It is a pleasure to introduce Daniel Koerner to you. Daniel and his wife Julie are ordained ministers and elders. This is such a wonderful teaching and reminder as we enter this new decade, of our covenant relationship with God. Please enjoy Dan’s insightful adapted message of encouragement and hope released at The Covenant Center on 1/12/2020. Becky

Upgrade Your Covenant Walk

Dan and Julie Koerner

I was struck a few months ago by a statement made by Bill Johnson in one of his messages as posted on You Tube:  “Our assignment,” he said, “is to believe what God knows to be true.”  What was so special about that?

It was the covenantal, relational resonance of the statement!  It was not my job to muster up faith in a set of abstract truths or doctrines-- far from it! Rather, my assignment was to co-labor in truth with the Father, my covenant Friend and partner.

Who is this covenant partner in truth? Listen to how He presents Himself to Moses, when Moses asked Him to show His glory:  “Then the Lord passed by in front of him, and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness and truth’” (Exodus34:6). Of all of His characteristics, what He Himself says He is most full of, what He abounds in, is this covenantal pair: loving-kindness (chesed) and truth (‘emet).

The loving-kindness of God is His persistent, committed covenantal love; His truth is the excellent content of His love-- what the Psalmist calls “His benefits.” (Psalm 103:1-6. See also especially II Peter 1:3-4).

Part of God’s engagement with us comes in the form of personal discipleship. As David cries out in Psalms 25:4-5 “Make me know your ways, O Lord; Teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for You are the God of my salvation.” How-ever, as much as we learn, the truth is always still rooted in God. It is no accident that John tells us when he is introducing Jesus to us: “…we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of full of grace and truth.” (1:14). Jesus also lines up verbally with this when He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me,” (John 14:6). Thus, our covenantal loving-kindness and truth connection to the Father is sure, absolutely essential, and irreplaceable.

However, precisely because that connection is so fundamental, my sense is that we often forget the awesomeness of being in covenant with God. This is the Being who said to Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no man can see Me and live!” So, being in covenant with God is a reality that transcends normal human categories. It would be one thing to covenant with another human, as they did of old, and call upon God as the fearsome covenant Witness / Enforcer. It is totally another thing to exchange from the natural into the spirit realm through the covenantal process. We are harnessed up to the Lord of all!

We know that in covenantal practice, the stronger party in the covenant ended up dominating the terms of the covenant. The best covenants were those where the stronger party made gracious promises and declarations to the people coming into covenant. This flavor is echoed to us in His chesed statements to us, such as “I will never leave you or forsake you.” We love Him, because He first loved us. 

 It is right that we should comfort ourselves with these words and these realities.Yet there is an additional challenge to this. We are not only supposed to believe what God knows to be true, we must labor to enter into the truth that we are believing. This is the transformation process.  And we must not stop with letting Him change our minds internally. What God knows to be true will change what is manifesting as truth-- first on the inside of us, then in our Judea, then in our Samaria, then in the uttermost parts of our Earth. ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, don’t you see. We must embrace the permanent, real and irreversible connection which has transformed the structure of the spirit realm as it relates to us: We have walked into relationship with the Father, and Holy Spirit has moved from Heaven to take up residence on the inside of us. We dwell together in covenant love. We are His beachhead in the recapture of His World! Once again in the spirit there is a cry going forth:  “Arise, O Lord, let Your enemies be scattered before You!”  And “Return, O Lord, to your rest among the thousands of Israel!”

 The covenant exchange wrought by the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord has resulted in newness of Life. The permanent reconnect in His blood has made the Kingdom of heaven to be “at hand”-- TANGIBLE.  We are able to access not only our faith, but Jesus said, ”Have the faith of God.” Not “Strive for bigger human faith,” but, “Borrow some from your friend God the Father.” Jesus said, “The words that I speak to you are Spirit.” He said,”You are clean by the Words I have spoken to you.”  “Your faith has made you whole!”

 You have access!  Explore your inheritance! Walk with the King, and watch the elemental principles of the natural world begin to bow to what the Lord is saying, seeing, hearing, touching and smelling as part of His covenantal walk with you. The truth He knows will dominate!

 The impact of this upgraded covenant walk in truth is that I do not labor to believe harder, but I labor to enter into Rest, the Rest that comes in knowing that my Father already knows and believes that what I am asking from Him is mine. I simply walk in faith down my timeline. until I enter the manifestation of God’s truth in my life. Daniel Koerner

Daniel M. Koerner is a prayer leader and prophetic counselor at The Covenant Center in Lakeland, Florida.  He is a carpenter by trade, but especially loves to build with spiritual substance.

Dan holds the M.Div. degree from Westminster Theological Seminary, and is ordained through The Covenant Center. He has taught at informal Bible schools in the U.S. and in Central America. He lives in Lakeland with Julia, his wife of 42 years. They have an Australian Cattle Dog, Everest. Victoria is their granddaughter; she visits often. He is the author of “The Edge of Heaven,” available in The Covenant Center bookstore: http://www.thecovenantcenter.com/store

For the visual illustration given with this teaching, please check out the service archive on the Covenant Center Facebook site.