Facet 7: The True Solution - Transcript

Welcome to the True Solution—the seventh and final facet of this journey we’ve been on called Awake.
 
This is where we ask the question, what do we do with what we’ve learned?
 
If this is all true; if Jesus really did come and live and die and then rise three days later, what does that actually mean for our lives?
 
We’ve discussed so much in the last six parts, which were all different facets of the Larger Story behind the universe and behind life itself. We looked at the very creation of the cosmos, and of who we were made to be, and how that was lost; how we fell into a false identity, and how that has led to every problem we see in the world.
 
But we also looked at this secret plan that the Creator had from before the beginning of time. And a good part of that plan first involved the Law, and God showing the human race that pursuing life on our own—the “God kind of life”—trying to attain that ourselves does not work. So we saw that the Law was a “false solution.”
 
But then we saw the ultimate plan come together in the person of the Messiah, Jesus, who had been prophesied about for thousands of years. The One who would come and restore what was lost—what we essentially fell asleep to.

What we fell asleep to was the truth of who we are; and the truth of who God is as a glorious and happy Divine Family: Father, Spirit, Son.
 
So Jesus came not only to show us these things; but to redeem them—to buy them back, so to speak. With the blood he shed at the cross, Jesus revealed the worth of our blood. And he revealed the true smile of God over humanity.  
 
And with His blood Jesus also took on all our darkness. The entire false self that we’ve inherited, Jesus crushed its power so that it would no longer have to haunt us or rule over us.
 
And then, when he rose from the grave and transformed human civilization, splitting the calendar in two—God showed us that the Messiah’s work on the cross was effective and real.
 
And so he proved once and for all that we have been restored as his children and bride.  
 
And that is the complete diamond of truth that we have been looking at. But now in this last Facet of this wondrous diamond, we turn to the question of where we go from here.
 
Do we stay asleep in the dreamworld, the false identity, or do we choose to wake up…?
 
Whether you believe it or not, Jesus did rise. I know that might sound arrogant or cocky, it’s not meant to… He’s alive. And by his Spirit he is still moving on people’s hearts all the time.

I’m one of many he has transformed. I experienced the power of Christ’s love in my life years ago when I was lost and searching for transcendence and meaning; Jesus came and turned my life upside down, and gave me power over things that I couldn’t overcome on my own.
 
I had many addictions and even more than that, I had this blanket of unbelief and skepticism that wrapped around my mind and made it seem impossible for me to embrace any kind of real faith. I felt I could never be a person who would embrace Jesus’s resurrection.
 
But one night, I opened my heart to Jesus, still struggling with my faith, but yet opened my heart enough for him to come in and bring his light. And that’s what he did. Then he took that shroud of addiction and unbelief, and he made me into a faith-filled child of God.
 
And he’s been doing that for countless people through the ages.
 
I experienced the most beautiful change in my heart, and that change came through the power of the Holy Spirit—which brings us really to the main focus of this last Facet.
 
When we choose to embrace the truth, to wake up, there is a gift that God releases in our lives.
 
When we open up and say “yes” to this amazing love, Jesus promised that something would get unlocked on the inside of us.
 
In the Gospel of John, in the New Testament, Jesus said that for those who believe—which is what we mean by saying “yes” or embracing the truth—He said that rivers of living water would come out of our innermost being.
 
Now those rivers are the very life of God Himself, and it’s really just another way of describing the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the very Life of God.
 
So here’s the deal—and a lot of religious people, including many Christians might have a hard time with me saying this—but the Holy Spirit has already been given to every single person.  
 
The Spirit is everywhere. In fact, no one can utter their next breath without the Spirit of God sustaining them. In the book of Job, there’s a part where it says, “If God were to draw in his breath (his ruach in the Hebrew, His Spirit, it says), all flesh would cease to exist.”
 
This gift of God, the Spirit, has actually been with you your entire life. God’s Spirit is the inspiration and spark behind all true creativity. The Spirit is the source of all true love and kindness and joy.

The Spirit is the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb and even fused with you in that process, giving you consciousness and the ability to receive love and to give love.  
 
But here’s an important thing to say in light of all of this. The Holy Spirit of God is still called a gift. And a gift must be received and unwrapped.
 
And the reason for that, in this case, is because God will not force a relationship on anyone.
 
And when we believe the truth, when we say “yes” to this message—we’re not just mentally agreeing with nice religious ideas; we’re embracing relationship with the Divine Family.  
 
And when that happens, we give permission to the One who has always been with us to overflow and transform our lives.
 
So it says in the book of Ephesians that when we believe, we are sealed with the Spirit. This is important to understand, this word “seal.”
 
During the days that Scripture was written, an ancient seal had a very specific purpose. A seal would confirm and empower a certain item.
 
So if a king put his seal on a letter, it meant that letter had authority and truly belonged to king. Now the unsealed letter already belonged to the king. It was already his. But the seal gave it authority and demonstrated that truth to the world.
 
That is what the seal of the Spirit does with a human being who embraces the truth—this diamond of God’s Larger Story.
 
The Spirit comes and confirms who you already are as a beloved daughter or son. And with that, the Holy Spirit brings an awareness in your heart of God’s intimate love for you.
 
In another part of the New Testament, it says, the Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God.
 
So when we believe; when we open up to the truth, God releases this empowering gift within us, and this gift testifies, or confirms like a seal on an ancient letter, that you are indeed a child of the King.
 
And that changes everything.
 
Now did you know that Jesus experienced this for himself. One day, at the Jordan River in Israel, Jesus was baptized, and it was there that he also received the gift of the Spirit.
 
Now Jesus already had the Holy Spirit, they were one, but he was showing us this mystery; how we are called to receive the One who is already ours.
 
So it says the Spirit came upon him. And then the voice of the Father confirmed, testified publicly to who he was.
 
God said in that moment: “You are My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.”
 
The Spirit confirmed Jesus was a loved Child of God. And when we receive Jesus, which also involves baptism, I’ll talk about that more in a moment, we experience the same thing.

Now the seal of the Spirit not only confirms who we are—the Spirit also empowers us to live out who we are.  
 
After his baptism, the Scriptures say that Jesus was filled with the power of the Spirit and he began to do incredible things. He began to walk with a new power upon His life.
 
Now again, that power was always there, but he was really showing us how a human being is called to be empowered by the Spirit to do the incredible. And to fulfill our purpose.
 
Later on in his life, toward the end, the night before he was crucified, Jesus said this to his followers. He said:
 
I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is, the Spirit of truth…
 
So the Spirit of God, this river of life waiting to burst forth within us, is also called a Helper.
 
That’s important to understand as well, because it reminds us that we can’t live out our true identity as the children of God in our own strength—independently. We can’t even continue to have faith and believe without his help.  
 
We learned this back in Facet 3 when we talked about the False Solution of the Law. The Law, and really all human effort, none of it does anything to solve our deepest needs.
 
So in this Facet, we’re finally getting to the True Solution, which is not the way of the law, but the way of the Spirit.
 
The Spirit gives us what the Law never could. The Spirit comes and confirms who we are deep down and then empowers us to become who we are. In other words, the Spirit leads us into the Truth. And the Truth is that our old identity was put to death with Christ, and now in his resurrection there is a new creation—a new identity available right now.
 
And this truth is true whether you believe it or not, but it is when you believe, when you receive it, that you receive the One who makes it real in you.
 
And that’s when the Spirit comes, like what happened to Jesus, and we get empowered. We are given the grace to live the right way, the good way. To live in joy and peace and love. And also, we’re given the power to do the work of healing and restoration on earth.
 
The Spirit enables us to live out our calling and destiny—something we can’t do without our Creator.
 
Now as we bring this whole thing to a close, I want to point out that there are “signs” of a person who has been sealed or touched by the Spirit of God on the inside.  
 
And listen carefully here, there’s so much debate and division out there in the world of religion about the signs and proof of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life. I’m not about to get into the weeds of that discussion. People have a great way of complicating things. We’re going to keep it super simple right now.
 
first of all, the greatest sign of the Spirit being released in someone’s life is love. That person begins to turn from darkness and selfishness and fear, and they begin to walk in the love of God. It’s that simple.

 
Now I do need to say that there are also supernatural things that can happen in a person’s life when they open up to the Spirit.  
 
One thing you may or may not be familiar with is how a new and strange language like babbling can come out of your mouth, something the Bible refers to as the gift of tongues.
 
When you read the book of Acts in the Bible it shows this happening to people as they were believing and receiving this message.
 
You also see other strange things happening. People wake up to the truth and they start prophesying; somethings the Scriptures define as speaking to others for their encouragement and strengthening; and really prophesying is speaking something from God’s heart to others.
 
So those are different supernatural things that can begin to happen in a person’s life when they receive the gift of the Spirit.  
 
But understand, none of that is a prerequisite or an absolute proof of whether or not a person has the Spirit.
 
Remember—God has already embraced you. Faith is accepting the One who has already accepted you.  
 
Contrary to some teachings out there, faith doesn’t make you into a child of God. Faith empowers you to become and live as a child of God. There’s a difference.
 
Faith is the humble acceptance that you are already his. And that you are loved and forgiven and made new through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

If you want a sign of proof that God is with you—it’s Jesus’s blood and his resurrection.
 
But all that being said, the Spirit does want to come and make this real. And if it’s not real in our lives, then we’re still living in deception and darkness.
 
And that brings us back to the reality that we do have a choice.  
 
This gift, this love, can be rejected. And God doesn’t want that for anybody. But people can stay in the dreamworld. In darkness. And so there is a choice involved in receiving this.
 
So we come here to an invitation. And this brings us to one last aspect of the Holy Spirit…
 
Interestingly enough, the Holy Spirit is also described in the Bible as a type of wedding ring.
 
You see, there’s this Greek word that’s used to describe the Spirit called “arrabōn” and most English Bibles translate that word as a “pledge” or “down payment.” But it’s so much more than that.
 
Back in the day, the word arrabōn was used to describe a certain type of gift a young man would give to secure his future bride, and it functioned like an engagement ring does today, but it had more binding power. It was more like a wedding ring, because if it was received by the woman then the deal was closed. The full celebration of the wedding hadn’t happened yet, but they belonged to each other at that point.
 
So the Holy Spirit gets compared to that type of wedding gift. And so I asked a question earlier… Do you choose to stay in the dreamworld…or do you choose to wake up?
 
When you say “I do” to his truth and his love, the Spirit is released in you like a seal or a ring upon your heart. And the Spirit enables you to become who you really are. And this is all through a relationship—not a rule book; not a religion.
 
Now, I mentioned baptism before. That’s important to bring up here as well.    
 
If a person truly says “I do” to this message, Jesus said that they are to be baptized into the family name… The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You see, baptism is person coming back to their original blessing in the Divine Family.  
 
In a way, baptism is almost like a marriage ceremony where we put on that ring of our beloved in public. It’s a public demonstration of what we’re saying “yes” to in our hearts.
 
And it’s what’s in the heart that matters.
 
So some people think that dunking a person in water or sprinkling a baby at church cleans away their sins.  
 
Listen carefully—Jesus cleaned up our sins at the cross when we died with him.
 
Baptism is what happens when a person truly embraces that reality. And again, it’s a heart embracing this truth that makes it outwardly real in our lives.
 
So I want to give you now an opportunity to say that “I do” to God. I want to lead you in a prayer here at the end—and like I just said about baptism, this is all about the heart. There’s no magic formula; there’s no power in a prayer in and of itself. 


Jesus has done it all. The question is, are you willing to receive that and then let the gift of the Spirit come and transform your life?
 
Maybe you’ve already done something like this, I don’t know; but if you’re feeling the pull to this now, don’t ignore it. Don’t ignore it.
 
I want to invite you to join me in this prayer. And as I speak these words, you speak them, or whatever hits you the most, speak it in your own heart to God.
 
Let’s pray…
 
Father, Son, and Spirit, I come to you right now as I am, and I choose today to say “yes” to the truth. I choose to say “I do” to your gift of love; and to receive your forgiveness. I give my very life to you. Come and wake me up to the truth. Renew my life and release on the inside of me Your Spirit.
 Let your Spirit flow out from my inmost being. I give you permission to lead me into this resurrection life. And it’s in the name of Jesus that I pray this. Amen.
 
I just want you to know how much God longs for that “yes.”  Even the weakest “yes” that we give Him, brings Him joy.  So linger here for a moment . . . stay here in this moment.
 
If you were with me in that prayer, or maybe you’re helping someone else with this area of faith in their life, there’s a final video after this that gives over some follow-up thoughts and some practical things. I would encourage you to look at that. There’s also some resources and some books and links below or with the video to help you as well.
 
But I just want thank you for joining me through these Seven Facets. I very much look forward to partying with you in the Kingdom of our Father forever. Be well.