Monday, January 02, 2012
WordWise Meat For A New Year "Bitterness Of Spirit"
There is an aspect of the Word of God that can go deeper than what most Christians are currently getting from their Bible teaching schools. Paul the apostle once made the proclamation:
1 Corinthians 3:2
I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
Let us see if you are now at the point in your walk with God to assimilate a diet that is not just milk, a diet that has some filet mignon...Some of you will be able to eat meat, while others will feel as if this just flew over the tops of their heads. We will begin slowly and simply enough...
Let us begin with some teaching about your human spirit.
Once in a while, some people seem to be ready to give up. Actually, they reached a place where fatigue and pressure have caused them to either go on a crying jag or eat a gallon of ice cream or do something even a little more foolish. But they tend to pull out of that state because it has not deeply affected their spirit. It was usually an isolated incident that did not have much permanent significance. It was a safety valve. They blew off a little steam and repented, "Lord, I'm sorry that I was ready to run the other way!" Then they usually press on.
It is not easy to help Christians who have experienced difficulties which have deeply affected their spirit. The serious problems occur when difficulties reach a person's spirit. I am always amazed to read in the Scriptures that the disciples were able to penetrate down into a person's spirit. An incident such as this occurred in the eight chapter of the book of Acts.
Philip had gone down to Samaria because of the persecutions which scattered the Christians after the stoning of Stephen. Philip performed great miracles and signs there, and he preached and won the whole city to the Lord (Verse 6). In Acts 8:14-17 we read, Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit.
Peter and John were ministering to the believers in Samaria when something unusual happened. Verses 17 through 24 tell a story which illustrates how the apostles penetrated into the spirits of the people to whom they ministered.
The apostles conclusions were not occasioned by what they saw or by the actions of an individual. Rather, they penetrated into his spirit, which was and is the determining factor.
This is important and of interest to us, because today people are generally evaluated by their actions. We might automatically assume that a person has a bad spirit if he hits someone. We tend to reason by the physical action that he commits, rather than to discern what was in his spirit. If we could reach his spirit, we could help him before he starts hitting someone.
Let us see what happened when Peter and John began laying their hands on the believers and they were receiving the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit."
We cannot blame Simon too much for offering them money; he was not familiar with the grace of God. He rocgnized their authority, and he thought this was great; he had never seen anything like it. But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God."
Peter exposed what was in Simon's heart, rather than judging him by his actions.
Notice how Peter dealt with Simon's spirit. "Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of inquity." But Simon answered and said, "Pray to the Lord for me yourselves, so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me." Acts 8:18-24.
Peter gave us a good example of how to deal with someone's spirit. People ask questions about everything; and when you listen to them, you know that something is not right. They do not want information; they are trying to put you in a corner. Others ask questions; and you perceive immediately, "This person's spirit is open to the Lord. There is no gall of bitterness here. This is an honest seeker."
If we were to go up and down the highways and byways and try to talk to people about things of the Lord, many would say, "I can't be bothered." Among those who would talk, we might be rather amazed that although some would ask the same questions as others, they would have an entirely different attitude of heart. Some would have a bitter spirit.
Talk to some people about religious Babylon, and they may say, "You don't need to talk to me about Babylon! I don't know about Babylon, but I will tell you what my church did to me and what our church was like and what they are doing. It was terrible!"
There is bitterness in their spirits. That bitterness keeps coming out by their lashing at everything. Talk to another man and you may find that he is not bitter in his spirit. He may have gone through similar experiences and could be bitter, but he is not. In his spirit, in his heart, he has a deep overriding hunger for God. and because he has a right spirit, he has not been embittered by the difficulties he experienced. Although he may have been very upset at the time, he did not retain any bitterness in his heart.
Simon the magician was rightly discerned by Peter, though he seemed to be an honest inquirer: "I want to lay my hands on people and see them receive the Holy Spirit, too. What a neat trick!" However, behind his inquiry was not just the motivation to buy a gift of God with money. Even more than that, he was in the gall of bitterness. Deep in his heart he had no part or lot with God. Peter said, "Your heart is not right with God. You have no part or portion in this matter." Not one thing was right because bitterness had cut him off.
Bitterness can be a great deceiver. It is surprising how many people hide their bitterness so well that it is difficult to detect. Sometimes this happens in a marriage. A wife may act pious in church, but be very bitter at home over the way her life has turned out. At times, we see this also in husbands. Colossians 3:19 says, Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Bitterness can build up, until after a while a veneer of toleration exists, while actually that bitterness goes down deep.
Some of the seemingly religious and spiritual homes should be analyzed for bitterness. Though entire families go through the right motions, at times there are uprisings of insidious criticism. They talk sweetly; their terminology is just right; their inflections of voice are just right. but look a little closer. Within these families there is bitterness. There is not the deep love. Tension and edginess come out. There is that gall of bitterness beneath the surface.
Do you realize where bitterness really is? Proverbs 14:10 says, "The heart knoweth his own bitterness." Doesn't this seem true? We have a way of detecting the bitterness that we accumulate within our own spirit. When you think back on the people who have stopped walking with God, you cannot point to any specific problem that was too much for them to bear. The reactions in their spirits, more than anything else, caused some to lose out.
Others, who went through the same problems stayed on. Maybe you excuse a brother for losing out because he seemed to have so much to put up with. Maybe you thank God for the work he did, and you think, "He was a good man at heart." Take another look. All the way along the bitterness of his spirit may have been constantly building up a reaction in him to the testings that were taking place.
When someone else went through the same testings, God used them as a catalyst to prepare his spirit to go on into deeper things of the Lord and to seek Him with all of his heart.
In Hebrews 12:5-6 we read, "Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines...Any time you go through a testing which seems to cloud your walk with God, be aware that the problem is not the testing; the real problem is your reaction to it in your spirit.
Walking with God in the Body of Christ is deeply personal. It is between you and the Lord. It is not based on the way the Body of Christ treats you. It is not based upon the way that your brother treats you. Good strong ministries, who should walk on with the Lord and be on top of every situation, sometimes begin to blame their circumstances and other people for the fact that they are not moving in the Lord.
Passivity and bitterness build up in their spirits. Their bitterness builds up while everyone else is breaking through. In the same worship services, we see some breaking forth to become prophets of God and others losing out because of their own bitter spirits.
People react differently, and the difference in their reactions often is based upon the bitterness or the brokenness of their spirits. What is in your spirit? A broken, contrite heart before God? or bitterness? Look back and analyze a time when you were in trouble. It was not necessarily the severity of the circumstance that caused the problem as much as it was your own spirit reacting to it.
Bitterness of spirit does not always result in people becoming vicious and leaving the church and criticizing it. they do not always react that way. Some keep going to services without ever becoming active. Meanwhile bitterness is in their spirits. Then in a difficult situation they become champions to criticize everyone else. Their bitterness may manifest itself in numerous ways. Sometimes they become aggressively defensive to a point of blaming someone else. But more than blaming someone else, they may even pose as being very spiritual.
In the New Testament churches that are coming forth today, there are people with beautiful, hungry, tender spirits who wholeheartedly press on with the lord. There are others with beautiful spirits who love the lord with all their heart, but they cannot seem to adjust to intense expressions of music and intercession. Still they worship and pray in their own way and keep a right spirit. At the other end of the spectrum are some people with bitterness! They may be critical and withdraw, or they may become aggressive to a point of berating everyone else.
How are we to deal with this? how can we deal with the varying responses of the human spirit to the things that happen? It would be marvelous if we would all bow down broken before the Lord. then He could give us an overall vision of the Kingdom and of the people who are ready to be brought in. With a right spirit coming forth, we could forget ourselves and bring other people in.
What kind of spirit should we have? We should not be self defensive or self assertive, but in our spirit we should be dedicated to bring forth the will of God in people's lives. If our dedication does not lead to this, we are not motivated in the right direction. A wrong spirit always dead ends before the true issues arise.
A wrong spirit stops at an impasse without seeing the great issues of the Lordship of Christ and His Kingdom coming all over the world. A wrong spirit always stops one at the local, personal level. It can ground you.
Do you realize the amazingly simple wisdom there is in this message? You can apply it to a thousand situations; to what you have experienced and what you are in now; to what other people have gone through and what they are in now. You will see how to best assist and help others.
Psalm 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
1 Corinthians 3:2
I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able.
Let us begin with some teaching about your human spirit.
Once in a while, some people seem to be ready to give up. Actually, they reached a place where fatigue and pressure have caused them to either go on a crying jag or eat a gallon of ice cream or do something even a little more foolish. But they tend to pull out of that state because it has not deeply affected their spirit. It was usually an isolated incident that did not have much permanent significance. It was a safety valve. They blew off a little steam and repented, "Lord, I'm sorry that I was ready to run the other way!" Then they usually press on.
It is not easy to help Christians who have experienced difficulties which have deeply affected their spirit. The serious problems occur when difficulties reach a person's spirit. I am always amazed to read in the Scriptures that the disciples were able to penetrate down into a person's spirit. An incident such as this occurred in the eight chapter of the book of Acts.
Philip had gone down to Samaria because of the persecutions which scattered the Christians after the stoning of Stephen. Philip performed great miracles and signs there, and he preached and won the whole city to the Lord (Verse 6). In Acts 8:14-17 we read, Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they began laying their hands on them, and they were receiving the Holy Spirit.
Peter and John were ministering to the believers in Samaria when something unusual happened. Verses 17 through 24 tell a story which illustrates how the apostles penetrated into the spirits of the people to whom they ministered.
The apostles conclusions were not occasioned by what they saw or by the actions of an individual. Rather, they penetrated into his spirit, which was and is the determining factor.
This is important and of interest to us, because today people are generally evaluated by their actions. We might automatically assume that a person has a bad spirit if he hits someone. We tend to reason by the physical action that he commits, rather than to discern what was in his spirit. If we could reach his spirit, we could help him before he starts hitting someone.
Let us see what happened when Peter and John began laying their hands on the believers and they were receiving the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was bestowed through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money, saying, "Give this authority to me as well, so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit."
We cannot blame Simon too much for offering them money; he was not familiar with the grace of God. He rocgnized their authority, and he thought this was great; he had never seen anything like it. But Peter said to him, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God."
Peter exposed what was in Simon's heart, rather than judging him by his actions.
Notice how Peter dealt with Simon's spirit. "Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of inquity." But Simon answered and said, "Pray to the Lord for me yourselves, so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me." Acts 8:18-24.
Peter gave us a good example of how to deal with someone's spirit. People ask questions about everything; and when you listen to them, you know that something is not right. They do not want information; they are trying to put you in a corner. Others ask questions; and you perceive immediately, "This person's spirit is open to the Lord. There is no gall of bitterness here. This is an honest seeker."
If we were to go up and down the highways and byways and try to talk to people about things of the Lord, many would say, "I can't be bothered." Among those who would talk, we might be rather amazed that although some would ask the same questions as others, they would have an entirely different attitude of heart. Some would have a bitter spirit.
Talk to some people about religious Babylon, and they may say, "You don't need to talk to me about Babylon! I don't know about Babylon, but I will tell you what my church did to me and what our church was like and what they are doing. It was terrible!"
There is bitterness in their spirits. That bitterness keeps coming out by their lashing at everything. Talk to another man and you may find that he is not bitter in his spirit. He may have gone through similar experiences and could be bitter, but he is not. In his spirit, in his heart, he has a deep overriding hunger for God. and because he has a right spirit, he has not been embittered by the difficulties he experienced. Although he may have been very upset at the time, he did not retain any bitterness in his heart.
Simon the magician was rightly discerned by Peter, though he seemed to be an honest inquirer: "I want to lay my hands on people and see them receive the Holy Spirit, too. What a neat trick!" However, behind his inquiry was not just the motivation to buy a gift of God with money. Even more than that, he was in the gall of bitterness. Deep in his heart he had no part or lot with God. Peter said, "Your heart is not right with God. You have no part or portion in this matter." Not one thing was right because bitterness had cut him off.
Bitterness can be a great deceiver. It is surprising how many people hide their bitterness so well that it is difficult to detect. Sometimes this happens in a marriage. A wife may act pious in church, but be very bitter at home over the way her life has turned out. At times, we see this also in husbands. Colossians 3:19 says, Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them. Bitterness can build up, until after a while a veneer of toleration exists, while actually that bitterness goes down deep.
Some of the seemingly religious and spiritual homes should be analyzed for bitterness. Though entire families go through the right motions, at times there are uprisings of insidious criticism. They talk sweetly; their terminology is just right; their inflections of voice are just right. but look a little closer. Within these families there is bitterness. There is not the deep love. Tension and edginess come out. There is that gall of bitterness beneath the surface.
Do you realize where bitterness really is? Proverbs 14:10 says, "The heart knoweth his own bitterness." Doesn't this seem true? We have a way of detecting the bitterness that we accumulate within our own spirit. When you think back on the people who have stopped walking with God, you cannot point to any specific problem that was too much for them to bear. The reactions in their spirits, more than anything else, caused some to lose out.
Others, who went through the same problems stayed on. Maybe you excuse a brother for losing out because he seemed to have so much to put up with. Maybe you thank God for the work he did, and you think, "He was a good man at heart." Take another look. All the way along the bitterness of his spirit may have been constantly building up a reaction in him to the testings that were taking place.
When someone else went through the same testings, God used them as a catalyst to prepare his spirit to go on into deeper things of the Lord and to seek Him with all of his heart.
In Hebrews 12:5-6 we read, "Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines...Any time you go through a testing which seems to cloud your walk with God, be aware that the problem is not the testing; the real problem is your reaction to it in your spirit.
Walking with God in the Body of Christ is deeply personal. It is between you and the Lord. It is not based on the way the Body of Christ treats you. It is not based upon the way that your brother treats you. Good strong ministries, who should walk on with the Lord and be on top of every situation, sometimes begin to blame their circumstances and other people for the fact that they are not moving in the Lord.
Passivity and bitterness build up in their spirits. Their bitterness builds up while everyone else is breaking through. In the same worship services, we see some breaking forth to become prophets of God and others losing out because of their own bitter spirits.
People react differently, and the difference in their reactions often is based upon the bitterness or the brokenness of their spirits. What is in your spirit? A broken, contrite heart before God? or bitterness? Look back and analyze a time when you were in trouble. It was not necessarily the severity of the circumstance that caused the problem as much as it was your own spirit reacting to it.
Bitterness of spirit does not always result in people becoming vicious and leaving the church and criticizing it. they do not always react that way. Some keep going to services without ever becoming active. Meanwhile bitterness is in their spirits. Then in a difficult situation they become champions to criticize everyone else. Their bitterness may manifest itself in numerous ways. Sometimes they become aggressively defensive to a point of blaming someone else. But more than blaming someone else, they may even pose as being very spiritual.
In the New Testament churches that are coming forth today, there are people with beautiful, hungry, tender spirits who wholeheartedly press on with the lord. There are others with beautiful spirits who love the lord with all their heart, but they cannot seem to adjust to intense expressions of music and intercession. Still they worship and pray in their own way and keep a right spirit. At the other end of the spectrum are some people with bitterness! They may be critical and withdraw, or they may become aggressive to a point of berating everyone else.
How are we to deal with this? how can we deal with the varying responses of the human spirit to the things that happen? It would be marvelous if we would all bow down broken before the Lord. then He could give us an overall vision of the Kingdom and of the people who are ready to be brought in. With a right spirit coming forth, we could forget ourselves and bring other people in.
What kind of spirit should we have? We should not be self defensive or self assertive, but in our spirit we should be dedicated to bring forth the will of God in people's lives. If our dedication does not lead to this, we are not motivated in the right direction. A wrong spirit always dead ends before the true issues arise.
A wrong spirit stops at an impasse without seeing the great issues of the Lordship of Christ and His Kingdom coming all over the world. A wrong spirit always stops one at the local, personal level. It can ground you.
Do you realize the amazingly simple wisdom there is in this message? You can apply it to a thousand situations; to what you have experienced and what you are in now; to what other people have gone through and what they are in now. You will see how to best assist and help others.
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Prayer Request For Pastor Chuck Smith Of Calvary Chapel
Just got this email from David Burgin...
Brother David,
You probably have heard but Pastor Chuck Smith announced
from the pulpit today that he has lung cancer and is doing a series
of tests and surgery this coming week. Just thought I would pass this along to you.
David B.
Story:
Happy New Year
You can now be detained indefinitely...without charge or trial...
Obama says even though he made it law he will not use it...Ya, even though police have guns, they will never use them...
WordWise For A New Year
Some say that the true Lord's prayer is in John 17, where our Lord prayed to the Father. But the prayer in Matthew 6 is very much the Kingdom prayer.
The apostle Matthew was raised with the Jewish concept about the Messiah who would set up the Kingdom. In his Gospel, he constantly points toward the Kingdom. The book of Matthew yields many treasures to us. It seems inexhaustible, because it is deep, and there is much revelation in it.
No human wisdom can probe deeply enough to really uncover its truths. But further revelation will come as the seals are taken off the Book, and people will discover hidden truths in the Scriptures as they seek the Lord.
God is leading His people into a deep dedication to the revelation from the Word. This is in contrast to doctrinal interpretation and the process of trying to discover its fine points only by reason, by analysis, and by scholarship.
From the written Word today, God is causing revelation to burst forth like fountains. Unless the Word is revealed it remains concealed, no matter what human wisdom tries to do with it.
The book of Matthew reveals many Kingdom truths. Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 6:9-15, "Pray, then, in this way: "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, Give us this day our daily bread" (the margin reads: "our bread for the coming day"). "And forgive us our debts..."
Jesus was speaking of more than just moral debts, the transgression of things that we should not have done. These are the obligations that we have in which we have failed; in other words, hamartia, which is the Greek word for sin meaning, "missing the mark."
We should say, "Forgive us, Lord, for every time we missed the mark of what we should have been." "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." This means not only forgiving someone who committed a gross sin against you, but forgiving everyone who has fallen short in an expected relationship for service or dealings that you anticipated from them. Forgive them.
Forgive them of any debt they owe you because of their shortcomings in their relationship to you. That covers a great many areas. People often forgive sinners down the street for all their gross sins, and yet do not forgive members of their own family who fail to measure up to their expectations.
"And do not lead us into temptations, but deliver us from evil" (the evil one). "For Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen." Then Jesus said, "For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."
The minute that you close your heart to a neighbor, you build a wall that the floods of mercy cannot penetrate. If there is no forgiveness in your heart for your brother, you build up a wall against him. That wall also becomes a wall to God; then God cannot get through to you.
That is what you create by having an unforgiving spirit. If you put up a wall of unforgiveness against an enemy, no matter what he has done against you, you are only shutting yourself off from the blessing of the Lord.
The Lord says that you must forgive even your enemy in order to keep the wall down so that the blessing of the Lord will continually flow to you. (Don't worry; God will deal with the enemy.) "But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions."
The prayer begins by dealings in the heavens, the highest spiritual realm. It is saying, "O Father who dwells in the heavens, we want Your perfect will as it is done in heaven." This is where He rules uncontested. This is where He has the power and the glory. This prayer of the Kingdom is to bring it down: "Thy will be done- Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, it is Your rule that we bring down."
This concept of bringing it down is very important. The Kingdom of God is not worked up. It is not disseminated from God's people. In every case the Kingdom of God comes progressively because God's people appropriate it over and over, bringing it down, bringing it down, bringing it down, again and again. Then it comes down to a present release where the Kingdom of God had not formerly prevailed.
In the Kingdom, every man will sit under his own fig tree (Micah 4:4). Isaiah prophesied, "They will not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain" (Isaiah 65:25). We read also that Satan will be bound for the time prescribed (Revelation 20:2). Then we will not know what it is to be agitated and aggravated by demonic assualt and harassment, temptation, lies, and deception.
At the present time of transition, we pray and believe for the Kingdom of God to come, for His will to come down from the heavens into the earth, on the same level as it is in the heavens.
We also pray for our bread- which is a symbolic term- referring not only to the bread that goes into the stomach, but to the food that feeds the mind, that which feeds the spirit. and that which feeds the soul.
When you come to the house of God, remember that you do not come to recite repetitious prayers, but you would be wise to kneel and say, "O Lord, give me this day the bread for tomorrow; the daily bread, the bread that is needful." Why?
You come to the house of the Lord to feed upon the fellowship, to feed upon the Word, to feed upon that which should give release to your emotions and to your spirit. You feed upon the Lord. You feed upon the grace that is ministered from the Lord through your brothers and sisters in the house of the Lord.
That is even more important than natural bread. We read in John 6:27, Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life... In Deuteronomy 8:3 we read that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
Therefore we should pray, "O God, give me bread to feed me for whatever I need. Forgive me my debts where I have fallen short, where I have not been able to meet the obligation that You would lay upon me." (This means much more than we could even express.) "Do not lead me into temptation, but deliver me from the evil one." (In other words, at the present time, do not bring an encounter to my flesh for which I am not prepared.)
We may know that our spirit is to rule with God, but we are also aware that we cannot take too much pressure. There is not to be an open door for Satan to hit us with anything that he can. God deliver us from temptation. Until we can reach a high spiritual level, God deliver us from the wicked one, from the evil one who would victimize us.
God show us how to be alert. We want to encounter Satan wholeheartedly in the spirit level, but we would choose the are of conflict. Let it be the will of God that the area of conflict not be in temptations to the flesh or to the human nature. We do not want to be defeated by anything that remains untouched in our own nature.
We cannot prevail if the battle depends upon our moral strength and our human ability to meet temptations of Satan. Only in one area do we battle him: "Thus saith the Lord God..." We want the battle to be on the Word, because we can prevail if we hold onto the Word.
Say in your own heart: "Deliver me from the evil one. Do not let me be led into temptation. Take me out of the conflicts of deception, lies, emotional disturbances, the invasion of my mind, that which sets off my basic instincts and drives, the hungers and the lusts of my body. God deliver me from encounters there!"
Let us battle only on the ground where the Word of God says He provided it all for us. He has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. There we are winners, because we overcome by that Word and by our testimony and by the blood of the Lamb.
The Kingdom of God must be brought down from above; we cannot generate it. An earthly, develish wisdom is generated below, but God's wisdom comes down (James 3:15). If we are risen with Christ, we set ourselves in the heavenly places. We must position ourselves in the spiritual realm of victory, in the heavens where the Father is. Our Father who art in heaven- that must be our abiding place.
This is what Christ prayed, "I will that they be with Me where I am" (John 17:24). This does not mean that we first die and then go off to many mansions. It means that we live on the same spiritual level, the same abiding place where He is. We are drawn up.
In John 14:2-3, Christ said to His disciples, I go to prepare a place for you...that where I am (seated at the right hand of the Father), there ye may be also. This Paul emphasized when he said that we are raised with Christ to be seated in the heavenly places with Him. That is the place of victory and authority.
Revelation 12:9 tells us that Satan was cast down. We also read in Luke 10:18 that Satan was cast down. Jesus told the seventy, "I saw Satan fall from heaven." They were rejoicing because they had authority over demons. But Jesus told them to rejoice because their names were written in heaven. They were enrolled as citizens in the higher level where Satan was cast out.
There are three realms for you to keep in mind: the higher realm of the heavens; the lower human realm of the soul, mingled with all of its various complications; and the still lower natural realm. Satan at one time governed in the heavenly realm, in the heavens where the will of God is done.
Jesus taught us to pray that God's will be done on earth as it is in the heavens. Satan has been cast down. He no longer has access to disturb from the only important realm that exists. The physical, natural realm is important only in the sense that it is to be controlled, governed, and recreated through the spirit realm.
Satan was called the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2). He could govern from that high realm over a mortgaged, forfeited world which man no longer was spiritually able to control. When spiritual death entered upon man, Satan was able to usurp the control over all the world, and so he was called the god of this present world. He could govern it because there was no spiritual entity great enough to take over what man had forfeited.
When man died spiritually, he lost his control over all things. As the sons of God come forth, man will rule and reign with Christ again.
That is what the battle with Satan is all about. Satan was cast down to the lower realms. In this end-time battle, the secondary realm of the soul has been largely overcome. The battle is now in the natural realm where Satan rages.
In the meantime, those who forsake their allegiance to the natural realm (NOTW) are no longer covetous. They lack ambitions for money and position. Most young people have a dazzling deception upon them to be important in this world and to have a great deal of money. But those who walk with God desire only to glorify God in the earth. End-time believers are overcoming the natural realm and the soul realm, and they are walking with God in purity.
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