Your identity is something you probably will have to wrestle through. Often times it’s very difficult to let go of an old identity. The reason we have spent so much time describing the condemnation identity, it’s so that you will see that all of us are living short of our true potential.
Luke 11:9-13 NASB
[9] “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. [10] For everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. [11] Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? [12] Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? [13] If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
Notice that Jesus says that Holy Spirit must be asked for. Few people connect the ministry of Holy Spirit with a need to persistently pursue God. When we place our trust in Jesus, we are actually entering into a covenant established by Jesus between God and man. This covenant is very much like a marriage covenant , so says Paul. When we receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, God comes and fills us with Love and baptizes us in His glory. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the consummation of this covenant.
Ephesians 1:13-14 NKJV
[13] In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, [14] who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
There are only two requirements to be filled, or baptized, with the Spirit: that we believe, and that we surrender. In fact, every aspect of the ministry of the Holy Spirit requires surrender. It is very much like a wife receiving from her husband in consummation.
There are only a few denominations that believe that there isn’t a separate infilling of the Holy Spirit after salvation. When a wife gets married she gets her husband at the marriage ceremony, but she does not give herself to her husband until the marriage bed. This requirement to ask and pursue, found in Luke 11, is often ignored by these denominations. The reason we have to pursue, is because Holy Spirit will not fill us with Himself until we are ready to surrender.
Jesus never told us to ask, seek, and knock when it comes to salvation. Salvation is gained when we believe from our heart on the Lord Jesus and confess him as Lord with our mouth, so says Paul. Yet in this verse, Jesus is saying that we must ask, seek and knock in order to received the Holy Spirit.
Notice also what Jesus says to the disciples that had already received salvation. He had already breathed upon them, but now He says “tarry”.
Luke 24:49 TPT
[49] And I will send the fulfillment of the Father’s promise to you. So stay here in the city until the mighty power of heaven falls upon you and wraps around you.”
Here is what D.L. Moody’s close personal friend and minister associate, R.A. Torrey, has to say about the significance of tarrying for the baptism. Moody often called upon Torrey to preach about this subject in his meetings. Torrey later became the first head of Moody Bible Institute, and was later the first head of Biola University.
“Any man who is in Christian work, who has not received the Baptism with the Holy Spirit, ought to stop his work right where he is, and not go on with it until he has been ‘clothed with power from on high.’
“But what will our work do while we are waiting? What did the world do those ten days while the early disciples were waiting? They alone knew the saving truth, yet, in obedience to the Lord’s command, they were silent. The world was no loser, When the power came they accomplished more in one day than they would have accomplished in years, if they had gone on in presumptuous disobedience to Christ’s charge.
“We too after that we have received the baptism with the Spirit will accomplish more of real work for our Lord in one day than we ever would in years without this power.”
R. A. Torrey “The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit” pages 153
The disciples were not told to tarry for Salvation, nor were they told to ask, seek, or knock for salvation. The infilling of the Holy Spirit includes the power to demonstrate Jesus and become just like Him. We can also choose to tarry for transformation, allowing Holy Spirit to minister to our hearts until all of our thoughts and feelings carry the image of Jesus. For most of us, real transformation requires deep surrender over a period of time. What we are surrendering is our old identity. And what we are receiving is the identity of Jesus. We are surrendering our beliefs about ourselves so that our mind can be changed and made new. The ministry of Holy Spirit always occurs in the place of surrender just like the baptism does.
Our mind being changed and made new is the actual definition of repentance.
Repentance (metanoia) – Thayer’s Definition1
1. a change of mind
There is a certain attitude a believer has that experiences radical transformation in a short period of time. That attitude is one of surrender and repentance. This is what John the Baptist had to say to the Pharisees about having the correct attitude.
Matthew 3:8-9 NIV
[8] Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. [9] And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.
This phrase, ‘keeping with repentance’, stirred my life early on as I began to realize that the ministry of Holy Spirit has extreme significance. If we are to ever become like Christ we must learn to maintain this attitude of surrender and repentance. We are not repenting of sin. Instead, we are allowing Jesus to be Lord over our very identity and sense of worth. A transformed person does not struggle with sin. I once asked Papa, “if I am not responsible for my sin or for fixing myself, then what am I responsible for?“ He replied, “your only responsibility is to come.“
Doing this behavior will give Holy Spirit deep access to the core of your heart. You will find that freedom and peace overtake your life, and that you have lost the need for sin. Please realize that whether or not you come does not affect your salvation or God‘s love for you. Whether or not you come only affects transformation.
When you really understand righteousness, then you know that transformation is not God fixing you, transformation is God revealing you.
Sin is an eagle strutting around the chicken coop thinking he’s a chicken, pecking at the other hens trying to climb the pecking order. The reason we keep coming to God is because he shifts our perspective. When we see correctly, then we know we don’t belong in the chicken coop. Now you can see that what we are repenting of is believing that we are chickens when we were born to fly.
The nature of God is already on the inside of us. We keep coming to God so that He can transform how we see. When we see correctly, then we will quite naturally begin expressing the divine nature which was always inside of us. We were reborn so that God would always have a Christ on the earth.
We are spirit beings with immature spiritual senses and immature spiritual abilities. When we surrender to the ministry of Holy Spirit, He trains us to see like sons of the most though. Until we receive this training we will continue to live as mere mortals.
Many people struggle with these two words, surrender and repentance, turning them into works. Let me see if I can clean that up a little. Try to see these two words this way.
- Let yourself be His.
- Let yourself believe the nice things He says about you.
I know it is difficult to believe that doing these two things will change anything, but these two things hold the secret to changing everything, and releasing you into your destiny.
I have always struggled with self discipline. Thus my capacity to pursue God was very limited. Instead, I began using the things I cared about to motivate my pursuit. In my twenties, my first encounter with freedom from sin resulted from three months pursuing God so that I would have something to share in Sunday school. Once I realized that I was using my new found revelations for personal promotion, I pulled back from God and in shame stayed in this half hearted state for ten years.
When God told the pastor to promote me to youth pastor, I realized that if I was going to be effective, I had to deal with my shame. I began to pursue God to help remove this shame. Now my motivation was for the teenagers. The resulting encounter became my first experience with beloved identity.
Later I pursued God to help me write my first book. Then I began pursuing God to have clarity in my capacity to hear his voice. At the same time I pursue God to understand his love for me as a father to son. Then I began pursuing God to have a deeper understanding of the condemnation Identity. Next I began pursuing God to gain freedom in my finances. That was a great struggle. After that I began pursuing God to deal with my feelings of rejection.
With every pursuit I gained new freedom. This freedom included greater levels of self control, changes in my personality, and a greater capacity to show love. The removal of shame set me free from sin.
But more than anything, each pursuit shifted my identity more.
Now my life is very peaceful and I’m able to accomplish the things I desire. The condemning voices are gone which means that decisions don’t require self discipline to see them through.
God never required me to do any of this pursuing. But gaining a new identity did require me to pursue.
1 Peter 1:14-16 TPT
[14] As God’s obedient children, never again shape your lives by the desires that you followed when you didn’t know better. [15] Instead, shape your lives to become like the Holy One who called you. [16] For Scripture says: “You are to be holy, because I am holy.”
Staying in a lifestyle of holiness is two parts. Abiding and keeping with repentance. Notice how they are exactly the same two things listed above.
- Let yourself be His.
- Let yourself believe the nice things He says about you.
We can also say it this way: “Keep your heart hearing and agreeing with God.”
There are only two requirements to pursue, and the only reason they exist is because we are not yet free from ourselves. But, these requirements position us to find the freedom we need that will free us from all other requirements.
Scripture only shows us these two that require effort on our part to pursue in this new covenant.
- A requirement to ask, seek, and knock for the Holy Spirit.
- A requirement to strive to enter into the rest of God.
These 12 steps are a structured path to lead us directly into this rest. What keeps us from entering the rest of God is all the things that surround a wrong identity. When we get our identity fixed, the rest of God becomes easy. And, it becomes very easy to abide.
Many ministers have talked about paying a price to get the anointing. For many of them, this means spending a significant amount of time in the presence of God so that the anointing is virtually dripping off of them when they go to minister to someone. They connect the level of God‘s presence directly to the amount of time they force themselves to spend with Him. What they are really doing is spending time with God to get the anointing and effectively “abide” through self effort, all the while sidestepping their identity issues. They are forcing abiding and forsaking the rest aspect of abiding. If they would deal with their identity then they could rest in righteousness, which is resting in God’s love. Then abiding would work automatically, and the significance of their anointing would increase manifold without all the effort.
When we deal with our old identity, abiding becomes quite natural, and doesn’t require great effort to pursue. When abiding becomes easy, we start to live by the flow of the Spirit and releasing the life of God is simple, yet powerful and overwhelming.
As you can see from this article, even though there are many sides, it amounts to the same thing: “hear God, believe God, and repent of anything contrary to what He is saying about you.” It is really this simple. This is the path of transformation.
Even though we give you 12 steps, they are really focused on bringing you through this simple process without short changing yourself.
Proverbs 4:21-23 TPT
[21] Fill your thoughts with my words until they penetrate deep into your spirit. [22] Then, as you unwrap my words, they will impart true life and radiant health into the very core of your being. [23] So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.