Last week I shared what God spoke to me, “No Inferiority!” This word has been challenging me. It’s always good to be challenged to walk as Jesus does.

A crazy guy has been roaming the streets of my neighborhood, threatening people with a machete or a stick. The latest thing is he’s been following pretty women and little girls around. He’s sexually assaulted a few women in the area.

The police arrested him about a week ago after he threatened a particular woman. But then released him a day later because he’s not in his right mind.

Well, he may not be in his right mind. But that’s not the point! He needs to be restrained so he doesn’t rape anybody. Now I could catch him unaware and overpower him, but what would I do? Give him to the police to be released on the streets again? Just beat him up? That would make me a target, and I don’t think it would stop him for long. I don’t have a jail in my backyard to hold him in.

This is where the rubber meets the road. We feel inferior to the situation. We feel like we don’t know the answer. But when God says “no inferiority,” I understand that I must refuse to accept that feeling as truth. God lives inside me! I’ve been united with Him through Jesus. My attitude must reflect these truths. I’m still growing, and I’m welcoming God’s word, allowing it to do its work in me. And I appreciate your prayers as I grow, especially that I exercise heavenly wisdom and God’s power in situations like these.

My Address Is God’s Address!

If people are looking for God, where can they find Him? Where is his address? It’s you! What’s God’s phone number? It’s your number!

Colossians 1:27 (NIV) …Christ in you, the hope of glory.

May we never treat this fact as mere doctrine, but may our attitudes continually reflect it. People who walk in God’s power learn to think this way.

It’s exactly when we begin to think this way that it uncovers feelings of inferiority. We feel like “I’m not God. How can I do anything about this problem?” That’s the natural, earthly way of thinking. But the truth is, God is with you and dwelling in you!

God has given the church authority over all the power of the enemy, but there’s a difference between having authority and exercising it. We exercise authority by acting and thinking according to gospel realities.

I am God’s address. If you are in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro and want to find God, where do you go? His address is Jonathan Brenneman!

Is that pride? No. It’s humility and receiving what God says in scripture instead of stubbornly resisting Him. We need to have this attitude!

“God Lives In This Suit!”

As I young missionary, God began to develop this attitude in me. When I come to a city, God is coming to that city! God just showed up! Because I did! And it felt like an army of angels was going with me, an indescribable feeling.

When we think like that, we are not diminishing the fact that God also dwells in the other believers. Of course, we know that God is omnipresent, everywhere. But his presence manifests through us. God is omnipresent, but He has a body. My body is His body. The church is his body. But how many Christians actually act and think as if God lives in them?

Without diminishing the fact that Christ’s spirit dwells corporately in the church, it’s important to develop the attitude as individual believers that my address is God’s address, my phone number is God’s phone number, and when I show up, God is here! “God has entered the building!”

Do any of you go on mission trips? What if when your plane touches down in Uzbekistan (or any other place), you think “God has just come to Uzbekistan?” Scripture says Elijah was a man like us, but we know he turned a nation from Baal to God. Godly men throughout history have altered the course of nations. Do you want to be a nation-changer? This is how nation-changers think. 

John G. Lake altered the course of history, especially in the United States and South Africa. The Better Business Bureau examined his healing ministry in Spokane, Washington imagining it was a fraud. They concluded that not only were the reports of miracles legitimate, but what was happening far surpassed all the reports they had heard.

In South Africa, John Lake led a movement with hundreds of native missionaries and many salvations and great miracles. We probably have little idea how much that movement affects South Africa to this day.

John would get up in the morning, look at himself in the mirror, and say “God lives in this suit.” 

Really believing that Christ lives in us not only leads us into a walk of power, but it leads us to demonstrate Jesus’ nature through our lives. God’s character is now my character. His love is my love. His patience is mine. His compassion is mine. His gentleness is mine. His joy is mine.

John Lake taught that Jesus is the Savior and we are also saviors, because Jesus lives in us. He was speaking in terms of deliverance from oppression and sickness. Faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for sin and resurrection is the only way to be freed from sin and born again. But in the sense of deliverance, we are also saviors (with a small “s”), because God has sent us to bring his salvation to the world and has commissioned us to set people free. And the Spirit of Jesus dwells in us to enable us to do so.

I’m learning to walk as a man who God lives in. And much of my prayer for you guys and for the church is that we learn to live this way, free from every sense of inferiority, and always conscious of having been joined in spirit to the Lord, abounding in the work of the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit. I’m praying for my readers. You guys can also pray for me and especially for the church in Brazil, that we walk no longer as mere men but as heavenly people, born of heaven, and joined to Jesus. His mighty strength is at work within us!

Ephesians 1:16-23 (NIV) I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.