In a walk with God there should be a practical application of every truth, however otherworldly it may seem, so that we have both feet on the ground and our spirit and mind in heavenly places. Then there will not be a day when we cannot see into the Kingdom.
When our spirit is alive to God we have the ability to see and enter into the kingdom. The kingdom is a spiritual dimension. It is within us, but also all around us. Our spirit is dimensional; it is seated with Christ in heavenly places.
Since the time of John the Baptist, the kingdom has been preached and people have been pressing into it. The kingdom is at hand, repent.
The word repent in the Greek is metanoeo-it consists of two words; the first word is meta- with, it means close association or relationship. The second word is noeo -which means to perceive with thought coming into the consciousness.
Matthew 3 1In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, 2And saying, Repent (command for continuous action, the maintaining of a spiritual condition- the life of God flowing into our spirit and mind, to think with God) ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (to bring near, to join one thing to another).
In John’s day the kingdom was manifested in and through Jesus’ earthly ministry and everyone was pressing into the atmosphere that surrounded him. To just be in the presence of Jesus, was to be aware of a different dimension, the kingdom was manifested through him and all around him.
What was it like to walk with the Lord Jesus Christ as a disciple? What was it like to see Him heal the sick, to eat with Him, to live with Him? It must have been a fantastic experience. When the Lord announced that He was going to leave them, the disciples’ hearts were troubled. They did not know what to make of it. And so He said, “Let not your heart be troubled.…” John 14:1. They were deeply disturbed because the presence of the Lord, as they knew it, was going to be changed.
Jesus had to explain to them what it would be like after His physical presence was gone and the Holy Spirit had come. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” John 14:26. This would enable the disciples later to write the gospels and the epistles. They would have a great power of recall, because the Holy Spirit would make everything that Christ had said a real and living truth which could be remembered and brought forth.
“When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will bear witness of Me.” John 15:26. The Holy Spirit always brings the witness of Christ and a focus upon Him. Although the disciples would no longer see Jesus in the flesh, they would find Him made even more real to them by the witness of the Holy Spirit.
“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and shall show it to you.” John 16:13–15. He unfolds everything to us.
1 Corinthians 2:12.Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God. The Holy Spirit does not come just for personal experience and blessing. He has a distinct function: to continually make us aware of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When Moses was on the mountain he saw the Lord, and when he came down his face was shining. To the extent that we are exposed to the Lord and He is revealed to our heart, to that extent we will change.
The Holy Spirit works the change in us. By making Jesus real to our heart and glorifying Him, He brings about the Spirit-led life, the Spirit-filled life, and the Spirit-motivated life. This changes us and opens a door so that we immediately start walking in the things of the Lord.
How can we walk with the Lord and practice His presence twenty-four hours a day, and be more aware of Him than of anything else?
By being filled with the Holy Spirit, so that the life of God flows into our spirit and our mind becomes aware of the life of God flowing into it, so that we begin to walk in it, this is what repentance means. We are no longer living unto ourselves doing our own thing; we are walking with the Lord.
We must learn to live in the Lord’s presence, to be exposed to Him, and to communicate with Him. The New Testament also uses the word abiding in this sense. In John 15:7, Jesus spoke of our abiding in Him: “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” The access to His power and glory is unlimited when we learn how to abide in Him.
And as for you, the anointing which you received from Him (the Holy Spirit) abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him. By virtue of the anointing of the Holy Spirit who is living within us, we in turn are able to live in Jesus with an awareness of the truth.
1 John 3:24 And the one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And we know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit which He has given us. The Holy Spirit is given to make it possible for Christ to live in us, and for us to live in Christ. We are given access to the heavenly realm and Jesus is given access to the natural realm to live through us.
The fullness of the Holy Spirit enables us to abide in Christ and enables Christ to abide in us. This reciprocal indwelling is what brings about the change in us.
The principle of the vine and the branches needs to be understood. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you do not abide in Me, you can do nothing; you are no good at all. You will just be gathered like a branch and burned. But if you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will bear much fruit. Then you will be pruned so that you can bear more fruit” (John 15:5–7).
What a beautiful picture we see in this vine and branches principle! When we look at a vine and a branch, we cannot tell where the branch ends and the vine begins. They grow into each other. That is what God wants us to do: be a branch that is growing in the vine, in the Lord.
If we do that, if we live in Jesus, we will bear much fruit. Our roots will be in Him, and His life will be flowing through us. The fruit that we bear will be supernatural fruit. We will have a supernatural life.
We are learning to abide in the Lord. We are branches, reaching right into the life of the vine; and by the Holy Spirit, everything that is in Jesus is flowing into us. The Holy Spirit enables us to so abide in the Lord and the Lord to so abide in us, that we cannot be destroyed.
Even if someone cuts off the branch, it will grow back because it is down so deep in the vine that it cannot be destroyed. No one can reach the roots because they are in heaven. If anyone cuts off a branch, it will merely serve as a good pruning, and that branch will come up stronger and more fruitful than ever because it lives in Jesus and His life flows into it.
Changes do not come by what we produce in ourselves, but by exposing ourselves continually to the Lord and to His Word. Our emotions may blow hot and cold a thousand times during the year, but if we learn how to be filled with the Holy Spirit and we draw on the Lord, this will subdue the instability of the flesh. It will cause a flow of Jesus to come through to us all the time.
1 John 4:12 if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. It takes a mystic to really understand the Epistles of John. In this passage he is showing how things work back and forth: “We know that we are abiding in Him because the Spirit is dwelling in us.” The Spirit makes the living bond between us and the Lord.
That is why the Holy Spirit must be manifested in the church. He takes imperceptive people—those who have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no awareness of the Lord—and moves on them to make that awareness come forth. Then they can begin to live in Him and draw from Him through that awareness.
There are areas of mental consciousness which give us an awareness of the world around us. There is also a spirit consciousness; our spirits become aware of things in the spirit realm.
When we learn how to walk full of the Holy Spirit, our consciousness is transferred from the earth’s scene into the heavenlies. Then, by means of the Holy Spirit, we are aware of what God has provided for us. The Word says that we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3).
Those blessings do not come down out of the heavenly places when our mental consciousness and your spirit consciousness are focused on the earth and the things around us.
We must be there in the heavenly places where all the blessings and privileges in Christ are found. This does not mean that we have to walk around in a trance. We can have a consciousness of the world around us and be mentally alert at the same time that our spirit is conscious of the Lord and continually focused on Him.
At that level the Holy Spirit takes what is of Christ and manifests it, shows it, discloses it to us. Then all the blessings that are ours in the heavenly realm of the Spirit, which is the area that our spirit is focused upon, begin to flow into our life.
It is because we have been filled with the Spirit, and by the Holy Spirit that there has been a transfer of our spirit’s consciousness and focus into the heavenly places. We are seated with Christ, reigning with Him and drawing from Him.
This is why it is very essential to be filled with the Spirit. If we try to read the Word without being filled with the Spirit, our consciousness will be focused on the human level, and we will interpret the Word on a human level. When you read the Scriptures, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Spirit draws us into an appropriation of the things in that realm which belong to us.
Jesus was on the earth, but His spirit was in heaven. He always beheld the Father. He did always those things which He saw the Father do; He spoke what He heard the Father speak (John 5:19). Because His spirit was focused on the Father, everything that Jesus brought forth on the earth was directly from God. It will be the same with us. As we learn to focus in the spirit realm, everything that we bring forth will be a divine flow of God coming through us.