Category Archives: Walking in the Spirit

God gives the Spirit without limit. Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to the church to equip us to be His witnesses and carry on the work that He started by that same power. To deny that the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit are available to the believer today, or to say, as some do, that God does not speak supernaturally to His people today, is effectively taking Christ out of Christianity.

Be prepared; hold on., Walking in the Spirit

The Coming Harvest

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“Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD,
“When the ploughman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed;
The mountains shall drip with sweet wine,
And all the hills shall flow with it.” (Amos 9:13)

The New Testament gives us a clear picture of what is meant spiritually by sowing and reaping. The word of God is sown through teaching and preaching, and the harvest is reaped when those hearts where they were sown accept Christ. Much of the ministry of the Church hinges on the activities of sowing and reaping, of teaching and evangelism.

But God is preparing us for another, and greater harvest. Although sowing and reaping will carry on, the work of preparing for the coming harvest will overtake the work of the current one. The apostolic and the prophetic will run ahead of the teacher and the evangelist, ploughing the land and treading the grapes. Ploughing the land and treading the grapes have this in common: they break through the surface layers and break up structures. The plough breaks up the soil; treading breaks down the grapes. I believe the Lord wants to break up our well-trodden paths and move below the skins of our relationships. Even as the devil seeks to use lockdown to keep us apart, the Lord will work in our lives to bring us together and move us towards true Unity of the Spirit.

I believe the Lord would say: “Why is the soil hard? Because you have walked in the same places for so long that the soil is trampled down; the seeds of the Word do not take root and the birds of the air devour them. So I am sending out the ploughman to break up the ground again, so my seeds can take root and grow.

And why is the wine not flowing? Because you hold and treasure your clusters of grapes instead of letting the juice flow from them, and you are content with superficial relationships in which people remain separate and isolated within their own protective skins, instead of truly giving themselves to one another. So I am sending out those who will tread on the traditions, the forms and the routines that you hold onto, and they will break them down so that the life of My Spirit can be released in your worship. And I will move in your relationships and break through those defensive skins that keep you apart; and as I am in the Father and the Father is in me, you, too, will become perfect in one, and the world will see your love and will know that you are my disciples. The world does not want your well-trodden paths, but it will seek out the life that it sees growing when the plough has broken them up. The world does not see your clusters, but it will see your love when the grapes are trodden and the wine is flowing.”

Before the harvest comes the plough, and before the new wine comes the treading. When this time comes many will feel they have nowhere to stand and nothing to hold onto; but the Lord says “Stand on my Word, and hold onto Me. Do not resist the breaking, and receive those who appear to tread on things that you would preserve, because when the work of preparation is done those who sow will again see fruit; ten, twenty and a hundredfold; and those who reap will not have barns big enough for the harvest.”

Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

Ministry Gifts

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“He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children… but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. “(Eph 4: 11-16)

Paul distinguishes three giftings in his letter to the Corinthians:

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit: “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. “(1 Cor 12:4)
The Gifts of the Son: “There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord.” (1 Cor 12:5)
The Gifts of the Father: “And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.” (1 Cor 12:6)

Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, often known as the fivefold ministries, are the gifts that Jesus gave to men. They are distinct from the gifts of the Holy Spirt enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, and distinct from the gifts of the Father, sometimes called the “motivational gifts,” listed in Romans 12 vs 6-8.

The gifts of the Son are unique in that they refer to people rather than the gifts of the Holy Spirit which can be “given to each one for the profit of all;” or to the “level of faith” imparted by the Father to every individual to serve in a particular way. Everyone in the church is given a “level of faith” for a specific area (or areas) of service; everyone in the church can be a channel for the Holy Spirit to manifest Himself through a particular supernatural gift or ”manifestation of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7), and certain individuals in the church are ministry gifts given  by Jesus to the church to bring it to maturity.

Jesus will be returning for a grown-up; not a child bride. The yardstick we are given for maturity is the “fullness of Christ” Himself. When He returns “we will be like Him.” (1 John 3:2) We will be “a perfect man,” we will know Jesus intimately, and our Unity will be complete. The cry of the Saviour’s heart narrated in John 17 will be answered, because we will be one as He and the Father are one. The fivefold ministries are given to the Body so that we can attain to this perfect goal.

How? When the church is functioning and the Body growing according to the Ephesians 4 blueprint, the saints are equipped as for “works of ministry.” The word for ministry – diakonia –means ‘obedient service.’ In other words, the body learns to do what the head tells it to do. And if we untangle the convoluted language of verse 16, the picture that we find at the core is that everyone grows when Love and Truth flow from the head (Christ) through all the connected members. The purpose of the fivefold ministries is to enable that flow of love and truth into and through “every part.”

What comes next is key. This equipping that brings the bride of Christ to maturity is enabled by what Paul calls the “effective working by which every part does its share.” The language  means more in the original Greek than the English translation suggests. The word “Energeia” – ‘effective working’ – is only used in the New Testament  for superhuman power. The body of Christ grows to maturity when, enabled by the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, each member relates to the others through the operation of supernatural connections. Placing this in the context of the gifts of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, this means that we have to apply “a measure of faith” – going beyond our natural abilities or inclinations, and reaching into the Father’s inexhaustible supply – to whatever works of service we are motivated to carry out; and it means that we expect and rely on the gifts of the Holy Spirit to touch the spirits of our brothers and sisters in ways that are impossible in the flesh. The gifts of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all work together as the church grows into the “perfect man.”

In his book “Into Action,” Reinhard Bonnke says “Christianity was never intended to be anything else but an outpouring of the spirit. It is a reviving, quickening, renewing energy. Revival is not an extraordinary work beyond normal Christianity. Christianity is revival.” Reinhart Bonnke has raised the dead, seen thousands of people healed, and led millions to Christ, so he has some credibility. The church cannot grow to maturity without the power of the Holy Spirit impacting every member and enabling each one to respond to the Head by reaching out supernaturally to others. Jesus has put five ministries in place in order to bring this about, so unless leadership is in the hands of all five the growth will be unbalanced and incomplete.

Revival isn’t just about a lot of people getting saved and healed; it’s about the Church growing up.

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Launch out into the Deep

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“So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets. Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net. And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.” (Luke 5 vs 1-7)

When I read the above passage of scripture this morning, I felt that the Lord gave me the following word. I believe it is for all of us to an extent, but particularly for those who feel, like Simon Peter did, that they have been ‘toiling all night and catching nothing,’ whose ministry has been “beached” by COVID, and who now have nothing better to do than sit on the shore and wonder about where their ministry is going. I believe the Lord would say this:

“It feels to you that your boat is pulled up on the shoreline. You aren’t catching fish at the moment so you are thinking about your ministry. Before you came ashore you had been working hard but catching nothing, so now you are thinking about your net and how you can improve it so that you can catch fish when you go out again.  But even now I am walking along the shoreline towards you. You don’t need to do any more to your net, because I am going to get into your boat myself. Your ministry isn’t about how good your net is, or what you do to make it better; it’s about me being in the boat and launching out with you into the deep , because that is where the fish are.  And together we will catch so many fish that you will feel overwhelmed; you will feel as if you are sinking under the weight of the catch. Will you launch out with me anyway? Will you come with me into the deep and face being overwhelmed?

So look up from your net and look out for me, because I am walking towards you. And when we get back into the shore you won’t be sitting by your nets again, making sure they are good enough and discussing them with your friends; but you will be walking with me, going wherever I go and doing whatever I do. And that is when you will be fishers of men.”

Be prepared; hold on., Walking in the Spirit

The Unity of the Spirit

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“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.” (Col 3:1)

It’s the Unity that commands the blessing, and without the unity the blessing will not be commanded. The Unity that God is waiting to see in us is what the Lord Jesus prayed for in John 17, before going to the cross: it is the “The Unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace” of Ephesians 4:3, where we are “perfect in One” in the Father and the Son. I believe that this will be a new work of the Spirit, that will cause us all to look up to where we are seated in Heavenly places, already “perfect in one” together with Christ; and when we do we will see and begin to walk in the Unity and Love that He has purchased for us at the Cross and that is already ours. The day of Ecumenism is over, the Unity of the Spirit is coming, and in that unity the Lord will perfect His bride.

At the moment we are like the Shunammite woman, and we have just a little oil, and there are many empty jars in the church. He is going to visit us like Elisha visited her, and he is calling us to gather together all those empty jars and to start pouring in what little we have. So He says: “Pour yourselves out into the empty jars, in your praying and in your ministering, and I will pour through you. And you will see coming on the Church the Unity that commands the blessing.”

You may be one of the empty jars: if so, let yourself be filled. It may be that the jar of oil that you have needs to be emptied so you can be filled anew with the fresh oil of His Spirit. He wants all those jars to be full, because it is from them that He will pour His love out onto the world.

Jacob Dominy, (one of our prophetic team who has a number of prophetic words and other material on this site, including “serving to soaring” and “a beginner’s guide to prophesy“) also received a word today on the theme of Unity, which he has sent me. I don’t think the timing is a coincidence...

“Oh my church, my bride my beautiful bride, when will you take your blinkers off; when will take hold of what I have called you to be; when will you truly work together; when will you get out of your individual trenches and work as one across your town, your country and your world?
I am not calling you to work as individual churches: I am calling you to work together so that I can reveal my Glory in the world. I am wanting you to share resources so that My church, My bride, My army, can advance My kingdom here on Earth. I am calling you to put My will and My Kingdom above your individual agendas. What I am calling my church to do is to work as one unit.”

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Walking in the Spirit

Sweep the Floor (2)

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We have a large paved patio which I look out on when I am having my prayer time. I was thinking again about sweeping the floor to prepare for the Lord to come and fill it with his presence (see earlier post: “Sweep the Floor“); and then I was in the spirit, trying to sweep the patio outside. But there were lots of little bits of straw lying around: I was trying to sweep them up but they got caught in the cracks between the paving stones and got stuck on the bristles of the broom. No matter how hard I tried I could not sweep the bits of straw out from between the paving stones. Then the Lord said to me: “You will never sweep the straw out from between the stones. You need a complete new surface.“ And He reminded me of the floor around the throne that Ezekiel and John saw, like a sea of glass. He said: “You need a floor like this, where every single strand of straw stands out, where you hate to see it, and where you can sweep it away immediately and with ease. It’s the floor that I laid down for you by my blood. It’s the floor of grace and forgiveness. There is no other foundation.

But where there is division in my church rubbish will always gather, and your broom cannot sweep it away no matter how hard you try. In many places the floor of my church is like that patio, with lots of individual paving stones, marked by division and unforgiveness where the rubbish gathers. But my mixer lorry is ready. It is just outside, with the engine running, waiting to pour out a new floor of grace and forgiveness in your lives and in your churches that will shine with the beauty of holiness. You will not even need a broom to keep it clean: if you see any little bits of rubbish you will just bend down to pick them up, because you will say “that doesn’t belong here!” You will love one another and prefer one another, and then you will see me in your midst and the world will see my glory, because you will be gathered in my name.

Be prepared; hold on., Discipleship and witness, Walking in the Spirit

The Stage is Set

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I was looking at an image of a stage with the curtains drawn across and the spotlight shining on the curtains. Then I felt the Lord say this:

The Lord has set the stage and is assembling His cast. Our lines are written in Heaven, according to Ephesians 2:10. He says to us now: “Learn your parts. For your parts are not playacting, they are the eternal reality of my Spirit. What is on the stage will not pass away; it is not just there for a season; it is built for eternity.“

An actor who comes out of role on stage is said to “corpse.“ The Lord says to us: “Your role is the reality. The spirit is your reality. Walk in the spirit, and do not corpse by walking after the flesh. The world thinks it is here to stay, and it is always fighting to stay; but the truth is the opposite: you are here to stay, and the world and all that is in it is passing away. Soon I will be drawing back the curtains to reveal what is on the stage that I have set, and my church will act the parts that I have prepared for them. But the spotlight will not be on you; it will be on Me. The Acts of the Apostles was just a prelude to what I have prepared for these times. Listen for my cues; wait for my cues; always move on cue and do not corpse. The world will begin to see who you are and who I am in your midst. The first act is coming; there will be many more acts after this, until the time comes for the final bow. So I say to you again: learn your parts, do not corpse, listen for my cues. And do not fear, for I am renewing faith among my people. You will enjoy the thrill of being in my theatre.”

Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Seated in Heavenly Places

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“In that day the LORD will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the LORD before them.” (Zechariah 12:8)

“His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which we have been given exceedingly great and precious promises, that we may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (2 Pe 1:3-4)

Who do you see in the mirror?


When speaking of the Word of God, the apostle James wrote: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. (James 1: 23-23) The question is, what kind of people are we, who have been born from above to “conform to the image of Christ” (Romans 8:29) Who do we see when we look in the mirror of the Word? We are the spiritual house of David that Jesus is building by the Holy Spirit (1 Pe 2:5). The prophet Zechariah doesn’t mince his words: he says that we will be “like God.” Peter says that through God’s “great and precious promises” we are “partakers of the divine nature.” Yet you don’t have to spend more than a few seconds with me to know that I am clearly not like God at all. What’s gone wrong?

Nothing, because you are seeing my flesh and not my spirit. I have already looked at our spiritual identities in “We shall be like Him,” and it seems to me that the evidence of Scripture is this: in the heavenly places where we are seated, we are like Him already, because we are already seated in the atmosphere of His glory, where nothing can dwell that is less than perfect.

Here are a few details of who we are in Christ that Scripture has sketched in for us:

“Those whom he justified he also glorified.”  (Romans 8 28-29)
“And the glory which You gave Me I have given them” (John 17:22)

We have come to “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” (Heb 12:23)

We are “crowned with glory and honour.” (Psalm 8:5)

We have places to walk in the courts of Heaven (Zech 3:7)

We can be “joyful in glory” and have the honour of “executing God’s written judgement” on the Nations (Psalm 149: 5-9).

We “Worship God in the Beauty of holiness” (Psalm 96:9)

All of these descriptions of the Saints – and there are plenty more – can only relate to our walk in the Spirit: since the flesh wars against the spirit nothing of our carnal nature can have any part in them. From the moment we are born again to the time when we join the Lord in Heaven we mature as Christians, “grow(ing) up  in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—” (Eph 5:15) as the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of Christ in our lives. But the question I am aiming at is this: is a baby Christian on Earth also a baby Christian in Heaven?

I think the answer has to be “No.” There is no passage of time in Heaven, where a year is as a thousand days, where the God who created time has reigned since before time began and where we are seated as His children together with His Son. If there is no duration in Heaven, there can also be no maturation: what we are in the Spirit is what we were created to be, as are the angels, the seraphim, the 24 elders and all the other members of the Heavenly host. I think we “grow up in all things into Him who is the head” (Eph 4:15) as, step by step, faith to faith, and obedient moment by obedient moment, we put to death our carnal natures and allow our spirits and not our flesh to do the walking.

Paul exhorts the Philippians to “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life.” (Phil 2: 14-16)

The “crooked and perverse generation” is the generation of the First Adam (See “away in a manger” for more on this). As we let the dead shell of that same carnal nature fall away, the light of Christ’s Spirit that is one with ours shines more and more strongly and brings His light into the darkness, while His Word executes His will on Earth. The process of maturing as Christians is becoming on Earth who we already are in Heaven, and in doing so becoming the answers to the Lord’s prayer: “Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” The correct translation of the Greek tenses in Matthew 18:18 is this: “Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on the earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” Everything was finished at Calvary: as we grow in the Spirit we are always reaching into Heavenly places for a completed work.

Pauls prayer for the Ephesians was

“that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places…” (Eph 1:17-20)

It is often said that Jesus is the “bridge” from earth to Heaven. The bridge from Heaven to Earth is the Holy Spirit: the baptism in the Holy Spirit gives us all we need of Heaven’s equipping for our earthly works – “the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe.” The more that we can see in the mirror of God’s word who we really are, the more the eyes of our understanding will be enlightened, and the greater will be the works (John 14:12) that we will do.

Prayer and Spiritual Warfare, Walking in the Spirit

The accuser of the brethren has been cast down.

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 “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.” (Rev. 12:10)

We have been raised with Christ and are seated with Him in Heavenly places. We know that those heavenly places are vast beyond any notion of human measure, and we also know from Ephesians 6:12 that somewhere “up” there “the principalities and powers of this present darkness” are doing battle against the will of God and the saints of the Lamb. But Ephesians 1:21 gives us some detail about where, in those heavenly places, Christ is seated. He is seated “far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” And not only is Christ seated there, but we are too:

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2: 4-6)

We have been raised to those same heavenly places above the same principalities and powers, by the love and mercy of God, to be seated there together with Him. And while we have been lifted up there, Satan, the “Accuser of the brethren,” has been cast down:

 “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down.” (Rev. 12:10)

If you have been born again – and you almost certainly have been, or you wouldn’t be reading this – you know this as a fact, and it’s always good to remind ourselves of the scripture where that truth is declared. But I think many of us – me included, for sure – can take a massive stride forward in our walk of faith if we live every day in the knowledge that any accusing words coming into our minds originate from the devil, and that when we walk free of the accusations of the enemy we can walk in salvation, strength, the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ. It’s what Revelation 12:2 says. Accusing is what the devil and his fallen angels do. And now that they have been cast down, and “there was no place found for them in Heaven any longer,” (Rev. 12:8) their desire is always to bring us down with them. Whether we are accusing ourselves, or accusing others; whatever the accusation and wherever there is a pointing finger, we can be sure that the voice doesn’t come from heaven, because there is nowhere in Heaven that accusation has a place.

By contrast, we read the following in Revelation 4: 1-2 “After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, ‘Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this.’ Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne.” In the book of Zechariah, the prophet writes five times that he “raised his eyes” to see what the Spirit was revealing. If we too “raise our eyes” we also can sometimes catch a glimpse of what God is doing. Jesus has opened a door in Heaven and has given us access to where we can look in the Spirit to the One who is seated on the throne. And if we keep looking, we can see ourselves seated there as well.

Zephaniah said this:
“The LORD has taken away your judgments,
He has cast out your enemy.
The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst;
You shall see disaster no more.” (Zeph 3:15)

The accuser can have nothing more to say to us, because the Lord has taken away our judgements. Even in our trials we can “count it all joy” (James 1:2) because of the enduring fruit that is borne by the testing of our faith. So when we look up to where we are seated and praise the One whose great love lifted us there, we are not only encouraging ourselves and giving Him glory, but by the very stance that we take we are doing battle with the enemy of our souls.

The psalmist knew this battle well:

“As with a breaking of my bones,
My enemies reproach me,
While they say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
For I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 42: 10-11)

Our praise to God is always an act of war.

I enjoy Premier League football and occasionally go to watch matches. One day we had tickets for an away game: it was the last game of the season, and our opponents on that day were in a relegation battle with their bitter rivals from the same city. Normally all attention is on the game taking place in the stadium, but on this occasion the home fans were far more interested in the score from their rivals’ game as it flashed up on their mobile phones than what was happening on the pitch in front of them. When it was obvious that the rival team had lost and would be relegated, the following chant reverberated round the stadium: “We’re staying up; you’re going down! We’re staying up; you’re going down!”

When the enemy whispers his accusations in our ear, we just have to remember one refrain, adapted slightly from the football chant: “We’re staying up; you’re staying down!”

Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

We Shall Be Like Him

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“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2) 

“I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands,… and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band… And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. “I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” (Rev 1: 12, 13, 17, 18)

John, the author of the Book of Revelation, was the “disciple that Jesus loved.” He was the one who rested his head on the chest of Jesus at the last supper; he walked with Him for three years; he saw Him on the cross, he saw Him after the resurrection, he saw Him ascend to Heaven and he even saw Him transfigured on the mountain. What John saw on those occasions was the Son of Man in a form that his eyes could behold and his brain could – at least to a degree at the transfiguration – comprehend. And then John saw Him again, on the Isle of Patmos. He saw the same Jesus, but with His glory undimmed, and he fell at His feet “as one dead.” Whether or not he recognised the Jesus that he had seen on the Earth is not clear, but what is clear is that he responds to Him on an entirely different level.

I think it’s clear that John saw the glorified Jesus “as He is” while he was in the Spirit on Patmos. When Jesus went from Earth to Heaven he went in his earthly form; but when He comes from Heaven to Earth we can expect Him to be much as He appeared to John on Patmos: “One like the Son of Man.” John’s vision gives us an image of the Risen Lord in His heavenly glory, and his epistle tells us that when He returns we will be like Him too. So we read these verses, and look forward in our minds to the time in the future when they are fulfilled. Maybe we dwell for a few moments on the thought that one day ‘we will be like Jesus,’ then move on in our devotions or whatever we are doing. But do we ever think of ourselves as being like Him now?

Yet we, His brothers and sisters, are seated with Him in heavenly places. What are we wearing as spiritual beings in the courts of Heaven? Jeans and jumpers? Or maybe we too have shining robes and sashes of gold round our chests. Do we have bad hair and tired eyes? Or do we too have hair as white as wool and eyes as flames of fire? John says clearly that “we will be like Him” when Jesus returns, and Paul uses similar language when he looks forward to that long-awaited time: “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” (Romans 8:19)  What seems inescapable to me is that what we will be on Earth then – when “this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality-” (1 Cor 15:53) is what our immortal spirits are in heavenly places now. Like actors on a stage waiting for the curtain to be pulled back, the children of God – you and I – who will be “revealed” when Jesus returns are already seated in heavenly places today, waiting for the time to come when we will reign with Him on Earth. (Rev 5:10)

If we are praying in the Spirit, worshipping in the Spirit, and walking in the Spirit, we need to see ourselves in the Spirit as well. We talk and teach about knowing “who we are in Christ,” and being clothed in “robes of righteousness,” so when we see our spirit selves in the heavenly mirror of the Word of God, what is the image that we behold? Our spiritual DNA is the same as the Christ who revealed Himself to John. He is our brother. We have the same Father. Is it too fanciful to believe that in Heavenly places, where our immortal spirits, “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Heb 12:23) by His blood, are seated with Him, serving as kings and priests to our God (Rev 1:6) we may have similar eyes as well?

We have His name. We have His Spirit. We have His word. It’s time we looked at Jesus as He is now and recognised ourselves in Him, because I think that many of us would fall on our faces, just as John did before our older brother, if we saw with the eyes of the flesh who we really are in the Spirit. But once we had told ourselves not to be afraid because we too were dead – we died with Christ – and now  we are alive for evermore, we would be much less troubled by the temptations and trials of this passing mortal realm, and our faith would be on another level.

“Awake, awake!
Put on your strength, O Zion;
Put on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city! (Isaiah 52:1)

Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

If Anyone loves me, He Will Keep My Word.

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A thousand thoughts and desires flood the mind daily, yet there is only one body of thought that can give meaning and wholeness to our lives, and that is “The wisdom that descends from above (James 3:17). A thousand words can pass our lips, yet the only ones that Jesus calls us to live by are “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Both Moses and Joshua urged the people of Israel to “meditate day and night” on the Law of God in order to walk in His blessing, but their subsequent apostasy suggests that this didn’t happen. The truth for Christians today is this: Jesus is the Word made flesh; we are flesh re-made by the word. As James put it (James 1: 18): “Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.”

The flesh of Jesus was perfect as it was the human incarnation of The Word; God expressing Himself perfectly in human form. The flesh of Man is, of course, imperfect, as we are born into the corruption of sin; and it is only the word of God that can work His perfection in our lives as He speaks into our spirits and “writes His Law on our hearts.”  As Paul writes to the Corinthians, Jesus writes our lives as His own epistle: “Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.” (2 Cor 3:3)

Jesus calls us to be “yoked” to Him. (Matt 11:29) If we want to understand how it’s possible to be yoked to the living Christ, I think it’s helpful to think of the material of His yoke as His word. We can’t accept His yoke unless we have died to self and picked up our cross – but if we are to follow Him closely we need to know where He is walking. And if our lives are to be His epistle, then the substance of who we are and the motivation for what we do must be found in the words that He has spoken. We cannot be like Him or do the things that He did unless the core and very makeup of our lives are the things that He says. Whatever our flesh says, whatever the enemy might whisper, our response must be: “Lord, what do You say?”

We have, in the Bible, a wonderful library of what God has already said. Whatever revelation we have by the Holy Spirit in these days will be grounded in something on the shelves of that Library. When Jesus gathered His disciples for the last time before He ascended into Heaven, they might reasonably have expected to be given a wonderful new revelation to propel them forward into the next phase of their lives. But instead He points back to the words He had already spoken during His time with them, and further back, to the Old Testament:

“Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me. And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” (Luke 24: 44-45).

More than anything, we need the Holy Spirit to open our understanding to the Scriptures. As Jesus spoke with His disciples shortly before going to the cross, he makes this wonderful promise:  “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him,” and in the next breath he assures them that they aren’t going to forget what he has said, because “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” (John 14: 24, 26.) The primary work of the Holy Spirit is to bring the word of God alive in our hearts, to make us His epistle, as we have already noted.

Finally, there is more to walking in obedience to the Word of God that the matter of being “yoked” to Jesus, essential though that is. Psalm 119 is a treasure trove of truths about God’s word. Just to pick two jewels: It is settled in Heaven (verse 89). Even perfection has its limits, but God’s commands have none (verse 96).  Even a cursory reading of just a few verses make one truth absolutely clear: God’s word is the perfect expression of heavenly perfection and power. Nothing on Earth can even begin to approach it in beauty, truth and majesty.  It is imbued with the very atmosphere of Heaven; and that is why the Word can only be brought to life by the Emissary of Heaven who dwells within us: the Holy Spirit. But once the Holy Spirit has brought God’s word to life in our hearts, there is one thing that does connect this capsule of Heaven to the mortal realm of Earth, and that is our obedience. Our obedience grounds God’s word on Earth. When we do what Jesus says, the creative power of the Word is released into the world.

To love Jesus is to keep His word. If we do that, He and the Father will come and make their home in us. It is our obedience to the Word of God that brings Heaven down to Earth.