Many years ago, when I was first learning how to walk with God, in a Victory Outreach Men’s Home, God taught my heart something that is of great value in this hour on the earth.
One sunny afternoon, about 30 of us were gathered on the back patio of the rehab home we all shared. There was a lot of tension in the home due to a divisive spirit. During this particular season in the Home, there were many men from rival gangs and even some Nortenos mixed in with the largely Sureno group.
Threats of murder were not taken lightly in a small house filled with those who were born and raised with death’s constant stalking presence.
Violence was ticking quietly, waiting for the right moment to explode.
I was maybe four months into my nine month commitment as a resident of the Home, and I had many questions about the Kingdom. One issue in particular, continued to bother me and I had frequently asked God to show me the truth of the matter. He was about to.
The message He had given me was about unity in the Body of Christ. I still have the original paper. For some reason it was written out in green ink. My habit for getting a message to share in any organized venue, has always consisted of getting alone with God until He shows me exactly what it is on His heart.
I spoke for about thirty minutes, surrounded on three sides by an increasingly more intense and wide eyed group of men. I remember feeling like a river was pouring through my mouth and the faint but consistent idea that I wasn’t actually standing on the concrete patio, but floating slightly above it somehow.
Almost as soon as I realized I was shouting, Someone turned the spigot off and the message was done. When I invited the brothers to come forward for prayer, the words had not yet entirely left my mouth and the first was in front of me, reaching toward me with tears streaming down his face.
He was about 3 or 4 feet away, closely followed by others and there were more brothers jumping towards my position from either side. His name was Greg Martinez and he was a good friend of mine, someone who frequently sought me out for counsel, prayer and fellowship.
For some reason, Greg was hunched over low; maybe he intended to kneel or prostrate himself before me on the patio. As he reached a roughly three or four foot distance from my outstretched hand, something interesting happened.
Have you ever seen someone run into a clothesline while running at a high rate of speed?
Well this was a bit like that, only it was more like a very large person had swung a two by four or a baseball bat from down low and connected it with Greg’s head as he lunged forward. His head snapped back so violently that his feet instantly replaced his very focused, tear streaked face. The brother behind him tried to catch him and was thrown wildly to the patio as well.
As the men rushed into the small circle where I stood, they were being tossed back like large sacks of potatoes by an incredible Force. It was very much like a wall of power that didn’t just keep things out or in, but actually violently repelled anything that touched it. Something like a giant magnet.
Within seconds, men were scattered about the patio in various states of emotion and consciousness. Some wept uncontrollably, crying out with unintelligible words…others were laughing like children, stating their brotherly love for one another and begging forgiveness. Still others lay perfectly still, as if dead.
The air was thickened and became golden somehow and time seemed to slow down. All around us, the inner city reality of Los Angeles continued in another world, as far from our thoughts as distant galaxies. I worshiped, trembling and tear soaked in utter astonishment.
You see, I had been asking God to show me whether or not the whole “slain in the Spirit thing” was for real and about “Pentecostal manifestations” in general. He taught me that one of the purposes of the manifestation of His glory is to bring unity. NEVER AGAIN WAS THERE DISUNITY AND STRIFE IN THAT HOME WHILE I WAS THERE.
Watch in this hour on the earth as King Jesus restores unity to His bride through the overwhelming manifestation of His glory. Be careful not to judge the things you see from your own understanding. Heaven is a wild place, beloveds
Have you ever read the Bible’s descriptions of the Throne Room of God?
LIGHTNING AND THUNDER!
FIRE AND SMOKE!
SHOUTING AND SINGING!
WHEELS AND WINGS EVERYWHERE!
STRANGE CREATURES COVERED IN EYEBALLS!
It’s time to ditch our religious ideas of what it looks like when the King of Glory shows up.
THOSE WHO LEARN HOW TO LIVE AND BREATHE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GLORY IN THEIR PRAYER CLOSET, WILL LEAD MULTITUDES INTO THE LIGHT OF THE THRONE ROOM OF THE ONE TRUE AND LIVING GOD.
“I looked: I saw an immense dust storm come from the north, an immense cloud with lightning flashing from it, a huge ball of fire glowing like bronze. Within the fire were what looked like four creatures vibrant with life. Each had the form of a human being, but each also had four faces and four wings. Their legs were as sturdy and straight as columns, but their feet were hoofed like those of a calf and sparkled from the fire like burnished bronze. On all four sides under their wings they had human hands. All four had both faces and wings, with the wings touching one another. They turned neither one way nor the other; they went straight forward.
Their faces looked like this: In front a human face, on the right side the face of a lion, on the left the face of an ox, and in back the face of an eagle. So much for the faces. The wings were spread out with the tips of one pair touching the creature on either side; the other pair of wings covered its body. Each creature went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit went, they went. They didn’t turn as they went.
The four creatures looked like a blazing fire, or like fiery torches. Tongues of fire shot back and forth between the creatures, and out of the fire, bolts of lightning. The creatures flashed back and forth like strikes of lightning.
As I watched the four creatures, I saw something that looked like a wheel on the ground beside each of the four-faced creatures. This is what the wheels looked like: They were identical wheels, sparkling like diamonds in the sun. It looked like they were wheels within wheels, like a gyroscope.
They went in any one of the four directions they faced, but straight, not veering off. The rims were immense, circled with eyes. When the living creatures went, the wheels went; when the living creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off. Wherever the spirit went, they went, the wheels sticking right with them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures went, the wheels went; when the creatures stopped, the wheels stopped; when the creatures lifted off, the wheels lifted off, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.
Over the heads of the living creatures was something like a dome, shimmering like a sky full of cut glass, vaulted over their heads. Under the dome one set of wings was extended toward the others, with another set of wings covering their bodies. When they moved I heard their wings—it was like the roar of a great waterfall, like the voice of The Strong God, like the noise of a battlefield. When they stopped, they folded their wings.
And then, as they stood with folded wings, there was a voice from above the dome over their heads. Above the dome there was something that looked like a throne, sky-blue like a sapphire, with a humanlike figure towering above the throne. From what I could see, from the waist up he looked like burnished bronze and from the waist down like a blazing fire. Brightness everywhere! The way a rainbow springs out of the sky on a rainy day—that’s what it was like. It turned out to be the Glory of God!
When I saw all this, I fell to my knees, my face to the ground. Then I heard a voice.”
~Ezekiel 1:4-28~ (msg)
Flying Leaps
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
~Revelation 21:5-8~
The human mind, when bound by dead religion, cannot conceive of a daily reality where sin is not a controlling influence. In order to receive the ecstatic revelation of the finished work of the Cross, one must first say “yes” to God by the exercising of faith. With one decisive step into the impossible, Peter exercised his faith, defied the laws of physics, and encountered Jesus in the earth shattering revelation of His absolute mastery over all of Creation.
Do you ache for an encounter with Jesus which will lead you further and deeper into the revelation of His absolute mastery over all of Creation…through you ?
The operative word is, “YES.” This word spoken from your heart to the King, must be followed by ACTION. Trust me when I say when one first steps out into what’s been taught as an absolute impossibility, they don’t feel like it’s any more possible than the second before they decided to step. Each step into His heart releases exponential revelation of His nature, character and love. In His heart we find freedom from all that binds, hinders and ensnares. Hidden in the glory of God, we learn that every limitation has been eradicated, and we are taught by the King Himself how to live from this truth. Every crushing impossibility becomes a glorious opportunity to express His goodness.
Every. Single. One.
Faith steps out when there is nothing to step on. The stunning revelation of what He’s already done to make provision for the situation at hand, comes after the heart says yes. Because human reasoning dictates that we cannot say yes to something until we see, feel or understand it…many hang suspended in earthbound limitations, longing for more, desperate for the reality their spirit tells them is just out of sight, and fumbling for the right prescription of corrective lenses which will enable them to finally see. Faith says yes before we see, touch, or comprehend, and positions the heart for the revelation which causes transformation.
Some run, tearing across the landscape of life and jump with flying leaps, shouting laughter from hearts utterly undone…into impossibility.
Each step toward supernatural revelation is a step of faith filled obedience. The process of taking each step into the unknown, into the impossible, enlarges our heart for the revelation that will both cause and seal the transformation of our lives. Each step is part of the process by which our minds are renewed, and each step challenges us to live according to the rules and life giving principles of Heaven rather than the death fostering patterns of this fallen world.
This is how God gets Heaven “into” us, if you will…the process of replacing our thoughts and perspectives with His own, requires that we walk by faith and not by sight. We judge according to what He sees and hears not what we see and hear. Those circumstances and impossibilities which confront us daily are no longer subject to the principles of this passing world but, by the decree of our lips, become subject to the rules of Heaven. We live and breathe as those with all authority, by aligning ourselves with the King through a whole life that says “YES” to Jesus.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
~Hebrews 11:6~
Though important, words are not enough; every part of our lives must agree with the yes of our lips, and God gladly empowers us to say yes with increasing faith as we yield to the smallest, seemingly inconsequential promptings. Often we fail to recognize the “little” we are being entrusted with because our vision is focused on earthly things and bound in an earthly perspective. We shall clearly see the “little” and know how to be faithful with it only when we view it from heaven’s perspective.
This is not mere spiritual theory but very practical truth. To see things from Heaven’s perspective, we must be seated with Him in the intimacy of sonship. The grasping and implementation of great revelatory truth is not necessary for intimacy with God, only the resounding yes of radical obedience to His word. We must believe that God has made all provision to obey His Word completely. When He commands us to be perfect, He has not given us a command which is impossible to fulfill. He has given us a command which is impossible to fulfill so long as we attempt to do it in our own strength and human reasoning.
In order to receive the ecstatic revelation of the finished work of the Cross, one must first say “yes” to God by the exercising of faith. With one decisive step into the impossible, Peter exercised his faith, defied the laws of physics, and encountered Jesus in the earth shattering revelation of His absolute mastery over all of Creation!
God invites us to abandon our reasoning and exchange it for His reasoning; to join Him in the beauty of His reasoning, to partake of the wonder working power of His reasoning.
The result of reasoning together with God?
The irrevocable restoration of our true identity in Him. We are able to see ourselves from His perspective. Though our sins were as scarlet, now they are white as pure driven snow! That which was hopelessly marred and filthy is now perfect in His sight. We are perfect in His sight.
“Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”
~Isaiah 1:18~
When we see as He sees, we live as He lives, think as He thinks…do what He does. His holiness is our holiness, His love is our love, a burning unquenchable force which consumes everything in its path. Nothing can stand before love! LOVE CONQUERS ALL. Every sickness, every inadequacy, every weakness, every failure, every darkness is utterly conquered by the Blood which poured forth on Calvary’s Cross. That Blood is the essence of God’s love. The shed Blood of the Lamb contains the beginning of Life and the end of Death.