harvest. He has authored numerous books including the best-selling Supernatural Ways of Royalty, as well as Developing a Supernatural Lifestyle, Basic Training for the Prophetic Ministry, and Purity. 

Website: KVMinistries.com | Resources | Video | Books | Article Archive here

Walking By The Spirit - Part 1

JoAnn McFatter

It is our privilege and delight as the body of Christ to pursue the mystery of the knowledge of our God. Most are in agreement that this is a time of acceleration where the things of the Spirit are concerned. As a God-driven hunger for Spirit and Truth increases in our hearts, we are finding ourselves hitting a wall again and again as we attempt to understand the things of the spirit via the mind of man. We seem to have a problem in this present age of comprehending what it means to have the mind of Christ. We must seek God to find just what it means to live by the Spirit.

FOR WHO HAS KNOWN OR UNDERSTOOD THE MIND (THE COUNSELS AND PURPOSES) OF THE LORD SO AS TO GUIDE AND INSTRUCT HIM AND GIVE HIM KNOWLEDGE? BUT WE HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST (THE MESSIAH) AND DO HOLD THE THOUGHTS (FEELINGS AND PURPOSES) OF HIS HEART. 1 COR. 2:16, AMPLIFIED

We've lost the fullness of just what it means to be a new creature in Christ at our conversion to the truth that Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, shed His Blood that we might be freed from the curse that was pronounced upon mankind when sin entered through the first Adam. If, indeed, Adam and Eve lived outside of the curse before they sinned, why then are we, though redeemed by the blood of the Lamb who bore sin on our behalf, still living as though nothing happened to negate it's hold on us?

I can't imagine the world that Adam and Eve lived in before all of this happened. God walked with Adam in the cool of the day, so His glory had to have filled the atmosphere. I've heard stories of people who have been in the kind of glory cloud that was so thick you couldn't see the person next to you! It was described as breathing pure oxygen that was absolutely exhilarating. I believe the speed of light was different in the garden before the fall, as that would have made the atmosphere to contain a different level of oxygen, etc. that would have sustained their bodies in a different way. There minds would have been much more alert. Breathing a different level of oxygen increases everything in our bodies.

I imagine that they had use of a much larger capacity of their brain. If the curse has been broken, shouldn't we, at the bear minimum, be living as they did in the garden before the fall? What I ponder these days is just why we are not living in that same environment because as God was with them in the garden, He is IN us at our conversion. It seems that the atmosphere they were surrounded in would be the very atmosphere that we should be carrying inside of us - the very glory of God! Christ IN us, the hope of glory!

CHRIST PURCHASED OUR FREEDOM ( REDEEMING US ) FROM THE CURSE ( DOOM ) OF THE LAW ( AND ITS CONDEMNATION ) BY ( HIMSELF ) BECOMING A CURSE FOR US, FOR IT IS WRITTEN ( IN THE SCRIPTURES ), CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE ( IS CRUCIFIED ). GAL 3:13 AMP

THEREFORE, IF ANY PERSON IS ( INGRAFTED ) IN CHRIST ( THE MESSIAH ) HE IS A NEW CREATURE ( A NEW CREATURE ALTOGETHER ); THE OLD ( PREVIOUS MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CONDITION ) HAS PASSED AWAY. BEHOLD, THE FRESH AND NEW HAS COME! 2 COR 5:17 AMP

The old has passed and the fresh and new has come. We can now walk in His manifest glory right here and right now. When Moses was in the presence of God's glory, his face shined so that he had to wear a veil over it. Something happened to him as he beheld the measure of glory the Lord allowed to pass by him as Moses hid himself in the cleft of the rock. Should not that glory reside in us today? Should we not be 'leaking light' as we become more one with Him, by our spirit communing with His spirit?

As we become born again by the Spirit of God and we become one with Him, we come into alignment with who we were created to be - one who is made in the image of God. As we walk on this earth we are to navigate by allowing our mind and body to follow our own spirit man as we are led by His Spirit. I'm afraid we have no idea how to do that! We have so navigated for centuries by the mind of man, that even when we think we are being led by the Spirit we are still following our linear, rational, left-brained, Greek/western thought processes.

JESUS ANSWERED ( NICODEMUS ), I ASSURE YOU, MOST SOLEMNLY I TELL YOU, UNLESS A MAN IS BORN OF WATER AND ( EVEN ) THE SPIRIT, HE CANNOT ( EVER ) ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD. WHAT IS BORN ( FROM ) THE FLESH IS FLESH ( OF THE PHYSICAL IS PHYSICAL ); AND WHAT IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT IS SPIRIT. MARVEL NOT ( DO NOT BE SURPRISED, ASTONISHED ) AT MY TELLING YOU, YOU MUST BE BORN ANEW ( FROM ABOVE ). THE WIND BLOWS ( BREATHES ) WHERE IT WILLS; AND THOUGH YOU HEAR ITS SOUND, YET YOU NEITHER KNOW WHERE IT COMES FROM, NOR WHERE IT IS GOING. SO IT IS WITH EVERYONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT. JOHN 3:5-8 AMP

IF I HAVE TOLD YOU OF THINGS THAT HAPPEN RIGHT HERE ON THE EARTH AND YET NONE OF YOU BELIEVES ME, HOW CAN YOU BELIEVE ( TRUST ME, ADHERE TO ME, RELY ON ME ) IF I TELL YOU OF HEAVENLY THINGS? AND YET NO ONE HAS EVER GONE UP TO HEAVEN, BUT THERE IS ONE WHO HAS COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN - THE SON OF MAN ( HIMSELF ), WHO IS ( DWELLS, HAS HIS HOME ) IN HEAVEN.
JOHN 12-13 AMP

Notice that Jesus says about Himself that He is in heaven. He's standing there on the earth, telling the Nicodemas that He is in heaven. We are seated with Him in heavenly places. He didn't say we would be seated, He said we ARE seated. That would mean present tense. The ability to be in two realms at the same time is something we need to grasp as we let our own way of thinking fall away and take on the mind of Christ. If it were not ours to have, He would not have put it in front of us the way He continually does in scripture.

We have rationalized the life out of what Jesus really said until there is no Spirit left in it - just the mind of man in his small box of what is possible and acceptable by our limited thinking and understanding, not to mention our religious ways of processing His words.

I believe God is going to illuminate our minds as we give way to His Spirit communing with out spirit man. It is a time in history when the sciences, the arts, and spirituality are coming to a shift as He allows us to see the fullness of how He put this world together for us to live in, both in the physical realm as well as the eternal realm -- AT THE SAME TIME! As we meditate on Him and His Word, He is going to help us to get our heads wrapped around these things of the Spirit.

He's going to help us step into and take on the mind of Christ. It would behoove us to ask Him to reveal just how He meant for us to live on this earth. Again I say, we need to ask Him just what was in His heart when He created man in the very beginning to commune with Him. It would be good for us to ask Him how to walk with Him, truly as a new creature in Christ, one with His Spirit, with Christ in us, living through us, with our spirit man taking the lead. It's time to break out of the limitations we have walked in for the past decades upon decades! The choice is ours as to just how deep we go into the mind of Christ.
Is. 40:13 Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him?

Author Profile

JoAnn McFatter

JoAnn McFatter is currently traveling nationally and internationally as a worship leader and/or speaker. Her ministry, Inside-Eternity, is partnering with WhiteDove Ministries, based in Foley, Alabama.

While facilitating the shift from the mind of man to the mind of Christ in word and song, she carries a twofold passion. First, to see the Bride abandoned body, soul and spirit to God and God alone. Second, to see revelation opened up as it pertains to spirit, science and art being woven together to bring Kingdom manifestation on the earth as it is in heaven.

Website: www.joannmcfatter.com | Email contact@joannmcfatter.com | Article Archive here |Books here