Discover Your New Identity: And Be Changed from Glory to Glory

By Pastor Reg Bendixen

This book is the culmination of a life of searching for the Pearl of Great Price The New Identity of the Believer.
The book is about Regs life and his pursuit in discovering what God intended The Church to be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491877913

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE SEARCH FOR THE PEARL

OF GREAT PRICE

At midnight I lay on my back out in the open looking up at the stars. The sounds of praying, praising, and worshipping, were still coming from the huge tent where earlier we experienced the stirring presence of God. The preacher could not finish preaching because God descended like a cloudburst on the meeting and the people erupted in their response to Him. They were still doing so and would go on throughout the night.

I was attending the general conference of the Assemblies of God and the preacher was Nicholas Bhengu, one of the greatest men of God I have known. I was 17 years old.

I did not want to let go of this moment. I was powerfully drawn to God and clung to His breathtaking presence. He somehow seemed to open His heart to me, letting me feel His immense compassion and longing for His people. I responded by going out into the night to be alone with Him and express what I felt.

I told Him that I would do anything, pay any price, go anywhere, make any sacrifice, if He would let me find what He longed for—what He wanted for His people—what He yearned to give them and receive from them. I was willing to give my life for what I tasted that night.

SEARCHING

I have spent my life searching for it. I did not know what I was searching for when I began. I did not know it would take so long. I did not know the price I would have to pay. And I did not know how valuable it would be. Although sometimes it seemed beyond my reach I never despaired because I had a conviction that someday I would find it.

After a lifetime of searching I found the pearl of great price. It is worth far more than the lifetime I spent finding it. My search is the story of my life.

At the age of 23 I obeyed the call of God to enter the ministry and when I did He amplified the call I felt at 17. He gave me a yearning to see the church become again what it was in the book of Acts. I began searching for its full restoration.

I knew God was calling me to find the answer to the deep longing of His people as louder and louder I heard them crying, There’s got to be more than we have experienced. Surely Christ died to give us more than we see in our churches. Our hearts tell us God has much more for us. The cry came from my heart too, and I committed my life to finding what God wants for us.

I covenanted with the Lord to be His slave and fervently called upon Him to allow me to fulfil His high calling. I reaffirmed that I would pay any price, make any sacrifice, endure any hardship, and suffer any tribulation. I gave myself passionately to the task of finding what God’s people intuitively knew was there.

The road to discovery led me through darkness and suffering in which I learned things I could not learn in any other way. As I look back I think that if I knew what lay ahead I might not have had the courage to go on. But I did, and now I can say that the suffering cannot compare with the glory of the prize.

Along the way I found many who shared my longing. We all agreed that the church, as we knew it, fell far short of what Christ sacrificed His life for. We searched, we talked, we prayed, we tried many of the things we found in the Scriptures, and we enjoyed many blessings.

At one point I thought we were close to reaching our goal. We found new light on the ministry of elders and deacons in the church and we applied them with great success. We found the liberty that Christ gives His people and we rejoiced in it. We saw water baptism in a new light and applied that too. For a considerable time we baptised people every week and every week saw them immediately baptised with the Holy Spirit. We learned to equip and train people for the ministry. We also established churches in neighbouring towns where we placed the newly developed ministers. Many of them went on to enjoy great blessing and effectiveness in their calling.

I loved the enthusiasm and dedication of the people in my congregation and confidently assured them that the church would protect them. I explained that because the gates of hell would not prevail against the church there could be no better haven of safety. In Christ’s day the refuse dump was called hell. It was the place where rubbish was continually burned. Whatever went through the gates of hell was refuse. I declared that in Christ’s Church no one would be discarded as garbage.

I thought the goal was in sight even though I knew we had not found all God wanted for His church. I felt safe and enjoyed the reputation of being a pioneer in the quest for the church’s recovery.

I did not know it would take a lifetime of searching before I found the marvellous mystery I longed for.

FINDING

When the glorious light dawned to complete the picture, I knew this was the pearl of great price, lost to God’s people for many generations. God has given me the liberty to share it now. I believe His time for its glorious restoration has come. It is being received with great joy and there can be no doubt that it will bring revival and reformation to the church because of what it is.

What a splendid privilege and blessing it is for me therefore to share with you, the people of God, the things the Lord has enabled me to find—things I know will make it possible for you to become what He intended you, His church, to be. My heart’s desire and earnest prayer is that you too will discover the immense value of the truth I found and through it find fulfilment beyond all you could ask or think.

The material I share with you is fresh and new. (It is recovered knowledge. It was not new to the writers of the New Testament.) To my knowledge it has not been published anywhere. But although it is new it has been put to the test. I shared what I found with dedicated groups of believers so that it could be proved. It would be meaningless if it were merely academic. Undoubtedly God requires it to be divinely vital, relevant, and important. It has been progressively tried and tested and its priorities have been adjusted and better positioned under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

This truth has the power to change you, equip you, and empower you to become what you could never be through your own human resources however competent, extensive, and developed those might be. God’s desire is that you become what He would be if He were you.

THE VALUE OF THE PEARL

Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Matthew 13: 45, 46). Looking back I realise that I have sold all to buy it and if it were to cost a thousand lifetimes that would be an offering far too small.

God sacrificed His Only Begotten Son for it. Christ suffered the agony of crucifixion for it. And the Holy Spirit came to the earth for it. The prophets of old died longing for it, and died believing their children would receive it. God promised it to Abraham and swore to him that it would come. It carries with it the gift of eternal life.

When it came to Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost, it turned the world upside down and changed the course of history. It brought to the earth a rich and beautiful community whom God was pleased to own and with whom He worked joyfully to satisfy the desires of His heart. He sent angels to remove any obstacles preventing His people from receiving it.

Tragically it was lost. The pearl of great price was set aside and forgotten.

What is it that God’s people have lost?

It is a person! It is a glorious and wonderful new person. It is a person who has been present in everyone who has been born anew. We did not know it was a person and so we did not treat it as a person and we lost what that new person could give us.

I did not know I needed to look for a person. I was looking for a system, a formula, a way to bring the church back to its former glory. I was looking for some kind of revival when all the time the answer lay in finding a person—a very special kind of person.

We had lost the knowledge that a real and complete new person comes into existence when you receive Christ as your Saviour and are born anew of the Spirit. This unique and glorious new being within you is a spirit person who never existed before—a divine being who was born when God and you came into union.

Your new spirit person is much greater than you. It has a vastly higher form of life and it can do, and be, much more than you ever could. It can transform you into what it is. You as its human host cannot understand it or define it. You must embrace it as a mystery you cannot explain.

For generations we have accepted that the new birth added a spiritual force to our lives. We were right. But we lost the knowledge that the new being, born of the Spirit, is much more than a spiritual force. It is more than something added to us. It is a whole person—a supernatural and superior kind of person—a spirit person. It is God’s own begotten child. It is far greater than the gift of eternal life it gives you.

We are familiar with God’s gift; salvation; eternal life; being born again of the Spirit; being a new creature in Christ. We have enjoyed the glorious privilege of experiencing these things. What we received changed our lives, inspired us in many wonderful ways and brought us great blessing.

Tragically we retained only part of the truth. We have seen them as attributes added to our lives; we have not known that they are the attributes of a completely new person that has not existed before.

We lost the knowledge that those attributes belong to a much greater person who shares them with us; who wants to absorb us, unite with us, and change us beyond what we are able to imagine. We glowed. But the glow faded when we tried to use those attributes to inspire us to be better humans. The new spirit person has a greater purpose than that. It came to be its glorious and wonderful self and is waiting for us to invite it to use our bodies for its purpose. It has no human faculties of its own through which to express what it is.

There is a great difference between a gift and a person. Compare it to the difference between receiving a gift for your house and receiving a person into your house. You can use a gift to make your house better. Nevertheless your house remains your responsibility. You determine its condition.

It is different when you receive a person into your house. You must define the relationship you will have with your new resident. You must make arrangements about who will be in control and what rights you will both have.

Your new spirit person will take the place you give and never take what you do not offer. It is much more capable than you and will change your house into a palace if you give it control. It will not seize control. It will wait for you to make your choice. You can either treat it as a source of inspiration to help you have a better house or you can invite it to take control and do much better than you can imagine.

If you remain in control you will eventually be disappointed. In contrast you can give control to the new person and it will give you a life that is abundantly above all you can ask or think. Divine power working for you and in you will make it happen.

I refer to the new person as ‘it’ and I do so because there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) I do not need to refer to him or her because the new person is able to merge with and manifest what God would be if He were either a man or a woman.

The reason that this choice has not been presented to you is that the knowledge that the gift is a whole new person, was lost. You did not know that you could surrender to it and so you used it to give you inspiration. You did not gain its new resources, you only gained new motivation.

The difference between the person born of man and the person born of God cannot be measured. God created the human being with His hands. He gave birth to the born of the Spirit being as His very own offspring. The new being is as much greater than the human being as a child is greater than a doll. Humans can make a doll. They cannot manufacture a child. Only the marvellous and mysterious miracle of birth can do that. God could Adam with His hands. He could not make the new person that way. Nothing less than His own marvellous and mysterious miracle of birth could produce it.

Because we have seen it as a spiritual force and not as a complete identity we have taken the responsibility of caring for it. You are not meant to care for the new being. God does not want His doll to take care of His baby. He wants His baby to take care of you. His begotten child is able to care for, heal, transform, manage, and merge with you. God intends it to express who it is and what it can do through you.

Who is this new person?

How did I find a person when I was looking for a system or a strategy?

How did I know that when I found this new person I would find the Pearl of great Price I had searched for all my life?

How did I know that this new person would bring us the revival we have longed for—that it would bring us even more than we could have imagined?

It gives me great joy to share the answers to these questions with you.

The Scripture says we are, the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:5) The new person is a child of the light.

I did not know that I needed to find the light in order to find the person who is a child of the light. I did not know I was in darkness and needed the light. I did not know what light was. Therefore I did not know darkness.

I knew only that God’s community is not what it was in the beginning. I knew that a weak substitute has replaced its lost vitality and power. In the words of Christ Himself, His once rich and beautiful society has fallen to the place where it does not even know its wretchedness and poverty. It boasts, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing. Jesus responds and says, "thou . . . . knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:" (Revelation 3: 17) His people have not noticed their loss. They mistakenly believe themselves to be rich and in need of nothing!

Christ’s words are astonishing. They unveil an appalling tragedy. He says you do not know that you are blind. How can anyone be blind and not know it? A blind person knows that they are blind. Either they once had sight and remember what it is, or they were born without sight and have been told that they are blind.

How is it possible for the Laodicean church to be addressed as the church and yet be blind? They were not only blind; they had lost the memory of what light and sight are! And they were without anyone who could tell them they were blind.

How could I know that I was in darkness? How could I know what I was searching for?

I had to taste and experience the consequences of darkness. I had to realise I was searching for light I could not imagine. Most of all I needed to learn that I could not search for it among the things that I knew and understood. I needed to be compelled to recognise that all I knew was darkness.

God allowed me to experience darkness in a profound and extensive way. He showed me that when I felt the pain and loss it brings I would learn what I could learn in no other way. It would be burned into my heart and mind. I needed to learn that the light I always thought I had found was not what God has provided for His people and could not bring us the things He wants us to have.

Let me tell you how I tasted darkness.

CHAPTER 2

DISCOVERING DARKNESS

I was the minister of a wonderful church. I had a dynamic and loving wife, a very happy marriage, devout children who gave me great pleasure and I enjoyed the respect of my colleagues in the ministry.

Then from an unexpected direction storm clouds began to gather. My lovely wife developed a condition that threatened our ministry, our home, and even our lives.

The furious pace at which we lived and worked put considerable strain and tension on us. Our doctor recognised this and warned us that the stress was dangerous to our health. He suggested that we have a glass of wine before going to bed each night. He felt it would ease our tension and give us the respite we needed.

We did so and found the relaxation beneficial. We also enjoyed the special intimacy and togetherness our private rendezvous gave us. I did not believe we were doing anything wrong because I knew that in the New Testament a deacon was not to be given to much wine. (1 Timothy 3: 8) If it was acceptable for him to drink wine to a degree that was not offensive I saw no reason why we should not do the same. I was aware that many Christians felt it was wrong to drink any kind of liquor and so to avoid offending them we were very discreet about it. We shared it only with colleagues in the ministry who held the same view.

The problem crept up subtly as my wife developed an addiction to alcohol. It overtook her before she realised what was happening.

Such an addiction generates a compulsion to deny it and hide it from others and so she concealed it from me and the rest of the family