For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).
This passage is not talking about the Bible, despite what we may have been taught. This sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, is going to divide our soul and our spirit. It is going to divide what is of the flesh, what is of the soul, and what is of the spirit in our lives, and in the church, and the world. This is the living Word spoken into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He may use scriptures, especially if that is a way we are used to hearing from Him; He may not.
The sword is coming
The sword is coming to our lives, and we cannot avoid it. It is coming from the mouth of Jesus. It is going to divide the thoughts and intentions of our hearts. It is going to show us what our hearts are engaged with, and it isn’t going to be easy, but it is going to transform us and the world in which we live.
The sword is coming to the church. And it is coming to cause division: ‘Who are for me, and who are against me?’ It will cause division because there is so much of the church that isn’t really the church, it is just people who are going to a church that teaches what they currently believe.
Church is not a building, we know that, but it’s not a meeting either. The church is a people called out and gathered to meet with the presence of the living God and to serve Him. In charismatic circles we jettisoned the idea that church was about buildings years ago, but then it became about meetings, about going to the meeting. Actually it is nothing to do with meetings, it is about Him, and is about who we are: we are His people and church is 24/7. It is about who we are every day of the week, in our jobs, in our homes, in our neighborhoods.
A level of holiness
And God is bringing a sword to the church. We need to get ready so that we are prepared to see what God is going to release. We have got to see into that supernatural realm of what is to come. We need to be prepared to be transformed, because if our lives remain in the state they are in now, then when the glory of God starts coming we will not be able to bear it.
I tell you, Ananias and Sapphira couldn’t lie to the Holy Spirit without dropping down dead. I don’t want anyone dropping down dead, but the level of holiness required for the church of Jesus Christ to perform the works of Jesus in the world is far higher than the level of holiness we are living in right now. Levels of relationship and responsibility are going to increase, and at the new level God is calling us to, a new level of His presence, there is a corresponding new level of holiness required. What we could get away with before, we will not be able to get away with in what is coming.
And God is going to open up and reveal those things to us. We have to be prepared. We have to be prepared to act. We cannot sit here and do nothing.
We have to be prepared for warfare, because warfare is coming, and what we see today is nothing compared to what we are going to see. We have to be prepared to be ambassadors for the kingdom of heaven on earth. We cannot live by the ways and means of the world; we have to be in it but we cannot be of it. We have to live by the kingdom, and the presence and the power of the kingdom of God. We are ambassadors to bring heaven on earth.
Bring heaven to earth
That is our commission, to bring heaven to earth. As it is in heaven, so it is on earth, through our lives. That’s what God is calling us to. We have to be prepared to be revealed as sons of God, who are going to shine with glory. Because Jesus was transfigured here on earth, that means we can be transfigured here on earth. People are not going to know what to make of it when the glory of God starts shining out of us visibly. But Jesus did it as a demonstration of what we are to do. What did He say? ‘These works that I do, you will do also, and greater things than these’ (John 14:12). Greater things: there’s a whole load more that we will have to grow into. We have to be prepared to take dominion.
God called Adam and Eve to take dominion over the planet. Satan took that from them, Jesus came to restore it. We have to be prepared to operate in the ways of God’s kingdom.
‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.