Covenant is defined as a formal and binding agreement between two or more people. They are God's promises and inheritance given to His children as stated in the bible. Paul defines covenant from God's perspective when God says. "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days. I will imprint My laws upon their minds, even upon their innermost thoughts and understanding, and engrave them upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people."

A person must be having a spiritual encounter and continual dialogue with the Holy Ghost.

It is the same promise God gave to the Gentile People who were grafted into the body of Christ because; the Jewish people never believed that Jesus was the Son of God and God turned to the Gentle people. Some Jews have accepted Jesus today as their Messiah however; the majority has not.

The first time covenant was mentioned in the bible was after the fall of mankind as stated in the book in Genesis. And in Genesis 17:1-7; God spoke to Abram when he was ninety nine years old and said. "I am the Almighty God; walk and live habitually before me and be (blameless, passionate, complete and I will make my covenant (solemn pledge) between me and you and will increase you in all areas exceedingly. Then Abram fell on his face, and God explained to him that if he participated in this covenant God would give him promises and exceeding wealth.

God said. "Be watchful and observe the fact that, my covenant (solemn pledge) is with you, and you shall be the father of many nations. Nor shall your name any longer be Abram meaning, high, exalted father; but your name shall be Abraham [father of a multitude], for I have made you the father of many nations. And I will make you extendedly fruitful and I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendant after you throughout their generations for an everlasting, solemn pledge, to be a God to you and to your descendents after you."

Paul the Apostle makes this a little clearer when he says. "Now the promises, God's covenant and agreements which are something that God instituted were made to Abraham and his Seed. (His offspring and heir) God does not say, and to seeds descendants, heirs, as if referring to many persons, but, to your Seed your Descendant, your Heir, obviously referring to one individual, who is none other than Christ the Messiah."

Jesus Christ made us His heirs when we accepted His sacrifice and death on the cross for our sinful nature.

Before Abraham had his encounter with God, he was called Abram meaning a man who had the capability to produce and raise offspring and have children. As you can see he was ninety nine years of age and if he was going to produce a son, he needed a miracle encounter with God to bring this to pass. This miracle encounter made him receive the power to have this son who he called Isaac and therefore; his name was changed to Abraham meaning; a man who had a physical miracle encounter with God by believing what he said and his capacity to have children was multiplied.

When ever we co-operate with God's thinking our blessings are multiplied.

"Abram relied and remained steadfast to his covenant with the Lord; and God counted it to him as righteousness meaning he was in a right standing with God."

The word for Isaac in the Hebrew concordance is laughter. Scripture tells us that when God told Abraham that he was going to sire a son at his age, Sahara his wife laughed at the promise. However, Abraham believed God and Isaac came into being. What started with a promise and a doubting attitude by Sahara became the whole generation of Israelites, (God's people.) Sarah's doubts and lack of patience on waiting for the promise caused her to influence her husband to sleep with her hand maiden and a son was born who's name was Ishmael.

From Abraham's loins came Isaac and Ishmael; one born from God's promise and the other through man leaning towards his own understanding and doing something in his own strength. Now this is a very serious thing to consider if; we do not want to be misled and not be able to covenant with God and receive our inheritance from him as His children. This can happen when a born again believer does not have a passion and first love commitment to meditate on God's word day and night as scripture tells us. This causes one to not know what their covenant with God entails and your whole life can be wasted on trivial pursuits that have no eternal purposes as far as God is concerned.

I hope somebody heard me on what I just said.

Abraham had this miracle encounter take place by God rejuvenating his ninety nine year old body and made him capable of making a free will choice of having sex with any woman and planting his seed and causing a baby to be born. He had the choice of waiting on God for the promise of Isaac being conceived by Sarah or he could plant his seed in disobedience and produce something that God never ordained. We know from this one disobedient act a whole generation of people came forth and that is why we have all the turmoil going on in Israel and Palestine. This is hard to believe but, one bad decision caused this total chaos. Nothing has changed and we are reaping the same consequences in many forms by not coming into agreement with God's covenant to us.

Paul the Apostle tells us. "Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside. He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God. For whatever a man sows that and that only is what he will reap. For he who sows to his own flesh (lower nature, sensuality) will from the flesh reap decay and ruin and destruction, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life."

God gave mankind the freedom to act and create life in many ways. He gives us the capacity to plan our own destiny and equips and sets decrees in motion for man to accomplish great feats with a choice to do it God's way or man trying to do it his way. God says, " let me now instruct you with a covenant I have made with you and as you allow the Holy Ghost to instruct you in our covenant; you will do great things in my name and will fulfill your destiny in your arena of life." There is a built in mechanism given to man by God that; gives man a desire to reach for great heights of fulfillment however; they must be interlocked with the creator of life to fulfill this purpose built in by God.

Being a born again child of God and wanting to be His ambassador to the weak and hurting people who are held in bondage in many areas by Satan, can through our covenant with God; are called to do the same signs and wonders that Jesus did when He walked the earth. What a privilege and great trust God has in us as His children to be empowered and follow in our older brother Jesus' foot steps.

The word for covenant in the Hebrew and the Greek gives the connotation of being clean on the inside of our heart. God's promise to Abraham was a promise that can only come through Jesus Christ, who was Abraham's heir and descendent and only he can usher us into God's kingdom and only the Holy Ghost can motivate that life after we become born again. All perception and discernment comes to us through receiving our righteous spiritual state from our Father God's DNA at our second birth. That's right; we who are born again have our Father's DNA in us with all of His characteristics.

If you are born again; the first thing is for you to walk in obedience to Math. 6:33 which states. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the things in life you need will be given to you" Only the Holy Ghost can teach you how righteousness lives in you and how your covenant works. However, it will take a total commitment on our part and comes by presenting our body as a living sacrifice with a hunger to meditate on the word of God night and day. This has nothing to do with rules or obligation acts or trying to carry a certain standard for living. A covenant with God is formed in our heart where the issues of life come from. When we walk in this covenant; our behavior and obedience to the Holy Ghost's leading will automatically fall into place because of us being empowered by Him.

Our covenant with God is fortified through a deep seated conviction of our eternal security as a born again believer and having a relationship with Jesus that is open and expressing our true feelings for and too Him. When we leave this mortal body we know that we will be told. "Well done thou good and faithful servant as He is also telling us all the days of our earthly exists." This can only happen if; we have a spiritual revelation of what righteousness represents in us assuming that; we are truly wanting to follow Christ. Our true understanding of what righteousness means and how we are to flow in it will determine if we walk in the spirit or in our fleshly thinking. We said that covenant means that our hearts become clean through our born again experience. Well, what does a clean heart represent? Let's remember that the Holy Ghost works from the inside out in our being.

As we allow our heart to be influenced by God or the devil; and make covenant with either one; so shall our outward behavior be changed. I have stated this countless times in many articles on the web site. Our righteous position in Christ is the basic foundation that the Holy Ghost builds on and no other foundation must be in place if; we are going to mature in Christ.

The word righteousness means being justified (blameless), innocent (free from evil), and holy (set apart from the world and able to walk in God's presence.) It's very difficult at times to realize that God looks at us as blameless, innocent and holy in His sight every day, because we have to deal with being tempted to look at our faults and failures as we walk with the Lord. As we hunger and thirst after Him, the Holy Spirit reinforces our doubts of our permanent eternal security and favor that God wants to lavish on us because; we are totally accepted by Him as his children. It is us functioning in God's Righteous Spirit that will cause us to come into agreement and function in our covenant with the Lord.

Our constantly being reminded by Him of how highly He esteems us; helps Him to search our heart and give us a vision and a purpose for the calling He has put on our lives. As this takes place, we become more like Him in our characteristics and temperament. As we experience righteousness, it acts as seasoning or a spice to our daily walk, just as spices in our food enhance and create flavor to our palates. It makes us experience peace and joy in our walk with the Holy Ghost and; it is acceptable and pleases God as He sees our maturing and getting to know Him better. It also makes our communication with people a lot better, because of our higher self-esteem.

Unless we are skilled and understand what our righteousness in Christ represents. We will continue to live as babes because we lack the skill of living in a righteousness mentality with the mind of Christ.

Now please hear me on this. Our righteous standing that God our Father has bestowed upon us has nothing to do with anything we have ever done or anything we have to do to earn this status. We became a new creation automatically when we became born again and we should have died to our old way of trying to be good and live a good Christian life by trying to follow the Ten Commandments or some other rules that we had set up for our lives. This is clearly stated in 11 Cor. 5:17 by Paul the Apostle when he said "we have become a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things have passed away and we know that there has been a change and we have become new."

When God the Father looks at us; He sees us the same as His first born son Jesus who came out of Mary's womb a born again believer because; He had His Father's DNA in Him. We must have this deep rooted assurance if; we intend to fulfill our covenant with Christ. This is what entitled Jesus to live in a covenant with God because He was in the family. His inheritance from His Father is the same as our inheritance from our Father because; being born again from above; we are also in God's family.

Now being in the family; we must learn how to function with the characteristics of God our Father and let Him instruct us as to what His traits are. If it says that our covenant tells us that we have a clean heart; we can not lean towards our own understanding but; we must allow the Holy Ghost the time to persuade us that what we are hearing in our thought life is coming from God. We must believe what God says about us and stop leaning towards our own understanding as we see it.

In Matthew 17:1-6 it states. "Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up on a high mountain by themselves. And His appearance underwent a change in their presence; and His face shone clear and bright like the sun, and His clothing became as white as light."

Peter, James and John who walked with more passion and commitment then the rest of the Apostles were able to have a greater revelation of who Jesus was. Peter got so awed by the experience that, he said he wanted to build three churches there and set up shop. While this took place a voice came out of heaven and said "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased."

What they saw was the Righteous Spirit of God in Jesus as Him wearing a white robe of righteousness. This is the same robe we acquired on the day we became born again. Scripture defines this as we putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. Let focus on this fact so we can relate our lives with Him. Jesus with out God in Him was a mere man. However, Christ lived in Him which made him a Son of God. Scripture tells us that we need to know this but by spiritual revelation and not from a fleshly reasoning in our own mind. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Ghost and was God's first born again child. Now; God has many sons and daughters if; you are born again from above.

This is what God told Abraham when he said he would be the father of many descendents. However, it only comes through God's first son who paved the way by a miracle taking place with in us. Our believing God was accounted to us as a faith step and we became a member of the family. The good news of the gospel is very simple when we teach it with a Holy Ghost peace and persuasion and we don't try helping God out by hyping it up in any way. When we walk in a covenant spirit with the Holy Ghost it is described by Paul like this. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost." Again; our righteousness is the same robe that Jesus wore which we inherited and only as we function in this understanding and supernatural oneness with God; can we truly have covenant with Him.
Continued in part 2