Perspectives For 2013
Posted on December 31, 2012 by tedjhanson
Greetings;

I pray blessings for you all on this last day of December in the year of 2012. I am in Salem, Oregon with some great people. I have been participating in a conference of Marshallese congregations. These are really fun folks. I speak many blessings to my new hungry Marshallese friends. God is going to do great things for you in the new year!

As we close this year of 2012 and enter the year of 2013, I want to write concerning what I believe to be prophetic keys to what God is doing in the earth. Just in case you didn’t get the spiritual memo of 2011, you will need to know three things from that season that are essential to understanding the season that is at hand.

The first of those three is that God is good and He loves people. You cannot view the world as bad and it needs a savior and believe that this is a statement of truth to build upon. If you do, the center of your world is bad people. This becomes the center of your focus. You must see that God is good and He loves people. He is able to love in all situations to work things out for good. He loves good people and He loves bad people, but He is the center of every world. The fact that God is good makes it possible for everything to work out for good.

The second thing you must grab hold of is that love is a revelation and not a command. The Law and the Prophets were based upon two commands, but Grace and truth is based upon a revelation of love. We love God and others “even as He loves us”. The empowerment to love is based upon a revelation of His love.

The third thing you must lay hold of is that you are not wrestling with yourself, others, your circumstances, or even God. God is actually wrestling with you, because He knows who you are and He wants you to manifest as a son or daughter of your Heavenly Father. God knows that you are a prince or a princess and the world is in need of you. I wrote in regard to this in my blogs of July 2011. You will need these three things in your weapons arsenal for the year of 2013:

God is good and He loves people
Love is a revelation
God is wrestling with you so you will manifest as an inheritor of God – a prince or a princess of life
As we enter into the year of 2013 you will also need three things given in 2012. If you didn’t get the Sprit memo, here they are. The first is that God wants us to be an accepting people. He accepts all people exactly as they are, but then He transforms us all into the likeness and image of our heavenly Father. His kingdom is a come as you are culture, but not a stay as you are one.

The second thing is that we are a people of empowerment. Life isn’t fair, so we cannot be people of entitlement. Life isn’t supposed to be fair, but God’s grace at work in anyone’s world will transform anyone’s world to a bit of heaven on earth.

The third thing is to be a people who are dependant upon God in all things. God dependence is the testimony of true righteousness. Self-righteousness, self-sufficiency, and self-dependency are the opposite of true righteousness. Our righteousness is in Christ, so we will need to be God-dependant in all things to see His glory revealed in and through our lives. You will also need these three things in your weapons arsenal for the year of 2013:

We must embrace a kingdom culture of acceptance
We must be a people who embrace and reveal the empowering grace of God
We must be a God-dependant people in all things.
Now this brings me to the challenge of 2013. Here are seven synonymous names that I believe describe the testimony of God’s people emerging in the light of 2013.

An Apostolic People
People Who Are Sent
People of Purpose
An Empowering Generation
People of Inheritance
Grace Empowered People of Truth
The People of God
We cannot be the people of God without being the family of God. It is time for the true culture of Christ’s kingdom to emerge to another level in the earth. To become who we were meant to be we must continually receive mercy and find grace (Receive Mercy & Find Grace -Posted on June 18, 2012 by tedjhanson). Mercy will free us from being stuck in our past and grace will empower us to reign in this life in Christ.

The year of 2013 will not come without trials. There will be trials and a testing of our faith in this new year. What is the purpose of those trials?

1Peter 1:6-9 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.

Trials only reveal the truth. Trials reveal the genuineness of our faith. Faith is a natural response to a supernatural relationship. Faith happens within us when we hear God in our hearts. Trials are not meant to take us out, but to manifest who we really are. Trials do not form us, but God in our midst forms us. God doesn’t want to deliver us from our trials. He wants to move into our neighborhood. He wants to move into our trials.

We have a genuineness of faith and that faith brings us to the place of seeing God in our lives. Faith comes by hearing, but it takes us to the place of seeing what we cannot see naturally. Faith leads us to a place of seeing Jesus. When we see Jesus we receive grace. That grace is the power of God at work in our lives. Grace comes to us at a revelation of Jesus Christ. The result is praise, honor, and glory to God. The end of our faith is the salvation of our souls.

The salvation of our souls is “His kingdom come, His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. His will is done by the power of His grace at work in our lives. Grace is the power that manifests His kingdom in our lives. Grace is the manifestation of Christ in our lives. This is the power of “becoming”, not merely doing.

1Peter 1:13-16 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy.”

When we receive a revelation of Jesus Christ in our lives we receive a manifestation of His grace. Grace doesn’t give us the instruction of doing holiness; it empowers us to be like Christ. It empowers us to “be holy”.

1Peter 1:17-21 And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

The Law could not redeem us. The religious traditions of men cannot change the substance of who we are. It cannot reveal the true substance that God intends for us to be. No law or religious ceremony can bring about true life in the earth. It was the sacrificial life of Christ that redeemed us. A human “being” redeemed us as human “beings”. Jesus made a way for us to become the people of God. Our faith and hope is in God, not freedom from trials. Let the culture of Christ’s kingdom prevail in 2013!

Blessings,

Ted J. Hanson