Some people are called to reign with Christ Jesus from the highest heaven. Such all-embracing majesty is far too vast for the natural understandings of men to grasp, yet the body of Christ is in practical preparation now for the explicit purpose of exercising dominion over all the earthly ways of mankind. Only God can accomplish this. And how can a man rule over principalities and powers if he is unable to rule the smallest thoughts and attitudes expressed within his own being?
“The ear that hears the reproof of life abideth among the wise. He that refuses instruction despises his own soul; but he that hears reproof gets understanding.” Proverbs 15:31-32
The awful betrayal, trial, mocking, beating, and crucifixion of Jesus is the most shining example of self control over one's soul. It is difficult to imagine any humiliation more bitter than His! It was the worst indignity that anyone could be called upon to endure. Few have ever had to bear anything close. Never was dishonor less deserved, never was dishonor so bravely borne.
Through those fierce and heated hours our Lord bore Himself with quiet dignity. Others were convulsed with uncontrolled passion, cursing, screaming, blaming. He alone was centered and controlled. His victory in this experience of provocation is a pronounced example of the victories our Father offers. In moments of crisis, truly,
“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city.” Proverb 16:32
God grants us knowledge of His principles to grasp and understand Him. God is our Father. He fathered our spirit. What happens in our life is ordained of our Father to teach us the principles of His lasting domain. This is making a pathway of the authority found only in the highest of heavens possible. Learning our Father's fundamental principles of self control by Christ gives us AUTHORITY OVER THE EARTH FOUND IN OUR OWN SPIRIT AND SOUL! If found faithful in the small things, we are promised authority over nations:
“And to the one who is conquering and keeping My acts until the consummation, to him will I be giving authority over the nations; and he shall be shepherding them with an iron club, as vessels of pottery are being crushed, as I also have obtained from My Father. And I will give him the morning star. Who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit is saying to the ecclesias.” Revelation 2:26-29 concordant
"The one who is conquering, to him will I be granting to be seated with Me on My throne as I, also, conquer and am seated with My Father on His throne. Who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit is saying to the ecclesia." Revelation 3:21-22 concordant
We have access to the same strength that enabled Jesus to live an overcoming life — to conquer death from within. Even now, as we ask, seek, and knock for the things above, He grants us the spirit of sonship with the same authority and power that He gives Jesus over death, hell, and the grave. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Jesus would come and transfer places with you? What would happen if suddenly He came to dwell in your body? What would God do for Jesus if he had our circumstances, our weaknesses, our desires, our pressures, our problems?
What if the Master came to us and said, “Move over, I am coming in to live in your house for a season!” No doubt that quickly He would have all of our problems straightened out and all of our weaknesses and turmoil would be under complete control. He could quickly overcome all the things with which we struggle.
Yet when we let the Father's voice in, the wonderful truth that is hidden from the wise and prudent is HE HAS COME to be one with our spirit! Oh, how we need to behold Him coming quickly within, bringing the Father, to make an abode WITHIN OUR SPIRIT! The coming of Jesus to us is still as he answered to Judas:
“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘If anyone should be loving Me, he will be keeping My word, and My Father will be loving him, and We shall be coming to him and making an abode with him. He who is not loving Me, is not keeping My words” John 14:23 concordant
“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Romans 8:9
Do you feel surrounded with problems? Then discover the challenge of finding God within your spirit to meet and conquer your every obstacle. God has promised that if we look to challenge our problems by His spirit, we too can find an answer that conquers death, hell, and the grave. He promises us strength to see and turn the stumbling-stones in our pathway into stepping-stones to rise to a place of reigning over all our earthly characteristics when we have spiritually been seated in the heavens where God is enthronement.
Considering the divine principles of overcoming as Jesus overcame, we need to understand how to tap into the same dynamic resurrection power that conquers every principle of death within our being. We should be masters of God's school of inner reality. We are getting focused on principles of resurrection so that we may arise within our spirit to where God abides. He forces the issues that cause release from earthly weakness and failure remaining from the darkness in our soul's dominion.
Our spirit is believing God's word as being possible now! There is no failure in the mind of the Spirit. The word of truth is challenging us to see Him, face to face, so that we are turned from our earthly problems by hold to God's truth, using it for a stepping-stone to higher spiritual ground. On the other hand, we will not overcome anything as long as we allow some horrendous problem to blind our minds to what God has revealed to our spirit.
God’s mind enables us to see the divine opportunity that is inherent in every obstacle. In our Father’s great kingdom schooling, He knows just exactly which obstacles to place in our pathway for our personal development and processing. He does this teaching because He loves us dearly. If we do not understand the powers at work, we will try to use our own strength to move the mountains out of the way.
Such actions will slow our growth to perfection and we will lack skills at overcoming the raging life in our soul. Those inner mountains of untrue thoughts and selfish attitudes are exactly what God is challenging us to face. We then climb over to conquer through scaling the hidden depths within us to find His mind extending His characteristics to us in the troublesome matters we face!
Some of us are facing severe problems today that seem to be insurmountable obstacles. Many are feeling frustrated at the circumstances that tower so ominously and menacingly before us. No matter how bad our situation really is, or how many times we have failed, the principles of God are and will be proven effective in easing life's hard and bitter experiences. It is the mind of His Spirit that removes the bitter sting of death as we learn to yield, to accept what God says and thinks rather than what our own soul screams out to us.
The answer to our problem is so near — right here within our spiritual being. The secret lies in whether we have grown in our spirit enough to view our situation as a challenge from God rather than a problem to which we are subject.
“What difference does it make,” you say, “whether I call my state of being a problem or an opportunity?” Well, If we are constantly perceiving obstacles in our life as problems, we will harbor and be subject to negative emotions in respect to it — frustration, fear, anger, hopelessness, despair, depression. These soulish characteristics are GRAVE-DIGGERS! They carve out the bottomless pit of failures in which to bury us with blame in darkness!
On the other hand, if somehow the mind of the Spirit, the mind of Christ, can give revelation of God’s Word that challenges us to see the inspired opportunity in the matter. If we can receive with it an attitude in which our Father's divine emotions are released — LOVE, FAITH, HOPE, CONFIDENCE, ENCOURAGEMENT, JOY, THANKSGIVING, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING, FAITH FOR RESURRECTION POWER — these fruitful Kingdom products energize us and propel us to break all former barriers to triumph, issuing through, over, out of, and above every obstacle!
"Now we are aware that God is working all together for the good of those who are loving God," Romans 8:28 concordant
It is hard to see the problems of disease in soul or body appear as working together for good because they are perceived within our mind as problems. When the truth of God working some good in all matters can be seen in the problem, it ceases in our mind to be a problem. Even facing the darkest problems, the comfort of the truth of God releases us so we are no longer held captive to the verdicts men prescribe!
Thank God our minds are being renewed to the mind of the Christ of God in order that we be free. The truth makes us free. We can believe and trust in God's precepts for they apply to our own life. Although our problems may still exist outwardly, in our physical body, it graciously no longer will be a ruling problem.
In Adam we die, but in Christ we are MADE ALIVE in our spiritual man to see the challenge. We rise above by scaling Christ's stronghold, the over-coming of this life's bondage, to conquer it by being spiritually connected to the Corporate Head of LIFE. He grants a flow into and through our spirit, His truth freeing our spirit from its human hopelessness! Who cares how high the mountain is if He supplies what is needed to climb over it and be above it?
He will NEVER LEAVE OR FORSAKE US:
“Then Hannah prayed, saying: Glad is my heart in Yahweh! High is my horn in my Elohim! Wide is my mouth over my enemies, For I rejoice in Your salvation. No one is holy like Yahweh; Yea, no one is holy barring You, and no one is righteous like our Elohim. Do not speak with lofty superiority so much; May no impertinence come forth from your mouth!
For an El of knowledge is Yahweh; And actions are regulated by Him. The bows of the masters are cracked, yet those who stumble are belted with valor. The surfeited have hired themselves out for bread; Yet the famishing leave hunger behind. While the barren one has borne seven, She who was abundant in sons has wasted away. Yahweh is putting to death and is keeping alive, He is bringing down to the unseen, and He brings up.
Yahweh is making destitute and is enriching; He is laying low and is exalting too. He is raising the poor from the dust and exalts the needy from the ash heap, seating them with patrons of peoples, allotting them a throne of glory. For Yahweh’s are the stanchions of the earth; He has set the habitance up on them. He is guarding the feet of His benign ones; Yet the wicked shall be silenced in darkness, For not by vigor has man mastery.
As for Yahweh, those contending with Him shall be undone; Against them shall He thunder in the heavens. Yahweh, He shall adjudicate the limits of the earth. He shall give strength to His king; He shall exalt the horn of His anointed one." I Samuel 2:1-10 concordant
Here in Hannah's prophetic prayer, we see many wonderful truths of divine principles which clearly reveal the sovereign power of God. He takes those who are esteemed as nothing by the standards of this religious world and, through His processing, exalts them to positions of priesthood with dominion over their elementary earthy parts.
It is the Lord who takes our life out of the present earthiness and raises it up into His life of incorruption. We will find out when we physically die that ALL is in accord with HIS sovereign power. That is why the darkness within mankind has never prevailed over God's light which shall save all men in spite of all of death's cunning devices.
Amazing statements in Hannah’s prophecy, include;
“The Lord makes poor, and makes rich…”
"Yahweh is putting to death and is keeping alive,
He is bringing down to the unseen, and He brings up."
"For an El of knowledge is Yahweh;"
Our connection to the kingdom of God is rooted in our knowledge of God — rooted in the very truth that He is sovereign and that He controls the destiny of all men, including both the poor and the rich, on every level that can be applied. Some think that the Lord controls only the destiny of some who are labeled as His people, but such is not the case. HE IS LORD OF US ALL!
ALL are in His hands and the STEPS OF EVERY MAN ARE ORDERED OF THE LORD. I do not presume to understand all the “whys” and “wherefores” in God’s appointments in the lives of mankind for both the wicked and the righteous, but simply believe His Word and perceive that it is as He has declared it to be. That “all things are of God” is declared over and over again in the scriptures. Did not the Lord say to Pharaoh, that wicked man who opposed Moses:
“Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.” Romans 9:17
The infinite wisdom of God’s mind cannot be ascertained by the little heads of the religious literal-minded. We have God’s word for it — He is the sovereign who controls all things. He controls all the circumstances of our perceived problems. I would not be surprised if some of the compatriots of the prophet Amos may have thought he was speaking blasphemy when by the Holy Spirit he truthfully said,
“Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?” Amos 3:6
This question notes the incredible darkness and deluded stupidity of man's mind, with its pitiful inability to comprehend things that belong to heavenly realms. Oh, that we might see beyond the mists and theories of tradition, right into the very heart of the heavenly mind. This is where is found the infinite wisdom that teaches us how one can become truly HEAVENLY MINDED yet CANNOT escape the pain of our earthly death. The fact is, the only true reality that brings freedom is God's reality:
"Wherefore we are not despondent, but even if our outward man is decaying, nevertheless that within us is being renewed day by day. For the momentary lightness of our affliction is producing for us a transcendently transcendent eonian burden of glory, at our not noting what is being observed, but what is not being observed, for what is being observed is temporary, yet what is not being observed is eonian. II Corinthians 4:16-18 concordant
In God's mind the things which are seen by men are temporal and the things which man cannot see by his senses are age-lasting. Here is wisdom of God in a precept! Until we learn how to live and draw our perceptions from the unseen spirit, the invisible spirit realm, we will continue to be held captive by the death working in corrupt human thinking. Men's souls are being held under the province and shadow of death. We need to hear in our spirit the words Jesus heralds about being changed by the light because God's Kingdom is so near:
"Then the Adversary is leaving Him. And lo! messengers approached and waited on Him. Now, hearing that John was given up, He retires into Galilee, and, leaving Nazareth, coming, He dwells in Capernaum, which is beside the sea in the boundaries of Zebulon and Naphtali, that that may be fulfilled which is declared through Isaiah the prophet, saying, ‘The land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, the sea road the other side of the Jordan, Galilee of the nations-the people sitting in darkness perceived a great light, and to those sitting in the province and shadow of death, light arises for them.’ Thenceforth begins Jesus to be heralding and saying, ‘Repent! for near is the kingdom of the heavens!’" Matthew 4:11-17 concordant
Jesus has taught His disciples that repentance means to be changed, including important principles like prayer to the God that fathered us:
“Our Father which art in heaven.” Matthew 6:9
Jesus clearly revealed that God is our Father. Until men recognize by the illumination of light in the seven fold Spirit who their Father is, they remain subject to dying in the dense darkness of the carnal mind of man. God has given us light and the spirit of adoption. Jesus told the vast and varied throng gathered around Him,
“Call no man your father upon the earth, for One is your Father, which is in heaven.” Matthew 23:9
Jesus teaches still that our true life is spiritual, and each of us have a spirit that was fathered by God the Almighty. That One is able to quicken our spirit so what is in us has its source in HIM. What is born of the spirit is spirit. Our spirit did not begin with our physical birth. What is born of the flesh is flesh. Our true Father is not a man upon earth, but our true Father is a SPIRIT and He is in heaven!
Becoming fully alive to this precept permits us to see that our real life is our spiritual life. It did not begin on earth — it began where our real Father is, in heaven. Our Father is drawing us upward, higher than we have ever been, and onward to a grand purpose chosen by His heavenly spirit in the connecting of each of our spirits to Himself. He will draw all in the time He chooses.
Over and over again Jesus taught the multitudes about their heavenly Father. Just look up the word father in Strong’s Concordance and see how many times in the four Gospels Jesus told the people that God was their Father. And remember these were not born again men under the New Covenant, they were natural men, mostly under the servitude of the law of Moses. Once we really know God as being our Father, it is easier for us to grasp the understanding that makes our spirit alive and connected to that same spirit that comes from our Father. So much so, we now follow on to go to that Source.
It becomes easier to see the supply that comes daily to strengthen us with the purpose God has designed for us. Now the divine CHALLENGE is come to that soulish opposition hiding in our soul. He will conquer it, for His purpose is that our inner spiritual man be raised above life's troubling obstacles. He has raised us above every lie, above every hurt emotion, above vanity, above false ways in Christian heavens, above every addicting yoke in the earth which holds men in darkest death.
He challenges us to share in His power to exchange our life for His. The mind of the Spirit is in league with this thought, for He frees us from dark soulish ways of perception and places in us His divine spiritual insight into Godly character. We recognize this Godly character as being right because within our own being as we are sons and daughters of it. Thus, some gain insight and strength over the darkness of death working within them. God grants it because our spiritual beginnings were with God where the carnal was not.
Our ending state is promised to be found where the glory of God is. NOW God is our Father, now He is fathering us by His spirit. Oh, how sublime the process! God loves us as a Father! He is supplying divine substance to us in making a permanent abiding, a tabernacle, within us. He is not just with us in every time of need or on Sunday morning. He ABIDES in us, constantly removing our tears from the sorrows of doom. The challenge is to see the light of truth, grasp it, be observing the light as He now shows the light.