We have been seated with Christ in heavenly places; Jesus is no longer just an individual but a many member body. In the eternal realm we are already perfect in our spirit. But we have to see who we are in the eternal realm, so that we can bring that reality down into our lives today.
We have a destiny that we must begin to lay hold of; it does not automatically happen in the time and space realm in which we are living. We have to lay hold of it by faith.
This faith is not a human faith that we try and work up; this faith comes down from above as we are filled with the eternal life of God. When we are filled with the life of the lord, then the faith of God begins working.
The faith of God has to come to us, and then it has to work through us. The faith of God is a fruit of the Spirit in our lives, and should be growing and ever expanding in our hearts.
Faith comes by us hearing the lord speak personally to us, and it works through God’s love being shed abroad in our hearts, where we offer our all to him. It works by the obedience of faith which is partaking of his divine nature; it is the working out of our divine destiny.
Our obedience is not a mechanical obedience, it is a tuning into who God wants to become in us. And it is through the inflow of that attribute of God, that we are enabled to work it out.
Every need, every problem points to who God wants to become to us, and what He wants to do through us.
The Spirit of God flows into us imparting His nature and abilities, but we have to respond wholeheartedly to the moving of the Spirit in our lives.
The only thing that stops the flow of life from working, are things in our soul that bock or dam up, the release of the Spirit in our life.
Unless the word is rooted in our heart in times of temptation we will be removed from the place of standing upon the word God has spoken to us, and we will not experience our destiny here on earth. There can be things in our heart that choke the life of the word, they are called thorns. The cares of this world coke the word, causing us not to depend upon the lord, but take matters into our own hands. The deceitfulness of material goods, distract us from the perfect will of God for our lives and choke the word the lord has spoken to us, desires for other things that compete for the affection of our heart choke the word, so that it becomes unfruitful.
We cannot be completely filled with the Spirit, unless our heart is empty of those things that are contrary to His Spirit. We need the fire of God to purge our heart. The things in our heart that we are reluctant to let go of, the fire of God will burn out. We cannot have anything in our heart that condemns us.
As we open our spirit to the Lord, the life of God will flow in to expand who we are. Our spirit is one with the Lord; our spirit is like a sponge that will soak up the life of the Lord. Our spirit is like a generator that will keep the life of God flowing in our heart.
It is the flow of life that cleanses our heart. It is the presence of God that transforms our life, and makes us holy.
The life we are called to live is more than we could ever imagine, and has to be revealed to us through the revelation of the Holy Spirit. The lord is not concerned about any mistakes we make along the way, He is just concerned that we step out in faith and begin to walk with Him today. He wants us to step out and learn how to walk with Him, to jump in the river and learn how to swim.
We are going to make mistakes along the way, but He has it all covered, he will turn it all around for our good. All He is asking of us is that we love the learning, that we become a student, a disciple in the school of the Spirit. The lord loves the struggle that we are in, because we are learning how to depend upon Him. When we struggle for long enough, we will give up and learn how to float, casting the whole of our care upon him.
It is in our spirit to walk with God. God first gives us the desire and then the power, to walk in His word. But we have to start moving; the Lord cannot steer a parked vehicle. We are the vehicle of the lord, to bring forth his will in the earth.The lord is not concerned about our struggle to learn how to walk. He loves the process of being with us in the learning. Lord I cannot do this, of course you can’t, but I can, trust me and I will bring it forth in your life.
The lord gives us as a gift what he wants to receive back from us. Everything comes from Him, through Him and to Him.
When God commands us to do or be something, it is because He wants to give us the very thing He is commanding of us. Whatever He wants from us He intends to give us first. He is the initiator, the author and finisher of our faith. And once He give us the initiative, then we are to take the initiative, and use the gift that God has given us.
We have two relationships with God, one on the earth and one in eternity. We are already seated in heavenly places in Christ. We need to know how we are known in heaven. What are the cloud of witnesses discussing about us? They also intercede for us, because we are now the manifestation of God upon the earth. We execute the victory of the Lord upon the earth.
Everybody in Heaven is focused on what is being released upon the earth. We are never alone, there is nothing done in secret.
How we are known in heaven will effect what we are not yet on earth. Once we see who we are in heaven, we can then become that here on earth. We need to understand the journey we are on, and how to cooperate and stay in alignment with God. We are to be led by the Spirit, in all things.
We ask the Lord to open up our spiritual eyes to understand who we are in His eyes; that we would begin to be connected to our identity in a greater way.
Our identity is who we are in Christ, our particular function in the body of Christ; it is who God is becoming in our life.
Our identity is a full grown son, identical to Jesus Christ in stature, He is the first born from the dead of a new race of beings. Some of us grow up faster into his image in the time and space realm than others. But when we see him as he is, we will be transformed into the same image.
All changes come through the principle of transference, the Holy Spirit literally interpenetrates every area of our life and we partake of the same glory.
John was caught up to heaven and was listening to one of the cloud of witnesses, and he fell at his feet to worship him, because he sounded and looked so much like Jesus. He was a full grown manifested son of God, and the Holy Spirit was the one speaking through him.
Revelations 19: 10And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
The Holy Spirit’s job, his role in our lives, is making us like Christ. He takes the provision and imparts it to us. He takes what is of Christ and gives it to us. As we become aware of His personality on the inside of us, we begin to partake of it.
When Jesus asked, who do people say that I am? He was making a point about identity. When we know who we are, then we also start to know how we are supposed to live.
Our lifestyle has to come in line with who God says that we are. When God reveals who we are in the spirit, then we know how we are to live with the Lord, how we are to relate to Him. How we are to show up in this life and how we are to relate to those around us.
We have to start interacting with people with that identity, because we have something to contribute to all the people that God has put immediately around us.
When we are changed and transformed, it is because the goodness and kindness of God has made an impact upon our life; it is impressed upon our heart through a fresh encounter with the nature of God.
Everything in the kingdom is relational. Everything is about knowing who God is for us, and who He wants to be in us. When we experience God doing in our life what we could not do for ourselves, He has become more real in our life. We begin to experience God in our heart and in our circumstances.
If we don’t know the identity of who God really is, and what God is really, really like, we do not know who He wants to become to us and in us. First God reveals His nature to us, and then through that revelation we begin to partake of it ourselves.
If we do not know who we are in Christ, we can only go so high when we are filled with the Spirit and then later we will come back down again into where we have always been, because we have not learned how to walk in that identity. Knowing our identity lifts us higher and higher into the things of the Lord. We begin to see ourselves the way that God sees us and walk in the spirit.
God wants to show us who we are in eternity, how we are known in heaven. So as part of that He always reveals Himself to us, He tells us who He is for us.
When the Spirit of the Lord comes upon us, our soul comes into alignment with the flow of the Spirit in our spirit. But if we do not know how to abide in the life of the Lord, we will gravitate back down to the soul level. The spirit of the world can then enter into our soul.
We need to become aware of the different kinds of spirits that operate in the earthly realm.
Either God is flowing in our spirit, influencing our soul, or another spirit is operating in our soul. A spirit outside of the Spirit of God in us is influencing our mind and emotions.
The Spirit of God, the perfect provision is in us, when He permeates our soul then the atmosphere around us is charged with God, God now inhabits the atmosphere around us.
When our spirit is reaching out to God, His Spirit is descending upon us, God in us, through us, and around us. The provision, the kingdom of God is within us and our spirit has access to it, but the kingdom is also around us.
The breakthrough is always from God coming through our spirit and through our soul, or God coming from what we hear and see outside of us through our soul into our spirit. The soul is what stands between us and the God inside of us and outside of us.
When God connected with Moses and He brought him up to Mount Sinai, it was because God wanted to show him something about himself. When we are going through a time of transition, that transition must be accompanied by a fresh revelation of who God is for us.
In spiritual life and warfare we are not being challenged by the enemy, by wicked people, oppositional forces. The truth is; we are only ever challenged by the goodness of God. What is God doing in our life when someone opposes us; He is teaching us how to be good. He is teaching us in that moment how to give some of His goodness away to somebody that doesn’t like us.
We are citizens of heaven here on earth; we are being challenged by heaven to live like heaven.
We have to ask ourselves a question all the time, does this exist in heaven. Like frustration, is there any frustration in heaven? Then it is not to exist in our lives. What if we are not really being frustrated, but in reality we have not learned how to step out of self, into the spirit, and let the peace and patience of the Lord flow into our hearts. So we rejoice in this opportunity, to experience God’s patience.
We can never be challenged by a negative, ever! We can only be challenged by the fruit God’s Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is our primary defense against all opposition.
John 16 tells us how the Holy Spirit is known in heaven; He is going to be your helper in all things. He will convict the world system of sin, so that we don’t have to do it. He convinces people of their need for righteousness. He has judged the ruler of this world on our behalf, and we can be set free.
He will lead us by experience into all truth. He will disclose what is to come because He is a prophetic Spirit. He will glorify Jesus to us and in us. He will take the provision of Jesus and reveal it to us. This is how the Holy Spirit is known in heaven.
Jesus is the radiance of the father’s glory, the exact representation of His nature. That is His identity; He is the image of the invisible God, and the firstborn of the new creation.
Every problem, every difficulty, every obstacle, every giant between where we are now and our future has already been taken care of, all we need to know is who God wants be to us, and who he wants to become in us.
Whenever the lord connects with us, He connects with us the way He see’s us in eternity, if we are falling short he always lets us know in his own gentle way. He is always speaking to our identity. He is always speaking to who we are in Christ. Once He tells us our identity. Once He reveals to us this is how you are known in heaven, then that is the way that He speaks to us from that point on. He will always talk to us from our identity.
When we say yes, to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and learn how to walk in the flow of the Spirit we can always feel our spirit rise up within us and bringing our soul into subjection to it. This is how we grow spiritually.
The joyful thing about it is that we start interacting with problems and difficulties and difficult people according to our new nature, our new identity which we are putting on, and this causes us to begin to grow spiritually.
As our anointing grows, as our relationship grows so does our capacity for enjoying every single thing in life. Everything we experience in life is an opportunity, to look to the lord, for who he wants to become to us, who he wants to become in us. We will recognize that joy is available in every single circumstance of life. Love is available in every single circumstance, his peace is available. We will travel with everlasting joy on our head, in our heart, in our mouth.