Our destiny doesn’t come to meet us; we have to go meet it. We must attract it to us by how we live before God.
God see’s our future and He is very intentional about it. Our intentionality must match His. So that what He is seeing over us, is what we recognize about ourselves.
When God calls us to do something He first puts the desire in our heart. Then when God reveals His calling over our lives it bears witness to our heart.
Eternity is a different realm than time. In eternity everyone knows who we are in the future and they are talking about it.
The question is how are we known in heaven? How we are known in heaven impacts all that we are not on earth. God thinks differently than human beings, people will see all the things wrong with us. God sees nothing wrong with us, only what is missing of His Spirit in our life and is dedicated to become that in us.
When the Lord tells us how He sees us, he is giving us an identity that will overcome everything that we are not. The Lord says this is how I see you, this is what I have called you to do, and this is your nature, your persona – this is who you are in the spirit.
When God reveals to us our identity, and that identity becomes a part of our spirit, then that identity will make war on every negative aspect of our thinking and personality, of our perspective and that of the people around us.
The only reason that God shows us a negative in our life is so that He can reveal the positive that will displace it.
When God reveals to us our identity, how we are known in heaven, He then relates to us on that basis.
The identity that God says we are, how He sees us, is how He is going to relate to us, this then becomes the central focus of our relationship with God, so that all of our praying and speaking and thinking and acting is derived from our identity, what happens then is that identity has to make war on our negativity that we have grew up with about ourselves.
God says to Gideon, hello you mighty warrior, I have called you to deliver Israel, have I not sent you? Immediately all of Gideon’s negativity about himself rises up which is what it is suppose to do, because when identity comes down from heaven it draws the negativity out of us so that identity displaces all of that. How can I do that, look at my history, look at who I am?
When the lord shows us our identity, He is not going to listen to us about our inadequacies. The lord says we can do it because this is who we are. If we live in the place of who we are not, we cannot fulfill our destiny, but if we learn how to live in our new identify it will displace all the negativity that may still be in us.
When God shows us our identity, that identity then begins to war against all our negative thinking, our negative personality, all those things begin to be eradicated so that we actually become the person that God see’s when He first spoke to us.
How the lord speaks to us, defines who we are, but then we must go through a process to establish that identity.
We need to understand the journey we are on, and how to cooperate and stay in alignment with God.
God gives us prophetic words about our distant future, because He wants us to go there in the spirit so that we can see it and bring it back into our present. He is giving us a horizon, a pathway into the future.
Jer 29; 11 I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare not for your calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Those plans will connect us with our identity, our destiny and our calling.
PRESENT-FUTURE
In Gen 18 the lord visits Abraham and makes this statement in verse 16-shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surly become a great and mighty nation.
Abraham was already known in heaven as the Father of many nations, although in the time realm, he did not yet even have a son.
When He says shall I hide from Abraham, what He is really saying is that I am choosing to include Abraham right now in something that is really important to me.
God begins a dialogue with Abraham that was already going on in heaven and that is why He has come down to earth at this particular time. The dialogue in heaven is about Abraham and about his destiny.
The language is this-shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since he is going to become this. Because Abraham has a destiny in the future, God wants to do something in the present with him because of what God see’s he is going to be in the future.
There is a principle in the prophetic that we need to understand. When God gives us a word about our future it is out there on our horizon, and we can barely see it. He speaks out of our future back into our present. We have two relationships with God one in the future and one in the present, but He relates to us out of our future. We are already perfected in the spirit and this is how He see’s us, and relates to us.
When He speaks to us from this place in the future, He already sees the finished representation of what He is talking about. And we are back here in the present listening to something, trying to get a handle on what it looks like. But God knows what it looks like because He is there while He is speaking it and we are back here listening to it.
God begins to interact with us in our present out of what He sees we are in the future. Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do now in the present since he is going to become this in the future.
When God gives us a word He sees a done deal. When God gives us a prophecy He is speaking from the place where it was fulfilled, and He is looking back down the time line to our present. And then He comes walking into our present and He wants to start dealing with us according to what He sees up there. So we have some adjustments to make in the natural, in the present, in which we are living.
Every time God speaks to us, the first thing is always about fellowship. He wants us to experience Him in the words that He speaks to us. He does not speak idly about our future. He lays a word out onto the horizon of our future and now He wants to start to interact with us as though we were that person.
We have to learn how to get out of ourselves and into the spirit, to start thinking about who am I, what am I, what kind of person am I going to become. When we talk about going into the future and bringing it back into the present, we are not talking about us working out our own prophecy, to see what God is seeing, so that we can become it.
We are talking about going into the future and asking what does that word look like?, what kind of person do I need to become in order to see that word fulfilled. That is what we bring back into our present, the qualities and the characteristics of the person that God see’s we are going to be in the future, and then we have to start getting to work on those things right now.
Mysteries do not make themselves available to a casual seeker. We have to seek them out. We have to learn how to wait in the presence of God to receive mysteries.
The Spirit of God is inside of us, and we experience Him in our spirit. Our spirit is different than our soul. Our soul is our self life or the human part of us. It is when our spirit is fellowshipping with God that our soul becomes aware of the presence of God and our thinking and feelings are on a whole different level. It is called being filled with the Spirit.
We need to understand this principle, God speaks from our future into our present, if this is who the Lord says we are going to be, then we have to go into the future and look at what that word is and what are the implications of that word upon our life, what kind of person do I need to become, what do I need to be thinking, what kind of personality do I need, what is my attitude in terms of what I will be facing. Those are the things we have to bring back into the present and begin to seek the Lord on.
These are the things He is going to develop us. After the calling comes the training and the training is about developing the personality needed and required to become that particular person. Once God speaks a word to us we begin to enter into training. Every situation that we come into is about training for reigning. The first thing we have to overcome is our self.
The first person we have to overcome is ourselves. We have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the destruction of our flesh. God and the devil have one thing in common; they are both trying to kill us in the natural realm. Satan has come to steal, kill and destroy. He hates us with a malignant, and a malevolence that is astonishing.
But God has come to kill our flesh and he is not apologizing for it. He wants to kill the things in us that would stop us from becoming great in the kingdom. He has to get to grips with whom we are and who we are not.
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
When the Spirit of Truth comes to us, if we are living present to past we almost never get progressive truth. The truth comes to us mostly retrospectively. We look back and realize I should have said that, I should have did that. And it was a bit stupid to do what I did. We look back and learn what we could have been and what we should have been. We learn what we didn’t do and so forth, it is called retrospective revelation.
We start out experiencing God when He reveals to us what we did wrong. Present to past people mostly learn retrospectively. That is why the lost art of discipleship is always feedback. How did you think it went? What do you think worked well? What could you have done better? We are looking back at something thinking how that could have been better. How could I improve that, what mistakes did I make and so on.
Retrospective revelation is good, progressive truth is better. Progressive truth comes to people who are present- future. Progressive truth means in the situation that I am in right now, I know what the Lord is doing, and I know how I should be responding. So we are in time, in the moment with God. This is what a walk with God is all about. And we are learning as we progress.
When we start to learn how to walk in progressive truth, we walk faster. When we have to deal with retrospective revelation we are stood still or we are looking back into that situation thinking we should have said that or done that.
Acceleration is about being in the moment with God. It is about knowing what God is doing in our life right now and we are deliberately making the choice to participate in that. So today, while it is still called today, I am not hardening my heart, I am hearing the voice of God and I want to respond to what He is doing.
When we are present-past we never see the lesson that is occurring in the moment. We see it retrospectively. When we are present-future we understand the lesson that we are in right now and we co-operate with the Holy Spirit and we grow quickly.
God begins to develop us from our future, back to the present. We need to learn how to track with what God is doing right now, to be in the moment with God. All success is backward.
With a prophetic word, what God does is tell us where our place of success is. He tells us what we are going to be. This is who you are; this is what you are going to be. God is prophesying our success. Now from that point of success in the future we have to work our way back into the present. And as we begin to take on the characteristics and so forth, what opens up before us is a roadway, a pathway.
That is why john the Baptist came saying “prepare the way of the lord and make His paths straight”. Straight is a fixed line between where I am right now and where God says my destiny is unfolding. Prepare the way of the Lord, get ready. We make sure we know what that path is; we make sure we know what the obstacles are and as we are walking it progressively in the spirit, we get to see what the traps of the enemy are; we get to see the things where God wants to take something off of us and give something new to us.
We get to understand the tests as they are unfolding. We begin to move in a level of wisdom about ourselves, the negative things that God wants to remove, and the characteristics of Himself, that He wants to become in us. When we start to get wisdom about ourselves, then He can move us quickly. This is why God says, ask me for wisdom, and I will give it to you liberally.
Wisdom is about understanding the ways that God thinks, and the way that He likes to do things. And when we understand the mind of the Lord, we start to have the same mind. And when we have the same mind that God has we can start to progress really fast.
Should I tell Abraham what I am about to do, since he will become this. What kind of person do I need to become. We need to write out a personality outline for ourselves. God gives us a word about our completion, because He wants us to start there and work back to where we are right now. We have to cooperate with the Lord in the development of that personality. When we start to get on time and in time in what God is doing and saying about us, we start to make up for lost time, we start to actually redeem the time that is around us.
Money is not the currency our life runs on, it is time. Time is the currency our life runs on. If we know the lord we can always get money, but we cannot get back time. We are in a position where we need to redeem time in our life.
Abraham has to learn several things; he has to learn that he has intimacy with God. That God requires intimacy as a way of life. In that intimacy God wants to bestow upon us the favor that He wants us to live in.
When intimacy and favor combine, authority comes on the scene of our life. Our authority always comes from intimacy and favor combining in the heart of God for who we are.
We thank the lord for all the things we are going to be, before we become them. We thank him for the plans and purposes that He has for us. We Thank Him for the favor that is on our horizon. We thank Him for this road, this journey we are on.
Because He sees our destiny and then speaks to it in us, God then begins to deal with us from the viewpoint of destiny perceived not just destiny pronounced. It is not enough for God to speak a word; He wants us to see that word. Every time we hear the word of the Lord, our sight has to follow our hearing; otherwise we will not do anything.
Moses has to release over a million people from bondage, to do this he has to go down to the most occult nation on the face of the earth, to the most despotic ruler on the planet, and has to get in his face and say a few simple sentences. Let my people go! But the problem with Moses is that he has a speech impediment, and he is nervous. So, he starts making excuses, here am I send him. I cannot do this I am slow of speech; I am this and that.
So God gives him a word, Exodus 7:1 See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron shall be your prophet. By the time you and I have finished with Pharaoh, in his understanding of things, he will assume that you must be some kind of God in human form and Aaron is your mouth piece.
If we do not see it, we cannot become it. Every time the lord speaks our eyesight has to follow our hearing. We have to see the kind of person God wants us to be. See, I have made you. See it Moses. I want you to go down there in the persona that I am saying you can have. I am standing here from the standpoint that you have accomplished what I have said you can do, what I want you to do.
All success is backward, in order for us to do that we need to see ourselves as that person. To see ourselves obtaining that objective and we need to see in the present what God has seen in our future. And if we don’t see that future, we won’t do it.
The lord sets words out there in our future and they are markers. He is a stake holder in our future. But we have to have the same spirit about ourselves that he has about us. We have to see the kind of person we should be and then become it now in the present and start working towards it. And we have to be very deliberate about it.
All of our tests in our present are about us developing the personality to fulfill that future. Everything that we are going through right now is a preparation for our future. What is being outworked in us right now is our destiny unfolding. For where we are going and what we have to do, it is necessary for us to go through a time of training. It may seem tough, but we have to be tough in the future, because we have battles to win. We have a city, a country to take. It takes tough people to take countries. This training, this situation we are going through right now is going to be the making of us. We want to be in the moment with God right now, so we can get through this quick.
There is a partnership in the present that God wants to have with us about our future. This partnership is really important. God wants to establish intimacy as a way of life with us and within that intimacy He wants to establish our faith and favor. God establishes favor by first establishing that He is our source.
It is in becoming aware of the presence of God, that the qualities of His nature become a part of us. We cannot fulfill our calling unless we know the Lord intimately.
The best way to experience the presence of the Lord is to find a church where we can experience Him in the worship service. We have to learn how to feel God. God gave us emotions so that we can feel and experience Him. We have to find some kind of music where we can experience God in it.
How we are known in heaven is important for who we are going to become here on earth. How we are known in heaven is our persona, this is where God is going to make us into the image of Jesus. We are in Christ learning to be Christ like. When God gives us a promise, when he declares our persona He is saying this is what I am making you into, so I need everything in your life to come into alignment with my purpose.
Whatever we are called to, it is going to involve a people group. For the lord it is not just about us having our own personal inheritance. He wants to give us an inheritance for that whole people group.
The movie amazing grace is all about the power of perseverance. In all the oppositional circumstances he won, he beat the whole British government. He made them submit.
God wants to resource us and the people group he calls us to. Our allocation of resources is bigger than we can imagine right now. We will never see it unless we become that identity.
Unless we see ourselves in our true identity in Christ we don’t come into our resources. But when we are practicing our identity, when we embrace it and say this is who I am and I am working this through now with the Holy Spirit. I am using this identity and am practicing this identity on all my circumstances.
Whenever the lord connects with us, he connects with us the way He see’s us in the spirit, not in how we are behaving. He is always speaking to our identity. He is always speaking to who we are. Once he tells us our persona. Once he reveals to us this is how you are known in heaven that is the way that He speaks to us from that point on. He will always talk to us from our identity. He does this always, it is who He is, it is what He is like.
Accountability is not calling people out on their stuff. It is calling people up to their real identity. Accountability says you don’t need to be doing that, this is who you are. Did you forget, you forgot, this is who you are! If we forget we need to be reminded.
Speaking the truth in love is telling a person how God see’s them in the future, so that they can rise to it. You don’t need to be worried here, because you have a provision there. No need to be anxious because you have this word. You have a promise.
Speaking the truth in love means we are going to say something about that person that sets them free from the behavior that we don’t like.
We need to learn how to bring the future into the now.
The Holy Spirit is a quickening Spirit. If we will cooperate with God in terms of our own destiny, then it is possible that we can make five years growth in one year. Most people are out of sync with who God wants them to be, and who he wants to be to them in the process.
We need to learn how to run, it is time for acceleration. We are approaching a place where what we think will take years will take months, what we think will take months will happen in weeks. What we think will take weeks will happen in days. What we think will take days will happen in hours and moments because the gap between prophecy spoken and prophecy fulfilled is getting narrower and narrower.
Prophecy is the word coming alive, spoken through a human vessel, proclaiming the will of God for a person’s life. It is God speaking to us. We can prophesy over ourselves when we are filled with the Spirit.
God is looking for people who can be accelerated, he wants to move quickly. He is looking for champions, people who will accept the process that generates acceleration in our life.
There are two kinds of people. There are people who live from their present to their past in the sense that they are still being tripped up or wiped out by the things that have happened years or months ago. They are still tied to an event or something that is there in the past. Sometimes it is a wound or a betrayal or whatever it might be. If we are going to be anybody in the church we are going to have to practice the art of getting healed very quickly. We don’t have a right to be wounded, we have a right to be healed, and Jesus bought us that right by his own death on the cross.
Gen 37 Joseph is an arrogant young man, quite conceited, the father’s favorite. His brothers don’t like him, because he is probably telling tales on them or something. And he has this dream one day, the interpretation of which is that his father and brothers are all bowing down to him. So that he is in this place of authority and they are in a different place on a lower level. And he can’t wait to tell everybody. So the next thing that happens is that he finds himself in a position where his life has gone in the opposite direction.
But it was going through those circumstances, that he received the necessary training to fulfill his destiny. He became the person he needed to become to see the word God spoke over him of his future come to pass in the natural realm.
The destiny over our life is important to think about. What are the implications of the word that God has given us? What kind of person must I become in order to see that word fulfilled in its entirety?
If we have an anointing or a calling upon us that will take us to a great height, what kind of foundation do we have to have. If we have only one floor the foundation doesn’t have to be that deep. If it is going to be one hundred stories high, then the foundations have to reflect the height of the building.
The height that God has to take us to is the depth to which he will also take us too first. God has to do a work in us, in order for us to fulfill our destiny.
Has the lord revealed to you, your future? What kind of person must you become to see your destiny fulfilled?