Manifesting Presence of the Holy Spirit

Ps 2:12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Jesus took the cup of wrath for all my sins so that I don’t have to. He is my complete refuge from the wrath of God. Yes his refuge is complete, lest the Lord be a liar and Jesus having died in vane.

Though I err, if I am found in Christ, there is no wrath unless I am out of alignment with the truth of who he is and what he did on the cross, unless I choose to not believe what is true. When I err, I repent, and I am made safe. If I know Christ in the fullness of him, I am safe, even though the world might fall apart around me.

Now what are some effects of wrath? Of many evidences, here are a few: sickness, judgment, hatred, blindness to Kingdom truth and excessive persecution.

Wrath is born of the law. Wrath is the result of the law broken. Wrath is the righteous penalty for breaking the law for those living under the law. Wrath is the price for man living independent of God.

A price must be paid for every sin.

But, what about God’s heart of mercy? Mercy delays the consequence of sin; it does not eliminate the consequence of sin. Mercy simply defers the cost of sin to a later date. Or, mercy allows the price for our sin to be paid by another, namely Jesus Christ.

In the economy of God, mercy is the gift of time that allows me and leads me towards repentance! God waits in hopes that we would turn and repent. In so doing, I turn and place the cost of my sin upon the Cross. Repentance is my means to transfer my cost for my sin onto Jesus.

There is no sin that goes unpunished. Someone must pay the charge for it. That person is either upon myself, or through Father’s mercy, upon the person of Jesus Christ. I pay or Christ pays, it’s one or the other.

The cup of wrath is the very price Jesus paid on the day of the Cross for all of our sins for all time. He drank the cup of full power wrath. It is unimaginable the sorrow and separation that Jesus must have felt! This cup was far greater the pain of the Cross than the torture of it.

Praise God for what Christ did for me! He paid it all on the cross by drinking this cup of all wrath for all Christians for all time. I gain the benefit of that each time I repent.

Mt 26:38-39 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus was not in fear of the cross. He was under the weight of the knowledge that he was about to take on the full price for all the sin of all the Saints for all time upon him. In light of all the wrath released in Old Testament times, how weighty must this knowledge have been of what was about to happen! The pain of the cross was but a tiny part of the greater pain Jesus would feel. The scourging, the whipping, the hatred, all momentary in comparison to this cup of wrath he was asked to take!

But Jesus’ drinking of this cup was complete, binding and for all time. This was the result:

Ro 8:1-3a Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death (wrath). For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! What a magnificent gift. But that gift did not come without a great cost. Jesus paid the price in full. He did so by taking on the cross. He did so by drinking the cup of wrath.

However, for those who do not accept Jesus, they themselves must drink the cup of wrath on an individual level, the very same cup that Jesus took for the Saints. Ultimately, God’s cup of wrath is hell.

Jn 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”  

This above scripture makes it unmistakably clear, God’s wrath remains only upon those who reject Jesus!

Therefore there is no wrath for those who are in Christ Jesus. This must be understood! There is no wrath for those who are in Christ Jesus! None!

Rev 14:9-10 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

This cup of wrath is the very thing that Jesus was most disturbed about just prior to the Cross. Therefore it also represents the cup of ultimate sacrifice. It was an act of extreme sacrifice unto death. It was an act that God calls us all into. It is sacrifice that is a cup from which we all must drink.

However in that Jesus cup carried the penalties and price of sin, none of us need drink of it. Jesus took it all! Sacrifice unto death yes, but pay the price for sin… no! Jesus did that for us completely. Any lesser theology cheapens the Cross.

Here is a key point of this writing:

Sickness, being therefore an effect of wrath, being therefore a price for sin, is of the law. Therefore no one in Christ should suffer in sickness.

Psalms 38 proves this point. (This very chapter is a prophetic foretaste of what Christ cried out for in the garden in Mathew 26. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.”)

Ps 38:1 O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger

or discipline me in your wrath.

2 For your arrows have pierced me,

and your hand has come down upon me.

3 Because of your wrath there is no health in my body;

my bones have no soundness because of my sin.

4 My guilt has overwhelmed me

like a burden too heavy to bear.

5 My wounds fester and are loathsome

because of my sinful folly.

6 I am bowed down and brought very low;

all day long I go about mourning.

7 My back is filled with searing pain;

there is no health in my body.

8 I am feeble and utterly crushed;

I groan in anguish of heart.

9 All my longings lie open before you, O Lord;

my sighing is not hidden from you.

10 My heart pounds, my strength fails me;

even the light has gone from my eyes.

11 My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds;

my neighbors stay far away.

12 Those who seek my life set their traps,

those who would harm me talk of my ruin;

all day long they plot deception.

13 I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear,

like a mute, who cannot open his mouth;

14 I have become like a man who does not hear,

whose mouth can offer no reply.

15 I wait for you, O LORD;

you will answer, O Lord my God.

16 For I said, “Do not let them gloat

or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.”

17 For I am about to fall,

and my pain is ever with me.

18 I confess my iniquity;

I am troubled by my sin.

19 Many are those who are my vigorous enemies;

those who hate me without reason are numerous.

20 Those who repay my good with evil

slander me when I pursue what is good.

21 O LORD, do not forsake me;

be not far from me, O my God.

22 Come quickly to help me,

O Lord my Savior.

Sickness is the result of the law being broken. Sickness is one effect of wrath being poured out. Sickness is the right that the devil has to bring people to a stop. The right he has to bring it is by our sin or the sins of the fathers in previous generations.

Exod 20:3-6 “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Many wonder how children get deathly sick in what seems to be good and godly families. Few people agree with the above scripture. How can God allow such a thing to happen to an innocent child? But the scripture is clear. God’s wrath visits to the third and fourth generation of those who live in sin.

What we do not believe we will not see, nor can we combat against it!

Indeed sometimes God allows sickness to a guiltless person to show his glory and power. But these events are rare and are clearly made known. People get healed that have this happen to them so that God’s glory is made known in the world! Job is a prime example. But Job happened before the Cross!

But how great is the gift of repentance!

2 Pet 3:9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Isa 30:15a This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…”

When we repent, we appropriate upon ourselves and our children the effects of the Cross. Jesus took the cup of wrath so we don’t have to.

Now here is a key point:

What we choose to believe of the Kingdom of God is what we see and gain in the Kingdom of God. What we choose not to believe we will not see, nor will we gain the benefit of it in the Kingdom of God. In the economy of the Kingdom, what we don’t believe we do not gain. If we do not believe that Jesus took all of our wrath, we reserve some of it for us on earth. If I do not believe that sickness is an effect of the fallen world, I expose myself to it. If I believe that a dieing child is the divine choice of a merciless God, I have no power to minister healing to that child! Then what I experience becomes my theology.  We reap what we sow.

What we do not believe that is actually true in the Kingdom of God, we will not see. Therefore, what we choose to disbelieve that is of the Kingdom of God is sin. That sin therefore results in an effect. The effect is wrath. Whatever sin I choose to live in eventually has a result, wrath.

It must also be said here that there is a great deal of mercy and patience in the Father’s heart. He knows who will turn and who will not turn towards him. We all deal with levels of unbelief. My main point for all who read this is to unlock your mind to the radical truths of the Kingdom of God and believe! In so doing we prevent volumes of trouble in this life. That trouble comes in the form of oppression.

Consider the story of Zechariah who was just given a phenomenal word that his aged wife Elizabeth would bear a child. He didn’t believe it:

Luke 1:19-20 The angel answered, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their proper time.”

God had mercy on Zechariah and his speech was restored. Though we don’t hear his words of repentance, clearly his heart was repentant. This is what happened:

Luke 1:63-64 He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak, praising God.

Notice that what Zechariah said that ended his punishment were words of agreement to the truth of what Gabriel brought to him. Zechariah came into agreement with the Kingdom truth that the angel brought him and to which he had first disagreed with.

When we come into agreement with what the Holy Spirit brings us today, we are then moving in what the Lord wants us to move into. To disagree with the word he brings is sin and error. The result is the inability to express what God has given us to do in this world.

Some falsely believe that God disciplines through sickness today. The main argument is that because we don’t see God healing today it must not be true for today. I know that this is false theology and the word makes this unmistakable. But to believe in such error denies what Jesus took on the Cross. He took all of the wrath for all time. Now there is no wrath for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we point those who are sick to the Cross. The result becomes healing power. Wrath falls off. The devil flees. Infirmity fails.

Sickness is nothing but the right of the devil to bring wrath to an unbelieving world. But the Cross and the power of the Cross is how we overcome sickness.

When we come into agreement with a lesser theology, such agreement becomes the right for the bringer of wrath to infiltrate. It is why there is so much sickness in the church. False theology, the law… Old Testament death!

Ro 4:14-15 For if those who live by law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.

Therefore where the law was made powerless through the Cross, there can no longer be any wrath for those who believe Jesus! Praise the Lord God Almighty for his great favor and love! Praise Jesus for taking my cup of wrath for me!

Wrath is in the world and will be in the world for those who are not in Christ Jesus. For those who say they are but do not believe in the fullness of what he did, wrath is also in the world.

Jesus’ Cross resulted in power. We must believe in both what he did and the power that he made manifest, namely the Holy Spirit. No wrath can stand in the face of the Holy Spirit. If sickness is a heckling jackal of death, the Holy Spirit is the mighty wind that chases it away through Jesus, the Lion of life who made it happen. Both the wind (power) and the Lion (Cross) are required. If Jesus is the Word and the Spirit is the Power, then sickness must flee by the manifestation of both!

Matt 22:29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

A key point in this writing is that truth is key to moving in the fullness of the Kingdom of God here on earth as it is in Heaven. Only in truth can we move in the fullness of our call on earth as Christians. Today the bringer of all truth is the Holy Spirit. How invaluable is the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit in our churches!

John 16:13-14 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

Ro 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…

Could it be that wherever the Holy Spirit is not welcome, Kingdom truth is being suppressed? Is this not the warning that Jesus gave in Mathew 22:29?

“You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

Is this not as warning for today’s church that claims to be in Jesus Christ?

And so I tell you the truth… wrath and all that comes with it, primarily sickness and early death, have no power over us who are in Christ Jesus.

Now therefore, God disciplines us in this world by the result of our own choices limited by our faith and by what we will not believe. We reap out of what we choose to sow. If we do not believe that Jesus took it all for us on the cross, we fall under the law and the penalties thereof. We open ourselves to sickness and extreme persecution. We reap what we sow!

If we live in the flesh, our consequences are in the flesh.

If we live in the law, our consequences are of the law.

If we live in grace, our consequences are miracles.

If we live in the Spirit, our consequences are the witness of the truth of the Kingdom of God manifesting on earth as it is in Heaven.

“Let it be unto Him according to His Faith.”

Matt 9:28-29 When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” “Yes, Lord,” they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith will it be done to you”

We should know that faith has everything to do with how far the devil can go against us.

For those who live in the light and who express that light into this dieing world, persecution is guaranteed. For all of us who are operating in the Holy Spirit and who are reaping a harvest, we must know, our enemy seeks every means to come against us. But that persecution is nothing like what David experienced in Psalms 38! Jesus work is complete! That was not yet so for David.

David did not have the liberty of the cross! Therefore he came under righteous wrath.  He lived in a world that regularly felt that wrath. Had he been under the blood of Christ, he would have not had the experiences he did to the level he did, even though he might have been martyred!

Not that we have it any easier than David, it is just that the tools we have in our hands are vastly greater than his! He had love and that was enough. We have love and Love poured out! And that is vastly greater.

We are all guilty. We all deserve to drink this cup of God’s wrath, but Jesus did that on the cross completely! He took my cup for me and drank it so that I would not have to.

The Lord is not angry with us! He cannot be. All anger was fully and completely exhausted upon one man, namely Jesus at the cross. Jesus took it all. Now there is no anger for those who are in Christ Jesus. He is not angry with you even in your failings. He can’t be, it’s against his nature and his word that is his bond. He would be a liar.

This is how it was in David’s day:

Dt 9:19 I feared the anger and wrath of the LORD, for he was angry enough with you to destroy you. But again the LORD listened to me.

But this is how it is in our day, and since the Cross:

Rom 8:1-4 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Scripture says that there is no judgment or condemnation until the last day.

John 12:46-48 I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. “As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it. There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day.

So no one alive in the world is yet judged. This should be great news for all of us who desire to reap for Jesus a harvest of souls! It is not too late for anyone.

But there is no judgment ever for those who are in Christ Jesus. All our judgment was leveled on Jesus on the Cross as he drank the cup of wrath. To believe any less is to reduce what Jesus did on the Cross.

Job 19:29 you should fear the sword yourselves; for wrath will bring punishment by the sword, and then you will know that there is judgment.”

So wrath is a judgment. Hell is the final place of God’s wrath. There will be no Hell for those who are in Christ. But for those who deny him, the fires of hell become their cup of wrath for all time.

Dt 32:22 For a fire has been kindled by my wrath, one that burns to the realm of death below.

That’s Hell.

Two final points. First, it is our compassionate hearts that should be hungry for the harvest of souls, to lead them out of a righteous wrath into the light of love. When the wrath of God is poured out in the world we see it as an opportunity to gain the lost. We don’t fear it. It does not affect us. We don’t take it as an affront or an offense. We just know that the cup of wrath is the price that someone must pay! And so we lead people out of wrath they currently feel into the One who took it all.

Second, there is no sickness for the Body of Christ. They are in error who believes otherwise.

There is no record of Jesus ever being sick in the Bible. Just the opposite, the power of the Holy Spirit in Jesus manifested out from him for healing to all who had ears to hear. He was our very literal deliverance from the bondage of infirmities. He said we would do everything he did and even greater things would we do. The apostles later proved this truth by seeing whole cities healed in Jesus name. Even today, people like Benny Hinn, Cal Pierce in Spokane with the Healing Rooms Ministries, Heidi and Rolland Baker in Mozambique and Victor Hernandez in Mexico are seeing healings by the hundreds.

Either Jesus healing power is for all the Body, or, Jesus shows favoritism and discriminates. I know, the former is true!

Now there is no wrath, no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Because perfect love casts out fear, we have nothing to fear. Now then whatever pain we endure, it is our sacrifice of self so that Jesus might be known in the world. There is no wrath for those fully in Christ. And as the church moves more and more into this truth by choice and faith, we will see healing happen more and more in this world.

T. Scott Morton