Experiencing the Benefits of the New Covenant

Hello, welcome to Self Talk with me, Dr. Ray Self, the show that empowers you with the Holy Spirit and gives you the ability to overcome every scheme of the enemy so you can enter your promised land. Today, you're going to get a new strategy for success in your life.

 

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Hey, welcome to another episode of Self Talk. It's me, Dr. Ray Self. Thank you for being a part of the show. I'm going to talk to you about covenant and how understanding covenant, doing your part in the covenant can change your life forever. The show again is brought to you by the International College of Ministry, enrolling right now at icmcollege.org. I appreciate you very much. Thank you for being a part of my show. I believe this is my 267th episode. Can you believe it? Amen. All right, here we go.

 

Heavenly Father, thank you for everyone listening to the show. I pray the Holy Spirit will speak through me and open up our ears and our hearts to receive what you have for us today. Bless each one who is a part of this show today and listening to this. In Jesus’ name. Amen. I want to talk to you about covenant, the blood covenant that Jesus instituted for us. The book of Hebrews - if you haven't read it, you should read Hebrews 8 and 9 - talks about how Jesus instituted a better covenant; how the old covenant passed away and a new covenant was instituted. Covenant is critical to understand. Now, a covenant is different than a contract. The Bible says a covenant is in effect as long as the institut– the one who initiated the covenant is alive. Well, Jesus instituted the blood covenant, shed His blood for us. He gave us life for this covenant, and He's alive eternally, which means this covenant is eternal. 

 

Now, a covenant is different than a contract. A contract is for a specific reason for a specific time. You have a contract when you buy a car, a contract when you purchase a house, then you purchase it, and it's done. It's over. But a covenant is different. And maybe…the, the beautiful thing, way to look at a covenant is look at marriage. When I married my beautiful wife Christy, I made a covenant with her. Now, I want you to pay attention to this because this is critical. A covenant is an exchange of one life for another. When I married Christie, and, and marriage is a beautiful picture of God's covenant, uh, the Bible uses the imagery of marriage a lot, especially in the book of Ephesians. But when I married Christie, and we came together, you know, on the altar and did the ceremony in front of witnesses, I made a promise to her that my life belonged to her. All my possessions, all my worldly goods, I gave her my life and everything in my life. It, it's, we became one flesh. Christy gave me her life. And everything she has, we became one flesh. Everything I have belongs to my wife. Everything my wife has belongs to me.

 

Now, a little side point here: that's why I don't agree with marriages, “Oh, we're married. We're in a covenant, but we have separate accounts. So, we have separate checking accounts, separate savings account.” No, no, no. In a covenant, you're one flesh. One flesh, which means it's all one together, and that's what Jesus has instituted with us. Whenever, in the Old Testament, a covenant is made, there was always an exchange. Uh, the beautiful story of Jonathan and David, how they made a, a covenant. They met together and they, they exchanged. They exchanged their clothes, I mean, their, their, their, weapons and their shields and their armor was exchanged. A covenant is an exchange. It's one life for another life. Jesus died on the cross and gave us His life. Life…see, a covenant is represented by the blood. The life is in the blood. This is why they call this the blood covenant. Jesus gave His very life for us on the cross. This is why in Hebrews it said Jesus is “...the mediator of a new covenant. Not the covenant made with the blood of goats and bulls and sheep,” which is the Old, Old Testament, “but a covenant made with his very own precious blood.” A perfect sacrifice. When we are saved, we enter into a covenant with Jesus Christ. In this covenant, Jesus is offering us His life. His life is given to us. Now, in His life there was His sacrifice on the cross. Now, we take– when we enter into a covenant with Him, the benefits of His sacrifice are applied to us. And you know the benefits. The benefits are called salvation. Your sins are forgiven. You are, uh, redeemed, justified, made righteous, sanctified, and adopted as a child of God and given eternal life. That is the result of the covenant. Jesus has given you everything He has. Jesus has eternal life. He's given you that. Jesus is perfect and righteous. He's given you His righteousness. Jesus is redeemed and justified. He's given all this to you.

 

But here's what a lot of Christians miss out: Your obligation of the covenant is to give your life to Christ. A covenant is an exchange of one life for another. I gave my life to my beautiful wife Christy. She gave her life to me. All right? Jesus gave His life to us for us. Now, our part of the covenant is to give our life to Christ. You might ask, what does that look like? I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like this: it’s “Lord Jesus, my life belongs to you. My possessions, my clothes, my money, my home, my car, my family, every breath I take belongs to you. I give you my whole life. I give you ownership of my life. I am here to serve you. I give it all to you. I trust you with my life. I trust you. I surrender to you my life, my marriage, my dreams, my aspirations, uh, my body, my children, my grandchildren. I surrender it all to you.” Jesus, in the covenant, gave us His life. Everything. He gave us– He, He gave us…When He died on the cross. Think about it. He is literally sacrificing His entire life for us, to make a covenant with us, a promise, an eternal promise. And our response in the covenant is we should, if you haven't, give Him our life. Okay? 

 

It's not…See, so many people say, "Well, yeah, I, I want, I want what Jesus has for me, but I'm not offering what I have back to Jesus." You see, Jesus owns it all. In the covenant, we're one. We're one with Christ. Okay? Christ is in me. I am in Christ. Okay? And this is the beauty of a covenant. We– it's, it's a picture of marriage. My wife and I, we're not separate. We're together in everything. We're together in everything. And that's the way it is with Jesus. The beauty of it is when we, you know, repent and say, “Lord, I surrender now to your covenant. I offer you my life. I offer you everything. I, I, it's all about you. I, I surrender. Remember the old hymn?” It says, "I surrender all. All to Jesus, I surrender. I surrender all." I would sing it to you, but I may break the internet. And today, what I'm telling you is we need to maybe daily repent for taking ownership and living separate from Jesus. You see, I'm not separate from my wife. We're together in a covenant. And folks, we're not separate from Jesus. If you're saved, you're not separate from Jesus. Jesus made a covenant with us. And the way He made the covenant with us is He gave His life for us. But in return, have you given and surrendered your life to Jesus? Have you really done it? Have you said, "Lord, I surrender to you. I, I, I give it all to you. I recognize in the covenant that everything I have belongs to you. It belongs to you. I submit. I commit my way to you. I submit it all to you. I surrender ownership. And I– frie– I am one with you, Christ, and you own it all. And I trust you. I surrender all.” Jesus gave us His life. Are you willing to give your life back to Him? And I want to tell you something: that's when the full benefits of the covenant start to manifest in your life.

 

You see, God's always got exceedingly abundantly more than you can think or ask for. But when we are…think it's up to us and we have not entered into that surrendered relationship with Him, it just doesn't happen, because we're trying to make it happen. We're living in our own strength. We're living in our own ability. We're counting on our self to perform everything. Now listen, we should work hard. We should do our best, but understand that our life and our own and our beings and our money and our family and our home belongs to the Lord. The Bible says the earth and the fullness thereof belongs to the Lord. All the cattle on a thousand hills, all the gold and silver belongs to the Lord. That's what a covenant is. Everything I have belongs to Christy, my wife. Everything she has belongs to me. And you know, it,  it's a beautiful picture. And that's the picture of a co– marriage covenant is the picture of the blood covenant, the new covenant that Christ instituted. 

 

But I think what we're doing is we're holding back on our deal. We're holding back on our part of the covenant. It's time to say, “You know what, Lord, forgive me. I've been holding back with you. I haven't fully surrendered ownership of everything to you.” See, Jesus has given us His life. He's offering us His life, His righteousness, His redemption, His power, His anointing. He's offering it to us. And He wants us, in exchange, to surrender our life to Him. And the results are more than you could imagine. And today, as I'm saying this, you– I, I'm, I'm, I'm convicted that, you know, I'm taking too much ownership of my life and cutting God out of it. I'm, I'm trying to do everything in my own strength. Now listen, I'm going to work hard. I work– I'm a really hardworking guy. I'm not going to stop working. I'm not going to stop doing my best. But I understand that I have a king, King Jesus, who's actually in charge. And I'm in a covenant with Him. And He's given me everything that He owns. He's given me His life. And He wants my life in return. Life for life. Are you surrendered to Jesus? Are you willing maybe today to say, "Lord, I'm ready to rededicate to you,” because I really think that's what we need to do. We need to pray this prayer. And I'm going to pray it right now. And if you're in agreement, pray with me. 

 

Heavenly Father, I thank you. Jesus, I praise you. You died on the cross, and you rose on the third day to institute a new covenant. You gave us the benefits of your life. You gave your life for me. Lord, I give you my life in return. I want to have the full benefits of the covenant. I give you my life in return. I thank you, Father, for the blood covenant. I thank you, Father, for the benefits and the promises of the covenant. I thank you, Father, that we've been redeemed from all the curses of the law. The covenant is our salvation and our healing and our adoption, our eternal life; our anointing, all the amazing, amazing benefits of being a child of the King. Father, forgive us, forgive us for holding back. Forgive us for holding back today, right now. We release and surrender our lives to you as part of our part of the covenant. I thank you for the covenant. We accept the covenant. We renew ourselves to you today. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.

 

I hope you said this prayer. I hope you understand that…think of a covenant like a marriage. When you're married, you promise your spouse everything, “It all belongs to you.” There is an exchange. Jesus made an exchange. He exchanged His life for our life. Are you willing to make that exchange and enjoy the benefits of the covenant? Thank you for listening to Self Talk. This is Dr. Ray Self. Again, we appreciate you. If you feel led by the Holy Spirit, only if you do, consider donating to help us out. icmcollege.org/donate. But if you don't, that's fine. I'm going to keep doing it anyway. Thank you for being a part of the show. It means a lot. The podcast is growing. Tell your friends about it. Love you much. Hope the show helped you. God bless you. Bye-bye.

 

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