Jim Martin Ministries/Grace Ministries International
4184 East Patterson Dayton, OHIO 45430
© 2001 - All Rights Reserved
www.jmmgrace.com

Dear Friends,

Last month I was at our church on a Tuesday night for a time of prayer. I began to think about how that so often through the years Christians have expressed to me the difficulties they´re having in trying to deal with the issues of life. As they have shared, what I have heard is a great amount of inner-stress and "emotional commotion."

As though He had been listening to my thoughts, the Lord spoke up and said the reason so many of His children struggle with so much difficulty is because they simply do not really know who they are as Believers. At that point He began to give me a powerful prophetic word which I will pass along to you. But first, here are verses He gave me to lay a foundation.

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.  (2 Corinthians 5:21)

And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.  (Ephesians 4:24)

These verses are telling us:

When we accept Jesus as Savior, we are then “in Christ" and we are a new creature. The word “new" comes from the Greek word “kainos" and it means: “qualitatively new; newly made; newly introduced; not before known." In other words, the moment we are born again, there is nothing about our spiritual past which remains; we are a totally and completely new spiritual being, one who has never previously existed.

Even though Jesus never committed sin (knew no sin), God made Jesus to be sin for us. We talk so much about Jesus bearing our sin on the cross, but it is so much more than that. The phrase “to be sin for us" literally means that Jesus became our sin on a spiritual level to die in our place under the penalty for sin.

Because of what He did, we then, through accepting Him as Savior, are made the righteousness of God in Him (Christ). The phrase “might be made the righteousness of God," is one of the most amazing revelations in all of Scripture. It means once we are born again (“in Christ") our spiritual “new creature" is the very righteousness of God. The key to this is the word “made." In the Greek it is the word “poieo" which means “produce (out of); to be created (out of)." Thus, our born again spirit has been created out of the very righteousness of God. Jesus became unrighteous so we could become righteous.

All of this is further confirmed in the verse from Ephesians. Here we are told to “put on" (live according to) the “new man" (or “new creature" as expressed in 2 Corinthians 5:17). Then we read that our new man has been created “after God." This is a tremendously revealing statement; it means that God used Himself as the pattern for creating our born again spirit, or new man, the moment we were born again. Thus, the phrase, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, literally means that God used His own, personal righteousness and holiness to create our born again spirit.

In spite of this irrefutable truth, there are innumerable Christians who teach that people who are born again still have the same sin nature they had before they were born again, and that there are no Believers who are righteous. But such a teaching is 100% wrong and in total opposition to what God Himself has said in the Bible about His children. However, if you don´t believe you are righteous and don´t believe you will ever be righteous in this world, then there is no reason for you to believe you could ever live righteously and truly be pleasing unto God.

By continually refusing to believe that we, as Christians, are truly righteous as our Father has said, a person is automatically living daily with intense inner conflict: your thoughts are in opposition to the reality of your spiritual life; this can only result in some type of instability in your life.

Having all of this as our foundation, here is what the Lord spoke to me:

If you capture the image of who you really are in Me you will overcome all forms of adversity and inner turmoil. I have used words to paint the image of the real you. Those words are contained in scripture. Prophecies contained in the Old Testament – especially in Psalms – and the manifested realities (of those prophecies) in the New Testament are a portrait of who you truly have become. Your born again spirit is the living canvas upon which this image is to be painted. In the natural you use paints of different colors to complete a portrait. But in the spirit, life itself – my life – is the color of the artistry.

Religion and the traditions of man´s churches use the brushes of human reasoning and flawed doctrine to paint dull portraits of the Christian life. Those images are fuzzy and incomplete with much, much detail lacking. They hang those paintings in the sanctuaries of their dogma and look at them with a great, but false, sense of accomplishment as though they have invited people into a museum gallery of the great masters.

But just like you would not hang a child´s abstract and indiscernible finger painting next to a magnificent Rembrandt, I do not allow the paintings of religion to hang in the gallery of my Kingdom.

My word, the Holy Bible, is the palette of living color you must use to complete the images of your born again existence. This will not happen just because you are born again; but it is because you are born again that it can happen. I have supplied all you need to finish the image, but you must do the painting. This is not done by human ability or talent; it is done as you place my word in your spirit.

Just like an artist cannot paint a picture unless he has his brushes and paint with him at the canvas, you are the spiritual artist who must saturate the canvas of your spirit with the pigment of my living word. Just like many of the great masters of the past used oil-based paints to create their works of art, the living pigments you use are also oil-based: the oil of my anointing.

As you stay faithful to completing your portrait, you will begin to see what I have known all along. Religion will portray you as having a sin nature and being unrighteous; my word will reveal that you have my nature and that you not only have righteousness, but you are righteous with my righteousness. Religion will paint the image of you as a slave to the works of an organization and shackled to its performance-based holiness; my word will paint the image of a person created in my holiness, free from the mandate of performance and loosed into a relationship with Me that is established in love.

Man´s religious ways will portray you as clothed in the soiled garments of a human existence. My word will create for you the masterpiece of one clothed in the glorious garments of divine salvation with a heavenly existence while living on earth; of a child birthed of a Heavenly Father, a child who is not just alive with the Father´s life but who is the life of the Father.

True artists in the world will not use paint that has been fouled with dirt. Such paint would immediately be thrown away. Yet I watch as so many of my children foul the purity of my word with their reasonings, their error and their opinions. Then, with this horribly contaminated paint, they try to create an image of what a person has become when he is born again.

Is it any wonder so few know what actually happened to them at the moment of salvation? Would you pay a blind man good money to paint an expensive portrait of someone you love? Yet week after week, vast numbers of my children pay good money to spiritually blind artists of religion to create incomplete, distorted and terribly confusing portraits of what their human reasoning has concluded that a Christian looks like.

Do you want to live the rest of your life on earth with an incomplete image of who you are in Christ? Or would you rather awake each day with an image of truth taking shape in your spirit? You can pray – even pray in the Spirit – worship and fast, but you still need the palette of my word to complete the image. When you use my word to complete more and more of your portrait, you will experience less and less failure, fear, discouragement, confusion, sickness, lack, defeat or anything else that is not of My Kingdom.

I am the true Master. Use My word diligently to cover every inch of the canvas of your spirit. You will create the image of eternal life and victory. You will be a masterpiece of the Master´s peace. You will be a reflection of your Father who has birthed you into His family of life and love.

As the Lord was sharing this with me, I could see that using His word as He described is more than simply confessing verses which describe who we are in Christ. It is a matter of reading His word with daily diligence, chapter after chapter in order as it is recorded. In this way we complete the image of who and what He has made us.

When I was a child I remember having coloring books that were “color by number" or “paint by number." Colors were assigned numbers, and images on the pages of the book were made up of sectors with each sector having a number. I would then fill in each sector using the corresponding color. Think of each verse of scripture as a color for your portrait. The more you read, the more you are filling in all the “colors" of your spiritual life.

Although the Lord used the example of painting a picture, the truth of what He said is summarized in 2 Corinthians 3:18,

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Let the truth of God´s word, not the opinions of a church or religious organization, be the standard for what you believe about yourself. Live in the freedom of your salvation and walk daily in the victory Jesus has given you!

Yours in His Love!

      Jim

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In closing….

Facebook is one of the most widely used community websites in the world. I use it for ministry purposes, announcing such things as upcoming special services, conferences, sermons being broadcast on our radio programs and much more. If you would like to connect to our ministry via Facebook (and even send a friend request), just go to: http://www.facebook.com/JimMartinMinistries

We are getting closer to the release of my first book, The True Path to Prosperity. Please pray that the final stages of editing and proofing go smoothly.

Don´t forget that our sermons are broadcast on the following radio stations:

WGNZ – A Dayton-area AM station (1110) which also broadcasts on the internet www.wgnz.com. Air times are Monday – Friday mornings, 8:30 – 9:00 and Saturday afternoons, 2:00 – 2:30 (times are Eastern).

www.watvnetwork.com – an internet-only station. Airtime is 9:00 – 9:30 Eastern.

***THE 2012 SPRING PRAYER AND POWER CONFERENCE – APRILL 22-27***

Pastor Dave Roberson and Gary Carpenter will be ministering. If you live outside the U.S and want to attend, you need to begin now working on getting your visa and passport (depending on your home country, this can be a months-long process). To rent a car you will need a valid driver´s license from your home nation, as well as insurance (required by law in Ohio).

The Ramada Limited will be our host hotel this year. We have a block of 30 non-smoking rooms set aside for a rate of only $72 per night (plus tax). You can call their front desk directly at (937) 490-2000; their email address is ramadafairborn49@yahoo.com. A list of additional hotels/motels can be found at our website. If you do not have access to the internet, let us know and we can send this list to you by mail.

Don´t forget to register if you plan to attend the conference, even if it´s just for one day. There is no charge to attend or to register, but registration helps us so much to prepare for the number of people attending. A registration form is available at our web site If you are bringing people with you to the conference, please send the same registration information for them.

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