Let’s look again at Ephesians 4:17-18.
“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, BEING ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.”
This is where most of the Church has been for two thousand years.
A great mistake we have made is in being satisfied with good teaching alone. We think that because we know something of God intellectually, we have it.
I KNOW that God is in me; I KNOW that Jesus lives in me; I KNOW that I am the visible expression of the invisible God.
Because we know these things, most of the time we settle for that knowledge without having the experience of it being made real in our lives.
We MUST begin to enter into the experience of being the visible expression of the invisible God.
We fail to seek for these things because of wrong concepts.
If we know something only intellectually, without the experience, it does not do us much good.
The Word of God tells us of many wonderful things that belong to the one who has received God. If we never experience them, then what good are they?
Paul says that WE ARE SEATED WITH CHRIST IN HEAVENLY PLACES (Eph. 2:6).
We should hunger after God until we walk in the reality of this, and not think that we have it just because we know it.
Our knowledge of the Word must become experiential.
There is nothing wrong with knowledge. To know that Jesus lives in us is wonderful. To know that we are filled with His Spirit is also wonderful. The problem comes when we settle for only the knowledge, instead of seeking God for the reality.
The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, “Knowledge puffs up, but Love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1).
Knowledge in itself can be very satisfying. Many Christians today are very satisfied with their knowledge of God. Some have great knowledge of the Word, and have become teachers without the experience.
William Law said many years ago, in his book “The Power of the Spirit”, that we are foolish to think that we can go to Bible School and learn how to put off Adam and put on Christ.
You cannot know in reality what you have not experienced.
Many today have been raised in Church and know all about Jesus being the Saviour of the world, but they have never experienced His life-giving power to change their lives.
I said for years that “Jesus lives in me”, yet I had very little experience of that knowledge.
I was taught in Pentecost that because I spoke in tongues, I was filled with the Holy Spirit.
I used to ask God, “If I am filled with the Holy Spirit, why am I so ungodly and doing so many things that are contrary to a Holy Spirit?”
The Christian religious system is so full of confusion.
That is why Revelation calls her “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots” (Rev. 17:5).
Babylon means confusion.
There is NO HOPE for that religious system. The only thing we can do is scrap it.
That is why Revelation says, “Come out of her, my people” (Revelation 18:4). It cannot be fixed.
Paul says we are “ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD through ignorance” (Eph. 4:18).
Ignorance does not mean stupidity. Ignorance simply means that you do not know.
I was a Christian many years in ignorance. I did not know that I could experience the quickening, life-giving Spirit of God in me to bring me into the reality of what I knew.
You can have a lot of Bible knowledge and still be ignorant.
We have also been TAUGHT a great deal of ignorance in Christianity. We are taught defeat and failure. We are taught how powerful the devil is and how he can defeat us.
We are not taught that it is possible IN THIS LIFE to walk as Jesus walked.
The Word clearly reveals that not only is it possible, but God expects us to mix faith with His Word and make it real in our lives.
The Word says, “He that abides in Him OUGHT TO WALK EVEN AS HE WALKED” (1 John 2:6).
If we are not walking as Jesus walked, then we need to seek Him until His Spirit arises in us.
“BEING ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:18).
These verses are talking to US, the present day people of God!
We have had our understanding darkened to the abundant life that God has made available to us through Jesus. Jesus did not go to the cross only so you could die and go to heaven. He died that you “might have life and that more abundantly” (John 10:10).
The Life of God lies dormant within us. When that Life begins to function, we begin to change. We don’t TRY to change; it is a natural process of His Life coming alive within us.
The Apostle Paul said that we should be constantly transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).
The Transforming River
The book of Genesis, chapter two, talks about a river flowing in three directions and becoming four heads. The name of the first is PISON, which means “freely flowing”. The second is GIHON, which means “bursting forth”. The third is HIDDEKEL, which means “rapid”. The fourth is EUPHRATES, which means “that which makes fruitful”.
In that land of flowing rivers there are also precious stones. Precious stones are transformed stones.
In the book of Revelation, we again see a flowing river and precious stones. Stones are made precious by the flowing of the river.
This picture shows us that God’s will in Genesis is to produce precious stones for His building, which is seen complete in Revelation. Between Genesis and Revelation there is a long process to produce the City of God.
The key to spiritual understanding of the Bible is to discover that it is a Book describing and unfolding to you your own inner being.
When you first receive God, you begin to experience from the depths of your being something that is moving and flowing. This moving and flowing is the Spirit of God, represented by the flowing river in the Word.
Deep within your being there is something “freely flowing”, something “bursting forth”, something that is “rapid”, and something that will “make you fruitful”. Jesus said it this way: “He that believes in Me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water!” (John 7:38).
We need to be challenged in our walk with God — not for condemnation, but to gain proper light and understanding. We need to experience what we say we believe.
WHERE IS THE FLOWING OF THE LIVING WATER THAT WE SAY IS WITHIN US?
I used to go to God and ask Him, “Where is the abundant life and the living water that You said we were to have?”
I knew it was there, because I did experience it from time to time. I knew the problem had to be with me, not with God.
There were times when I would be greatly filled with the Spirit of God, but it would not last. God does this so that we will continue to seek Him for His fullness. I wanted to stay in that river, but I didn’t know how.
The more time we give to God to seek Him, the more we come into His flowing. Whenever you begin to sense even a little of His flowing within you, there is a transforming that takes place.
The more the river flows over the stone of the natural man, the more you are transformed into a precious stone.
A great many Christians have tried to die to the flesh and to be obedient to the Spirit, but it is impossible for the natural, carnal self-life to be like God.
If you will learn instead to turn to the Spirit of God within, and begin to experience the presence of God within you, the river of His Spirit will begin to flow, and the river will transform you.
It is impossible to enter into the presence of God and not have something of His essence flow into your soul.
The book of Revelation reveals to us that the New Jerusalem, the City of God, is made of gold, silver and precious stones. Gold represents God’s divine nature, silver represents redemption. Precious stones are made precious only by transformation.
Religion has taught us that the New Jerusalem is a golden city, and that it is up in a place called heaven. It has golden streets, gates of pearl, and a river flowing out of the throne with a Tree of Life on both sides and in the middle. Someday this city is supposed to fall out of the sky, and we will all go into it and live happily ever after. I wish it were that simple.
We must begin to pray for God’s people to have a spiritual understanding of His word.
The entire book of Revelation is revealing to us our own inner life.
You must realize that YOU CAN BEGIN TO EXPERIENCE THIS CITY OF GOD NOW.
You do not have to wait until you die to enter the New Jerusalem. Today! — right now — you can experience the flowing of the Spirit of God within you. This flowing will transform you into a precious stone, to be built up with the saints in your locality, until together you become a local expression of the City of God. This is God’s plan for His Church. We are to be A VISIBLE EXPRESSION OF THE INVISIBLE GOD.
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).
“But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
“But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:11-13).
I will never forget the time when the Spirit of God began to speak the above verses to me. That is when I began to change. I knew them and believed them and hoped for them. When the Spirit began to speak them to me, I began to seek God for the flowing of the river to transform me.
The entrance of the Word brings light. In our natural state we are in darkness, in fact we ARE the darkness. God says, “I form light, and create darkness” (Isaiah 45:7) and “the people that sat in darkness saw great light” (Mat. 4:16).
If you are in darkness, how can you see? You don’t bind the darkness, you just turn on the light.
The book of Revelation says that the New Jerusalem has streets of gold. Gold typifies divinity, streets represent the walk. Those who are experiencing the New Jerusalem are walking in the divine nature and character of God.
In the New Jerusalem there is a river flowing from the throne. Where is the throne of God today? It is within you.
Paul told the Ephesians that “He hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:6).
There is a realm, a consciousness in God, where we can experience these things.
Many talk today about the believer’s authority, but that authority comes only from the throne.
If the Spirit of God does not have authority in your life, then you cannot exercise God’s authority. If you are under the Spirit’s authority, then you will have authority.
The Crossing of the Jordan
In the Old Testament, when Israel was about to cross the Jordan, it was told them in Joshua 3:3, “And they commanded the people, saying, When ye see the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, and the priests the Levites bearing it, then ye shall remove from your place, and go after it.”
When you see the ark begin to move, that’s when you cross the Jordan. When you experience within your consciousness the Spirit of God beginning to rise, and when you begin to experience the tables of stone (the ten commandments) to be the regulating life-law within you, then you begin to cross the Jordan.
The Ten Commandments were never meant to be a set of rules and regulations that you try to keep in an outward way with your fallen humanity.
When you experience the resurrection power and Spirit of God coming alive within you, you will naturally express what was written on those tables of stone. It is effortless. No more trying to be that good Christian, but from your innermost being flows the Spirit of God to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the Law.
Don’t try so hard to be holy. All you need is one glimpse of the Ark, just a little taste of Jesus Christ in you, and all of a sudden you begin to live the life that you thought you had to die to receive.
We used to think that death solved our problems, but not so. The hope of the Gospel is not merely to get saved and then someday to die and go to heaven. The hope of the gospel is “Jesus Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).
Don’t Be Devil Conscious
Another part of the darkness in these days is to be devil-conscious.
One of the biggest-selling categories in Christian books today is writings on the Cults. Christians today are reading hundreds of books on Satanism and witchcraft. They read biographies of the experiences of people who have been in Satanism, with all the gory details about what Satan can do to you.
The reading of all these books is causing such a consciousness of Satan and demonic activity that it is actually helping that activity. (Incidentally, one of the lowest-selling categories in Christian books is prayer.)
Christians are spending millions of dollars to learn about witchcraft and demons, and how to deal with them. They think they need to learn about these things so they won’t be trapped by Satan, but that in itself can be an entrapment.
When Christians are so consumed with learning about demons and Satanic activity, it makes a statement that Christians are living in fear. They think they have to learn about Satan to fight him.
Do you really think that learning about all the details of what Satan can do to you will help empower you to fight the hosts of darkness?
IT WILL NOT!
However, if you learn to live in the presence of God, where you can say, “It is no longer I that live but Christ that lives within me” (Gal. 2:20), Satan has no power over you.
If Satan comes to me and the Spirit of God rises up within me, what can he do to me?
I can study deliverance, but is it really going to help me fight the darkness? There is only one area of true deliverance that will have lasting effect. It is this: “Let God arise and His enemies be scattered!” (Psalm 68:1).
If the Life of God never arises within your being, your enemies will never be scattered, no matter how much you study and learn.
The Word says that we have been delivered from the power of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God.
Listen. If we have truly been taken out of the power of darkness and placed into the Kingdom of God as the Word says, then we need to experience it.
The Word of God is not a theory, but a fact. If you have been taken out of the power of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God, then Satan has no power over you.
You may say, “But look at the multitude of Christians who pray every day, yet the enemy is destroying their finances, and they are eaten up with sickness and disease. How can you say the devil has no power over them?”
It is because of the darkness.
Again I must repeat:
“This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, BEING ALIENATED FROM THE LIFE OF GOD through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Eph. 4:17-18).
Most Christians believe more in the power of the devil than in the power of God.
By confessing and believing in the power of evil to prevail over you, you give it the power to do so.
Whatever you believe in will work for you.
You believe in your heart that the devil has power over you, you then confess it with your mouth, and it becomes yours by experience.
It can be very difficult to believe God when your experience is totally different.
However, if you will look away from your wrong experiences and begin to believe God, your experience will then line up with the Word.
You can spend your whole life fighting the devil (as I did for many years), sometimes winning and sometimes losing, but never realizing that in actuality he has no power over you.
Not I, but Christ In Me
The Apostle Paul knew the power of the human mind, and the power of human beliefs and suggestions.
That is why he said for us not to walk as the gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind.
The carnal mind is what keeps us in bondage to the flesh.
We think, “How can I possibly walk free of Satan and in the power of God?”
We know that the Word says we have been delivered from sin, sickness and death, but that is not our experience. I have sickness in my body and I know that for a fact. Some say that sin and sickness are not real, but that does not make them go away.
Our problem is the darkness, the blindness, and the ignorance.
The problem is in not knowing what we have inherited in Christ.
It is the blindness of not seeing who He is in me. It is no longer I:
“I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
If I, through the Spirit, put to death the carnal self-life, and I am no longer living, and the Life of Christ is coming forth in my body, I will begin to realize the resurrection power of Jesus giving Life to my mortal body.
We do have the Life of God in us. If you have experienced that Life, no one can take it away from you. Just as you have experienced His Life in you, you can experience everything that He is by that Life growing in you.
We are alienated from that Life due to the darkened understanding and the ignorance.
Paul told the Corinthians, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor. 4:4).
We must realize that this also applies to Christians.
The god of this world is the spirit of the age that we live in. It is all the human beliefs that are contrary to the Word of God.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5,
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
We must renew our minds to conform to the Word of God.
If our experience does not line up with the Word, then our experience is wrong, not the Word. We must spend time seeking God so that His light may enlighten our darkness.
Coming out of darkness is a gradual experience.
After the night has ended, the day gradually dawns. The Church has been in darkness for 2,000 years, but the day is beginning to dawn.
You will soon see a people on the earth who walk in the reality of Christ in themselves.
If you open to the truth of these words of His indwelling presence, you will begin to come out of the darkness.
If you are not consciously aware of God living His Life in you, then for you He is not real. You have only a story-book God.
You cannot walk in the Spirit as a theory, or only as a good teaching. If you begin to walk in the Spirit, you will begin to see your enemies fall at your feet.
Paul also said that you need to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. The spirit of your mind is a renewed consciousness. Human intellect alone will never know the power of God. He must come alive in your consciousness.
The Glorious Church
“He has put all things under His feet and has appointed Him the universal and supreme head of the church which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all — for in that body lives the full measure of Him Who makes everything complete, and Who fills everything everywhere [with Himself]” (Eph. 1:22-23, Amplified).
There is enough revelation and power in these words alone that, if you believe them, they will bring you out of the darkness.
I began a few years ago to learn the power in the spoken word.
I learned that what I believed in the new heart God had given me was far past the reasoning capabilities of my natural mind.
I had to learn to follow and listen to the Spirit of God within me, instead of listening to my natural mind.
I began to have an experiential encounter with God in my being.
This is still a limited experience, but it is growing.
There is a realm in God where there is no sin, no disease, no sickness and no death. The Church is not yet fully there, but we are beginning to enter into it.
The Apostle Paul said, “Put on the new man” (Eph. 4:24).
What does that mean?
We are seated with Christ in heavenly places (Eph. 2:6).
What does that mean?
We have been blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places (Eph. 1:3).
What does that mean?
These statements are given to us as facts, as present realities, not as something to hope for someday.
It is a conscious awareness of being that which the Word declares.
We begin to experience these things when we have a spiritual birth and begin to grow in the Spirit.
The Word says,
“Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:46-49).
This is what the Church is coming into.
We are to bear the image of the heavenly.
JUST THINK OF IT!
A group of people on the earth who are manifesting the heavenly character of Jesus.
Paul told the Corinthians,
“He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17).
In your spirit is the Holy Spirit. These spirits are not two spirits, but ONE SPIRIT.
Paul told the Ephesians,
“The two shall become one, and I speak a great mystery of Christ and the Church” (Eph. 5:31-32).
YOU ARE BONE OF HIS BONE AND FLESH OF HIS FLESH.
As we are transformed and begin to live in our spirit, where the Spirit of God dwells, we become the visible expression of the invisible God. WHAT A DIVINE MYSTERY!
Stay Tuned…