What an amazing and wonderful God we serve! He ardently desires his children to come to Him and receive all He has for us. He wants us to experience His supernatural, miraculous power in this world. He wants to experience His supernatural love, joy and peace and to express them to all men. He longs to show His glory to all the earth through His church, us.
Most people in the western church have little idea and the glory and wonder God has in store for us. We are caught up in a vicious cycle of sin that blocks us from obtaining all we need. Many are caught in the false view that they are not worthy to experience the wonders of God and that it might be for someone else but not us. We are caught in a misery cycle where we think that God is just generally ticked off at us and is more ready to clobber us than to bless us.
It is true; sin does block the work of the Holy Spirit in us. God desires a clean vessel to flow His power through. But God’s blessings are because He is good and not for our piety or inherent goodness. What God desires is that we quit our striving and learn to rest and trust in Him. That is the true secret for accepting our Kingly authority.
What God desires above all is that we become truly intimate with Him. He longs for us to know Him as He knows us. He craves our presence in His arms and love, and for us to sit in His lap and look adoringly into His lovely face. There is a way into this realm.
Two Levels of Relationship
Level 1, Beginning Fear of God.
The children of
Exodus 19:
10The LORD also said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments; 11and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. 12“You shall set bounds for the people all around, saying, ‘Beware that you do not go up on the mountain or touch the border of it; whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. 13‘No hand shall touch him, but he shall surely be stoned or shot through; whether beast or man, he shall not live.’ When the ram’s horn sounds a long blast, they shall come up to the mountain.” 14So Moses went down from the mountain to the people and consecrated the people, and they washed their garments. 15He said to the people, “Be ready for the third day; do not go near a woman.”
16So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. 17And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
The Lord Visits Sinai
18Now
Exodus 24:
17And to the eyes of the sons of
The children of
This level of relationship occurs sometime after one is
converted and they encounter the HOLY nature of God. Our popular enthusiastic teachings on
God’s love and such don’t really mention this most holy God. Our first encounter with Him causes us
to wonder what we got ourselves in for.
But this is a necessary step to intimacy. You’ve got to get past some of the
baby Christian ideas and come to the
Didn’t Jesus forgive us all our sins? Didn’t we become a free moral agent? Why is this God hounding us so?
Romans 6: 17-18
17 But thanks be to God that though you were
slaves of sin, you became obedient fro the heart to that form of teaching to
which you were committed, 18 and having been freed from sin, you became
slaves of righteousness.
You see we were NEVER free moral agents. We are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness; there is no moral middle ground. There never was and there never will be. But the soul thinks there is a middle moral ground. We must digress a bit here to explain a common misconception in Christianity. This misconception can make it very hard to walk the journey to intimacy unless it is cleared up.
The misconception is this: you are a tri-part being, body, soul and spirit but many do not know the vast difference between the soul and the spirit. You might say, “Well I already knew that we were three parts but what do you mean!”, but in talking with many people all agree on that statement but still confuse the soul and spirit and hamper their understanding of God’s very work within. Most people think that the words soul, spirit, heart, inner man and innermost man are synonymous. But they are not and they all function very differently. This has caused many people to flounder around and not understand salvation, sanctification and baptism(s) in the Spirit.
Well let’s look at the beginning. Before we were saved our spirit was essentially dead to God. It may have been alive to occult things, but the Bible calls it dead.
Colossians 2:13
13When you were dead in your transgressions and the
uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having
forgiven us all our transgressions,
God told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge that they would die. Satan told Eve that she would not die. When they ate they didn’t immediately die physically nor did they die in their minds, will or emotions. Where they died is in the area where God would communicate, the spirit of man. When we are made alive again our spirits are opened up and made alive with the presence of God again! Something stupendous happens and we suddenly become acquainted with the Living Lord. But only in our spirits, not our souls or bodies yet.
I Corinthians
6:17, 20
17But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one
spirit with Him. … 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of
the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not
your own? 20For you have been bought with a price: therefore
glorify God in your body.
Here is an interesting comment. “He who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” This is powerful, you see your spirit not only comes alive but is filled up to all the fullness of God. There is no more room, so to speak, for God in your spirit because you have become one spirit with Him!!
You might say, “Well if that is true how come I don’t always feel that way?” Look at Romans 7: 14 – 24
14For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. 15For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. 16But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. 17So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. 20But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. 22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
This is not the agonizing cry of the unsaved. The unsaved don’t want to fight with the flesh; they want to cooperate with it! They want to do the things the soul and the body want to do and they don’t want to do anything the Spirit wants to do. They don’t even have a communication path to the Spirit yet. This is a believer who has been saved but the soul and the body (the flesh) haven’t figured out there is a new sheriff in town. They are operating just as they always have, but there is interference now. Something else has come in and there is now WAR! Paul so clearly states it that this sin principle the flesh wants but there is a different principle that is calling the soul and body into alignment with it. Look at I Corinthians 7: 19 above, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”
The temple was divided into three parts, the outer courts,
the
Paul is saying that when God came into His new temple, us, He intended to take everything over. New management was in place. But the soul (mind, will and emotions) and the body had different ideas. But God always wins doesn’t He?
He brings death to the flesh.
Paul says:
I Corinthians 6:
5For if we have become united with Him
in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the
likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him,
in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no
longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.
Galatians 2:20
20“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Philippians 3:10
10that I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11in order
that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Yes in confronting this sin that is killing us we must allow our flesh (the old cooperation between the soul and spirit) to be crucified and cut out like a cancer.
That is why in the journey to intimacy there is death in
every level. In the first level
there is a barrier set around the mountain that meant death to anyone going
past it. But to get to the
top of the mountain you must past the barrier and you must die.
2. Level 2 – Static Theology
While most of the people stay at the bottom of the mountain some venture past the barriers and up the mountain a way. But first Moses tells all the people of God’s plans and makes an offering to the Lord by sacrificing young bulls as a peace offering to the Lord. He used the blood to sprinkle on the altar and upon the people. I believe the elders were these sprinkled and they had to go through this “death” to get to the next level of relationship.
Exodus 24:3-11
3Then
Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the LORD and all the
ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the
words which the LORD has spoken we will do!” 4Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. Then he arose early in
the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with twelve pillars
for the twelve tribes of
9Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab
and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of
Now we see the next level of relationship when Moses, Joshua, Hur, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders come up on the mountain to eat and drink. Look at the change in God here. They saw Him clearly and saw the place where He stood as sapphire as clear as glass. This is very different than the “consuming fire” from the view at the foot of the mountain. God wants us to understand Him as much as we can. We will never completely understand Him but God wants to study and know Him intellectually. This is a prelude and a necessary step to a deeper spiritual knowing of Him.
However we need to be cognizant of the difficulties of this step. Look at verse 11 above. He did not stretch out His hand against them. It was like they were ready to run pell mell down the mountain if He had moved. In fact God never moved in this level. He was entirely static. That tells us something. Intellectual knowledge while important is wholly inadequate for knowing God in all His depths.
Intellectual knowledge can only study bits and pieces of God. For instance when we speak of the concept of the unchangeableness or immutability of God we are speaking a real Biblical doctrine, but there is a bit of arrogance in that statement from us. It arrogant because we have no basis for measuring the truth of that statement, we cannot even begin to sum the character of God at any given time and see if He changes or not. In fact we may deduce a change in God when He may just be manifesting a different face to us, a face that has always been there, and we just were not aware of it. Theology is static because our brains are so incapable of fully understanding a fully dynamic God.
There are very real dangers at this level if one chooses to get stuck here and not continue the journey to intimacy. Many do get stuck here and struggle understanding God because their theology doesn’t do an adequate job. You’ve met these people, in fact you might be one of these people. Their theology of God becomes all they know of God. In fact their theology can become their god. Sometimes when their theology and the Bible disagree they will side with their theology. These types of people can become very cold and formal, austere and hard. They can be very legalistic and judgmental because their theology isn’t up to the fiery love of God because that is dynamic and faith derived.
Ultimately people stuck on this level trust in their intellectual ability alone to understand God. I talked with a strong and ardent Calvinist once who wondered why we went out and witnessed to people when is was God’s sovereignty that decided if they were saved anyway. Now I know all Calvinists don’t believe this way and I am not trying to denigrate Calvinism. I am merely saying that our Theology can get in our way of really grasping the message of Jesus. I don’t want to get to heaven and have God ask me, “What part of GO didn’t you understand?” I don’t believe either Calvinism or Arminianism are wrong and essentially both are right. It depends on which end of the telescope you look through. The safest place to stand on that argument is right on the fence between the two. Don’t let your theology get in the way of relationship with God. He will surprise you.
Here is where we really need
to watch the flesh. You see the
flesh by this time is starting to really like God, but it wants God on its
terms not God’s. God however
will not tolerate the flesh’s desires and with our permission will gladly
crucify the flesh. People this is
most important. You have seen those
who live the carnal Christian lives but speak highly of God when people are
around and follow the flesh when alone or with others of like mind. They grieve the heart of God. Sinners look at them and laugh. They shame the cause of Christ. They are dry wood in the church and
cause the church to lose its way.
Many people like this are very upright and straitlaced and are
pharisaical in their behavior, but they have no power in their walk. They want all who are around them to
agree with them so they can feel secure.
They find security in the things they know or do or are rather than the
One they know. Avoid such and flee
to the Lord who loves you. Continue
your journey to intimacy and let none of this cling to you.
Two Levels of Intimacy
Level 1 – Deepening Relationship
Exodus 24: 13-15
13So Moses arose with Joshua his servant,
and Moses went up to the
Now
Moses and Joshua leave the rest and go higher up the mountain. Much had to die here and much must be
consecrated. The view of God
becomes a “Cloud of Glory” on the mountain. The sharpness of the last level is now
gone and a cloud of unknowing becomes the norm. This is good because now the faith that
is beyond knowing can come into play.
Yes this is a reasoned faith and not a leap in the dark. We are on a journey and each level has
new understandings. The intellect
had its way in the last level and should help in the faith of this level. We will understand better because of
what we learned on each preceding level.
The most important thing we learned on the last level is that God is
bigger and more dynamic than our intellect can understand. So it stands to reason that at this
level a new kind of knowing would come forth. We now are looking at God a bit
differently than the last level as much of our “knowing” has become
“unknowing”. God has
disappeared into a cloud and is even now beckoning us onward to Him in all the
fearful awesomeness of His presence.
We are getting close to the secret place of the Most High. We are rapidly loosing our very selves
in this climb, our concerns, our desires our needs are losing out to the wonder
of knowing this Holy God.
The God-filled spirit of man is gaining ascendancy
over all the mind will and emotion of the soul and suddenly you find that the
things you could do yesterday you can’t do today. You are redefining your life style into
the lifestyle of Jesus. He is becoming
paramount in your language, thoughts and attitude.
The flesh is in a love – hate cycle. It loves the goodness of God but is
fearful of the death He brings. It
flees to the recesses and hides there trying to stay away from the piercing
eyes of Jesus. You in wonder let
Him have more and more His way with you.
You are in a crucible of fire and actually tolerating it because you
know it is doing you good. You are
finding that the consuming fire isn’t so bad after all. It is here all remaining secret sins
come forth into light. We have
successfully hid them from men, but from the piercing, searching eyes of God we
can never hide. His will is
that we be done with them.
Dangers in this level
There are great dangers in
this level. Some of the lessons we
learned in the past levels will serve us here.
There is first the danger of fanaticism. Many of those in the Pentecostal or
Charismatic persuasions fall prey to many deceptions. When their grounding is not on the Word
of God alone then there is danger of letting our spiritual experiences and
feelings leading us astray. God
will move powerfully in you at this time and even that is fraught with danger
if you do not stay buried in the Book.
All experiences, prophecies, words, angels, etc. must, must, must align
with the scriptures. If they do not
align, discard them and cast them away from you. Judge every word given to you from the
Living Word, do not let anyone make you move before you are ready and firm in
your faith that God is in it and the Word agrees. Only in this will you be
ready for the next level of deep intimacy with God. You are to learn His voice here.
John 10: 1-5
1“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. 2“But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. 3“To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4“When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5“A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.”
The sheep of
This level can be the most
frustrating level. You came from
the deep intellectual assurance in level 2 to a place where your intellect is
not adequate and you sometimes seem to be drifting where you know not. God uses many things to draw us to
him.
Isaiah 45:15
15 Truly, You are a God who hides Himself,
O God of
Sometimes God seems a
million miles away. Our prayers and
cries seem to fall on unhearing ears.
Other times He is so near and His very presence makes all oppression flee. This time can be a feast or famine of
Spirit. God has purpose in
everything He does and these times are to help up gain the goal He has set for
us.
Churches in this level
experience the presence in their services at times, but they don’t
understand what the key is for it to stay.
The move of God seems so very random and without reason. Many leaders will try to create the
atmosphere or feeling to have Him come again but He won’t. Then suddenly one day the very delight
of His presence floods in. But God
is dealing with our souls and training us to want Him above all else. His interest is in our character not our
comfort!
Proverbs 2:4-5
4 If you seek her as silver
And search for her as for hidden treasures;
5 Then you will discern the fear of the LORD
And discover the knowledge of God.
But we have trouble seeking Him above all else. Even though we know it is best the world
and all its allures is strong.
Psalms 14:2-3
2 The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men
To see if there are any who understand,
Who seek after God.
3 They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt;
There is no one who does good, not even one.
Yes it is a struggle sometimes here, but remember
what Jesus said.
John 7:37-39
37Now on the last day, the great day
of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come
to Me and drink. 38“He who believes in Me, as the
Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living
water.’” 39But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom
those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given,
because Jesus was not yet glorified.
This is the
level where this really starts to happen.
Those quiet times are when the Lord is wooing us and calling to us to
come deeper. That requires a giving
up of our selves that oppose Him and a drawing of Him from our spirit into our
soul to rule and reign. Now we
start looking at the level of deep intimacy.
Level 2 – Deep Intimacy with God
This is probably the most
unnerving and difficult level for us all.
For here the flesh will be pretty much gone and our intellect will be
stretched way beyond what we thought possible. We must learn things that are absolutely
backwards and antithetical to the way of the world and even much in the church.
Let’s look at the verses first.
Exodus 24: 15-18
15Then Moses went up to the mountain, and
the cloud covered the mountain. 16The glory of the LORD rested on
Here let all your expectations fall away. You have never been to this place and you will never want to leave.
In her book “Teaching a Stone to Talk”, Annie Dillard says:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.
The eighteenth - century Hasidic Jews had more sense and more belief. One Hasidic slaughterer, whose work involved, invoking the Lord, bade a tearful farewell to his wife and children every morning before he set out for the slaughterhouse. He felt, every morning, that he would never see any of them again. For every day, as he himself stood with his knife in his hand, the words of his prayer carried him into danger. After he called on God, God might notice and destroy him before he had time to utter the rest, ‘Have Mercy”.
Another Hasid, a rabbi, refused to promise a friend to visit him the next day: ‘How can you ask me to make such a promise? This evening I must pray and recite ‘Hear O Israel.’ When I say these words, my soul goes out to the utmost rim of life… Perhaps I shall not die this time either, but how can I now promise to do something at a time after the prayer?” Page 52-53
Brothers and sisters! This one whom we serve and love above all else is the eternal God. We little know of whom we seek, in His awesome glory He is so wonderful and appealing.
Isaiah 57:15
15 For thus says the high and exalted One
Who lives forever, whose name is Holy,
“I dwell on a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.
That is the God I serve! He who is Holy and high and exalted and live forever and comes to my lowly and contrite heart to revive it and lift it up to His plane.
Hallelujah to the Lord for such love!
Now let us look at the verses in Exodus 24:15-18. Notice that Moses (and Joshua) go up and the cloud is also a consuming fire. I’ll speak more about this later. They wait six days before God calls them into the cloud. There are two things about that we need to look at.
First, Six days represents works. In Genesis God works for six days to create the earth and rests on the seventh. God calls Moses into the cloud on the seventh day of rest. Ministry is to be a rest for us not a work of fleshly zeal. This is so important that we cannot ignore it.
In Genesis 3:19 we are told that part of the curse on man is that we must work by the sweat of our brow to live. It takes human work to do that. But in Ezekiel 44:18 the priests of the new covenant in the new temple must not wear anything that makes them sweat. Sweat implies human effort and zeal and God says that means nothing to Him. We must enter His rest to minister. It is the only way.
Hebrews
4:19-13
9So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of
God. 10For
the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God
did from His. 11Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so
that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. 12For 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. 13And there
is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to
the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
So here we see the Sabbath or seventh day rest for all believers. It is in Him we find our rest. Just as God rested on the seventh day so must His people who are His ministers. Praise Jesus! You see I was learning this very thing as I ministered in the church where I was a pastor. The senior pastor didn’t know this truth and thought ministering was works and human zeal. When I left to start this ministry he was surprised to see the deep impact I had on the church. I did it through resting in Jesus and letting His ministry flow through me.
Matthew
11:28-29
28“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
In Jesus we have such rest. He is so gentle and humble of heart. Just the way we need to be to truly enter His rest. A yoke is a thing to hook an oxen to a load and make the oxen work. But Jesus’ yoke is a thing of rest we abide in Him and let Him produce His fruit through us.
John
15:
4“Abide
in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides
in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in
The
branch doesn’t do anything but abide and the all capable vine pulls up
the nutrients and supplies the abiding branch everything it needs to bear
fruit. This abiding comes with
great cost to the believer of dying to the flesh and all earthly wants. This level of intimacy with a God who is
so jealous of our love is rich beyond all belief. Abiding in His rest is where the soul
finally finds its fullness.
Second,
the verse in Exodus 25:15-18 tells us that God calls Moses into the fiery
cloud. This journey is God
initiated and empowered. Really all
we do on the journey is obey Him when He calls for us to die or do something
that makes no sense but leads to further points I call faith trigger
points. Wow! You see God is way more interested in us
climbing this obedience mountain into intimacy with Him that we are and He is
making sure we climb. He is so good
and loving! He so Holy and full of
awe! He is so fearsome and not
safe. You hear of some of the
prosperity doctrine that goes off kilter.
They try to pull God down to our level of just a beneficent king or
maybe even just a vending machine.
They want a safe and comfortable God.
Brothers
and sisters! God is not safe nor is
He comfortable! Who wants to be
safe anyway when the fire of God is flying to the darkest parts of the earth to
bring a light into great darkness?
Who wants to be comfortable when souls are crying out in agony and pain
because they don’t know Him?
We have the thing in our spirits that the world so desperately needs!
Isaiah
33:14-17
14 Sinners
in
Trembling has seized the godless.
“Who among us can live with the consuming fire?
Who among us can live with continual burning?”
15 He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity,
He who rejects unjust gain
And shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe;
He who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed
And shuts his eyes from looking upon evil;
16 He will dwell on the heights,
His refuge will be the impregnable rock;
His bread will be given him,
His water will be sure.
17 Your eyes will see the King in His beauty;
They will behold a far-distant land.
How safe and comfortable is a God who is a consuming fire, a continual burning? Those who want to be safe and comfortable will never understand these verses, in fact they will never understand this issue in the believers life. It is US that are OK with this consuming fire God! We are the ones whose bread or manna will be given to us daily. We will be fed from the mouth or Word of God that pierces us. How safe or comfortable is that? Our water or our Living Water will be sure. We will never be without that artesian well of water bursting forth from our innermost man! That isn’t safe! We must dwell in the deepest and hottest part of that consuming flame! It is the only place for the believer who wants to be a living flame for the Lord! I do, don’t you!?
Now look at the Exodus verses again. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights up in that consuming fire of God and ate and drank nothing. His bread and water were from the Living God and he needed nothing on earth for satisfaction. The number 40 means a complete time and a time of testing. The time Moses spend on the mountain represents the completeness of salvation that God provides. He needed no food or water as I said above, he needed no companionship nor did he need any healing or deliverance as they were all supplied by the very presence of God in that cloud. And God tests all those who abide in him. Not the test of a angry teacher. Too many people believe God is just plain mean and wants to thump them in a bad humor. That is not like Him at all. God wants to be loved by His people!
I have two daughters who are now married and away. But when they were little and I would come home from a business trip I loved it when the came running up to be and just wanted to love on me because the missed me. Not wanting something from me, just loving me. God wants the same thing! He wants children who just love Him and want to be near Him.
His presence is all we need, and in Him we can be completely satisfied. His salvation has everything we need, fullness of Spirit, healing and deliverance. He desires us to spend time with Him just in His arms of love. He is a good father. Reach out to Him today and start your journey.
Our Kingly Authority
So now we come to the very crux of our thoughts. This is the key and the crown of what God wants in His children. We must take this to the nations, to the darkness, to those sick, broken and lost. It is a simple truth, not intellectual; a truth a child could grasp and operate in. God wants each of us to come to him with total childlike faith as our Abba Father and simple accept all the goodness from His hand.
Authority is the key word in this section. It is Kingly authority because Jesus the King bestows it, not because we are anything great. In fact the more you are aware of your utter lack, poverty and need of the power and presence of Jesus the better off you are!
Matthew 9: 2-8
2And they
brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to
the paralytic, “Take
courage, son; your sins are forgiven.” 3And some
of the scribes said to themselves, “This fellow blasphemes.” 4And Jesus
knowing their thoughts said, “Why are you thinking evil in your hearts? 5“Which
is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get
up, and walk’? 6“But so that you may know that the
Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—then He said* to the paralytic, “Get up, pick up your bed and go
home.” 7And he got up and went home. 8But when
the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who
had given such authority to men.
As I was reading through the Bible a few nights ago, I was reading in these chapters in Matthew. The Holy Spirit was pointing out the word and concept of authority to me and I was seeing it with new eyes. Here Jesus tells a man that his sins are forgiven and the Pharisees objected saying only God has the authority to do that. Jesus then proceeds to heal the man, thus proving he had God’s authority to heal and forgive sin. These are things God alone can do and the Jews knew that well. Jesus walked in the full authority of His Father.
The Holy Spirit pointed out to me
that authority is a key concept in the
Matthew
10:1
1Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
Wow! The Holy Spirit jumped on me and I started laughing in the Holy Spirit and I could not get past this verse. Then the Holy Spirit spoke these words to me: “If I would give these men such authority before they were filled with My Spirit, how much more will give authority to those who are filled with my presence?!”
There it is. Simple and profound. We must get to the intimate levels to be able to understand such an idea, but it can be grasped by a child. Become childlike for a few minutes and read that verse and listen what the Spirit is saying and accept the authority that is rightfully yours. Go and cast out demons and heal every kind of disease and sickness. It is your right to do that and bring heaven close to earth.
The devil so fears a church that will raise up in such authority. Let’s get our pictures on the post office walls of hell.
God Bless you all.
Evan Wiggs