Pictures in the Spirit

Jesus said the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.  The Spirit came to bring a revelation of Jesus Christ.  As we receive Him directly and fed through others we are strengthened in our inner man, our Spirit.  This is a simple truth and the basis of all spiritual life.  I am convinced that living in the world as we know it today, the Spirit of Christ has affected, touched, and found some ground in many people.  The truth that in these last days, the Lord has poured His Spirit upon all flesh, is evident if we have eyes to see.  Jesus said to lift up our eyes and see the fields ready for harvest.  The Spirit of God has been brooding upon the earth in a new and glorious way for 2000 years since Jesus appeared and poured out His Spirit on Pentecost.

Jesus taught in parables to help His disciples understand things of the kingdom of God.  He expressed spiritual truth in picture stories.  He also said His words are spirit and are life.  When we hear with the spiritual ears given by God, we receive life.  We get it.  The natural mind apart from the Spirit of God cannot understand.  As we seek the Lord and the growth He desires to provide, He will give pictures.  I know believers whose spirits have grown to receive 3-D visions.  Do we need to say that such experiences are Biblical and that the Spirit of God has not changed since creation?  Jesus took three with Him to the mountain and He was transfigured and Moses and Elijah joined Him in conversation.  This was not symbolic, this was real!

Now I understand that this was an encouragement for Jesus.  You may say, Jesus did not need encouragement.  You are separating yourself from His humanity.  Rather I would remind you He was fully human.  The record states that the three, Elijah, Moses, and Jesus, spoke of Jesus’ impending death.  Three in the heavenly realm being observed by three in the earthly.  The veil was removed and the Lord had three witnesses, Peter, James, and John.  In the mouth of two or three witnesses let every fact be established.  They would see Jesus resurrected, and John would see much more years later on Patmos.

The other 9 disciples did not see what Peter, James, and John saw that night and I think those three obeyed Jesus and did not mention it until later.  Peter mentions it in his letter.  I have not had an open vision but I have had pictures in my spirit.  I would say they were seen in the spirit of my mind as Paul described the place where we are renewed.  An example is, while in fervent prayer, I was seeing myself, my spirit, as a flame ascending.  I was wrapped with another flame like two strands of a rope and I understood the other flame as the Holy Spirit.  We were operating as one before the Lord.  I observed a similar picture in the natural.  It was very unusual.  I was at an outdoor storage unit in our apartment complex and noticed two long worms on the side of the structure.  One stretched itself to form a circle and I recall the other stayed in a long straight line.  I realized they were slugs who had significantly stretched  their normally short bodies.  After other movements that appeared calculated, they wrapped themselves as the strands of a rope.  They were mating.  I was surprised by what I observed.  They operated as one.

First the natural, then the spiritual.  It is a way of the Lord, more than a law or principle, it is the way He reveals things that already are.  His desire is that we be joined, married to Him, one with Him.  As Jesus prayed, He prays for us, not as independent individuals, although that is important, but as a group.  He prays that we be one as He and the Father are one.  John records it in John 17.  That body of true believers, even disciples, even wise virgins are the ones He prayed for.  He said He was not praying for the world.  I believe He meant He was not praying for all the people but for that group, including the women I want to add, and all those who believe (that is, truly believe and trust) because of what others hear from them.

He was focused on His own.  He defined them as the ones His Father had given Him.  Jesus Himself had a small group.  It’s wonderful to me that over the next 50 days following that prayer, the 12 would increase to 120 in the upper room.  Jesus said it was expedient that He leave so that the Spirit would come.  Through that initial group, Jesus began to turn the world upside down.  Now we see Him turning it inside out.  How is that for a picture?  I am smiling.  Don’t try to picture that.

A New and Better Covenant

(Jeremiah 31:31-34, Hebrews 8:6-13)

This meditation has been with me for years but is new and fresh every day.  I have said that I hoped for us as His people to come fully out of every shadow of the old covenant and fully enter the new.  And this I said out of a desire that we gain a revelation, an understanding of the eternal covenant.  This is fresh just as the manna was in the wilderness.  He makes all things new continually.  He never changes.  He is always the same.  He is eternal.

The new covenant is made in a relationship that requires following the Lamb.  Are you following?  Are you even now knowing the desire to be closer to Him than you have ever been?  Are you wanting Him for a newness?  He is always ready to give it.  I do not mean here to imply it is automatic.  It always includes a waiting, a seeking, a pressing on and a pressing in.  But He is faithful and a rewarder of all who diligently seek Him.  As we go on and have pressed through, we will find His response to us is quickened.  Didn’t He say, I come quickly?  If this seems contradictory, it is our analysis that often is our problem.  That’s part of growth, our processing of what is happening around us and in us.  So Lord, give us an eternal perspective, that is, Your perspective.

His desire is for this very thing, for a people who answer the call to come higher.  It includes leaving things behind just as He said it would be as we follow Him.  The higher call always has a cost.  The disciples did not know the end of this earthly life immediately when they responded to Him.  Abraham was not called to sacrifice his son on the first day he heard God call him.  He went on a journey, not fully comprehending where God was taking Him.  But he left Chaldea, his hometown behind.  He left the world, the riches, the comfort of this world, this present evil age behind.  So Jesus said to the religious of His day, if you say Abraham is your father, do what Abraham did.  But they had no hears to hear the voice of God, as Abraham heard and followed.

May the Lord tune our ears to His pitch, even a mature (that’s what His perfect is) hearing, a spiritual hearing, unmixed with our own desires.  I had been drawn to Jesus’ full discourse in John’s gospel.  It covers a few pages, all spoken at that table when the Passover was fulfilled.  All of the works of God are fulfilled in His Son, Jesus Christ.  And He shared that cup with them after the meal and plainly said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.  We become partakers of His life and of His sufferings as we sit at His table and share the cup with Him.

The name “Christian” has been so misused and applied that some of the Lord’s true followers don’t want to use it.  But Christ has not changed.  Jesus has been resurrected, and is now seated with all authority.  I could put the word “all” in caps.  No one has any true authority for life apart from Him.  Having written those words, I think much more must be considered.  A year or so ago, while praying I had a picture in my mind.  I saw a table and some were seated at it.  It quickly grew, and then it multiplied very strangely.  The message of it all is very simple.  True fellowship with the Lord Jesus is multiplying.  Many are being drawn to Him, to enter into this covenant, this new, eternal one that is based in and consists of His blood.   The phrase, “the blood of the eternal covenant,” resonates within me.  It motivates the passion.  His life is in the blood.

Read the passages I reference under the title.  The writer of Hebrews refers to the very words that God gave through Jeremiah.  This wonderful, new covenant is not to be a representation of some religious concept.  It brings us into a depth of spiritual relationship that is like marriage.  But earthly marriage is temporary and cannot touch the glory that is to be fully revealed after this life is done.  And it cannot be compared to what we can know of the Lord Himself as we journey here.

The word know as used by Jeremiah is the same Hebrew word that is used when Adam knew his wife Eve and she later gave birth.  Our spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus is an intimate union where we give birth to spiritual life in others.  It is all by His word.  As Jesus said, “My words are spirit and they are life.”  Feed on Him, the living word today.