The Lord is teaching us how to walk on a new level, or plane (level of reality or level of existence) and it will be a little while before we all get into it. It’s like learning to walk. Every new level we enter has that similarity. We must become like a little child who dreams it is possible, who is teachable and open to instruction.
We move along well on the level we’re on, and when we move into a new level, it’s a little different. It’s like learning to drive a car and then being set down in an airplane, in another sphere. We handle an airplane differently than a car, and we have many problems that we don’t have with a car. It’s an entirely different operation.
We’re learning how to move into this realm of authority, the pathway of responsibility and what seemed to be just a simple matter of submitting to the Lord now becomes more serious.
It’s the foundation of everything because it’s the realm in which we move—the realm of submission. If we don’t move in the realm of submission, we will not be able to move in the realm of authority.
We need to see the relationship between the present sufferings with the progressive manifestation of authority. It comes as an impressive revelation from the Lord. Now we need to pray that the Lord will teach us the words by which we can teach the truths that He is trying to show us (I Corinthians 2:13). It must be spiritually discerned, and the words themselves must be taught to us and must be spoken in the Spirit.
Most Christians have no idea what I am talking about, they basically live unto themselves, even going to church is an act of self, once they grow a little more spiritually they will leave the church they are in because I only know a few that are somewhat led by the Spirit, but they still charge money for their materials and that is a sign that they are deceived, that is why I no longer study under ministries, it is the best way to be deceived.
Because every word that proceeds from their mouth is not God, you only speak what you hear the Father speaking through the Holy spirit, no more and no less, or be quite and first how learn how to listen, I have no desire to hear what you have to think.
In a church led by the Spirit, every member of the Body knows what the Holy Spirit is going to say. They are not a congregation of individuals listening to some individual talking, they have already lost their individuality and are one body focused on the Lord.
Most Christians have no idea the difference between their soul and spirit, every Christian has some area of their soul that is deceived otherwise they would be transformed, and I only met a couple that are like Jesus. And when they teach in a church most of the congregation will leave. I have a friend like that, who prophesied 9/11 and the government flew him to Washington to have a talk with him.
When we get into these mysteries of God, we can’t rely on anything that we’ve known in the past, as far as being able to really understand them. Yet when they are expressed, we realize that they are an extension of truths that He has already taught us. They are not a contradiction, but an extension of truth.
We’re going to believe for miracles today, but not the kind of miracles that come from a conscious concentration for faith. We’re going to believe for the miracles that come from a witness to our spirit of the authority to use His name. We’re going to try to bypass the struggle of the mind to believe, and move into our spirit’s awareness of His authority, so that we move in a perfect faith.
There are two kinds of faith, a human faith and God’s faith. When we try to believe God on a human level, we find ourselves doubting. The faith of God comes to us through a witness to our spirit of what the Father desires to do and through a flow of His Spirit into our spirit. The faith of God is a fruit of His Spirit and is a result of the moving of His Spirit. The authority that comes with God’s faith is based upon our total submission to the Lord.
We are coming into the manifestation of the male and female sons. We are moving into the days of authority and rule. We are coming into the oneness. We are submitting to the fires of the Lord. We just want to know how to walk in this new level.
As we learn how to meditate on the word, we need to identify ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ in every experience He had. The basis of the gospel is the fact that He was wounded for our transgressions and chastised for our iniquities, and by His stripes we are healed. This is the basis of all of it. So, we identify ourselves vicariously with Him in His experiences and we say, “He wrought all of that on our behalf, that we might do the same.”
As we learn how to identify ourselves with Him we find that we begin to have an identical experience with Him. It may not be to the same degree, but it is an identical experience because he is the pattern of the new creation.
He didn’t say, “Identify yourselves with Me.” He said, “Suffer with me; you are a partaker of my sufferings.” We do not identify ourselves with His righteousness; we are identical with His righteousness. It’s not identify; it’s identical and it becomes our identity.
There is a hyper grace gospel out there, that was actually devised by the enemy with the goal of keeping the self-life alive, so that we do not suffer with him, in order to reign with him, to enter into the works that Jesus did and even greater works, which are done through a body of believers not individuals.
The work of the cross is not just something that causes us to rejoice, “O hallelujah, we see He died for us. Praise the Lord for the cross.”
Rather, we have an identical experience. We may not physically hang on a cross, but as far as the spiritual reality of it is concerned, we do go through an identical experience. We are conformable to His death, which is the death of all independent action.
There is nothing greater than to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. We read how Paul said he had to fulfill in his body what remained of the sufferings of Christ for His Body’s sake (Colossians 1:24). Paul reached in and suffered the same agonies that Jesus did—maybe not to the same measure or extent, but it was an identical experience.
We do not identify ourselves with the love of Jesus Christ; we have an identical love. The Word says we love Him because He first loved us. When He loved us, He didn’t send down a divine love to see us echo back a feeble human love.
When we are born of God, we love Him with His own identical love. It may not be in the same quantity or to the same degree, but when we love, it’s the same love. It’s an identical love. It’s not human love; it’s a divine love. When He loves us, we are given the capacity to love Him back with the same kind of love. It is by entering into the same kind of love that opens the door for heavenly encounters.
When we suffer, it’s not a little mystical experience of identification that we go through. We reach into His sufferings.
I can feel everything that Jesus feels now at the right hand of the Father, that is why he is in deep agonizing intercession that his church might wake up.
But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (this is what we have come into—we are walking with the Lord, right into the fellowship of His sufferings) being conformed to His death: in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:7–12.
Paul admitted that he didn’t feel he had attained it yet, but he was pressing toward it.
In a very real sense, we experience some of this resurrection life, that power to quicken us and make us alive. You who were dead in your trespasses and sins, you hath He made alive (Ephesians 2:1).
Romans 8 speaks about the manifestation of the sons of God, about moving up into this place of authority with Him. Romans 8:16–19. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
This is not speaking about identification with His sufferings. It is talking about going through His sufferings with Him. It’s not that we identify ourselves with His rule; we’re going to rule with Him. We’ll suffer with Him, and we’ll rule with Him and this begins to happen now and not when we die and go to heaven, and there will be a group who never die like Enoch.
In the work that Jesus does in our life, there is absolutely no distinction between Him and us—in what He has been through, and what He is, and what we are going to be if we follow on to know him.
This was the will of God, for whom the Father foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). And that is not just some reasonable copy. It is becoming identical with Christ, no difference between you and him.
We go through everything He went through. We experience everything with Him. We suffer with Him. We’re crucified with Him. We are so identical with Him that He becomes the firstborn among many brethren. He is leading many sons to glory, and all of them will be conformed to what Christ has been, what He is, what He’s gone through, and to the authority that He has inherited.
We are not just identified with Christ; we are identical with Him. When Paul says in I Corinthians 12:12–14, that the Body is not one member but many, yet it is one Body, and so also is Christ, he is not speaking blasphemy. Christ intends to manifest Himself throughout eternity in a many-membered Body, made one in Christ. Christ will eternally be one, and all the members will be one with Him because they have experienced the identical dealings, this is speaking of the bride of Christ and not every believer attains it. But those who follow on to know the Lord, whatever He went through, He sees that they appropriate and go through an identical experience, though it may not be on the same scale or in the same measure, it is still an identical experience.
Suppose a man has a terrible illness and barely survives. After the man recovers, the scientists and doctors take some of the man’s blood and make a serum with which they inoculate the man’s children. The father watches anxiously as the children have the same symptoms that he had, though not as severe. They don’t come nearly as close to utter destruction as he did, but they have a fever, and their bodies must fight the same germs. They experience the same disease, but in a much milder form, and they build up the same immunity that is in his body. There they are—a family that is immune to the disease. The children have not identified themselves with their father’s illness; they have partaken of it. They’ve experienced it. They’re identical with him.
Likewise, are the children of the Heavenly Father. They are children, like unto Him, and they cannot sin for they are born of God, and His seed remaineth in them (I John 3:9). That means the Christ in us cannot sin, and we will walk in the same oneness that Jesus did with the Father.
We will come to that sinless state, too. We do not attain it through our individual experiences, but because we have an identical participation in His experience. We partake in it. We believe to become the manifest righteousness of God in the earth. We believe that everything God is, we are becoming, by virtue of what Christ is producing and experiencing within us.
If indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. Notice the phrases: “with Him,” “suffering with Him,” “glorified with Him.” In bringing many sons to glory, He made the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10). We’re all coming into the same glory. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Romans 8:18, 19.
The manifestation of the sons of God is the manifestation of the Son in the sons. When the sons of God come into the full glory of manifestation, it is identical to the manifestation of Jesus Christ and His glory. It is his kingdom, and we inherit it which means ruling it.
Paul kept talking about wanting to reach up into all these things, to experience them. He said he had not really attained unto that resurrection from the dead, and that was true. We do not have to wait for all these experiences to be identically reproduced in perfection in us before we can move into the authority.
To the extent that we submit to those things being wrought in us, to that extent the beginning of authority starts to move in us also.
We find that at a very early time, before the disciples had gone through very much and while they were still carnal, arguing over who would be the greatest, they were nevertheless commissioned, authority was laid upon them, and they went out to heal the sick, cast out devils, and do many wonderful things.
A man doesn’t have to wait until he is certain age to inherit the entire estate of his father. The will could stipulate that if the son can prove he is a true son and an heir, he can stand upon the document that his father issued and go before the court and have released to him whatever he has need of until the time when the entire inheritance will be given him.
The same principle applies to those who are moving into sonship. We are going to frustrate people if we try to convince them that they are going to enter this all at once. It would also be a grievous error to tell them, “You cannot have it until you die and go to heaven.
The living word reveals who we are in the future but also gives us spiritual principles that we can walk in right now. Not only does it give us a glorious heritage, but gives us an earnest of it, a foretaste that we can have now.
We can move much more rapidly if we continue, with all of our heart, to submit to the marvelous work of the cross being wrought in us—identifying ourselves completely in an identical experience with Christ and His sufferings, being willing to bear His reproach, and at the same time reaching out in the spirit to draw the provisions of that inheritance which we can walk in right now.
Visualize an individual who has not been prepared to handle money or to spend it wisely, who has had no stewardship or faithfulness built in his heart for it; then suppose that such an individual suddenly falls heir to a lot of money. It would be a disastrous situation.
Suppose you tell your child, “As long as you’re under my roof, you’re going to do exactly what I say, The day you leave my table, that’s the day you can make decisions for yourself.” That is a good way of making sure your child will probably be good for nothing.
On the other hand, if you train that child as the days go by, teaching him how to work and budget his money, how to take more and more responsibility, and let him make a few mistakes and stumble around, when the time finally comes for him to be independent, he will be a mature adult. You can slap him on the back and say, “Go to it, son.” You have confidence that he’s been properly trained and disciplined. These examples illustrate a principle which we can establish with the Word.
The Lord is bringing many sons to glory and He knows how to do that. He knows what kind of experiences are needed to make us mature. The time will come when we walk in our full inheritance, but He has ordained that many of these things are already to be our inheritance now. And so, we struggle with them, until we learn how to flow in them.
We’re learning the delicate balance that exists between submission to God and the exercise of authority. The more we submit, the more we can begin to move in His authority.
The more we die to self-individual will, the more we’re alive. Therefore, the apostle says, “So then death worketh in us, but life in you” (II Corinthians 4:12). It must be a corresponding action. Two things are working at the same time.
Unless we experience death to our own personal life, we will not be able to minister life to others.
We’re coming closer and closer to the identical thing that Jesus experienced in total. And as we’re doing it, we’re moving more and more into complete authority.
Everything that Jesus went through, we go through. We will not necessarily experience it as He did, but the same identical experience is going to be worked in us, in one way or another. It is not an identification; it is a real experience.
We not only make a mental assumption, “He’s, my Lord; He’s, my Savior.” We become His bond slave, literally, as we find everything within us removed that will not submit to God. We come under the lordship of Jesus over our spirit, soul, and body and all that we possess.
If we believe and accept that, then we must also accept the corresponding progressive manifestation of authority. God put all things in subjection under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:22, 23.
In verse 6 of the next chapter, we read: (He) raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus. This means that we have been moved into that place of authority with Christ because we’re to be His fullness in the earth.
There should be a corresponding balance between our identification with Christ—in His sufferings, in His dealings with us, in the identical thing being worked within us—and with the authority which is being manifested.
The Lord is producing this in us now, for we will never be ready for the takeover of nations and everything unless we are progressively moving in now, step by step.
There must be the exercise. A baby is not making a mistake when he stumbles while he is learning to walk. And if we do everything, we can be submissive to the Lord, if we move forward with faith, doing the best we can, and then go out and fall flat on our face, I don’t think God counts that as a mistake. He says, in effect, “Isn’t that cute? They are learning to walk.” Then He’ll pick us up and dust us off and say, “Try it again, son.”
We’re going to learn. When we make our first mistake, we do not cry too hard; we just get up and walk right on. We’re going to be a success because we will be standing in His authority.
There must be this positioning of ourselves right into the identical thing that He is. We are His expression in the earth. We are His Body. We are the fullness of Him who filleth all things.
That’s why we personally must experience everything He has experienced. The identical thing must be worked in us and then we’re going to walk in that identical glory and the same authority—all authority in heaven and earth.
The trouble is that we might not know how to walk in any of these things. We are used to driving a car but we don’t know how to fly a plane. But we’ll wait on the Lord, and we’ll mount up with wings as an eagle.
We determine never to look back to anything in the past. We Say with Paul, “Forgetting those things which are behind.” That is so important. We may say, “Yesterday I couldn’t do it.” Forget that. This isn’t yesterday. And it never will be yesterday. Never again will we live yesterday. Today is the day, unique in the fact that the Lord brings it forth for us to walk in it with all the authority He’s releasing to us.
Where do we start? We Ask the Lord to blot out of our mind the boundary lines we put up, defining how far we can go. We need to be brainwashed. We need our minds renewed. They’re standing in the way. We believe we can only jump so high, and we could jump higher if we believed we could.
When athletes believed no one could run a mile in four minutes, no one did. But then one fellow came along who hadn’t read that book and he ran it. After they found out it could be done, many more did it. Now his record has even been broken. Have you accepted too many boundaries as to how much you can move in? It seems the miracles are always for somebody else in the sweet by-and-by. Do you ever daydream about a day when you’ll be moving in these things?
Before the days of Samuel, they called a prophet a seer. Samuel himself wrote, “He who is now called a prophet was aforetime called a seer” (I Samuel 9:9). Before it really became much, the prophet’s ministry was just to see the revelation out there with a prophet’s vision.
But there came the day when the miracles began to happen, as in the days of Elijah and Elisha. After that they were no longer called seers, but prophets.
A prophet does more than just see the vision; he speaks it into existence. What he has seen with his eye is not the whole thing, so we can’t limit him to being a seer.
We can call him a prophet or prophetess and so they prophesy to the bones and there’s a big army standing there. The prophets were told by God, “Prophesy against Sidon. Prophesy against Egypt. Prophesy against Philistia.” That’s enough. Down they come, one after another.
The day will come when we prophesy against governments and they will crumble, in fact they will be scared of us. Every word we speak manifests in the natural realm. But this requires an absolute submission, to the Christ in us so that he is doing the speaking.
There will no longer be the false prophecy we hear today of the Lord is going to do this or that. No, you are going to do it! Just like the Lord let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground, they all came to pass. These things are in the Bible as patterns.
1 Samuel 4:1 And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.
1 Kings 17:1 And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.”
Even the Lord’s Prayer is in the imperative mood which is a commandment. We don’t pray, “Oh please, Lord Jesus, let the Kingdom eventually come”; we say, “Thy Kingdom come!”
Not, “Oh, we’re hungry. Will you please give us bread?” No. “Give us this day our daily bread!”
It’s all in the imperative mood, we command it! We are to speak it into being. We must take our position. Take our authority. Take the things that are ours in the Lord. He provided it for us. In that way we honor Him. Without this kind of faith, we’ll never please Him.
Lord, give us faith to begin to walk in authority. We know the Lord can do it, but we’re going to believe that we will be the instruments, not for self-glorification, but just because this is the way God has ordained it should be done.