To a Communist it is not enough to read Karl Marx; he is not satisfied until he knows how to make a Molotov cocktail. In this walk it is not enough that you have a few vague illusions about the restoration, the Church, and the Kingdom, and the basic changes; you must be prepared to move into that revolution yourself and participate in it.
There are those who come to the Lord by night as Nicodemus, who did not want to be too involved because he feared the Jews (John 3:2). But in an hour when the rest of the disciples were ready to run Nicodemus came to get the body of Christ (John 19:39). He had to stand before the council and come against what they were doing (John 7:50). There are no secret disciples in the walk with God. There are no halfhearted followers among the discipleship of the Kingdom. Sooner or later each must become involved. God is always dealing with us to bring us out of the conditioning we have been in and to loose us from the chains of the conventions in our hearts. His desire is to teach us how to think like our King thinks, to feel like He feels, and to walk with Him.
In Ephesians is given the revelation of this walk, its intent and purpose, and the things to come. He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. Ephesians 4:10. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ must not be viewed in terms of doctrine alone, or you will miss the meaning. If you think Jesus died for your sins, was buried, and rose again just so you could be delivered out of your sin and that is all, you have missed it. That is only one phase of what He is doing. What He is really intending to do is to fill all things. Christ intends to fill everything. The Lordship of Jesus Christ means that He will invade one area after another in your life. He will fill it. You will have nothing to retain to yourself; everything is subject to Christ. He must reign until everything is brought under Him, including His enemies (I Corinthians 15:25). His enemies, including your flesh, are made the footstool of His feet, and He fills all things. He fills! Fullness is the theme of Pentecost. He must fill all things.
And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man (and this is usually where we stop in our thinking. The apostles and prophets are wonderful; they are to lay hands on us and give us gifts. We are to be equipped for service and become mature. But all this is for what purpose?), to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fulness of Christ. Verses 11–13.
Here again is the theme of fullness. It begins and concludes this paragraph about the great foundational ministries. Christ must fill all things, and He begins with us. The whole intent and purpose is that He fill all things. We begin with His fullness until we come up to the measure of the fullness of Christ.
This is worded another way in Colossians 1:24–29. Paul said, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body (which is the church) in filling up that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. Of this church I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, that I might fully carry out the preaching of the word of God (that word preaching is wrong. “That I might complete the word of God” is the Greek. In other words, Paul knew that the New Testament remained to be completed and that he was writing the Word of God), that is, the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations; but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.… And for this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.
Paul wanted to present every man complete in Christ. “And we proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.” What does the phrase, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” mean? The whole hope of glory and the whole Kingdom that is to come depends on the invasion of Christ within us. His coming forth in fullness is the only hope of anything that is to come. That is the hope of all the glory to come.
In the Body of Christ there are many members, and their distinctiveness we respect very much. You are never made to conform in personality or ministry to anyone else. You are never taught that you cannot be spiritual unless you imitate a certain pastor or elder. We are always against the personality cult because it can never yield what God wants; it becomes flesh emulating flesh. That cannot be. We see the distinctiveness that can be in each one’s ministry. Everyone can be different; consequently, we all are, and the Lord begins to knock the rough edges off and crucify the flesh. He brings forth Himself in such manifold operations, such diversities of manifestations, and such unique ways in which He invades our personalities that we say with Paul, … I live (now I am really alive); yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God… Galatians 2:20. This is something different. The “I” has been changed to Christ. Christ is in us! That is the hope of glory.
The whole purpose of the foundational ministries is to come into the fullness of Christ. It is not enough to have Christ in us, but that is the hope of the glory. We must give way to the full expression of it. For this purpose the Holy Spirit comes forth in our lives to bring forth the fullness of Christ in us. The Holy Spirit does not come for any other purpose than to see that Jesus is Lord in us. I Corinthians 12:3 says that if we have the Spirit, then we can say Jesus is Lord. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” but by the Holy Spirit. It is only the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives that enables us to say that with real truth and honesty.
The gifts and the ministries are all heading towards one thing. John saw it: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John 3:30. I think perhaps John saw it in a wrong light. He finally decreased to a place where he was nothing, and he was beheaded. But the least in the Kingdom of God is greater than he because while Christ must increase and we must decrease, it is not a matter of one or the other (Matthew 11:11). It is a simultaneous process. Our natures are being taken over by the Lord. We are becoming something new. We are changing. We are walking into a new era. We must understand this. We do not look to the Lord for deliverances so that we can battle and overcome principalities and powers. We will not break through the power of Satan until He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (I John 4:4).
The Trinity indwelling your life is not like three peas in a bottle. When Christ moves within you, He moves within your thoughts and within the patterns of your life; He moves into your emotions and into your nature. Then you can say, “I am crucified with Christ. Yet, I am alive. But it is not I, but Christ living in me. His fullness is coming forth.”
The purpose of the fullness of the Holy Spirit is not for you to speak in tongues, only; not for you to prophesy, only; not for you to move in miracles, only. All that is but a part of it. The purpose of it is to bring forth the fullness of Christ within you. The purpose of an apostle’s ministry is not just to lay a foundation of doctrine so that you will not walk astray. God forbid that we get our focus on that, spending all our energies to insure correct doctrines and orthodoxy. People can be very orthodox, yet dead and reactionary to what God is doing, and usually they are. The more religious people become, the more reactionary they are to what God is really bringing in the way of change to the world. Orthodoxy is not what we seek, but God’s invading of our nature, His filling. He must fill all things.
In the book of Ephesians Paul spoke of several prayers he made for those believers. He said, … making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. Ephesians 1:16, 17. He said it all right there. When someone asks me to explain the walk to him or explain any of the doctrines, the best thing I can do is to pray for the Lord to give him a spirit of revelation and of wisdom in the knowledge of the Lord. Unless it comes by revelation, he will not understand anyway.
Paul continued, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened (that goes down deep inside), so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come. That is the power towards us who believe—the resurrection of Jesus. God set Him at His own right hand, giving Him authority over everything. This is the surpassing greatness of His power to usward who believe. This is the way He did it. God did all that and gave Him such authority. And He put all things in subjection under His feet (here is the punch line), 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 1:18–23.
Once again it speaks of the fullness. The whole thing starts with Christ filling us; then we become the source by which every area is invaded and everything is brought under the Lord. We are instruments of His ultimate fullness in the earth. That is what this walk is all about. That is the purpose of the apostles. We must take our eyes off the apostle, the prophet, the elder; we must get our focus off the doctrines of restoration and everything else. One thing must be foremost in our thinking: Christ is going to be in everything and in everyone. That is the one important truth: being possessed by His fullness; becoming the channels of His fullness. We are His fullness.
In the Kingdom of God we do not batter away against Babylon. We do not have to do that. God brings her down in one hour (Revelation 18:10). We do not need to worry. In fact, I am becoming much more in favor of not being so “anti” things. We were never much that way, but now let us determine to be “pro” something instead “anti.” I am going to be pro-fullness. This job will not be done by propaganda nor by showing ourselves superior because then we go back to a fleshly level. Who cares whether we are different. Who cares whether we are nonconformists. We still have lost everything until we have fulfilled what Christ wants of His fullness.
We do not walk into the Kingdom. We do not use propaganda to get ourselves into the Kingdom. We do not fight our way into the Kingdom; even spiritual warfare is not an answer. It is God’s pleasure to manifest His wisdom through the Church to the principalities and powers (Ephesians 3:10). We are never smart enough to really know what the enemy will do or to meet his tricks except by the wisdom of God. It is God’s way of bringing victory. How does it come? We do not walk into the Kingdom; we do not fight or preach our way into it; we simply become so full we start overflowing and float into the Kingdom. It all becomes a matter of spiritual overflow.
There is a great deal we are in conflict and warfare over that would change if the level of fullness came up in the whole church. We should not be battling with many things we are battling. We are on too low a level. The level of fullness and the level of overflow must come up. Christ in us is the hope of glory. He fills, and we become His fullness, the fullness of Him who fills all things. Let us not doubt that this will work. It will work away at us. Christ will invade one realm after another. There is no realm He will not invade.
The rock cut out of a mountain without hands smote all the cultures of the world from Babylon on down. It smote them and ground them to powder (Daniel 2:45). Many things we have inherited from the cultures of the past, even the demonic interpretations of astrology. Looking through the newspaper we could find influences of Babylonian, Greek, Persian, and Roman cultures. We are victims of the past—our language, our thinking, our ways. Then the stone comes. It is the Kingdom. It will smite and grind to powder. Then that stone will grow until it fills the whole earth (Daniel 2:35).
Get ready for the revolution. Do not look only for the trumpet to sound and Christ to come. It will take forever to get it done the way the fundamentalists think it will happen. Christ is invading you. He is coming to be glorified in you and to be admired in His saints (II Thessalonians 1:10). When He comes, He is but the Head of the Christ-body. He has already filled it until He is not one person like the Nazarene, who walked the shores of Galilee, but He is the federal Head of an organism. We are members of His Body. We are the fullness of Him who fills all things. We proceed to go forth and fill the whole earth because the rock must grow until it fills the earth. The rock, Daniel says, is the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom. It expands until it fills the whole earth.
It is beginning to fill you. You find that many of your ways of living and thinking are changing. You are being invaded. There is no cubbyhole you can hold back and keep to yourself. The Lord will knock at the door, and you had better listen, or He will knock it down. He is going to invade. Christ is knocking at the door. If you open the door, He will come in and sup with you (Revelation 3:20). There will be a communion, and He will dwell with you. This is the way of the Parousia.
Do you carry any old ideas about heaven? What do you think the rod of iron of the Kingdom will be? Do you think certain saints will walk around with a long rod of iron, whacking those who get out of line? The rod of iron represents the total demand that Christ has for your life. This is not regimentation. This is smiting down the things of rebellion in your very nature and taking over with the glorious submission. He will reign until everything is subject to Him; then He delivers the Kingdom over to the Father (I Corinthians 15:28). It is all heading back to God. Despite Communists, devils, anything else, everything is heading back to Christ. He is the conqueror. Our work of redemption is to be indwelt by the Spirit of the Lord, to be filled with the fullness of Christ, and to become the means by which He invades. We are the fullness of Him who fills all things.
It is important to wait upon the Lord, but not passively; just keep drinking of the Lord. Do not try to work out things in your mind. Most people would get into the Kingdom faster if they would stand on their heads, and I do not mean yoga style. I mean put your head down and stomp on it. Forget it; you will never figure everything out. You may be desirous of certain mystical things; but be sure it is not some psychic or soulish development for that will lead you nowhere. Only one thing is necessary; let Christ fill everything. Let him fill the psychic, the soul, the head, everything, even your feet.
One outstanding Bible scholar pointed out that there seems to be a great acceleration in the diseases of the feet in these days. In doing research on it he found that in the days of Babylon head problems were common. That was the time of the head of gold. The end time is the time of the feet of clay and iron. (Do you know a massage of the feet can be a more effective way of releasing tension and pressure than a massage of your neck?) We can parallel in this the image of Daniel (Daniel 2:31–45). When God dealt with Nebuchadnezzar his problem was of his head. For seven years he walked around out of his mind, eating grass like an animal (Daniel 4:32). The problems of that time seen to be problems of the head. Do your feet hurt? We are in the end time.
Christ is the fullness of Him who fills all in all. Ephesians 3 will complete this revelation. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man (why?); so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith (again it is the indwelling Christ, and Paul is talking about more than just salvation); and that you, begin rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge (you may think that is just a beautiful phrase, but do not miss the punch line), that you may be filled up with all the fulness of God. Ephesians 3:14–19.
It all comes back to fullness—filled up to all the fullness of God. This theme runs through the book of John as well. Jesus said, “If you keep My commandments, My Father will love you, and We will come to take Our abode in you” (John 14:23). It is an invasion.
It is a fine line, and I could be accused of heresy because some false religions talk about the deity that is in us. The statement could be made: “We will never partake of Deity. We will never be a part of the exalted Christ. He will always be the preeminent one.” But this does not take into account what God is doing. God does not want to have fellowship with an inferior creature. He is invading us and filling us to bring us into deity. We must not deny that. But as many as received him, to them gave he the power to become the sons of God… John 1:12. Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature. II Peter 1:4a. We are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ (Romans 8:17). If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12). Hebrews says that both the sanctified and the sanctifier are all of one Father; therefore, He is not ashamed to call them brethren; He is bringing many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10, 11). To me this is not sacrilegious; it is the most humbling truth I have ever heard. If He came down and experienced the dregs of my humanity, it was so that I could partake of the glory of what He is, and He is God.
Do you see how Satan twisted that truth to Adam and Eve? He told them that the day they ate the fruit, the day they disobeyed God, they would be just like God (Genesis 3:5). Adam and Eve bit on that, and they fell. But God is saying, “If you will obey Me, if you will be submissive to Me, you will be one with Me.” Oh precious truth!
You are to be filled up to all the fullness of God; then you start soaring, way up there, filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him (to that power that works in us) be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20, 21.
This is the picture. If we keep the goal, if we would concentrate more on fullness and less on emptying, we would be emptier quicker and fuller quicker. That is a good Kingdom proverb. The people who are always concerned about the discipline of their lives may come to the place where to them it is all a matter of suppression. That can be deadly. That can be a fool’s trip—forever looking inward, forever looking at the flesh. We get further by drinking of His fullness. Sanctification is largely a matter of displacement. The fuller I become of God, the more I displace the flesh, and the more the other thing goes. The more we become full in Him, the more the other things are eliminated in our lives. I know we must give some attention to the problems, or we may wind up excusing them. We must hate sin. But the fullness of the Spirit is the only way. It is the overflow, that power that works in us. That is what gets the job done.
Perhaps you think that this is a wonderful message, but that I should set some things straight and get after some people in the church. Yes, I know; that probably includes you. I would like to get after you the same way that I have done for a good many years. I want to see what God has said over you, to see how much He loves you, and to see how much He is trying to work things out in your life. I want to relate everything that comes up in your life to God’s causing it to surface and allowing you to expose it to Him. He takes away, and the area is displaced by His fullness. Another thing comes to the surface, and He deals with that. Instead of condemning you because you are in a constant state of revolution, in a constant state of dealing and coping with things that are surfacing in your life, I would rather think that God sits as a refiner of silver until all the sons of Levi are refined so that they may offer unto Him an offering in purity (Malachi 3:3). God is skimming off the impurities as they surface. He keeps dealing and putting the fire to you. You may not have realized there were so many impurities in you. If it is there, it will come out.
Let us not focus on condemning people over that unique and important process. Let us allow the problems to surface and deal with them. We may have never realized what filth was in our lives. As it comes up, we know. It is good to weep before the Lord, to repent, and to seek God with faith in our hearts. This is not sadistic. God is not trying to torment us. He is trying to invade us. When He comes in, something else has to go. It is like breathing: in comes the good air; out goes the bad air. As He comes in and fills us, the impurities must go. What living hope we should have.
Some observers may look at the walk and wonder that so many people go through so many crises and problems. We go through many things. Is that a bad sign? Are we changing? Is God doing the work? Yes, and we are going to change even more. We will be filled with Him and be the channel of His filling all things. What should we do now? Go right on the way we are.
One more Scripture will bring this all together. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ. Ephesians 5:18–21. There it is. In effect we become so full of the Spirit that we overflow into the Kingdom, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns.
Do not prophesy out of a half-full tank. When you prophesy, prophesy out of an overflow. When you sing, sing with an overflow. Whatever you do, do it with an overflow. Be filled with God. That is what will win people to the Lord. The fact that you prophesy, sing psalms, believe in the restoration, or have the most wonderful teaching and revelation of all time will not win people to the Lord. That is not enough. It will happen as it did in the New Testament: they will take knowledge of you that you have been with Christ (Acts 4:13). There is an overflow. That will do it. That is the message: be filled with all the fullness of God. That is the purpose of the apostle to bring you up to the measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). Paul said, “Christ in you is the hope of everything. I labor for that anointing that works in me mightily, to present every man perfect in that Christ manifestation” (Colossians 1:27–29).
You know what you must do. You must get your eyes off the mechanics of the walk and on to the real procedure and method by which it will come to pass. That is what God desires. That is what you want too. Do you believe He will do it for you? Do you have faith for it? That is what you are seeking—to be filled.
What happens when your spiritual tank is low? The enemy starts coming in. Be filled. The inner pressure prevents the outward invasion by principalities and powers who would prey upon your weaknesses. If you have enough pressure built up inside, you can stand anything. Fish of the deep ocean are built to stand the pressure there. When they are brought to the surface, their eyes pop out because they were not built to survive under that little pressure.
The higher we go in God, the more the Lord teaches us by the pressure coming against us. Some people want to back away from it. They do not understand what God is doing. He is putting us in a position where there is only one answer for the assaults and pressures that come against us. We must be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, so filled with Christ that there is an inner pressure that resists everything else. We are more than conquerors through Him (Romans 8:37). Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world (I John 4:4). The pressures that come from without, the psychic, diabolical things, will become more and more intense. God allows them to come because there is only one answer. The answer is not learning how to better fight devils, but learning how to be more filled with Christ. The answer is fullness.
Lord, let this truth sink into our hearts. Open our understanding lest we get our focus on something else, trying to establish doctrines, teachings, or churches. There is only one answer for all these things. Whatever God is putting us through, wherever He is leading us, however He is going to use us, we must be filled with Christ and become His fullness so that He can fill all things. Lord, burn this into our minds. Grant that not one of us shall miss this wonderful truth.
Do you wonder how to go about this, how to contribute to the fullness of the Lord in your life? Do you truly seek to be filled with the fullness of the Lord, to come into a real meeting with God, letting Him take over? You can begin by saying an unqualified “Yes,” without any reservations, to anything God wants.
Submission is foremost. James writes: Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. James 4:7. Submission is the route to fullness. The flesh is always resisting divine fullness. When you submit, you let Christ come in. The flesh resists for it says, “I must possess this vessel. I must dominate. My thinking, my instincts, my nature must predominate.” The dethronement and crucifixion of the flesh comes by the route of submission, determined submission.
Let us give ourselves to the aspects of being and becoming full. We know how to open up to receive the Spirit and how to speak with tongues, but we also know that we can receive only a limited filling. Speaking in tongues is not the gauge of our fullness. Many Pentecostal people could speak in tongues profusely, but if there was trouble in the church, they could also become vicious fighters. It did not reach their natures.
It is not enough to have just the mechanics of moving; there must be submission. When you speak in tongues, speak with submission to the Lord. When you prophesy, prophesy with submission to the Lord. There are many aspects where He must increase more and more in your life. As He increases, you increase. The true creation of God increases as He increases, but the flesh decreases.
Lord, we claim to be submissive. Deal with us. Show us how to be submissive.
This is the message we have heard from the beginning: “He is the Lord.” This is the heart of the walk, not apostles, not prophets—they only come to bring us into the fullness of Christ. If they serve any other purpose, if they are self-exalting, they are false. Christ’s purpose is done when He fills everything.
The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks. Proverbs 30:26. Four things upon the earth are small but exceeding wise (Proverbs 30:24). The rabbit, coney, is not strong in himself, but when he goes into a hole in the rocks, he is just as strong as the rock. When a fox or coyote chases him, he gets into that hole and is safe. That is what God wants us to realize. It is only in Christ, in the fullness of Christ, that we escape the problems and assault. It is just the reverse. He fills us; that becomes our answer.
Many of us are in the midst of satanic conflict and warfare. The Lord spoke to me some time ago, and lately He has revived it: “The day of your deliverance, when you are fully liberated to do My will, will be the time when you are walking fully with Me.” At the time the word did not mean as much to me as it does now. I thought: “I am walking with the Lord. Now where is the deliverance?” Now I understand what He was saying to me. I do not need to fight the oppressions and restrictions upon me. All I have to do is walk with Him and let Him fill me.
I am using different tactics. I do not concentrate on rebuking the devil, but following the admonition: “Submit yourselves to the Lord; resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” I want to see the devil flee. I do not want just to overcome him; I want to see him run. In my submission Christ fills me; and when Satan comes against me, the encounter is directly against Christ. Satan will never oppose the fullness of Christ. The day that he does is the day he meets his Armageddon and is bound and put in the pit. Therefore, he must be evasive and tackle people where the percentage of flesh is high enough that he can hit their flesh again and again. When Christ’s fullness has taken over, then the wicked one can touch them not (I John 5:18). If he does touch them, it is instant judgment for him.
When Christ spoke there was no struggle; the devils just fled. They knew where they were going. They asked permission to go into a herd of pigs (Matthew 8:31). They knew where they were headed. “Art thou come to torment us before the time” (Matthew 8:29). They fled because they knew one encounter with the fullness of Christ would bring their judgment.
I intend to be full of the fullness of Christ because I have Nephilim, principalities, powers, and many demonic things coming against me. I will not survive by the procedures of the past. I will prevail by the fullness of God. The time has come for it. For this end we walk with God. When we fully walk with God, we will have it. We must set our eyes on this goal and determine to wait on the Lord. This is not just a sermon; it is teaching. This is the way we are to move. This is the way we are to walk. We must commit ourselves to it. This means less focus on the enemy, and even on our own failures, and more focus on God’s grace.
This is an apostolic word. Let it burn in your heart. Walk in it. You will come into such a flow in the Lord. It will be precious.