The great wealth of the believer is emphasized in the book of Ephesians; and in the last chapter, the warfare of the believer is emphasized in the battle against principalities and powers. Also, throughout those six chapters, there are seven references to the way we walk, instructing us in our walk. Two of those occur in our text, the first ten verses of the second chapter.
It is not coincidental that we speak a great deal of “our walk with God.”
In the New Testament Scriptures, especially in the book of Acts, people referred to the early Christians and their faith as those of “this way.” It was a way of living, a way of expressing what they believed.
Our way of living is not a faith nor a creed. It is very definitely a walk with God.
To walk with God, it is very necessary that we know His thoughts, understand the principles that He has laid down in the Scriptures, and know what He says and what He promises.
We become very diligent students of the Word, but this does not mean that our emphasis is doctrine. We believe in the blood of Jesus Christ, not just in doctrine, but in its constant application to our hearts. It is a way of righteousness to us. We walk in it.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Once this was our way of life. This was the way we walked, according to the course of the world, according to Satan himself, who is the prince of the power of the air.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.
We are exalted to the place of authority and also to the place of creativity.
From the throne issues forth that which gives life. Ezekiel 47 speaks of the waters that issue from under the threshold, from the throne; and as they flow out, they are constantly increasing.
Ezekiel presents a picture of the living word flowing; and wherever the river flows, there is life. The trees grow; their leaves are for the healing of the nations, and the fruit is perpetually feeding. The waters are creative in their very nature. Christ Jesus the Lord is the Creator and the Redeemer; and now He is the Lord and the Administrator of all the fullness of God; and we are His fullness, who filleth all things. We are raised up and seated with Him in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:20–23).
He has seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God hath prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:7–10.
Two things are mentioned concerning walking: once we walked according to Satan, the prince of the power of the air; now we are walking with God. We are walking as His workmanship, created in Him for the good works which He ordained before the worlds were. We are to express them. We are to bring them to pass. He has provided them, and we are to enter into them in the name of the Lord. This is exactly what is happening in this day.
We are generating something which will never die. When Christ said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away,” He was expressing a concept we understand readily.
When Christ speaks, His words are living words; and they will never die. We accept that those words will live on beyond everything that can be seen with the natural eye. However, we must also realize that our words do not die either. The time will come when we will give an account for every idle, useless word (Matthew 12:36).
Paul warned those who spoke words to no profit (2 Timothy 2:14), for what we say and what we do will never die, but it will return back to us. God has before ordained that these good works, meaning our speech and our actions, should all be in God.
Revelation 14:13 says of the saints of God that they do rest from their labors and their works do follow them. Why? Because the works are living. Everything a person does has some significance; it brings forth something that will not die, that will never end. If we create a blessing in the way we walk and the way we serve God, that will follow us into eternity. If we cause a brother to stumble, even one of the little ones, it would be better for us that a millstone were put about our necks and we be cast into the sea (Matthew 18:6). How rarely do we understand the consequences of our actions or the fact that they live on and on.
God is now allowing creativity in both a negative and a positive way. Creativity is being manifested both in the prince of the power of the air, through our words and the sons of disobedience, who are walking under him, and in us, who have been made alive and are walking in the good works that were before ordained for us.
Looking at the negative aspect, you see that evil and torment are being turned loose. Evil forces are being generated that sometimes become a torment to you.
It is the satanic purpose to create torment for the children of God. You may go through persecutions, harassments, and sufferings and wonder what you did to deserve them. The truth is that you did not do anything to deserve them. When the disciples asked Jesus concerning the blind man, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, “Neither, but this is for the glory of God,” and He healed the man (John 9:2, 3).
We become accustomed to thinking that the original sin of mankind’s first parents was the only thing that generated evil in the world, but we must remember that Satan had a hand in that. He did not generate that evil only to have man cursed, and then to stop; he has continued to generate and create as much evil and torment as he can. The torment and evil in the world continue on and on. They are transmitted from parents, the Word says, to many succeeding generations. To the third and fourth generation, evil in a man can mark those who come after him (Deuteronomy 5:9).
We are victims of the evil that is in the world. Every one of us knows what it is not only to have the Adamic curse upon us, but also to battle that which is generating evil afresh in this generation.
We are aware also that in this generation God has raised up the sons of God; and through them, He is beginning to speak a living word to bring forth those works that He has before ordained we should walk in.
By our very walk and the way we move in God, we are generating the goodness and the blessing that the Lord would bring forth through us in His name. Two forces are being generated.
What is going to happen to the evil that has been generated? It is an undying mass, like the wastes of nuclear fission from atomic plants. What is God going to do with it? Where can He bury it? A thousand years from now it will still be active.
He has prepared a place where the torment and the evil that Satan has brought against the people of the Lord, and upon all humanity for that matter, will ultimately be heaped upon Satan himself and his angels. The Word says that God has prepared a place for Satan and his angels where the worm dieth not, where the torment is unceasing (Isaiah 66:24).
You may think that God is unjust to send people’s souls to hell for that which they could not help being in their very natures; but keep in mind the true picture.
Everything that makes an offense, every evil spirit, all the torment that has been generated from the very dawn of creation, must be disposed of some way.
God intends to wipe away the tears from every eye (Isaiah 25:8). The time will come when there will be no sorrow, nothing that makes an offense (Matthew 13:41). God will ban all of it.
In the meantime, we have come through the regeneration. We were dead. We lived and walked according to the prince of the power of the air. We walked as the children of disobedience, in that spirit which works in them.
But God, in His great mercy, loved us and redeemed us from it.
He caused all the torment, the sin, the consequences of sin, and everything that we had (or could have) generated, to be transferred to Christ, his soul was made a sin offering.
He opened up a way for us to become the new creation. We, who were dead, are now alive and are raised up and seated with Him in the heavenly places. We become the instruments of God.
Just as Satan has his instruments in the sons of disobedience, who create the evil and the torment in the earth, so we also become God’s instruments of righteousness.
We become the channels through which God will move and through which His Spirit will come forth in the earth.
Sometimes we find ourselves led simply as dear children, not understanding at all what we are really doing.
When we stand in faith and prophesy the Kingdom and speak it into being, we are becoming co-creators with God of a new age.
Hebrews speaks of creativity: “Through faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God, so that what came forth was not made of anything that doth appear” (Hebrews 11:3).
Through the force God turns loose within you, through the Holy Spirit within you, you prophesy. Your words do not just come to tickle someone’s ears; they are a creative, generating force.
We prophesy to one another to edify, to exhort, to comfort, to bring people into a relationship with the Lord (1 Corinthians 14:3). Paul said, “Follow after love, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1), because prophecy becomes the creative channel through which all the gifts of the Spirit can move.
The gift of faith, a word of wisdom, a word of knowledge, or the working of miracles can all come forth through the channel of prophecy.
The gifts come forth through people who understand that with their lips of human clay they separate the precious from the vile.
The prophet Jeremiah brought the word from God: “If you separate the precious from the vile, then shall your mouth be as My mouth” (Jeremiah 15:19).
We must begin to speak the words of the Lord and cry out to this generation the word God has to say and the plan He has for those who have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. As we speak, those who hear will find something imparted and created within them.
We have no liturgy. We have no evolved traditions. We have nothing but the Scriptures and the leading of the Holy Spirit to guide us in what we are to be.
We have left much of the formality that was a deadly part of preceding generations.
We find ourselves with the brethren who were raised up by God to be shepherds and servants. We find ourselves without any of the mechanics that support church programs. We have no special music as such, only the impromptu psalms and hymns brought by the Spirit and the Word of Christ dwelling within us. This is by divine revelation and divine intention, for we are not creating something that is flesh, because that which is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6); it can never rise above its source.
If we speak words of man’s wisdom, nothing of God will be created; only ideas will be transmitted from mind to mind.
But if we speak by the Holy Spirit, then our faith does not stand in the wisdom of men, as Paul writes, but in the power of God (1 Corinthians 2:5). Our faith stands in something that is generated and created by God.
We seem to be helpless. We seem to have no supportive program. Everything upon which we could have leaned, we have forsaken.
We are dependent upon the fact that everything that happens must come forth by the Spirit, not by the flesh of men. We prophesy and speak a living word, and people begin to change.
People wonder what our basis is, how we survive. It is not by program, promotion, or an organization.
The key is that our focus is set on what God said it should be—on the word that He is speaking. His word is the creative agency that is bringing everything to pass.
When God says something, we publish it; we put it on audios, videos, print it, and send it out because His word will not return void (Isaiah 55:11). It will work.
We prophesy to one another. We may hear the same prophecy many times, but every time the flood comes, every time it flows, it is like water overflowing the banks of a river in the springtime; when that water recedes, another layer of rich soil has been deposited.
The flood may have swept away some old vegetation, but now the ground is fertile, and plants will grow that never would have grown before. This is how God works through a prophecy.
When prophecy flows, it is like a river overflowing its banks; it seems to sweep away things in your life that you are glad to see go. Sometimes you are not so glad.
Sometimes you are reluctantly holding on to things that God wants to sweep away, and He does sweep them away. After the flood subsides and the prophecies have been stilled, after you have been flooded with a word, you will find that the soil of your heart is a little more fertile to bring forth what God has been saying, what He is desiring to create in your life.
Prophesying to one another, ministering to one another, blessing one another—this will occupy our attention.
It is time for the sons of God to enter into the greater works. It is time for us to speak the word of the Lord in all the land.
It is time for us to realize what God is doing in the earth and that our humble mouths are going to speak these words which will never die.
I believe that one man could prophesy in the wilderness—where there were no ears to hear it, no human beings to evaluate it, no reporters to take it down, no microphones to pick it up, no printing presses to print it, no organization at all—but if that man had faith to believe God, he could speak by the Holy Spirit and change a whole age. He could change a world. This is what God has done in the past, and it is what He is doing now.
We are concerned with the creating of a blessing, the creating of the Kingdom. Paul said, “The Kingdom of God is not in word, but it is in power.” He meant that it is not in carnal words, but it is in the power that comes forth in the utterance.
Paul said, “When I come, I will know not the words of these who are seditious, these who are contentious, but the power” (1 Corinthians 4:19, 20). He was not interested in mere words that had nothing to them; he was interested in words that were a channel, literally freighted with the power of God. We must cry out to the Lord to loose us into this greater flow of prophecy.
When we come together, we should prophesy the word of the Lord. No service is without significance; no meeting together is without meaning.
People who come to church only to hear an interesting speaker have the wrong attitude. A minister can lead and teach his people, but they are not going to be students forever. The time is upon us now that all of us must be teachers and proclaimers of the Word so that it be created within us.
We must come and exercise ourselves in God and be the creative force that God is turning loose in the world. We are only a handful, but through us God can change the whole age. He can change the world, and He is.
The Kingdom age that is to come will be a time of great blessedness. When everything that makes an offense has been gathered out and all the torment and sting are gone, when the grave has lost its victory, when the last enemy has been destroyed, then there will remain nothing but the accumulating, overwhelming, multiplying blessings that have come through all the ages and will continue to come.
Blessings are alive. God did not just talk to Abraham; when He spoke to Abraham, He turned loose something that was eternal.
There may be many sons of Abraham after the flesh, those of Hebrew descent, who will never believe in Abraham’s blessing; but they who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham (Galatians 3:9). We who are walking with Christ have inherited that covenant; we are the seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29).
Abraham’s blessing is still alive! It all depends on the way we think. There are curses, witchcraft, and satanic intent to destroy that hang like clouds around us. If we succumb to that heaviness, if we listen to the lie of Satan, if we accept the futility with which Satan tries to condition us, we reach out into the blackness and pull to ourselves the curses, the evil, and the torment, Those are a living force.
Hebrews 4:9 says, “There remaineth therefore a promise of entering into His rest.” Those to whom it was given were not worthy.
Someone must reach up into that beautiful golden cloud filled with blessing and promise that few, if any, have ever grasped.
Someone must start drawing those blessings. When the prophecies are coming, reach out like a lightning rod, and begin to draw them to yourself. It is an electrifying thought to realize that God meant those words for you. Appropriate them for yourself.
People grow when they repeatedly hear a living word from the Lord and they keep appropriating it. Every time they hear it, they receive something new. They start growing; and the more they listen, the more they become alive because the word is living. It will never stop; it will never die.
It does not matter whether anyone hears or understands a creative word; it is not based upon understanding. As you worship, you draw blessings, some of which were prophesied by people long before you were aware of God at all. You reach out and you draw on that accumulative cloud of blessing that is resting over this generation.
Because those who cannot hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches will reach into all the foreboding mass of torment, there are those who are destined to destruction; and the judgments of God will be upon them.
However, I do not think that either the judgments or the blessings of the Lord are determined as much by a sovereign act of God over individuals as by the individuals deciding, at their own initiative, what they will receive.
I do not believe the fatalistic concept that God foreordained that certain men could never be saved, that they were destined to be lost. It is true that God knows the end from the beginning, but the fact remains that He has released certain forces and established certain principles and laws.
If a man or woman violates those laws and exposes themselves to certain dangers, they will suffer the consequences. If they put their hand on a hot stove, they will have some blisters.
If they are thirsty, either they can get a drink of cold water and be refreshed, or they can drink poison and destroy themselves. The Spirit is saying, “Oh, why will you perish? Why will you be of so little understanding?”
Hearken to the words of the Lord. Listen to what He is saying. Listen to His promises. He is opening up another age to you.
He is putting a trumpet in your hand and saying, “Sound the alarm! Proclaim it in all the land that there are blessings available.”
I do not think that God had a spirit of vengeance when He created hell. Hell is simply the rubbish heap of the universe where He sweeps out everything that makes an offense—all the torment, all the threats, all the curses, all the witchcraft, and all the hatred. He dumps all the evil into the pit along with those who have generated it, and they find themselves tormented beyond degree by that which they themselves generated. God did not create all that evil. But He has prepared a place for it.
Similarly, the joys that you shall enter into will be proportionate to the way that you joyfully enter into your position as a son of God, who is seated with Christ in the heavenly places, proclaiming liberty, proclaiming joy, proclaiming the release. With all joyfulness, you embrace the promises of God; and they will come back and light upon your shoulder as the beautiful dove that brings tidings of an age to come.
I believe in the principle of the boomerang. Give, and it will be given back to you; heaped up, shaken down, running over shall men give to your bosom (Luke 6:38).
Send out a curse, and watch it return on your own head. Send out a blessing and see the truth of the Scripture: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
Whatever you send out always circles back on you. This is a true principle.
As you stand before God and prophesy the word of the Lord, you can release your brother and sister and yourself as well. On the other hand, you can destroy yourself with your own bitterness, with your own unbelief and anxiety, until decay is complete in your soul, defiling your spirit.
I do believe in hell. I do believe that God has prepared a place where, ultimately, all the evil will be dumped. I am determined not to be a part of it. I also believe in that eternal bliss and blessedness that God has prepared for those who love Him. Eye has not seen it, nor ear heard it (1 Corinthians 2:9). God will show us how to move into it. Let us prophesy to one another.
How fantastic is God’s plan! He raises you up from death in trespasses and sin, seats you at His right hand, and gives to you the commission of the Kingdom; “Go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Go and bless them, love them, and be the channel I ordained you to be.”
Are you ready to prophesy? What are you going to turn loose? murmuring? grumbling? complaining? Those serpents will bite you if you do.
Are you going to turn loose blessing? Are you going to prophesy the word of the Lord and speak with faith? Let there be no utterances of doubt or despair, but only the utterances of faith. You will prophesy according to the proportion of faith (Romans 12:6), and a new age will dawn.
You need to see your authority to create the Kingdom as a positive expression of your authority over futility.