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

Seated in Heavenly Places

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“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, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2: 4-7)

It’s easy enough to read these words and tell ourselves that we believe them, but speaking personally, I wonder how much I really understand what it is to be seated in heavenly places when I don’t even know what they look like? Paul had been there (see 2 Cor 12: 2-4), and I have friends who have had visions of them, but so far that hasn’t been part of my walk with Jesus. But Jesus said to Thomas: “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” so that tells me that those of us (i.e. most of the Body of Christ) who haven’t had any visionary experience of heavenly places, can be blessed in our lack of experience just as we are blessed with eternal life by believing in the Saviour that we haven’t seen. So my question is this: if I am blessed for believing what I haven’t seen, how do I live out of that blessing? Among other things, being seated in heavenly places is our position of spiritual authority, and that is my focus here, because the devil will do all he can to get us out of our seats in the spirit and running around, weakened, in the flesh. Here are three keys that may help us to stay in our seats. I plan to post some more in future articles.

Remain in the atmosphere of worship.
If we know one thing about heaven it is that it rings with worship. When John first looked through the door into heaven and beheld “a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne,” (Rev 4:2) the scene before him is ablaze with the beauty of the Lord and resounds with unending worship:

“The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying:
“Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God Almighty,
Who was and is and is to come!” (Rev 4:8)

Heavenly places echo with constant worship, so we too must keep our hearts tuned to this atmosphere. As we know, God is looking for true worshippers: “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.“(John 4:23) However this isn’t easy, as we know. But I think Paul gives us some help here:  his exhortation to the Thessalonians to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess 5:18) is a reminder to remain thankful for the wonder of our salvation and the abundance of God’s mercy in lifting us into those heavenly places, whatever may be happening around us. Whatever we are doing, we can always seek God’s face in the midst of it: “When You said, “Seek My face,” My heart said to You, “Your face, LORD, I will seek.” (Psalm 27:8) If we seek His presence we will find it (Matthew 7:7), and when we do, our hearts will be stirred to worship, on earth as it is in heaven. It was “because of His great love with which He loved us” that God “made us alive together with Christ,” so that He could have us in His presence and we could share the wonders of heaven with Him. We have been lifted there because God wants us with him. I have a precious pair of pictures of my son-in-law with my 4-year old grandson. In the first picture, he is standing behind his son, with his arms outstretched, but the little boy is looking in the other direction and is unaware of what is about to happen. In the next picture, he has been scooped up, and his happy face is close to the smiling countenance of his loving dad. The God of the Universe, in all His glory and majesty, has scooped us up because He wanted us close to Him. If we can keep our hearts aligned with this truth I think the rest will follow; and spiritual authority, alongside the capacity to love, will become a reality in our lives. (Eph. 2:4-5) God doesn’t need our thanks: giving thanks in all circumstances is for our benefit, not His.

Maintain holiness and consecration.
Heaven is a holy place. Jesus has qualified us to be there, but He wants us to take what we have been given in heaven and bring it to earth. As well as keeping our flame of worship alive, we need to keep our mind renewed and empty of carnality and selfish ambition. Talking of those “by nature children of wrath,” Paul writes “among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, … just as the others.” (Ephesians 2:3) How much of our thought life and activity revolves round gratifying the flesh? In Christ we “walk after the spirit and not after the flesh,” but it’s also true that “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another.”(Gal 5:17) Suffice to say that there is a battle going on, and we can’t expect to be spiritual without being vigilant.

So why focus particularly on “selfish ambition?” Because Satan’s selfish ambition brought about his downfall and consequently introduced sin into the world, by tempting man with the thought that he, too, could “be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:5) Satan’s selfish ambition became Man’s: it is at the very root  of all sin. James writes: “Where jealousy and selfish ambition exists, there will be disorder and every vile practice,” (James 3:16) and Paul teaches us to ”Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves.” (Phil 2:3)

King Jesus, the Lord of Lords, was “meek and humble of heart.” Philippians 2:3 tells us that our pathway to this humility is not to try to fight a battle against conceit in our heads, but quite simply to make a practice of putting the interests of others before our own. When we are unselfishly loving others we are pulling up roots of sin in our own hearts. Holiness and consecration are a consequence of a decision to love instead of being the lofty goal of a priestly lifestyle, and love begins with humility. Peter writes, “Love covers a multitude of sin.” (1 Pe 4:8) Not only does our loving forgiveness of others cover the sin in their lives, just as Christ’s forgiveness covers ours, but it also covers “a multitude of sin” in our own hearts so that we can indeed “be holy, just as I am holy.” (1 Pe 1:16)

It’s notable that Paul partners “selfish ambition” with “vain conceit.” They have the same root of pride: both exalt self. Conceit tells me that I am better than others, and ambition makes a career path out of that belief. Since it was selfish ambition that caused Satan to be cast out of heaven, we can’t sit in heavenly places with any in our hearts.

Stay free of condemnation.
We are blameless before Him; His adopted sons. We know the scripture, of course: “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” But knowing the words doesn’t always mean we know the truth in our hearts, and many of us can be all too ready to listen to the enemy when he whispers condemnation over us, because it’s an area where he has often started building strongholds during childhood. A “naughty” child becoming a rebellious teenager who comes to faith in their early 20’s can carry a lot of baggage into the Kingdom, and it’s not always easy to leave at the cross – until we grasp the dimensions of Christ’s sacrifice measured against our condemnation. Paul writes:

“Who can lay a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, Who also makes intercession for us.” (Romans 8:33–34).

If we measure a pebble against Mount Everest, even that is not enough to even begin measuring the value of God’s gift to us against the weight – or lack of it – of condemnation that the enemy would try and lay on our shoulders. What is the devil’s pebble against us when we have a mountain of freedom in Christ? Who can lay a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Hebrews 12:2 says “Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy set before Him.” If our Jesus despised Calvary’s mountain of shame, who are we to catch and carry the pebbles that the devil tosses in our direction? “He who believes in Him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 10:11, 1 Pe 2:6)

Condemnation that hurts us is only part of the picture, however, because “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45) If we feel condemned in ourselves, we will be prone to condemning others. If we can truly walk in the freedom that Christ has given us in this area, we will be less likely to be judgemental of others; less likely to be open to the enemy using us to put other people to shame. Even when we work at not allowing the critical words to be formed on our lips, what is in our hearts will always leak out. If there is no shame in our own hearts, there will be none to spill over others.

I want to look at one more aspect of this topic before we leave it. Paul writes “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16) If we are vulnerable to condemnation and the shame that it brings, it will affect our witness: if we are ashamed of ourselves, we will also be ashamed of the gospel. If we are confident in who we are in Christ, we will be more likely to be confident in sharing what He has done for us. I think this makes it one of Satan’s favoured weapons against God’s people: if there is one thing he must want more than just about anything else, it is to close down our effectiveness in sharing the victory of Calvary. We need to keep in mind the words of Jesus to the woman caught in adultery: “Woman, where are those accusers of yours?  Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” (John 8:10-11) There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus; there is no condemnation in heavenly places.

Where we are seated in the Spirit is our place of authority. The devil works hard at trying to make us get up out of our seats: we mustn’t let him.

Next: our sonship, not our business card.

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

Bone of my Bones: Headship in the Church

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“And the LORD God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said:

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.” (Genesis 2:18-25 NKJV)

“To the woman He said…Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16 NKJV)

I’m going to jump straight in here. Is headship, particularly in the church, exclusively the province of the men, or can headship – and especially church eldership – be female as well? As we know, opinions are divided. The following opinion is mine. I think it’s an important topic at the moment, because if Smith Wigglesworth’s 1947 prophesy is true, the move of God that is coming on the earth is going to be unlike anything seen before. And I don’t think the Holy Spirit was just talking about the scope of the revival as it spreads worldwide; I think He was also referring to what the church in revival will look like. It’s going to be different.

So what does it look like now? As far as we can see, the elders of the early church were all men, and Paul’s teaching on the place of women in the church certainly seems to put them below men in the hierarchy. He says to the Corinthians that women should “Keep silent in the churches,” (1 Cor 14:34), and teaches that “the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Cor 11:3) In my experience at least, women are not expected to keep silent in church any more, any more than they are generally expected to cover their heads (although there are exceptions): the societal norms of the first century don’t apply today. More difficult to dismiss is the “headship hierarchy” that Paul gives: God over Christ, Christ over man, man over woman. Many (but again, not all) evangelical denominations hold to the “complementarian” view that men and women are equal before God in value and worth, but have distinct roles in the home and church, one of which is the role of headship that falls to the man.

The previous verse says this: “Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions just as I delivered them to you.” The word translated here as “traditions” (Greek paradosis, if you are interested) is literally rendered as “ordinances,” and was used particularly to describe the body of precepts that illustrated and expanded the written law particularly as it applied  to ritual. Strong’s defines the word as “transmission, i.e. (concretely) a precept; specially, the Jewish traditionary law:—ordinance, tradition.” (Strong’s G3862) Paul was establishing a new culture in a society of Roman licentiousness and temple prostitution, where women without a head covering were communicating a message of sexual availability; where women drawing attention to themselves by speaking out in public again signalled a desire to be noticed for more than just their words.

Paul was a Pharisee, a passionate keeper and self-appointed guardian of the Law, who had had a life-changing encounter with Christ, the fulfilment of the Law. He had exchanged his vision of the law for his vision of Christ, but he still would have had some of the ways of of a pharisee: his intention was that the church of Christ should not be brought into disrepute in the society of his day, and I imagine he would have given weight to the “traditions” he delivered because of the importance of tradition in his past. Ordinances, or traditions (paradosis), were an integral part of Jewish law, and carried its full weight. But the church is not under the law, as Paul is repeatedly at pains to remind us. By his own description, Paul’s instructions were the commands of a man: just because he shows an authoritative manner in applying them to a situation that could affect the reputation of the church within its community does not necessarily mean that we can infer from those instructions a timeless principle that Jesus applies to building His church today.

Principles of headship
Such principles can be found elsewhere: in Ephesians 4, for example, where we read how we “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.” (Ephesians 4: 15-16) There is no hierarchy of headship here: men and women together, the whole body, grow up in all things into the one Head. In fact “joined and knit together by what every joint supplies” has an echo of Adam’s joyful “bone of my bones” – the original creation reflected in the new. Again, Colossians 1:18 tells us that Christ has supremacy in all things, and specifically that He is “the head of the body, the church.” In Ephesians 1: 22-23 we read that God has put all things under His feet and appointed Him as “head over all things to the church,” and again in Ephesians 5:23 Paul states that “Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the saviour.” There is no reference in any of these verses to Christ’s headship of women being delegated through men. God has “raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:6) To infer from Paul’s instructions on maintaining order in the early church that men and women are anything other than “together” under the headship of Christ, seems dangerously close to falling into the same trap as the religious leaders of his day whom Jesus castigated, quoting Isaiah, for “teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” (Matt 15:9)

A help meet for him
Finally, if headship was male we could expect to see evidence of this in how God ordered His creation before the fall, yet it seems to me at least that the opposite is the case. His intention to create Eve is stated in Genesis 2:18, where He says He will make a helper, or literally a help, suitable for Adam. The  KJV translates the original Hebrew words ezer kenegdo as a “help meet for him,” which is rendered variously in different translations as “a helper suitable for him” (NIV, NASB), “a helper comparable to him” (NKJV) “a helper who is just right for him” (NLT) etc. The KJV translation reads “a help meet for him” (“meet” meaning “suitable” in the English of the time), and the two have become combined into a single noun, “helpmeet.” If we read this with a male-headship mindset, we can, if we aren’t careful, see God creating a sort of sous-chef for Adam’s kitchen; someone who “helps out” with the jobs he can’t manage on his own in his task of tending and watching over the Garden of Eden. But the Hebrew phrase “ezer kenegdo” literally means “a helper corresponding to him,” or “a matching counterpart.” And if we look at how and where else the word ezer is used in the Old Testament, we find that it occurs many times in the book of Psalms. Well known verses include

Psalm 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”

Psalm 121:1-2: “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

Psalm 33:20: “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.”

Psalm 124:8: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

In the New Testament, the original language is different, but the concept carried into our English translations is the same: “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.” (John 15:26)

Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the Helper.” In other words, God used the word “Helper” for Himself, and He made man in His image. God made woman for man so that man wasn’t alone, not because he could not manage. She was the helper that was kenegdo, corresponding to him like a mirror image. He created Eve to work in the garden alongside Adam, not under him. Just as God had made Adam in his own image, so He also made Eve. Just as God is one who helps, so is Eve. Just as God is our companion who strengthens us and provides succour, and is the one who rescues and protects us, Eve can do the same. Ezer kenegdo means all of that. Yes, she can carry Adam’s tools in the garden; and at the same time no doubt God intended that Adam should also give help to Eve. Eve was not created to be Adam’s assistant: she was his ally. And just as we are only complete in relationship with our Helper, so Adam was only complete in relationship with his. You can’t have an incomplete head. The text suggests to me that the man and the woman were created to be side by side in the Garden, tending it in relationship, and that neither was head over the other.

And it was good… until the Fall
The fact that Eve was “taken out of Man” is sometimes construed as suggesting an innate superiority in the male; that woman was derived from Man and therefore is in some way secondary; that Man came first in creation and is therefore at the top of the hierarchy. But when Adam saw Eve, I think his reaction was entirely different. “This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” tells me that he saw his helper as someone who was the same as him, equal in every way. God was not establishing a hierarchy; He was establishing an equality. If it wasn’t “good” for man to be alone (remembering how the word “good” when used in the creation narrative describes the perfection of creation before the fall), it certainly was “good” for man to have an equal helper who would tend Creation in relationship, one flesh, with him. It was this relationship that Satan destroyed at the Fall.

We know the story of course. Eve listened to Satan, Adam joined in, they disobeyed God, and creation came under the curse of sin and death. The equality between man and woman was ruined at the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

“To the woman He said…
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.” (Gen 3:16)

So male headship didn’t begin at creation but was written into the curse, and enshrined into human traditions thereafter. But just as the curse of sin and death destroyed the relationship that God had originally created, it all changed again when Jesus went to the cross to set us free from it (Romans 8:2). Seated together in the heavenly places that Jesus paid for on our behalf, the original “good” relationship of Eden is restored. Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians addressed situations that could arise as men and women gave in to their carnal nature. But we walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh, and surely the question of headship in the church should be decided according to the truth of where men and women sit in heavenly places, in the Spirit, and not according to what Paul said to the church at Corinth that clung to the flesh. And I think we should be guided by what Genesis 2:18 seems to say about Eve being Adam’s “matching counterpart,” not by the consequence of their sin and the curse that ensued.

“The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:2) This is the only law that we should be applying when we think about headship in the home and eldership in the church.

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.”

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!”

Christian Life, Holiness: You shall be perfect, Living by Faith

Away in a Manger

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“O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you?” (Luke 9: 41)

If you have been fortunate enough to have done some international travel, you will probably have experienced a bit of culture shock when moving between different cultural norms. Attitudes to considerations such as punctuality, work ethic, loyalty, hospitality, debt and much more can vary between nations, and can be quite difficult to adjust to while we are away from home. But while the tinsel of “civilized behaviour” can be draped across – or pulled off – any number of different practices depending on where they are performed, the common strands of acceptability are still enough to enable, say, an American Indian, an English nobleman, and an Maori tribesman to recognise and accept each other as members of the Human family. Moving between them might be a bit awkward at times, but the obstacles aren’t insurmountable. However there are two societies where the gulf between the cultures  is so enormous that the consequence is all-out war, and that is the culture of Heaven and the culture of the world.

Jesus said: “You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23). He refers a few times to “this generation,” notably in Matthew 24:34, when He is talking about the events of the last days: “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” The word used in Greek is just ‘what it says on the tin’ – a line of descent from common ancestry. There are differing interpretations of the text, but  I think that the “generation” that Jesus refers to is, quite simply, the generation of Adam that is born of the flesh. It is the generation that will finally pass away when He ”makes all things new.” Until then, there are two generations in the world: the generation of the first Adam, born from below; and the generation of the second Adam, born (again) from above, born of the Spirit, alive in Christ. Faith is from Above. It can only be received and exercised in the Spirit, which is why the generation of the first Adam is faithless. The Greek word diastrepho, translated as “perverse,” means diverted from the right path and specifically opposing the saving plan and purposes of God. The flesh has been perverse since the first Adam perverted it in the garden of Eden.

God said “Let there be…” and there was. The universe was created by the Word of God (Hebrews 11:3), and that word became flesh in the Incarnation. The Son of Man Himself is the perfect and complete expression of faith. The faith by which Love of God brings creation and its redemption into existence is the very atmosphere of Heaven. Jesus left that atmosphere behind to dwell among us, in a culture that was totally and fundamentally in opposition to everything that He was. When we consider the lowly conditions of the Lord’s birth we traditionally see a great disparity between the surroundings that one would expect for the baby King of Kings and the environment of the stable. But the distance between these two extremes is just a pinprick when compared with the great gulf that exists between the world “below” and the world “above.” It wouldn’t be surprising if there were times when all He wanted was to go back home.

What about us? We are born from Above; we are no longer “of the world” any more than He is (John 17:16). In Christ, we have “places to walk” among those who stand in the courts of Heaven, (Zech 3:7) where we are also seated. (Eph 2:6) As descendants of the second Adam, we are also “conformed to His image” (Romans 8:29) and therefore restored to the image of God as we were originally created. Spiritual things can only be spiritually discerned, yet we so often fall into the snare of trying to understand our spiritual heritage through the clouded eyes of the flesh, and grapple with the impossibility of trying to reconcile our self-image as creatures of this earth (below) with the idea of our inheritance in Heavenly places (above). But as I wrote in my last article (we shall be like Him), not only will we be like Him when He returns, but we already are like Him in the Spirit.

As I have quoted in that article, John writes: “we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2). The apostle goes on to say this, in verse three: “And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” (1 John 3:3). I strongly believe that Jesus is calling His bride today to purify herself. Do we settle for the norms of the “faithless and perverse generation” that we live among? Or are we straining our spiritual lungs to breathe in the pure atmosphere of faith, in which the Word of God can bring about the purposes of Heaven? Do we seek the Kingdom of God above all else? Are our lives an incarnation of Love? Do we hunger for the bread of Heaven? Do we thirst for the living water of the Holy Spirit and cry out with the sons of Korah:

“As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?  (Psalm 42:1-2)

I wonder how many times Jesus prayed these verses Himself when He was alone on the mountain with His Father.

We are no longer of “this generation” because we have been born from Above, but we dwell among those who are, with the King’s work to do, for as long as the King wants to keep us on Earth. So as long as we remain here, let’s remember who we are and where we come from; because until we leave this tent for our permanent residence we too are away in a manger.

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)

Christian Life, Walking in the Spirit

The Saddle: Seated with Christ in Heavenly Places

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And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. (Eph 2: 6-7)

Are you born again? Because if you are, (and if you aren’t you need to be) this is what happened when Jesus entered your heart: you were raised up, united with Christ, and seated with Him in heavenly places. God picked you up and put you on the saddle. When you were raised out of the waters of baptism it was a symbol not only of your new life in Christ as you live out your discipleship on the earth, but also of God’s own hand lifting you from the “miry clay” of sin to be seated with His Son in the Spirit. And to be absolutely clear, Scripture gives us more detail of exactly where in the heavenly realms Jesus is seated. When God raised Him from the dead by “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,” He “seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 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.” (Eph 1: 19-21).

Since we are seated with Him, our saddle is there as well. So what does it mean to be seated?

It means the job is done. The death and resurrection of Jesus completed the work of salvation for all time, and we sit with Him, sharing in that completed work. He won the victory at Calvary and we share in the spoils. Nothing we did put us in that seat – even the faith that we had to believe in Jesus was a gift of God. God lifted us, and God seated us. And the power with which He lifted us with now dwells within us, and is available to us when we “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:4) However we must also remember that Jesus is not just sitting with His feet up at the right hand of the Father now that His work is completed: He is busy interceding for us (Heb 7:25). So as we sit there with Him we can be engaged in the same activity, and we can be talking with Him about what He wants us to pray for.

Being seated means we are in the place of authority. Jesus is seated “far above all principality and power and might and dominion.” Not just a bit above, but far above. I have never been given revelation on the topography of the heavenly realms, but those who have tell us that the second heaven is the area of the demonic principalities and powers, whereas the third heaven – where Paul was taken and “heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter” (2 Cor 12: 4) – is where Jesus is seated, and where we, in the Spirit, are seated with Him. We are not just above the forces of the enemy and their destructive works on Earth, we are literally on another level. If we think about demonic activity from an earthly or carnal perspective, we can easily feel intimidated or uncertain; and this makes sense because the second Heaven is obviously on a “higher” level than our earthly abode. This of course is exactly what the devil wants. But if we look at the enemy from where we are seated we have a very different picture, and it is no longer us who are intimidated, but him.

Finally, being seated means being in the place of rest. I am sure you have seen someone on a mountain bike, pedalling up an impossible-looking slope, with their legs moving faster than their wheels, but nonetheless moving forward in their lowest gear, remaining seated, and not even appearing to exert themselves. Hebrews 4 talks about the rest of God, and verse 3 tells us that “we who have believed do enter that rest.” Later in the same chapter the writer exhorts us (v. 11): “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.” (ie the disobedience of the Israelites.) Peter too exhorts us to “be diligent to be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” (2 Pe 3:14) If we keep short accounts with God and with one another “the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7) and our peace remains with us. Even though we may be pedalling hard, the saddle remains a restful place. And when we are in it, whatever the path looks like, our God “will supply all (our) need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus” (Phil 4: 19). The right gear will be there on the bike when we need it. We do not need to get out of the saddle to exert more pressure on the pedals, and we certainly do not need to get off the bike to help God by pushing it up the hill.