Heavenly Perspective – Part 1

We are going to talk about a heavenly perspective because of our heavenly identity.  To do this, we must know what heavenly perspective and heavenly identity is.  A heavenly perspective is seeing things through the eyes of God.  This is how God would perceive and see particular persons, places and things.  Heavenly Identity is who you are in Christ.

We must understand that when we got saved, we experienced a new birth and became a new person.  This new person is different than the person we used to be before we got saved.  This person has a different way of looking at things and thinks differently than the person we used to be.  If you begin to allow that new person to dominate your life, you will begin to see the results that God intends for you to have and you will begin to experience them as you live for the Lord.

Because we believe in the gifts of the Spirit, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, healings, miracles, deliverance, authority over devils, it is important that we build a foundation and teach every believer their identity, position, and God given rights so that they are not engaged in a battle that they find themselves struggling to win.

But did you know that when you fight, you have to learn both the offensive methods and the defensive methods of fighting.  You have to know how to defend when the enemy attacks.  A good biblical foundation regarding your heavenly identity and being able to look at things from a heavenly perspective gives you the ability to defend when the enemy attacks you because you know your rights and you don’t allow him to get away with something that he has no right to get away with.

When someone is going to do warfare, they got to know first of all, that they cannot be defeated in warfare.  They have to know that the enemy has no ability to overcome them and the only way to know that is to find out your identity according to the Word of God. That way you know how to live consistently and be instant in season and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2).  That way you realize that everything you face on the battlefield of life has been answered and has been provided for in the Word of God.

Let’s turn to Colossians 3:1-5 (Memory Verses) 1 If then you are raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. 2 Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. 5 Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

I want to draw your attention to some things here. The Bible says, “we ought to seek the things which are above.” Another tranlation of the Bible says, “the things above be constantly seeking”. That means in order for you to seek the things which are above constantly and set your mind on them, we have to first of all, know what the things above are.  The Bible said, “if then you are raised with Christ…” Do you believe that when Jesus rose from the dead, you rose with Him?  That’s right! When you rose, you rose a different person then when you died.  Now most people look to the cross as the end, but the cross is not the end, it is the beginning.  Thank God for the cross, for without it, there is no beginning.  Praise God for the burial because without it, there is no death to your old nature.  Glory be to God for the resurrection because without it there is no new identity that can live on the inside of you.  Most of us are so mindful of the death of Christ that we fail to cash in on the resurrection of Christ.  Now Colossians says, “if then you were raised with Christ…”

That means you rose again victorious over death, hell, grave, sickness, sin and disease.  So that means that God expects you to do something with with the information.  He said “this is what you ought to do, constantly be seeking the things which are above.” Now Jesus said, “Seek ye first” what?  that’s right! The Kingdom (Matthew 6:33)

There is no better place to depict or project a revelation of the kingdom of God then heaven itself.  Heaven is the perfect place to see the kingdom in action.  Why? because heaven is a place where God’s Word is settled. There’s absolutely no turbulence, turmoil, contradiction or doubt regarding the rulership or the kingship or the dominion of the Lord.  Jesus Christ in heaven is Lord of all. There’s no one arguing, no one trying to overthrow His authority in the third heaven. He is King of Kings. Now the Bible says, “we are seated with Him in heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6), so if we want to bring the kingdom of God and the power of God into the earth realm, we have got to have a heavenly perspective.  We have got to come at warfare, at the enemy, the world and life from a superior position of authority.  We dont fight to overcome, we fight because we have already overcome.  We dont fight to get the victory, we fight because we already have the victory.  We are already risen with Vhrist. We are already seated with Christ and the Bible says “if then you are raised with Christ, then constantly be seeking the things which are above and constantly set your mind on things which are above.

Christians seem to think that spirituality has nothing to do with what they believe, what they meditate upon or what they invest in. They want God to just show up and do it, but it is not like that.  “If then you are raised with Christ, set your mind on those things which are above.”  That means you have to meditate upon your position, your identity and your new nature in God. Remember, man did nto invent creativity. Man did not impart to himself the power to imagine.  It was God who made man.  All men, regardless of their salvation have God-given abilities to go places in their mind.  If you think, you will find out you are thinking in pictures.  You will find out that you are relating to something.  Man has the ability to follow his thoughts.  Try it one day.  Just think about someone in anger and think about them in disappointment and think about them in resentment, and then run into that person.  You will have a very hard time being nice to that person.  You will have a very hard time communicating with that person.  What they have set their mind upon has set them up to become a slave to the thing that they have chosen to meditate upon.

Well by the same token, you cannot think good about God, His Word or your position in Christ before you begin to draw near to Him and you being to actively experience the reality of the thing that He has provided for you. So the Bible says, “if you meditate upon the Word of God day and night and let not the Book of the Law depart out of your heart and mouth, but learn to do everything that is written in it, you will make your way prosperous and you will have good success (Joshua 1:8)

Most of us know that, but you see knowing it is not enough.  Knowing it does not ensure a short cut to receiving that thing.  When you get a revelation of the finished work, it’s going to take meditation, thinking upon, analyzing, evaluating, studying, digging into the Word of God until you receive the reality and the power of those things.  Until the experiential power is flowing through you, you haven’t arrived and even when the power is flowing, you still haven’t arrived.  So what do you do?

You seek those things. We constantly set our minds on those things which are above.  Now the things I am talking about are related to your position in Christ, your authority through Christ and your identity through Christ.  You are not who you used to be so in order for you to really experience that, you have got to start thinking on who you are.  You have got to start speaking in relationship to who you are.  In order to operate as a person of authority you have to see yourself from a biblical perspective, find out where you are seated in God and find out what Jesus has paid for you to have.

People go around for many years and then the power of the thing they are seeking begins to flow through them. Understand this! Every man will eventually yield to one power or the other. He will either yield to demonic spirits or the Spirit of God. He will either have demonic supernatural power or Godly supernatural power.

The Bible said we have been given the Holy Spirit (1 Thes 4:8).  The Holy Spirit of God gives us the ability to open every dimension of ourselves to the supernatural embodiment, incarnation, residence of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Now He’s inside us, but the more you pray in your heavenly language, the more you will get out of the natural, rational realm. The more you let the power of the Spirit live in you, the greater the sphere of influence that God gives you will be in your life.  So He said, “Constantly be setting your mind on the things which are above.” So what happens is – those things which are above are the real provisions that jesus has for you – your identity in Christ, your new nature through Christ, your authority through Christ, your victory through Him, and your heavenly perspective through His Word are realities that will never become real to you unless you constantly set your mind upon them. That means both conscious and unconscious effort.

The Road Not Taken (John 18-19)

Jesus entered the world in controversy and lived much of His life under the shadow of doubt. His mother received an angelic visit informing her that she would be the mother of the Messiah and that His birth would be in literal fulfillment of an ancient prophecy: “Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel” (Isa :14). In other words, her baby would be conceived without a human father. Unfortunately, her wonderful secret would soon become a neighborhood scandal. Her betrothed was prevented from filing a quiet divorce by another angelic vision, but we have no indication the Lord supernaturally revealed the truth regarding the conception to anyone other than Joseph. No one else in Nazareth received an angelic visit telling them the truth.

From the very beginning and throughout His public ministry, belief in the Christ would be a matter of choice. Which evidence would people trust? Scripture or their own prejudices and presuppositions? Which authority would people accept? The Word of God or their own desires?

As Jesus proclaimed divine truth, His critics relished every opportunity to question His origins, taking great care to avoid the overwhelming prophetic evidence of His divine identity. As we have observed, most people miraculously performed, ironically while demanding He prove Himself by performing miraculous signs. Nevertheless, many others were attracted to His obvious divine power. Ultimately, “His own” moved beyond the need for miraculous signs to accept the MAN as the Word of God, their Messiah, the Son of God.

By the end of His public ministry, Jesus had polarized the nation. On one side stood the unbelieving temple authorities in all their religious finery, on the other, a ragtag collection of a few hundred committed believers. Between them stood a vast multitude, whose souls hung in the balance and each side, the minions of evil and the followers of Jesus, had been tasked to claim them.

As the sunset one evening before Passover, each side retreated to prepare for the first real battle of an invisible war, a cosmic campaign for the souls of humanity. Both claimed to be the sole guardian of divine truth, but the religious leaders hoped to settle the matter quickly. Before the end of the passover festival, they intended to prove their case by killing Jesus. They would put Him on trial for openly opposing the temple authorities, and God by extension, and then crucify Him as a blasphemer. By sundown on “the day of preparation”, they hoped to bury His body and with it, any notion that He was the promised Messiah, the Son of God, the Word incarnate, the Savior of humanity. With the good news, salvation by grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone, lying cold in a tomb, their proud religion of works could again reign supreme, with the temple authorities back in control.

Our journey through life brings us to forks in the road. The choice we face is not between convention and curiosity as much as between truth and power, riches on earth or treasure in heaven, earthly success or spiritual purity, short-term comfort or eternal reward. The urge to preserve our comfort in the here and now can powerfully override our decision to obey God. Let’s face it – His rewards are often intangible and almost always delayed, which makes obedience a matter of trust.

Pontius Pilate stood at a critical juncture – for Him, a choice having eternal impact. He had to decide which kingdom he would serve. To render a “not guilty” verdict and release Jesus would certainly have destroyed his political career and might have invited severe punishment by Rome. So, instead of submitting to the kingdom of God, Pilate set truth aside for the sake of power, earthly success and short term comfort.

Before we pass judgment and count ourselves righteous, let me challenge your ethics with a test. What if you were a clerk in a German army, busily typing out orders and the command to round up Jews and dissenters crossed your desk? In a totalitarian regime, disobedience will almost certainly result in severe punishment, if not death. And what for? You will not likely be remembered for your stand. Another nameless, faceless clerk will be pressed into service after your removal, anyway. What would be gained? Certainly the satisfaction that you did what was right, but that will likely come at the expense of great suffering.

How about a situation not so clear-cut? The highest ranking member of your employer’s office – the person with the most power and least accountability asks you to do something your conscious clearly tells you is wrong. What do you do? No lives are at stake. It’s unlikely anything tragic will result. Besides, what would be gained? When you are fired, would the satisfaction of doing what is right taste as sweet? Or, as you tell the story to your coworkers and share their outrage, will you shrug off your responsibility with the words, “A command is a command; I’m only following orders”?

The road we travel forks more than once. Our initial decision to trust in Jesus is the most crucial choice we will make, but it is the first of many. Each day, we must choose which kingdom we will serve. Will you submit to truth or succumb to power?

What You See Isn’t What You Get (Nbrs 14:5-24)

How many times have we let our eyes gauge our situations?  How many times have we allowed our human mind to reason through our trials?  When we walked in the world without the knowledge of God, we often face challenges in our lives too overwhelming for us to handle.  As a result, we’d worry and stress over the possible outcomes and how we would fair.  We never knew what would happen from one moment to the next.  Our lives would be overcome with fear, doubt, negative thoughts and the like.  Then one day, God reveals Himself to us. We accept His invitation to be Lord over our life.  Over time, He proves Himself to us, bringing us out of our trials, providing four our every need, performing miracles and more. Things seem to be going well in the early stages our our relationship, but how many of you know that as we grow and mature in God, He expects us to exercise our faith more?  The trials increase. From our perspective, our life takes a turn for the worse.  Here is where we should look back upon our past and remember all God has done.  Here is where we should trust and believe.  Her is where we should stand confidently and firmly in the midst of our storms, yet, for most, here is where life falls apart.  We allow our human nature to take over our reasoning of our human hearts and minds.  Trust and faith take a leap out the proverbial window.  Struggles take hold.  We forget all we experience, all we witnessed, and all we learned and reach back into our nature and react accordingly.  Many of us give up long before the trials end, forgetting the truth of God’s promises and losing sight of the important fact of Who’s in control.

This is where our studies begin.  In Numbers 14, the children of Israel are right in this exact spot.  They had experienced miracle after miracle, received promise after promise, and lived with God like no other people, yet after all this, they still reverted back to unbelief and every situation arose.  Though God had brought them out of bondage, saved them from death and destruction, and provided for their every need, they still weren’t satisfied.  In Chapter 14, the people of Israel are responding to the news reports they had just received from the scouts.  It is said, that the initial response of a person is usually the most accurate indication of that person’s heart.

All but the last two of the scouts returned with a negative report.  As the people listened intent, they began to fear all that lay ahead.  Instinctively and immediately, they respond with complaints and accusations of their leaders.  Their reaction indicated that they had no memory of their freedom from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, the events of the Egyptian pursuit, the provisions of water, manna and meat or anything else God had done for them.  Seeing their response and knowing God’s mind, Moses and Aaron fall on their faces on their behalf, interceding before God for  their lives.  While they are doing this, Caleb and Joshua stand to be recognized.  They top participated in scouting this land, but their report differed drastically from that of the scouting party.  They see the land through their eyes of faith and trust in God’s promises and past performances.  They remind the people of that very thing, though their report was disregarded.  Displeased, God’s wrath is about to be loosed upon this unbelieving race.  Fortunately, Moses comes to the rescue.  With humility and reverence, He intercedes before the Creator on behalf of the people, pointing out how God’s plan of destruction would be perceived to the surrounding nations who had already heard of His might.  As a result, God spares the people, but rescinds His promise to those in unbelief.  Only Joshua and Caleb would inherit the land.

What you see isn’t what you get! When we look through our human eyes we can only see failure, defeat, death, hopelessness and the like.  Without the Spirit of faith, without the provision of God, we can only reap the fruit of despair and all it brings.  What you see isn’t what you get when God is involved.  With God, we are given spiritual eyes to see our situations in a different light.  What was once impossible now becomes possible.  Our spiritual eyes accept that we are nothing apart from God.  The worst situations with no solutions, now become situations with possibles.  What you see isn’t what you get!

Instead of complaining, begin praying.  Humbling yourself, cast your problems upon the Lord, then look at the situation through your spiritual eyes as the result come about.  Had the people looked at the land through their spiritual eyes, they would have seen a land without the obstacles.  God would have done as before and opened up the door of opportunities and rained down blessings and provisions.

6 Ways to Pray

1. Aspirations.  A strong aspiration and desire to pray will create the proper climate for effective intercession. (2 Corithians 7:7, Matthew 5:6)

2.  Fervency.  Fervency changed Elijah’s situation, suspended natural laws, and brought about supernatural miracles through prayer. (James 5:16-18)

3. Perseverance. On some items, there will be instant results as we pray, while answers for other requests might take time. However, Scripture talks about persevering and enduring until the answer comes, learning to add patience to our faith. (Ephesians 6:18, Hebrews 6:12)

4. Intercession.  Addresses the pray-er needs, assists in intercession for other.  True pray-ers know the importance of standing in the gap between God and others until the result comes.

5. Praying in tongues. (Jude 20 Amp, Ephesians 6:18)

6. Choose a comfortable posture: Kneeling, sitting, standing, prostrating

A Bridge Built Out of Faith

Joshua 3:1-17

There are two central truths to follow if we want the Lord to do great things in our lives.

1) We must declare our dedication (Joshua 3:1-8).  As this chapter opens up, the people are preparing to cross the Jordan River led by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant, God’s very presence.  The instructions given were very specific and had to be followed to the letter if all was to be a success.  The priests themselves prepared the ark themselves for the travel as outlined in the Levitical Law, but preparation didnt stop there.  The people themselves had a responsibility as well.  They too must prepare their hearts and minds, as well as, their families and possessions.  Can you imagine all that crossed their mind?  God was now after 500 year of waiting, fulfilling the promise given to Abraham.  Happiness should have flooded their very being, but what was to come? The people were now camped at the edge of the Jordan almost directly across from Jericho.  It was harvest time, around April, and the Jordan River was at flood stage.  Picture yourself looking across at the waters as they turbulently travel downstream, not to mention, the depth of the waters themselves.  This was an impossible feat from their human perspective, yet they had to have had hope as they are told that the Ark would go before them.

So what part did they play in all this? The Ark represented the very presence of God.  The people had to sanctify themselves to even follow behind a holy God.  They had to search their hearts and minds, ridding themselves of anything unpleasing to God.  The people are told that they would travel 3000 feet behind the Ark.  Why do you think that was? First, the people needed to be far back enough to see where the priests were going as they had never gone there before.  The distance would allow them to see the events unfold as God’s hand performed the miracles required to fulfill His promises.  They say seeing is believing.  Their eyes would see, their faith would take root and their bodies would follow as a result.  Second, God is a holy God.  The distance separated a holy God from the sinful people, thus protecting their very life.

So what happens now? The priests carry the Ark and in faith take the first step into the turbulent flood waters of the Jordan. What happens now is nothing short of a miracle.  Just as at the Red Sea, the waters part, the river bed dries up and the people must now make their final decision – will they move forward in faith and trust God or will they let fear hold them from the promise they had so long been waiting for? 
That leads us to the second truth:

2. We must demonstrate dependence, trust, and faith in God if He is to do great things in our lives. (Joshua 3:9-17)

The people witness the waters parting and see the river bed dry, but there was more to weigh on.  If they walk forward and decide to cross, what then?  They knew that once they crossed, there was no turning back, the waters would return to normal and their way blocked.  They also knew that they were entering enemy territory, a place where their very lives were in danger.  Yet, in faith, knowing that God’s presence was before them, knowing that His hand had unfolded the supernatural miracle, they follow Him in faith, choosing to pass the point of no return and faithfully accepting the victory as they depended upon God for their every need.  If God was before them and for them, then who could come against them and separate them from His Love?  As a result of their faith, God would now do great and mighty things in their life.