Grace and Glory Conference - Session 1

Tuesday 23rd October 2007 - Grace and Glory Conference, Hong Kong!

Thanks to my very kind new South African friend Allen I have been able to get some internet access and can post a few sessions! I don't know how regular I will be but I will post when I can get the opportunity. Well we have just had the first two sessions at this incredible conference and I am already staggered at the Presence and weight of God by His Holy Spirit in this place. Before the conference begun everyone was gathered virtually from about 08:00 for a 9:30 start! You could cut the air with a knife!

Rob Rufus - Introductory Remarks:

To open the conference Rob Rufus first addressed us with his fatherly aims for this conference. He said this:

"God is going to do a number of things through this conference. 1. He is going to bring us together.

Unity doesn't bring the glory - the glory brings unity.

2. This is a conference about divine encounters.

You can know the whole Bible but if you don't have divine encounters then you are nothing but a walking Pharisee.

3. Too often we are concerned with numbers and make growth the most important feature - but His Presence and His glory will fill buildings and then the people will come. 4. We need to actively lift sails of faith into the wind of the Spirit. If we only have the concept of being filled with the Spirit like an empty jug being filled with water then a month later, this conference is only going to be a pleasant memory. But if we can learn to catch the winds and go forward in purpose and up in the glory like an eagle - then we will be truly filled with the Spirit!

The golden rule in this conference is that there are: NO RULES!!

Don't wait for ministry time! Lift your sails of faith NOW and let's go!!".

Worship and Prophecies:

We were then led into worship by an amazing couple who Rob Rufus has known for quite some time - called Fini and Isi de Gersigny. They are both incredible musicians as well as being awesome worship leaders. The astounding thing was that the Presence of God was such that we didn't actually sing any songs for about half an hour. We just stood and basked in the glory that was beginning to swirl and hover around us. Fini and Isi very sensitively played music and got us to sing in the Spirit but didn't allow their agenda to interfere with the Holy Spirit's leading at all. There were some very powerful prophecies during this time. The lady worship leader - Isi said;

"I have had a vision of healing angels coming into the room and standing behind those who are sick and they have red crosses on their shoulders. They come and stand ready to minister especially to those who have the flu".

The thing was that I had woken up that morning with a nasty chesty cough and a blocked nose so wasn't feeling 100%. But as she shared this vision - I felt a hot fire go through me and suddenly I could feel my lungs expanding and my nose clearing. Truly angels were in the place!

The worship leader - Fini - then sang a prophecy over us and the line that just kept resounding in my head again and again was this:

"Everything I have is yours".

The grace and wonderful generosity of our God! Finally Rob Rufus himself prophecied something that has been on my heart since the beginning of the year now - he said;

"This conference will commence a series of psunamis and tidal waves that will go out from Hong Kong in ever increasing concentric circles until the nations and the entire world are impacted, the promises are fulfilled and the earth is covered with the glory of the Lord!!".

Rob Rufus - Main Session - "How Grace and Glory Connect":

God's high thoughts are to the new covenant - the gospel of grace. There is so much legalism in the church because we are not good at reading our Bibles in context. If our thinking raised the dead then we would have emptied entire graveyards by now! But instead we have gone into the "paralysis of analysis".

Thinking won't raise the dead - only drinking will. The bigger the miracle required the more we must dial down on the flesh and let Him dial up His power.

The glory of the New Covenant is a never-fading glory so why do revivals die? We were meant to start and stay in glory! His power is revealed in the gospel of His grace.

"I cannot allow anyone to go into New Covenant glory with an Old Covenant mindset".

The cherubims are the peripheral fence guarding the glory. The glory is God's Presence manifest in a tangible way. The Law is the knowledge of good and evil and the spirit of Adam and Eve died when they disobeyed God while their intellect gained ascendance.

(2 Corinthians 3) - Written to the most immoral church in the history of the world. Even the unsaved were shocked at what was going on in the Corinthian church!

Jesus did not come to make immoral people moral but dead people live.

(v6) - "The letter kills". He is talking here about the 10 commandments. A Western mindset is to have people teaching the concepts without the experience - but this is about an impartation of life! Paul is speaking in 2 Corinthians about two glories - a fading glory on tablets of stone and an unfading glory. The Old Covenant glory reveals God's opinion of you through the law - "It is a ministry of death".

On the day that the Old Covenant came into existance, 3 000 people died for worshipping a golden calf. But on the day that the New Covenant came into existance, 3 000 people who had done something far worse than worship a calf (crucified the Lord of glory) were saved!

Any law observance brings a curse - the law is a composite one-ness. If you lie, in the eyes of the law you are guilty of murder, idolatry and adultery. But believe in the Cross and God sees you in EVERY area of your life as perfectly righteous! Mix law and grace and God must dismiss the value of the finished Cross.

Law demands perfect righteousness from you but grace gives perfect righteousness to you!

If your sin can stop the power of God's favour on your life then your sin is more powerful than God's grace. Whereas if your sin and God's grace meet in a boxing ring then it is a no-match!

In law if you meet and touch a leper then you are unclean and must die. In grace if you meet a leper then they get healed!

(Romans 8:1) - If you feel condemnation after you sin then you are still under law and not under grace. Paul kept loving the Corinthian church despite their sin yet got angry with the Galatian church for leaving grace! In the glory you don't WANT to sin! The Gospel isn't about right living but right believing. It isn't holy to get morbid about your sin! Most in-patients in asylums are there because of coming from legalistic backgrounds.

(Matthew 17) On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus clothing turned white and the disciples could see Moses and Elijah. Peter thought Jesus could be positioned equally and worshipped equally with them. But then a cloud of glory came down and they fell into it and when they woke up - "They saw only Jesus". Jesus and Jesus alone! God wrote on the tablets of stone but before He did He warned Israel that it meant 100% law. They should have pleaded and asked for the covenant with Abraham but they didn't and in self-righteousness said "We will!".

Self-righteousness does not lead to holy living but to idolatry.

It is legitimate to ask a barren woman under law whether she opened herself up to sin to cause such a state but under grace it is totally illegitimate and cruel. Grace rather says; "Be free and be bountiful!". In the Old Testament sacrifices the entire thing was obliterated including the stones by the fire of God - the sacrifices weren't enough. But at the Cross Jesus could say in triumph, "IT IS FINISHED!!" - having endured the searing blasts of God's wrath. The sacrifice was greater than the judgement!