A TIME TO BE BORN
“A TIME TO BE BORN”
Sunday, March 26, 2017, the Year of Our Lord
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
What an incredible journey! Each of us has been designed to successfully complete our God-sent task (Is. 55:11). – The appointed time has come.
Eccles. 3:1-2: To every thing there is a season (a set time, an appointed occasion), and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born…
Eph. 1:3-6: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
You and I were a word out of the mouth of God before we ever had a body. He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world. We were part of the army of words selected out of Him who is the Word.
The pre-incarnate Word is Head and Body, Jesus Christ and His Church. We are His ongoing incarnation and expression in the earth---called and chosen to be salt, and light, His witness.
Eccl. LXX (The Sep-tu-a-gint) Time is for all things; but there is a particular portion of time for every particular affair under heaven…For everything there is a season, and there is a proper time for every project under heaven…There is a right time for everything.
Ps. 102:13: You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come.
God’s “purpose” for each of us---our chosen destiny---is His will and delight. There is an appointed time for every facet of this predetermined purpose, the first of which is a time to be born.
Each of us was brought to the earth at a specific time. The season of your birth was aligned to His foreordained purpose. The sovereign God knew who your parents would be, how they would meet, and when they would decide to have you!
At the prearranged moment---your conception---You were created as one in billions.
You were right on time to fulfill your prophetic purpose, that which the Father spoke over you from the beginning.
God spoke over you about yourself before He assigned you a body. You were elected before He released you to come to earth, picked out for greatness as a word out of the Word.
You are a gift from Heaven. You will not return to Him unfulfilled.
Isa. 55:11: So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
The words we speak which are Jesus’ words will bring forth His will. The words we speak from our carnal nature will burn as wood, hay, and stubble.
1 Peter 1:18-19: “…you know you were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spot.
The proper discharge of our foreordained purpose is inevitable once we begin to understand his divine objective for our lives, by His Word and through His Spirit.
Can we miss God? YES! We can continually operate out of our flesh, speak our opinions, do our will, make our judgments, then decree that as truth; and we will miss our Kingdom purposes.
Jesus spoke John 5: 40-44: You are not willing to come to Me (Jesus) that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men. Human approval or disapproval means nothing to me. But oh how different it is with you. Obviously you have no real love for God. For here I am fully attested to by My Father. I have come in His Name, yet you won’t believe me. But let someone else come along in his own name and him you will receive. How can you ever expect to exercise faith when the only glory you care about is that which you get from each other? Faith is impossible when you are not interested in the glory the true God bestows on a person. (C. S. Lovett’s Lights on John)
As God did with His firstborn Son, God sent you and me from heaven to earth in the fullness of time to do His will.
Your name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from the foundation of the world. Only the Lamb could open the book in which your destiny, and Kingdom purpose has been prepared from the foundation of the earth. Only the Lamb is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals. No man in heaven, or in earth, neither under the earth was able to open the book, nor look at it. But the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has prevailed to open the book. For Christ was slain and redeemed us to God by His blood out of every nation. He has restored to us our right mind, our destiny, our Kingdom purpose and made us unto God kings and priests. In our fulfilled destiny in which you were chosen from the foundation of the earth, we shall reign on the earth.
The Holy Bible clearly states that the first man, Adam, was the federal head of a natural race. He pointed ahead to the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, the federal head of a spiritual race.
When Adam sinned, we all sinned. When Adam fell, we all fell. When Adam fell, he lost His divinely appointed dominion and destiny which was spoken from the foundation of the earth.
Luke 19:10: For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
The blood of the Lamb bought back and brought back all “that” was lost, not just whoever was lost. Jesus Christ recovered us into right relationship with the Father and recovered our destiny, dominion and purpose for His Kingdom.
Each of us is a word from God. Eph. 1:4: For He chose us in our union with Christ before the creation of the universe…
In that meeting, the Father decreed Psalm 2:7: I will declare the decree; The LORD has said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.
That decree is to Jesus Christ, the Pattern Son, to the Psalmist who was given the decree, to you and me.
The Son agreed: Psa. 40: 7-8: Then I said, “Behold I come in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is within my heart.”
The works of God were finished in that meeting Heb. 4:3: For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said; “So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest,” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
The Lamb was slain in that Meeting Rev. 13:8: All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
You and I were there…in Him
The god of this world has blinded the unbelievers’ minds that they should not discern the truth. The devil is a murderer and a liar. His hellish intent is abortion and assassination. He wants to destroy the Seed.
Satan purposes to steal everyone’s foreordained identity. Rev. 13:7 It was given unto him (the beast/antichrist) To make war with the saints, and to overcome them…
Satan tries to wear out the saints to steal our authority and destroy our God-sent purpose. If we don’t know who we are in Christ, we will never know what we have in Christ. Acts 17:28: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being…
The purpose of the king of darkness is to blind our minds as to who we were declared to be “in Him” from the beginning, lest we grasp the gospel of glory. Watch your television screens and the mindless shows and programs are written by people who have lost their minds.
There is a sealing of the mind, will and emotions by the Lord Jesus Christ. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
If we have the mind of Christ Jesus, only doing the will of the Father, and being led by the Holy Spirit rather than our emotions, Satan cannot steal our Kingdom destiny. People cannot make judgments over us because their judgment will not stand before God. Their judgments are made from their vain conversations based on the traditions of men.
1 Cor. 2:16: For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
We have a problem. How is humanity to redeem its right mind? How are we ever to remember that we have been chosen for greatness?
Be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, acceptable, and the perfect will of God.
We had His mind and heard His mind “in the beginning.”
We lost our mind---His mind---in the fall.
We reclaimed our mind---His mind---at the cross!
When we were born again, we were born with our right mind, the mind of Christ. There is a time to be born. When the Lord spoke to the Psalmist You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Whoever wrote that Psalm was a full grown man born again that day as a Son of God? Our new birth was a resurrection. He raised us from the death of trespasses, sins and the Adamic fall. He re-lit our spirit. His finished work restored our right mind and renewed our fellowship with the Father. The spirit of man is that part of a man which is God-conscious.
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.
James 1:18: Of his own will he begat us with the word of truth….
In the first Adam, we lost our right mind.
Regenerated in Christ, the last Adam, we got our right mind back---the mind of Christ.
Like the prodigal, when we were born again, we came to our senses.
We are to …stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.
The new birth is but the beginning of our full salvation experience. In water baptism, we get our name back---His! The baptism of water is into the NAME OF THE LORD JESUS. This involves both identification and invocation.
Water baptism in the Old Testament is typified first by Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea, and then by the covenantal rite of male circumcision that Jehovah gave to Abraham (Gen. 17).
First Moses’ Old Testament Church in the wilderness was delivered by the blood, the water, and the Spirit (1 Jn. 5:8). Paul showed that Moses’ whole congregation enjoyed five experiences (the first three were once-for-all, and the last two were continual benefits). Old Testament Israel, a Body called out, was blessed by:
- The blood of the Passover Lamb.
- The baptism of water as they were baptized corporately into Moses at the Red Sea. (Ex. 14-15; Jn. 1:17; Gal. 3:19)
- The baptism of the Spirit as they were baptized into Moses in the Shekinah glory cloud (Ex. 13), a type of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
- The bread, the manna (“What is it?) that fell from heaven (Ex. 16), a picture of eating our daily bread, the Word of God.
- The beverage, the water that flowed from the flinty rock (Christ) (Ex. 17), showing that we drink daily from the Spirit within (Jn. 7:38).
Pharaoh is a type of Satan, the prince and god of the kosmos. Israel left Pharaoh’s territory and the water cut off his power at the Red Sea! Likewise the old Adamic man has been buried in baptism. Satan has been cut off once and for all! Sin shall not be our master “shall not have dominion.”
Jehovah initiated the seal of covenant with Abraham, the father, of all those who live by faith. Circumcision sealed the Old Covenant, and points ahead to water baptism in the name of the Lord as the first sealing of the New Covenant.
Old Testament circumcision which includes the invocation of a new name is a type and picture of New Testament water baptism by immersion in the NAME OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST for the remission of our sins and the circumcision of our hearts.
Acts 2:38: then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized every one of you in the NAME OF THE JESUS CHRIST for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we got His mind back. When we sealed that conversion with water baptism in His name, we got our right name back. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one.
The third witness is the Holy Spirit. For those who are filled with the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking with other tongues, we got our language back---the language of His Spirit. Our Heavenly language.
The divine mind-set has been restored to God’s elect. Your appointed assignment and personal destiny---like Mary’s can only be birthed “there.” Lk. 2: 6-7: So it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she (Mary) should be delivered.
Your destiny can only come forth “there” among those who have been impregnated with the same prophetic spirit.
Make “sure” your election that you are with the right people in the right place at the right time. The keys to your fulfillment are in those God-given covenantal relationships who will stay with you until you bring forth.
I have been blessed with those covenantal relationships. Such are many of you in this congregation. Others you know who have stood with this ministry since the day the Lord appointed me to full time ministry.
To win the good fight of faith is to be convinced the battle is already over! It was fought and won in the Meeting when the Lamb was slain.
Jesus opened the book and found the place where it was written of Him. Jesus proclaimed His foreordained destiny from the Volume of the Book.
Receive now in Jesus’ name an abundant entrance into all that your Father decreed about you and over you “before the foundation of the world”. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries Church
Scripture from K.J.V. and N.K.J.V. I entered into the labors of Chosen for Greatness by: Rev. Kelly Varner (1949-2009) Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Rev. Varner.