Your more alive when your in the strongest flow then when your just on the banks of the river. Paul recommended in I Thessalonians 5:23 that your whole spirit, soul, and body be sanctified wholly and preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord. This indicates that there are certain areas in your life right now which are now actually dead to God, there may be a process by which these areas can come alive to God.
Ephesians 5:14-21: Wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead.
Without a doubt, Paul was speaking here to believers, not to sinners. He was telling believers: Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee. Look therefore carefully how ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil. wherefore be ye not foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunken with wine , wherein is riot, but be filled with the Spirit; speaking one to another in psalms and hyms and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.
Note this carefully. Paul was saying "Come Alive." Be aware of the will of God. Awake, you who sleep, and arise from the dead; and Christ will shine upon you. Notice that revelation comes because some faculty within you awakens.You may have dead ears, and so they struggle to hear. They may find that heaviness comes over them.
We are never going to be what God wants us to be until we come alive- totally and completely alive.
There are specific areas of believers lives that are dead to God. They are often defeated because there is no awareness of the Lord in these areas. When a man does not have spiritual ears to hear or spiritual eyes to see, so that his heart can respond to God's provisions, where is the focus of his life? It is through his soul. He reacts emotionally to his circumstances, to what he sees and hears. He always finds himself crippled where God is concerned because the faculties of his spirit are not alive to God.
We must come to the place where we can move and see and experience things in the spirit world as well as we can in the natural world. II Kings 6 tells the story of a young man who was the servant of Elisha. When the siege was laid around the city to take Elisha captive because his revelations were disturbing military plans of Syria, this young man went out in the morning and looked over the wall of the city. He saw all the armies of the enemy surrounding the city, and he went to Elisha and cried, "O Master! What shall we do?"
Elisha was a seer; he could actually see the protection that was around him. He prayed to the Lord to open the young man's eyes that he might see. The Lord opened the young man's eyes that he might see. The Lord opened his eyes to see all the angelic hosts and forces that were there. Immediately, the young man's faith was great, because God had opened his eyes; a faculty within him that was dead had come alive.
The fullness of the Church is being held back because of the fact that more prophets are needed; but a prophet cannot be dead in any aspect of his life. We can call it "death" because something within him is dead. He must be aware of the spirit world. He must be able to see what God is doing.
Christ was always beholding the face of the Father. He did only those things that He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). Just imagine having sight like that. The world cannot comprehend it. A psychiatrist would call it hallucnations, seeing things that are not there. Hallucinations that belong to insanity are one thing, and what a seer prophet sees is another thing completely.
Many limitations remain because we do not actually isolate an area of need and focus on it until God meets us in that area. If we would, we could break through one limitation after another. We would not be stumbling along, but we would be walking clearly before God. we must have spiritual faculties if we are going to have a spiritual walk. We cannot win in warfare unless we know what we are fighting.
Even when there is willingness and a dedication to interceed, intercession is often not as effective as it should be. This is due to the fact that our perception needs to be opened up to a greater extent so that we know exactly how to pray and how to focus in on our need.
The provision for us is great, but we cannot move or function in what God has for us until we focus on His provision; it must become more real to us than the problem. If intercession focuses on the problem, it becomes a desperate wailing that is ineffective. But if intercession focuses on the provision, there is a constant drawing of the provision to meet the problem. This is very essential.
Jesus gave a warning in Luke 21:34, "Watch and be careful, lest the day come upon you unawares." Keep your spiritual eye open so that you can see. You can train yourself to become very observant (which few people are); but in a spiritual sense, your spiritual eye will tend to go blind unless you use it and constantly exercise it by being watchful.
If you do not pay attention to what God is saying and give deligence to it, you will miss it. If you have your ears trained in the spirit to hear what is being preached, you will grow by it.
You may be sitting right next to someone in the congregation who does not give the diligence to hear. He knows that the Word is from God, but somehow his mind starts wandering and the Word passes him by. You must bring your imagination and your thoughts into captivity, subjecting them to Christ. ( II Corinthians 10:5 ).
If any man has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches ( Revelation 2:7 ). Train your spiritual ear to hear and your spiritual eye to see. People should be trained to grab the Word the moment God speaks it. They should be alive to the Word.
This Word comes in the midst of the stuff I put on this site, and there are many that will not hear or see it...
For they that sleep in the night; and they that are drunken are drunken in the night. I Thessalonians 5:7. The night exist for these people. What makes the difference between day or night? Can a blind man tell the difference between day or night? The difference comes in having an eye to see. This constitutes an entirely new level. what makes color? The eye that can see it. What makes beauty? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Satan tries to creat a sleepiness and a heaviness. Often he brings deception by distorting and clouding your faculties so that you do not receive a true picture when you hear the Word.
God is going to give me eyes to see. I am going to be awake. My faculties are going to awaken to God. I am going to rise from the dead! Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee."
Come alive to your need and determine to have that need met. Being spiritual is not some special quality with which you were born. No one is born with a spiritual quality. That comes from pressing in and getting off the banks of the river and wading out into the middle where the flow is greatest. The place where your faculties are developed to maturity. For us the middle of the river happens to be way out in the desert places.
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