Ken: Everything God begins, He begins in love. Nothing ever starts in God without His love being poured out. And the people that love, I think, is probably one of the greatest things that we can even talk about, because His love overshadows everything that He is doing. He does everything by His love.
He loves us, so He sent His Son. He loves us, so He baptized us with His Holy Spirit. He loves us so that He can fill us to walk on and be those people that He’s called to be. It’s all about love. It really is.
Ron: It is. Even His discipline and everything is all about His love. He’s not disciplining you out of any other motivation than love. So that’s an amazing thing if you think about it. Everything that a lot of times we call—whatever we call it—
Ken: If we interpret it any other way than it’s love, then we’re not interpreting it correctly, and we’ll never be changed if we take it that other way instead of by taking it by love.
Mike: I thank the Lord that in our conversation at this moment, I have an answer to what happened to me yesterday when I heard Charlie Kirk being shot and then heard that he had died. I just overwhelmingly began to bawl like a baby and didn’t understand why. What it was—the love of the Father that was coming through.
I felt that love to such a degree I couldn’t help myself but be tied into how much He loved Charlie. And even though He foresaw this coming, He still felt love for not only him but for his family—his wife and kids. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, right? Why? Because He loves us. He loves them.
Ken: God chooses everyone that He calls. And I don’t know how that applies or how it works; I just know that He does. He knows the ones that are going to receive Him. I don’t understand that. Most of us didn’t come from a Christian background—I certainly didn’t.
And the thing is, He’s called the people that look the worst, it seems like, to the people around them, and makes them something more than they could ever be. That is such an interesting statement.
So when people out there are thinking, “I’m just not good enough for God to use,” you’re just exactly what He’s looking for. How does this indwelling and how does this fullness actually take place? God’s designed a way for that to work, and the way it works is in the Body of Christ, because we’re not individuals out there doing something all by ourselves, but we are a part of a massive Body of Christ.
God is speaking through individual members to the whole, and we are being brought up. In fact, Ephesians talks about us being changed—how? How does He put it? By love. Each member is ministering to each other.
There is that love again, because it takes the love of God and the creative force of our speaking with that love in our hearts to each other that creates a change. Because He’s looking for mature saints.
He’s looking for people that will walk as Jesus walked in the earth. And I know that sounds impossible, but it’s not impossible. God said that we would come to the fullness, to the maturity of the image of the Son of God—and He meant that.
It’s something that people often say, “That’ll never happen.” The common expression in Christianity is, “I could never be like Jesus.” I refuse to believe that.
Lois: Isn’t there a scripture that says, “As I am in the earth, so are you”?
Mike: We were created after the image of Christ. Christ was that firstborn Son of a new race of people. We forget that Adam was a living soul. Christ is a life-giving spirit, and we have the potential to be life-giving spirits as well. As we follow after the pattern Son and do exactly as He did, we will become just like Him.
It’s a beautiful thing the way the Lord has set this up, and it just follows through in the pattern that how He walked, we do the same. The outcome is for us to be the same. We become living epistles—the Word made flesh, the Scriptures—living epistles.
Ken: I know the world says that we’re arrogant to say that we’ll ever become Christ, but when you read the Word in John 14, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit will come and take up their abode in us—right there—there’s a dedication to the oneness of Christ.
In other words, that whole scenario of belonging totally to God—you’re giving up your life. You’re embarking on a whole other venture. You belong to the Lord. And when you do that is when the Father, Son, and Spirit take up their abode in you. And from that point on, you become something more than you ever dreamed you could.
Mike: The next step is for God to come in us because we are His inheritance. That’s the picture in Peter. Just before verse nine, when it says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people for God’s own possession.”
Ken: Live God in the earth, because that’s exactly what He’s after in all of us.
Ron: A lot of people say that I could never be like Christ. “I’m a sinner saved by the grace of God.” But they maintain that rather than reaching into the Word where He says, “You will be sons. You are sons.” Christ was the firstborn. Firstborn means firstborn—that means there are others coming along with Him.
So the real, true humility is not some pseudo-humility that you put on. Humility is actually believing what God says—exactly—and walking out what God says.
Ken: God doesn’t want us to do things for Him. He wants to be in us doing works through us, because this is exactly what God wants to do.
He wants to do a work through a many-membered body that is functioning in oneness with Him. The Lord is in us, dwelling in us. Why are we praying outside of us to have Jesus do something? Why aren’t we speaking the thing into existence straight out of our being? One way, I don’t feel qualified; in another way, I know that He has qualified me.
Ron: I think a lot of it honestly has to do with revelation, because it’s not a mental concept. If you try to do it in a mental concept, you’ll fail—you’ll just go back to the normal things, the way we pray. But by revelation—you have to have a revelation of Christ in you, the hope of glory. Christ in you in a deeper way.
We have somewhat of one, obviously. Not everyone, but people have a revelation of Christ in them. But to what depth do they have it? When you know who you are in God, you’re going to speak that way. And to whatever depth—whatever revelation you have of Christ in you—that’s the way you’re going to speak.
Ken: We have a revelation that Christ, the Father, and the Son live within us, and we have to walk in a new way of expression because of that—but not with arrogance, but with simplicity and with His love.
If we come off as being arrogant, people that are saying something because they know it—without that love—people will be turned off, and they won’t want to hear it because it’ll drive them away.
I was thinking about Charlie Kirk and the way he spoke to people. He would ask them to tell him what they were thinking, what they were talking about, and he listened very carefully. There was a love in that.
Ron: The example we have is Christ. That’s right. So He walked as a servant. He walked very humbly. He walked as a servant, and yet He was Lord of Lords and King of Kings and the fullness of the Father within Him. He is our example, right?
And yes, now it’s not just one man—it’s a many-membered body—but the example is still the same. The humility, the servant’s heart—all that’s the same. It’s not necessarily something that we figure out, but it is definitely something that’s imparted to us through the Holy Spirit.
And we know that we’re in this constant molding of the Father—dealing with our spirits, working with our natures. And what’s He doing in all that? He’s making us exactly conformable to His Son, being conformed to the image of His Son so that we can speak a living Word and be a living Word in the earth.
