New Birth (Rora 2003) — Norman Meeten

Before we turn to the word of the Lord tonight, I rang Christine Kelly just after dinner. Keith is making a most amazing recovery. He was out of intensive care in less than 24 hours. He was sitting up in bed yesterday.

Today he was sitting out in a chair and he'd been for a walk. A man on the opposite side of the ward, having had similar surgeries, just cannot believe his eyes. He's miles behind, dear Keith. And Christine was able to say, it's because so many people are praying for us.

And she sent her gratitude and thanks to all of you. I said, how are you, Christine? She said, much, much better. Hallelujah. So go on praying for them. They need our support in these days. Bless the Lord.

The Indwelling Spirit and the Incarnational Gospel

I overheard a conversation at dinner tonight, and the brother will be here, who was relating something to my wife at the table. He said the thing that has impressed him most so far in this conference is the realisation that God in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, actually lives in us and lives his life out through us.

Now that's the very crux of the Gospel. That's the most significant thing that happened on the day of Pentecost. It wasn't that they spoke in tongues. It wasn't that they received power for service. The miracle of the day of Pentecost was that God came to live in man permanently for the first time in all of history.

That's the most wonderful thing about the day of Pentecost. And that's what the Spirit of God is desiring and continuing to do in our day and generation. He wants to come and live in all his fullness in you and me and live out his life through us.

It is impossible for anyone to live the Christian life apart from the indwelling Spirit of God. Utterly impossible. Many of us have strived, we've struggled, we've tried, we've cried, we've prayed. All to no avail.

And until that miracle happens and God places his Son in all his fullness in our hearts. Bless God. Twice during the course of the ministry over the weekend, Les has made a statement which has confirmed what the Lord had been implanting in my heart for some time.

First of all, he said the Gospel is incarnational. In other words, God clothed himself in humanity and came and lived amongst men and women first of all to show us what God is like. Everything that you and I will ever know about God has been revealed to us in the Lord Jesus.

But not only did he come as the Son of God to show us what God was like but he also came as the Son of Man to show us what every man and every woman should and can be like. God has come to reproduce the life of his Son in you and me.

House Church and the Reality of Christian Life

One of the earliest things that we experienced in Liverpool many, many years ago now was the tremendous concern in our hearts that people should be delivered from religion and brought into the reality of living.

That was one of the reasons why we chose to live and worship and serve the Lord within the context of a house. As far as I know, we were probably the first house church in the United Kingdom. We weren't a house group.

We weren't a cell group. We were a house church because our desire was to demonstrate especially to young people amongst whom we'd moved and worked for a number of years demonstrate and prove to them the reality of the life of Christ being worked out in the context of ordinary everyday living.

They'd written the church off. They weren't interested in religion but they were concerned about life. Jesus said, I've come that you might have life and life more abundantly. He didn't say, I've come that you might have religion.

He didn't say, I've come that you might have doctrine. He said, I've come that you might have life and life more abundantly. Of course, that life was personified in the Lord Jesus and in the following chapter of John's Gospel in chapter 11, he said, I am the resurrection and the life.

The life that Jesus lived as a man on the earth was resurrection living. He didn't die to get resurrection. He was resurrection. Jesus didn't have to die to get anything. He was it. He died to give to you and me what he had already got.

He died to come and reveal himself in you and me to bring us back into the normality that he intended every man and woman to enjoy before sin came and spoiled it all. Glory to his name. He wants to reproduce the Lord Jesus in each of our lives.

He wants to make us realistically more like Jesus every day. We may not be able to define it. We may not be able to explain it. We may not be able to preach it. But again and again in the course of this conference and Emmanuel has just said, sorry, Olaf has just said this, the thing that is going to impact the lives of many of these children who probably wouldn't understand a scrap of the doctrine, probably they would struggle to have words to explain about what it was all about.

But that which they have received that is actually working in their daily lives that they rub shoulders with these children is that with which they will be infected. Not injected. Infected. Hallelujah.

The gospel, beloved, when it becomes a reality in your life becomes infectious. You can't hide it. You can't keep it out of sight. You are it. You can't be anything less. The gospel is incarnational. And then Lez made another statement.

He made it again this morning. He said the church is the extension of the incarnation. That was a title to an essay that I had to write when I was a student of theology. I have no idea what I wrote and I am utterly convinced tonight that I had no clue what it was all about.

But I want to say tonight I know what that means. I know what it means. To be caught up in the continuity of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. By the impartation of the Holy Spirit. Not only to read it.

Not only to talk about it. To have the ability to live it. Not with stress and strain and struggle. But be able to live it. Day in and day out regardless of the circumstances. No longer conditioned by our environment.

No longer conditioned by the people amongst whom we live. No longer conditioned by what other people think or say. The ability to triumph even in the most adverse situations and live as Jesus would live.

Paul says Christ is our life. For me to live is Christ. To die is gain. I often say most people don't believe that or else the doctors wouldn't get so rich. Trying to ward off the evil day. It's alright, I know he's a doctor.

And he's probably one of my best and nearest friends. Amen. We come from the same county. We're tied with the same brush. And we've enjoyed fellowship together for many, many, many years. I knew him when he was a student.

Those were wonderful days. God did mighty things both in the university and in Liverpool as a whole in those days. Glory be to God. But the one thing that motivated me I didn't want to preach anymore.

I just wanted to live. And of course that was the thing that nearly drove me to distraction. I couldn't live what I believed. I believed it up here. I could preach it with my lips. Had done for over four years.

But I could not live what I believed. And I said to the Lord if I can't live it then I don't want to live. Many of you know that I studied psychology for four years only to be told that I was incurable.

I didn't need anyone to tell me that I was incurable. I needed someone to tell me how I could be cured. And the answer didn't come from psychiatry or psychology. It came by an encounter with God in the power of the Holy Ghost that I knew nothing about.

Three months later I discovered that I'd been baptized in the Spirit. Having been baptized in the Spirit I began to read the Scriptures with my eyes open. And came to the realization that for the first time in my life or though I had believed it intellectually before for the first time in my life I had the ability to live in the reality of what the New Testament talks about as new birth.

Or birth from above. Glory be to God. Wonderful. God wants to make His Son the Lord Jesus vitally real in your life and my life. We should be as a company of people corporately and as individuals the testimony of Jesus.

Peter’s Conversion and the Testimony of Jesus

Hallelujah. Now that's comparatively easy I suppose in the context of a conference like this where everyone loves everyone else. I hope you do. Amen. I hope you do. Of course that's the sort of evidence that proves whether we do or not.

This is not something that you can work up. It's not something that you can plan. It's the outworking. I use the word again which Les says is a dangerous word. It's the result of a supernatural intervention of God in your life giving you not only revelation but illumination that does for a man or a woman what all the preaching in the world will never do.

Remember when the Apostle Peter had just denied Jesus and was sitting in the foyer of the judgment hall having cursed and sworn that he never knew Him. The wonderful thing was that Jesus had told him that he would pray for Him.

He said, when you are converted comfort, strengthen your brethren. But according to the prophetic word of Jesus Peter denied Him. Blasphemed, cursed and lied and said, I do not know Him. And of course that was the truth.

When Jesus came out of the judgment hall we read in the scripture that He turned and looked at Peter. He didn't say, I told you so. Did He? He looked at Peter with a look of love that plumbed the unfathomable depths of His being and broke Him all up on the inside.

And the scripture says that He went out and He wept bitterly. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart. He will not despise. That was the first step that Peter took via Calvary to Pentecost where he became another man.

It wasn't the servants. He'd heard the most magnificent sermons that had ever come from the lips of a man. It wasn't the miracles. We read John chapter 2. That wonderful chapter where in the beginning of the chapter we have the account of the wedding feast of Cana of Galilee.

And then that's followed by the cleansing of the temple. And then in the last verses of that chapter it says, many believed because of the miracles. But Jesus did not commit Himself to them because He knew what was in the heart of all men.

We talk a lot about we committing ourselves to the Lord. The more important thing tonight brothers is whether God can commit Himself to us. Entrust His whole life and all its beauty and glory to you and me to represent Him.

To continue the work that He began both to do and teach. That was the scripture that used to boggle my mind at one time. But you don't have to read very far in the Acts of the Apostles. In fact, eight verses down in the same chapter it says, You shall receive ability, power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you.

And you shall be witnesses, martyrs unto me both in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost parts of the earth. You shall be. Translate the word witness, testimony. You shall be the testimony of me.

Glory be to God. That's why we're alive. That's why we're here. That's what God wants to accomplish in all our lives. To deliver us from all those things that inhibit us. That tie us down. To bring us to a place where we can't cope anymore.

We blow our top and then wish we hadn't done it. To bring us to a place, beloved, where God so dwells in the depth of your heart and my heart that we can live. All that he needs, beloved, is for you and me to yield unto him our earthen vessel.

That word literally means clay pot. I spend a lot of time in India and on the trains they used to serve chai. That's Indian tea in clay pots. If you were very thirsty, you were glad to get a cup of chai.

When you drunk your chai, you threw it into the, threw the pot out of the window. Dust to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes. Amen. It came from dust and it returns to dust. Of course, I didn't throw mine out of the window.

I wrapped it up in my handkerchief, put it away in my bag and after a considerable amount of time, managed to get a number of these little pots back home to England. They sit on one of our mantelpieces at home today.

People think that they are rare archaeological finds. In fact, all that they are is a little tiny clay pot which you could probably buy for less than a penny. But that's what God wants. He wants the clay pot.

He wants the earthen vessel. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Amen. The reality of all that is God in us. I thought that Olav was going to steal my thunder by quoting from 1 John chapter 4.

The most magnificent chapter both on the love of God and this central truth as I understand it of the Gospel. God lives in me. God lives in me. And of course, Paul says in the Colossian epistle, that's the great secret.

That's the great mystery. Christ in you, the hope of glory. His definition of Christ in that same letter in chapter 2 verse 9. He's described as all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. In chapter 1 verse 19 he says, it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell.

In other words, all that God was in Christ by the Holy Ghost comes to live in you and me. And that's why that verse in John's Gospel chapter 1 which says, to as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.

Not born beloved of human ingenuity or power, but born from above. Are you full of God tonight? Has God revealed His Son in you by the power of the Holy Ghost? It is no longer like a carrot dangled in front of the nose of a donkey alluring you endlessly on, never able to attain and live in the reality of the things that we believe.

We make all manner of excuses but the Lord Jesus Christ beloved is the answer to all our need. Blessed be His name. Tonight we need to praise Him for the gift of repentance. Magnificent exposition that we heard this morning when Ron preaches, I want to crawl under the stage.

Amen. I wish I had half of his brains. Praise God for the price that He prayed, paid for our redemption. Praise Him for the miracle of regeneration. Praise Him for the ultimate truth related to salvation which is reconciliation.

Praise God for reintegrating us back into that position that Adam forfeited in the garden. Praise God for the gift of His Spirit who has come to recreate and reproduce in your life and my life the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's done everything. We can add nothing to it. We dare not take anything away from it. It is sufficient. And we constantly can avail ourselves of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ to maintain us in the reality of that truth day in and day out.

Continual Drinking and the Supply of the Spirit

Do you know that lovely scripture that comes in John chapter 7 verse 34 where it says, if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink and out of his being will flow rivers of living water. Now that word drink, beloved, doesn't just say drink.

All this is lost in translation. It says, if any man thirst let him come unto me and drink and go on drinking all the time. We have both tenses in all the truths related to God's so great salvation. It's not just an experience, an encounter.

That's the initiation. That's the beginning. That's the birth that caused you to cry Abba, Father. But the maintenance, the constant supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ is there all the time for you and I to appropriate, to enable us to consistently live in the reality of the life of the Lord Jesus.

No longer I but Christ. All that He requires of you and me, beloved, is the abandonment of our total being spirit, soul and body and all that we possess over under Him for Him to do exactly what He likes with it.

If God could get us all to that position, beloved, the whole tide of contemporary history would be turned. It was in the days of Charles Wesley, or to go back further, it was in the days of Martin Luther.

One man, an Augustinian monk, who lived in a monastery in a place called Erfurt, which used to be in eastern Germany. God used that one man to reverse the whole tide of religion, of the political direction in which the whole of Europe was going.

Just one man. God added to him companions. I remember when I preached in that same monastery many, many years later when it was a part of eastern Germany. I found myself standing between the two great life-side portraits, one of Martin Luther and the other one of his friend, who was Melanchthon, my wife should know.

Melanchthon. Yes. Not that Martin Luther knew it all. He used to refer to the epistle of James as an epistle of straw. Of course he was quite wrong about that. Because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.

He's also wrong in his attitude towards the Jews. He was anti-Semitic and some of the most vitriolic things that he ever said were levelled against God's ancient people, the Jews. Scripture warns us not to do that.

But God utilised that one man who yielded up his total being and was prepared to jeopardise his life to see the glorious truth of justification by faith reinstated and restored unto the church of Jesus Christ.

It was a beginning and lot has happened since that time and I trust lots more will continue to happen as the days go by. Blessed be his name. I want to read your quotation from a man who lived in the latter half of the 17th century just into the beginning of the 18th.

His name was John Howe. He was a Presbyterian minister who obviously loved God passionately. He understood the truth that I'm trying to talk about tonight when he said this God was made in the likeness of man to make man in the likeness of God.

He partook with us of human nature that we might partake of the divine. He assumed our flesh in order to impart unto us his spirit. Do I read that again? It's a magnificent quote. God was made in the likeness of man to make man in the likeness of God.

He partook with us of human nature that we might partake of the divine. He assumed our flesh in order to impart unto us his spirit. In that quotation, beloved, we have the crux of the truth. Blessed be his name.

Praise God he's had faithful men and women down through the ages who have seen the truth, embraced it, and have been a part of that faithful remnant of God's people. You can trace them right down through the course of human history to this present day.

And you and I have the privilege of being entrusted with the ongoing manifestation of that glorious truth. That's why we're here, beloved. We're not here just to enjoy the sunshine. We're not here just to enjoy each other's company, primarily.

Those are by-products. We're here to engage our hearts with God in Jesus Christ and believe him to work those miracles of grace in our life that will conform us more and more unto the likeness and image of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Partakers of the Divine Nature

Peter, in his second letter, writes the most phenomenal statement. I believe it is the most inspired statement that came from the tip of his pen. He was moved by the Holy Ghost. He writes the same thing in the same letter.

In 2 Peter chapter 1 verse 4 where he talks about the promises of God. And then he goes on to say that we are partakers of the divine nature. Amen. We are partakers of the divine nature. Early Christians talked about being divinized.

You know, so often we excuse our behaviour because we say it's our nature. We inherited it. What can you expect of me? My mother was a grumpy old woman. What can you expect of me? My father, he was a twisted, devious old character.

What can you expect of me? I tell you, beloved, the reason why Jesus came and died upon the cross. Bringing to a climax, beloved, the great doctrine and revelation of circumcision. Because when Jesus was cut off, out of the land of the living, he was cut off for you and me, not for himself.

To break that malicious, vicious cycle that takes you round and round and round and round. He came to break it. That's why we don't have to go on living with the legacy of our past. Both inherited and accrued because of our own willfulness.

We can be free. That will save you pounds, beloved. People engage counsellors to try and sort them out. I tell you, in the final analysis, beloved, God and God alone can sort us out. He alone has the ability to plumb the unfathomable depths of our being, like he did that woman in John chapter 4.

When she said the well is deep, she didn't know what she was talking about. She was talking out of the back of her neck or the top of her head. She had no idea what she was saying. Jesus interpreted what she said.

It wasn't just the external world that he was talking about. It was the unfathomable depths of his own nature. That's why when she left him, she went home and said, come see a man who told me all things that I ever did.

Is this not the Christ? Scripture says he only told her one thing, that the fellow that she was living with wasn't her husband. But she knew that he knew everything that there was to know about her. Her whole life was totally revolutionised.

She was emancipated from all that she'd been. The whole course of her life was changed. She didn't verbalise her repentance, but she responded to the incarnate love of God who made an end to her lies, who made an end to her terrible life.

She'd been abused, she'd been misused. She'd become a thing that men handled. They weren't called men. The apostle Peter says they were natural, brute beasts. That's what we all are until Jesus comes.

Working in the manifestation of that definition, beloved, differs in every person. But that's what God says we are essentially. I'm so glad that the New Testament, beloved, doesn't mince its words, tells us the truth.

Wasn't that what we were told on Saturday night? That God cannot lie. He will tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He doesn't cover things up. He doesn't veneer things over. He doesn't stroke my feathers.

He doesn't pat me on the head and say, you're not so bad as you think you are. You're not so bad as people suggest you are. I often say to people who are a thousand times worse than you ever imagined you were.

And once you face up, beloved, to the reality of your own life, that's the great work of the Spirit of God that brings your conviction to your heart. It comes to convince or convict us of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.

Amen. Where there's no conviction, said a great preacher in days gone by, there's no conversion. You could be convicted, beloved, without being converted, but you can't be converted unless you are first convicted.

That's why many people never get properly saved, because they don't know what they need to be saved from. And that's one of the things that I believe agonises the heart of our brother Ron. Related to contemporary evangelicalism, grace becomes terribly cheap.

It's a slick way of entering in. Signing on the dotted line. A. Acknowledge your sin. B. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. C. Commit your life to Him. D. Sign on the dotted line born again. Rubbish! Scripture says, The wind bloweth where it listeth.

Thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit, or born from above. Glory to His name. We're made partakers of the divine nature.

And that word partaker, brothers, is a very interesting word. It's very repetitive in Scripture, but not with the same translation. You have to go back and look at the original word. And it's the word koinonia, which in our Bible is often translated as fellowship, sometimes as communion.

If you come from a Latin speaking country, they don't have the word fellowship, they just have the word communion. Speaks of intimacy, speaks of oneness. Of course the Lord Jesus expounded it, didn't He?

Christ as the Bread of Life

John chapter 6, the wonderful story of the feeding of the 5 ,000. Of course everyone loves that story because it's the greatest picnic that it was ever had. 5 ,000 men plus women and children, 5 loaves and 2 small fishes, that was some event.

Amen. And there's a tremendous amount of truth of it actually in the illustration, because that's all that the feeding of the 5 ,000 was about. It was an illustration to convey to men and women something much deeper than that.

That's why Jesus said, labour not for the meats that perish. I'm not suggesting, brother, that God isn't interested in making people well and strong but feeding them. One of the most criminal things in our contemporary society is the phenomenal waste.

Phenomenal waste. I tell you I find myself all torn up again and again because I go to countries, beloved, where you see people at the other end of the scale. We were with Steve and Ann in Tanzania just a few weeks ago and they took us on a Sunday morning to preach to about 78 people under a tree.

They can't afford a building. They had a few planks to sit on. They didn't even have drinking water. I understand that Steve and Ann take them 5 litres on a Sunday and then they take another 5 litres on a Thursday and they share it.

Blows your mind, doesn't it? Every time you pull the loo chain, beloved, you gush down the sewer more than 5 litres of water. They took us to see another dear woman lived on a hillside where people had made her life an absolute misery if they could have done, but they couldn't.

She still smiles. Amen. Terachir, I think her name was. Ann will correct me if I've got all the definitions wrong. She took us to her little house, just 2 little mud rooms with her and her husband and 5 children 2 little beds about this wide.

Took us to her kitchen. She had one battered aluminium pot and 3 stones and that was the totality of her kitchenware. There was no food to be seen anywhere. We went to a prayer meeting on the Friday or on the Saturday then.

This one woman came to the pastor, she said, if I don't get food for my children today a maze is the thing that they need most. She said, they will die. We waste. America dumps tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of grain in the South Atlantic.

Europe stockpiles until it rots. Of course that sort of thing never gets into the paper. It's too uncomfortable. And if you do get a glimpse of it on the television it's very convenient, you can turn the knob and not get involved.

Go and live in India. I'd like to take you all to Calcutta for a single week, beloved. Your life will be revolutionised. I was so devastated the first time that I came home from India in 1975 that everything lost its meaning.

I didn't want anything. It all seemed so futile and meaningless. Jesus is concerned, beloved, about the needs, the essential needs of men and women. He's promised glory to His name. But He said, labour not for the meats that perish but those that endure unto everlasting life.

And then He goes on to say, I am the bread of life. Eat me, drink me, and if you won't you have no life in you. He wasn't talking about the breaking of bread, that's something, beloved, that came later.

To serve as a constant reminder and illustration to you and I that we need to constantly partake of the divine nature so that our whole inward nature is changed. We can no longer excuse our behaviour if we really believe that we have partaken of divine nature.

That's what that quotation said, wasn't it? That we might partake of the divine. God made you all divine on the inside. Christ-like. Like Jesus. Hallelujah. Eat me. Drink me. I want to get on the inside of you.

I want to be the life of you. In another place He says we're changed. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18. He says we're changed into the same image from glory unto glory even by the Spirit of the Lord. We're changed.

You can translate that word in three different ways. You can translate it as transformed or you can translate it as transfigured. You'll find it in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18. You'll find it in Romans chapter 12 verse 2 and you will find it in Matthew chapter 17 verse 2.

Translated in three entirely different ways all from the same original word metamorphosis. What happens to a chrysalis before it becomes a butterfly, a little dry shriveled up thing that lies sometimes in the hedgerows for years and years until the environment becomes conducive that causes that miracle to happen instead of being a little leathery piece of stuff that you wouldn't see unless you knew what you were really looking for, suddenly becomes a magnificent moth or butterfly.

Hallelujah. We're changed. Transformed. Transfigured. The word that the Spirit of God uses to describe you and me when we've been wrought upon by the Holy Ghost is exactly the same word that He uses to describe the Lord Jesus manifest in His glory on the Mount of Transfiguration.

Exactly the same word. That's better than being veneered over, beloved. It's revolutionary. Changed into the same image. That's that great rectifying work which God does, reinstating us back in that position which Adam lost.

The Image of God and Transformation into Christ’s Likeness

Because the first thing that God ever said about man, God's first thought, God's first word was, let us make man in our image. After the image of God created him male and female. By the time you get to Genesis chapter 5, beloved, Adam was no longer reproducing after the likeness of God.

He reproduced after his own image. Like father, like son. And that's what we don't like. But that's the tragedy of the fall that marred and spoiled the original image but it didn't alter the heart of God.

And that's why God took the initiative a second time and sent his man. You read in Ezekiel, you read in the book of Jeremiah, in Isaiah, that God sought for a man. Couldn't find one. Couldn't find one.

Even in the greatest characters in the Old Testament, beloved, they weren't what God intended them to be. They were remarkable men. From their lives we can learn many, many truths. But they were not man as God intended a man to be.

So He sent Jesus. And repetitively He was referred to in the Scripture as the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. You'll see it in Hebrews chapter 1. You'll see it in Colossians chapter 1.

You'll see it in Romans chapter 8. You'll see it later on in the Colossians 5. We are changed into the same image. He was the image of the invisible God. And then the magnificent truth is the realisation, beloved, that what He was, He has come to make us by the Spirit.

You are changed into the same image from glory under glory even by the Spirit of the Lord. Again, beloved, it's not just an initial experience, it's coming into the reality of that life that God has provided for us in Jesus and then constantly going on.

Again, you get that truth, beloved, in John chapter 3 verse 16. We all know it, don't we? Off by hearts. In fact, the one verse that everyone could stand up and repeat without stumbling. Someone stop me off.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That is not what it says. That's why you have to do your homework.

That's not what it says. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth and goes on believing in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's this wonderful realization, beloved, you've come into the reality of life but there must be that continuity.

Those who endure unto the end shall be saved. Paul writes to the Corinthians in chapter 6 and he says, now is the day of salvation. Amen, I'm being saved now. Paul says, I am saved, I'm being saved and I will be saved.

He uses a different word, he uses the word delivered there. In the first chapter of 2 Corinthians, I am delivered, I'm being delivered and I will be delivered. The proof that you are delivered, beloved, is that you're being delivered now and the guarantee that you will be delivered in that great day is that you're living in the reality of being delivered now.