This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created. Genesis 5:1-2.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
You are from Me. You came forth from Me and you live in Me. All life does, and everything made exists because of and in Me. But though all things were made by Me and come forth from Me in the continuum of life, existence, and being where they are sustained in Me, only you, mankind, did I make in My image and according to My likeness. Only you are of My kind. Only you are to sit with Me. Only you are dining at My table in My Kingdom. All other creation was made to serve you. And even I, in Jesus, came to serve you and I will at the marriage feast of the Lamb in Heaven.
Angels do not sit with us. They attend you and help you as My Host as I assign them, and they are lovely creatures of light and love, and they look like you in form but not in substance, for they are of heavenly substance that is not found on earth, but they will never be able to take your place as My children. Angels stand in respect and honor, ready to take off at My command on errands across the globe.
This did not please the beautiful cherub filled with music and sparkling gems of light, who is now known as Satan or the devil, he wanted to sit with Me on your throne and be like Me, the Most High. He wanted to speak and things came to be that were not. But I had given that authority to you by giving you dominion over the works of My hands and putting My Words in your mouth and My Spirit upon you. and not to him.
His goal has been, and still is, to take you captive to do his will so that he can use your speaking authority and dominion over the earth as his. And for a while he even gained the throne from Adam but when the second and last Adam took flesh from the imperishable seed of My Word, though Satan tried, he could not take Him captive to do his will.
Jesus took back what you had lost by satisfying the debt you owed Me by accepting your sins and the punishment due them. And as the first born again believer, He dethroned Satan and reinstated the perfect Man upon the throne at My right hand. And I seated all you who would be born again upon that throne with Him. It is the throne of the Overcomer. And He is in you who believe.
He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. Revelation 3:21.
When the devil approached Eve with Adam at her side, he first questioned the truth of My Word, and that is still exactly where he starts with everyone even up to this day. Even if you have had victories over him before in this area and believe yourself to be strong in My Word, he will try again to put the same situation or worse on you along with an unclean spirit of fear that says this time the Word is not working and you cannot take this one down.
And if he is successful you will start doubting whether My Word works in any area of your life. You will cry and beg and plead for healing or answers. But that is exactly the response he is watching for.
That is Lie No. 1.
Now let us consider Lie No. 2, and this has to do with identity. Satan will, as he did with Eve, lead you to the conclusion that you are not like Me. After I declared Jesus to be My beloved Son at His baptism at the Jordan River, Satan began working on Jesus to make him doubt that identity. In the wilderness soon after, he tested him, “IF you are the son of God . . .” and tried to force Him through supernatural gymnastics to prove it. And he definitely left out reminding Jesus that He was My beloved Son. Satan always attempts to separate you from your faith in My love for you, which is devastating to our relationship. For a relationship to last it must be built on love, pure love.
But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39.
And there are various ways this lie is used by Satan. With Eve, it was to make her feel incomplete that I was withholding things from her that I had and she did not and he created in her by his words and influence the desire to be greater or at least as great as I was apart from Me. And he told her that she must disobey My Word to grasp things away from Me in order to become like Me. And you see this today in schools, government positions of power, and the like. This is what happened to king Saul when he disobeyed My Word to further his own glory and then went into his fight to keep that exalted position in which I had placed him to rule My people in defiance of Me. He grabbed it for himself and left Me out.
And so many who adamantly force upon others the theories of evolution, the murder of innocent life in the womb, and the immorality of sexual lust and perversion calling this enlightenment and trying to prove I do not exist and created nothing. It is all grabbing for man’s glory and leaving out My power and presence. And they hate Me without cause. And if anything evil happens though they blame and question Me as the cause. But I am not the cause of evil. What you permit or bind on earth is what has happened.
The devil presented to Eve and Adam, that if she would reach out and take prematurely what was off limits for her but belonged to Me, she would be like Me and know good and evil.
And yet at that time she had never known evil and did not have any concept of what it entailed. That is why Satan had to approach her in the way of grasping what I had to be like Me. She had no sin on her or failures in her past which he could use to beat her down in shame and fear that she had lost her likeness to Me by sin and was nothing but a worm of a sinner who could never rise up to do the great works I had planned for her.
However, after he had enticed her into sin, the devil began that process of shaming her with her nakedness, her evil exposed before Me so that she really no longer had anything in common with Me and had lost the authority she once had. She had fallen and she hid in shame and fear. Fear has to do with torment, with punishment, but perfect love casts out fear.
But up to this point, she had only walked in the presence of love and been surrounded by love but now she had turned to a source that once was made of love but now had gone out to the outer darkness of the continuum of life and she was headed there with him locked into the slavery of sin. But Jesus took back the keys.
A continuum is a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct.
In mathematics a continuum is the number line of real numbers which has no end to negative or positive numbers, like Me, everlasting to everlasting, no beginning and no end.
You will become like who you are close to and spend your life near. You cannot serve two masters. You are going to be like one or the other. You were created in My image and according to My likeness, but many, like Adam and Eve, the devil has pulled out of walking with Me and close to Me in trust, agreement and love into the outer darkness of the continuum until My image in them is buried in the stone of their hardened heart that has become dead to Me and alive to sin.
But the good news is that smoldering, dying wick, though lying in darkness can be lit again by new birth and fanned into flame until your heart is no longer a dead stony heart but a new creation again in My image and according to My likeness burning as a light to the world. Out from under the bushel basket onto the lampstand.
The devil took Adam and Eve down by his lies and his appeal to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And he took them to a place of malice, hate, blame, shame, fear, and self-seeking ambition to not only rule the works of My creation but also the people whom I made as My free children, not subject to slavery.
The devil also uses the lie that you are not like Me is to keep you from exercising your dominion authority at all. He makes you grovel and behave like a slave that just wants the crumbs from My table. But I told you that I have taken you into My banquet hall, invited you to the wedding feast of My Son where there is great abundance, that I set a table before you in the sight of your foes and overflow your cup, and that I give you the abundance of My house and of My delightful stream to drink. Psalm 36:8.
In His shade I took great delight and sat down, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He has brought me to his banquet hall, and his banner over me is love. Song of Songs 2:3-4.
And the devil also uses this temptation so that you use your inability to be like Me and the things I tell you to do in My Word as a false humility that you are nothing but a groveling sinner who just keeps sinning and can never rise above this and do the greater works that I told you to do. Like the servant who hid his talent in the ground buried out of sight because he thought he could not reach My expectations.
But I have never given up that I created you like Me. And now I have clothed you in Christ so that as He is so are you in this world. You are My children who on seeing you others see Me.
And I have commanded you who believe to do the works Jesus did and greater, not by your own power and might, but by Mine, in His Name and by My Spirit in you and on you, for I have cleansed you in the blood of Christ, raised you up in Christ and clothed you in Him, seated you with Him on the seat of authority over the earth at My right hand, put My Spirit in you, and put My Words in your mouth. I have given you My own righteousness and I have poured My love in your heart by the gift of My Holy Spirit.
And there is the secret of being in My likeness and showing it for all the world to see, as Jesus did.
And that is the secret to being just like Me. Love. All will know you as My children and disciples by your love for one another. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 1 John 4:7.
IMITATE ME AS MY DEAR CHILDREN AND WALK IN LOVE.
Here I am telling you that you can be just like Me. I am love and you can be love too.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Ephesians 5:1-2.
You were created from Love, made by Love, blessed by Love, born again by Love, and sustained by Love. So the more you live in and abide in My love, the more like Me you become. You become perfected in love.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:11-12.
It is time you stood up to the lies of the accuser of My children with the Truth. Yesterday we studied the lie concerning the truth of My Word. and today we have considered the lie that you are not like Me and can never be.
Know first that when I spoke man into being I made you in My image and according to My likeness. Male and female I made you and I blessed you with dominion over the earth and all the works of My hands. And I gave you seed with which everything begins to plant and cultivate to create the garden of your choice all over the earth. I had given you the authority on the earth but to function in the maximum I brought you forth from Myself. Jesus came out of My bosom and so did you. And I delight to be with the children of men for you are like Me, we can have a relationship.
I have no fear and I did not give you a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind. But if you listen to the devil’s lies you will fear not having enough and not having what it takes to have authority and control over your life.
Many would think it blasphemy to say you are like Me and can do the works Jesus did and greater. Jesus too ran into this problem many times with the religious leaders of the day who should have known better.
They do not know nor do they understand; they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, “You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High. Psalm 82:5-6.
They even sought to kill and thus silence Jesus about this:
The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? John 10:31-36.
The devil told Adam and Eve that to be like Me they had to go around Me surreptitiously .and seize what was Mine to be theirs. But I have given all to them already and was going to give them still more.
This is what I explained to David along a similar vein of temptation. “Nathan then said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel, ‘It is I who anointed you king over Israel and it is I who delivered you from the hand of Saul. I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care, and I gave you the house of Israel and Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these! Why have you despised the Word of the LORD by doing evil in His sight? 2 Samuel 12:7-9.
You must understand your position with Me, that is, who you are and who I am. You are not a slave that can never attain to My perfection and ways and you are not an unrelated party to Me who is in competition to take over being God. The relationship you have with Me is you are My child and I am your Father and My entire focus is on you and not on My own grandeur and might. I have that already and I want to share it with you. All a father has he wants to share with his child and the same with the mother. And as a parent raises a child training them in wisdom and giving them instruction and direction to prophet and live a beautiful, fruitful healthy life, so you grow up with Me. And I perfect you as you grow unto the full stature of Christ, who is the radiance of My glory and the exact representation of My nature. A child is in the image and according to the likeness of the parent. And just as when the child matures you no longer have the same relationship as when the child was a baby and could not understand mature concepts so too, a Jesus told His disciples, there was much more He had to tell them but they could not bear it then. So He sent them the Holy Spirit to teach them more and more as their capacity increased.
And once you understand who I am and what I am about, you become not just a young child but My friend who walks with Me in agreement and partnership.
When a son or daughter joins their parent in the family business they are no longer a child but a mature adult with creative ideas and innovations, inventions, and skill until they can run branches and extensions of the parent company that bear much fruit and prosper. The child has become like the parent and does many things the parent does, but the parent is still always the parent.
I do nothing in the earth realm without first revealing it to My prophets. Abraham was the first man I call a prophet and I did nothing without first telling him, such as Sodom and Gomorrah. He had become one to be welcomed, to be on the friend level (I called him “Abraham, My friend”), and one that I could trust. I called Moses My friend as well.
Being like Me is knowing Me and walking in My ways of love and truth. And it is a process of growth that will go quickly or slowly depending on your diligence in seeking the relationship. I draw close to those who draw close to Me and we become more and more alike. Remember, a continuum is a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct.
My apostle John, who grew with Me to perfect love, wrote of the stages of growth of the believer as from the child who was born again with all his sins forgiven in Jesus, to the young men who had overcome the evil one, and to the fathers who knew Me as the One who had been from the beginning.
And My apostle Peter who matured until he became My dear companion and friend taking the position of leader in the first community of believers and he described the process of increasing in the knowledge of Me and My Son as an ascent by faith from being born again and growing on the milk of My Word into the virtues and stages of moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. 2 Peter 1:5-7.
You see again that it is love that makes you like Me. The one who does not love does not know Me for I am love.
And what does that mean? What does love look like? Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not proud and arrogant, does not act unbecomingly and is not rude; it does not seek its own interests and glory above others, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, is not offended, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
If this sounds unattainable it is not because I have poured My love into your heart by My gift of the Holy Spirit so that you can love with My love. You are with Me always and all I have is yours.
Jesus told you to be perfect as I am perfect. And you know whatever I command you I give you the ability to do. And I tell you later that the perfect man is one who controls his tongue. Love starts there.
And knowing and believing and experiencing My love fills you up to all My fullness, the very fullness of God.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from the whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
So full of My love which has become your love that you are full of Me and we are looking alike. Jesus prayed for that for you.
I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. John 17:20-23.
Love. It all comes back to that. Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts but above all pursue love. And that means pursue Me for that is who I am.
Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand all things. Proverbs 28:5.
Justice. I justified you in Jesus for He bore the judgment against sin which satisfied justice. David sang of this as most unusual judgment, “I will speak of the mighty works of the Lord (Adonai); O LORD (Yahweh), I will tell of your singular justice.” Psalm 71:16.
All is for you. And if you are really like Me, you will exercise your love for Me in love for others and in serving their needs as if they were your own.
I love you and that is why I made you. Love. Imitate Me as My dear children and walk in love until that just becomes the way you are. Like Me.