Victims walk in fear, but God’s word says, “Perfect love casts out all fear.”  Anyplace in our lives where we find fear, we can be certain that we are not walking in love.  Perfect love is not a thing; He is a Person, our Abba Father.

One of the biggest victories in my Christian walk was learning that I must walk in dominion rather than victimization.  For me, it began to happen as I realized how fearful I was and that I was more than performance orientated, I was super performance orientated!  When born again, religion taught me that ‘faith without works is dead’, so I must work, work, work in the church because ‘without faith it is impossible to please Him.’ The missing link for me was the absence of the Scripture that says, ‘faith works through love.’  So, I worked, worked, worked until I burned out, burned out, burned out for God!  When the message of Father’s love came into my life I realized that I had been working with only 2/3 of the Trinity!  I knew Jesus and the Holy Spirit, but I did not know Father in an intimate, up-close relationship.  When I met Father, my faith began to work through His love and I died to performance orientation especially as it related to ministry.  I came alive as my true legitimacy in Father began to arise.  My ‘doing’ for Him stopped and my ‘being’ in Him began to raise my legitimacy. The result of that transformation was that I began walking out of the victim spirit and into dominion as a true Daughter of the Most High God.  Today, I do not have to ‘do’ anything for Him to be legitimate in Him.   What I do for Him and for His Kingdom is just ‘be’ who He says I am…His Daughter with all rights and privileges.  Anything I do now in the way of works for the Kingdom flows out of that legitimacy.  What freedom!

To accomplish the removal of performance orientation in my life, God removed all ministry from my plate and I do mean ALL.  He took me to the desert and worked the spirit of religion out of me.  At first, I resisted this chastening which only prolonged the time in the desert!  Eventually, I began to embrace not ‘doing’ anything for Him.  After that, it didn’t take very long for His work to begin manifesting in my heart.  Today as we minister to others, we find many who will simply not embrace the desert and come apart before they come apart.  They are unable to see the value of sequestering themselves to just be alone with God.  Their legitimacy in ‘doing’ for Him blinds them to the value of being alone with Him.

I remember a time when I heard the late Jack Frost preach on the Great Commandment vs the Great Commission.  He said that much of the church had these two commands reversed.  When someone gets saved and gets involved in the church, the first thing that religion teaches them is “go ye into all the earth and make disciples” and we put them to work on the’ faith without works principle alone’. That’s the Great Commission.  He said if we would teach the Great Commandment, to ‘love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as yourself’ and when they are able to walk securely in their love for the Father and the Father’s love for them, then He will direct them in what He wants them to ‘do’ for Him.  Faith works by love and according to this commandment you must learn to genuinely love Him, others AND yourself if you are to obtain your legitimacy in Father.  A great read that we highly recommend is Jerry and Denise Basel’s book,  “The Missing Commandment:  Love Yourself”.

Another thing that helped me greatly as I trekked along on this part of my journey was a chart developed by Arthur Burk of Sapphire Leadership Group entitled Victimization vs. Dominion.  It presents a clear picture of where a person walks in the victim spirit and how one will look as they walk free and legitimized by Father.  I hope you will take time to look it over, discover where your mindsets do not line up with Father’s legitimacy for you and then begin working on those areas.  So many in the Body of Christ are walking so far below where Father God intends for them to walk.  See Roger’s recent article on ‘Diminished Stature’.  It’s time for us to arise and shine as a son or daughter of the Most High God.

Blessings,

Gerri