Scott Levesque
Scott and his wife Laury are very active followers of Jesus who have a passion to see healing, evangelism, and prophecy restored to the entire body of Christ. They have trained hundreds of believers to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit in the US, Brazil, and Bolivia. You can often find them ministering the Gospel with love and healing on the streets of Boston, preaching a message in a church, or training groups on the simplicity of healing and living by the Spirit, through our Identity in Christ!
IDENTITY IN CHRIST
Who Are We?
BORN OF FLESH AND SPIRIT
To know who we are, we must first look at our origin. When a human is born into this world, they are born of an earthly mother and father. And since every person born in the world has a direct lineage to the first mother and father created by God (Adam and Eve), we know our earthly heritage came from this first man and woman.
A consequence of that heritage is we also inherited the "fall of man". Adam and Eve were cut off from their intended destiny with God and not only removed from the garden, but also removed from the family of God (Gen 3:16-24).
Since that day, every person born into this world has entered cut off from our original heavenly identity and seen by God as orphans, at enmity with Him, in conflict with His Spirit, and unfit for living as part of His Kingdom of Heaven. Consequently, the Bible also says that when born into this world, we are born as "sons of disobedience" (Eph 2:2).
No longer walking as children of God, we became slaves to this world (citizens of Satan's temporary domain). Mankind then began to live through sin "entering into the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath" (Eph 2:3).
This translates to mean we are born as "sinners of the world" in danger of receiving the pending wrath of God for our sin (Eph 5:6), and this is why every person born in this world is in such desperate need of a Savior who can restore us.
In our fallen state, we're seen and known to God as "sinners" which remains our eternal identity unless we have a faith encounter with Jesus, believe in Him, and become born of the Spirit.
"For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God."
The good news is that our heavenly Father so loved us that He sent His Son to pay the price to take away the sin of the world (Jn 3:16), that we might be transformed (Eph 4:15) and adopted by God (Rom 8:14-16)!
When we are truly born again through faith in Christ, by the grace of God, our identity changes from a "sinner of the world” into an "adopted son of God" (Gal 4:5)!
When we are born again, not only does our identity change, but a transaction takes place where the blood of Jesus has paid a ransom for us (1 Tim 2:6), and He has set us free from the bondage (and penalty) of sin by that transaction. And as a down payment for that purchase, God seals us with His Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13 & 2 Cor 1:22).
Once we receive the Holy Spirit, we carry the Kingdom of Heaven within us along with all authority in Jesus’ name (Luke 17:21). God then sees us as "the righteousness of God in Christ" (2 Cor 5:21), and calls us His children (Rom 8:14-16) and saints! (Acts 9:32, Eph 4:12 & 5:3, Phil 4:21, and Rom 16:2).
One of the greatest reasons why the body of Christ (His Church) has remained powerless for centuries, is due to the lack of understanding of these foundational truths concerning the "born again" shift in our identity as sons of God, while unknowingly remaining in bondage to an old sinful nature.
RELIGIOUS OR BORN AGAIN?
How do I know there are so many people going to church living in this lost state? Because I was this person for a large part of my life, and hung out with others who (intellectually believed) Jesus to be the Son of God.
But like my own life, never surrendered their lives to Him, never turned from sin (repented), never made Jesus Lord, and didn't intimately know Jesus. As a result, we never had a born again experience with the seal and evidence of the Holy Spirit, never had a changed heart, and never showed evidence of a changed life.
The truth is that I was void of the gift of the Holy Spirit and the example of my life for all those years didn't look any different than "non-church" people, except that I went to church on Sundays. Sure, I sincerely believed in God, but then again, so do demons (James 2:19b).
In truth, I was simply a "church goer" who thought going there made me a believer and gave me eternal life! I wish someone had asked the question; "If you sleep in a garage each night, does that make you a car? Then what do you think makes you a Christian?"
The problem was, many of us believed that going to church somehow made us "a Christian", and no one ever explained we needed to have faith in Christ and to make Him Lord of our life, in order to have a real born again experience.
In fact, to add more to my confusion about salvation, I had been told that my "infant baptism" made me a Christian. I was also told my "confirmation ceremony" as a youth made me a Christian, even though I was clueless about life through Jesus, and what it meant to be born again. In our travels my wife and I have met hundreds of people who truly believe that "religious ceremonies", "the sinner's prayer", and/or water baptism make you a Christian but this in of itself is not necessarily so.
What a marvellous life it is! It brings with it new perceptions, new emotions, new desires. It has new senses: there are new eyes, with which we see the invisible; new ears, with which we hear the voice of God, before inaudible. Then have we a new touch, with which we lay hold on divine truth; then have we a new taste, so that we “taste and see that the Lord is good.” This new life ushers us into a new world, and gives us new relationships and new privileges.
"Beloved, if any unholiness exists in the nature, it is not there by the consent of the Spirit of God. If unholiness is in your life it is because your soul is giving consent to it, and you are retaining it. Let it go. Cast it out and let God have His way in your life."
That's not to say such acts can't be a contact point of faith to surrender one's life to Jesus as Lord with a sincere decision to follow Him and become born again in the process. But the religious act(s) and the "sinner's prayer" alone, often have little to do with a person's heart or a commitment and desire to know and follow Jesus, leaving many lost and deceived.
I've learned that Jesus is far more interested in having a close relationship with each of us rather than having us go through religious ceremonies, or declare empty words so we can call ourselves "Christian". If our heart is turned to him, He makes it easy and simple to approach Him.
Jesus did all the heavy lifting for us to receive the gift of salvation through faith (not works), by believing and trusting and relying upon Him alone. He created us and loves us and came in the form of a man, then died and rose again to become the first born of many.
He did not come to establish a "new religion" but to establish a pure intimate relationship with each of us (as a body), and seal us with His Spirit for adoption. He did not come for us to search for Him and eternal life by jumping though religious hoops.
No one ever told me that I could be rescued from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of His beloved Son, (Col 1:13) and have eternal life (salvation), IF I truly believed, trusted in, and made Jesus my Lord. Going back to the dilemma; with all the religious confusion, if most of us weren't very clear on salvation to begin with, how could we ever understand what it means to have authority over the kingdom of darkness through our true adoption as a born again son, with an identity tied to Christ?
This is by far one of the greatest deceptions everywhere we minister. It's a simple concept: Until any of us are born again and actually become a son, we cannot know our identity, we can't behave as sons with all the privileges, power, holiness and authority, and we will continue to struggle to overcome sin without the gift of Holy Spirit given by our Father in heaven. In knowing this, therein lies the power of our transformation.
The reality for many of us has been, we identified ourselves with the original sin through the first Adam and saw ourselves as wretched, powerless, worthless, weak sinners that God somehow tolerated despite continued sinful behavior. Publicly most of us saw ourselves as decent people, but in private saw ourselves as falling far short of any resemblance of Jesus. As a result we thought and acted like sinners, void of any identity remotely "Jesus-like" in nature.
In fact, since many of us were not born again, perhaps we really knew we were sinners who didn't look or act like Jesus, because of our unregenerate, sinful state void of a "new creation" status. In that state, we are blind to the truth, unsaved, and don't understand there is a real adoption experience available, filled with the promises of God and the Holy Spirit. Hosea 4:6 says "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge". If the news isn't shared, how could we know?
My heart is burdened with multitudes of “church goers” who are perishing because they don't understand that believing in Christ means fully surrendering to Him, to know the full power in sonship offered through the born again experience. For years I didn't understand such a decision gives the power and ability to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. Most of my life I was blind and powerless struggling with sin.
I never knew that a born again experience compels us to turn from our sinful ways, by changing the way we think (true repentance). I simply didn't know we could be renewed by the transforming of our minds through the Holy Spirit, and by reading His word, to avoid being conformed into the sinful nature of the world (Rom 12:2). I am thankful to God that now I know we can live by the power of His Spirit, and be set free from sin, to usher the Body of Christ into her true image!
“SAINT” OR “JUST A SINNER
SAVED BY GRACE”?
SAVED BY GRACE”?
YOU SHALL RECEIVE POWER
“We must be taken out of the ordinary. We must be brought into the extraordinary. We must live in a glorious position, over the flesh and the devil, and everything of the world. God has ordained us, clothed us within, and manifested upon us His glory that we may be the sons with promise, of Son-likeness to Him.”
GOD IS LOVE
(YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR FATHER)
(YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR FATHER)
“We love because He first loved us."
ADOPTION
19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.