Bar Barakah Service

1/29/2003

...the odds of a child seeing sin, knowing they’ve crucified Jesus, knowing they need a Messiah, and crying out towards Jesus in repentance at age THREE? Doesn’t happen. Odds are 10 million to one. It’s not “you guys” that “don’t put much stock in it,” but God doesn’t either. Not a SINGLE Biblical example of ANYTHING like that. Not one. I know you know that, but it is utterly amazing how so many have absorbed so much religious baggage! Even the “Shadow” God set up, Bar Mitzvah, was the rite of passage from a slave in the house, to a SON (Gal.4:1-7)—and that was at age THIRTEEN, not three from slave to Son....

PS “When is a man a man?” When, and ONLY when, he proves it with his life. All other “designations” are false hope and superficial! In the world of “shadows” people put great stock in externals. But, in the Kingdom of the Beloved Son we find no such “external” measurements. He is worth ONLY what he is worth IN THE SPIRIT. When and IF one is “bought by the Blood,” he is a NEW BORN.

“I write to you dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name. I write to you fathers, because you have known Him who is from the Beginning. I write to you Young Men, because you have overcome the evil one” (1Jn.2:12-13).

Being a MAN is a PROCESS of maturity and life and love and POWER—not an age. There are 40-year-old “MEN” and there are 80-year-old total babies. It is about SPIRITUAL ISSUES, “the full measure of the stature of CHRIST,” not externals. Even Salvation itself is NOT about anything physical EVER (Jn.1:13; Rom.9:6-8; etc.).

The same is true of MANHOOD. And any false sense of meaning ANY of us have based on ANYTHING other than: 1) the Blood—for the second birth, and 2) “You shall know them by their FRUIT”—for our “Manhood”—will not help us, but hurt us by giving us an identity that is not based on the Spirit, but on externals. Just as “Salvation by externals” mocks Jesus, so “Manhood by externals” (age, last name, color, knowledge, seminary degree, singing voice, talent, wealth, being part of the “right church” or ANYTHING other than WHO WE REALLY ARE!) also mocks the Spirit of Truth....