Good Morning Sisters and Brothers in Christ,
Last week I wrote about the promises of God, our Father, to us in Isaiah 41:17-20 in the email entitled, “How is Your Land?” This week I want to highlight more of our precious Father’s promises to us as His children.
Ezekiel 36:33-36
33 Thus saith the Lord GOD; In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities I will also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded.
34 And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by.
35 And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.
36 Then the heathen that are left round about you shall know that I the LORD build the ruined places, and plant that that was desolate: I the LORD have spoken it, and I will do it.
Ezekiel 36:33-36 tells us what God does to, and for, us the very moment we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior: “In the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities…” God cleanses each of us from all our iniquities, past, present, and future, when we accept and make Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
Upon Salvation, what did God do for us? When His Spirit came to live in us, He took our Spiritual lives from desolation, damnation, waste, and ruin to the Garden of Eden: “This land [Spirit] that was desolate is become like the Garden of Eden….” Notice the Scriptures don’t say “has become like the Garden of Eden….” It says, “is become like the Garden of Eden….” The word “is” is in the Perfect Continuous tense meaning it is an action that has begun and continues. Every day God is renewing us with grace [Hebrews 4:16]and His benefits [Psalm 68:19]. In our Spirit, we have the Garden of Eden.
Now notice the change that takes place immediately upon Salvation: in our Spirit, we will dwell in the cities, wastes shall be built, desolate land tilled, land become like the Garden of Eden, and the cities fenced and inhabited. Now, these are Spiritual blessings as spoken of in Ephesians 1:3.
Ephesians 1:3
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath blessed us with all Spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
We are able to be cleansed immediately upon salvation through the shed blood of Jesus Christ and all of His redemptive acts. Immediately God turns what was desolate, damned, wasted, and ruined into the Garden of Eden in our Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ. The question is are we seeing the Garden of Eden which is inside us (our Spirits) manifested in the natural realm?
In Matthew 6:9-15, Jesus is teaching the disciples how to pray. Notice in verse 10 what Jesus has to say.
Matthew 6:10
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
There is so much revelation in this one verse. We could write pages unpacking it. This is Jesus, God in the flesh, teaching us how HE wants us to pray. As I write this, The Holy Spirit speaks James 1:17 in my Spirit. God only gives us good gifts and perfect gifts, and He changes not. This means “the Kingdom” is a good and perfect gift. What Kingdom? The Kingdom of God (also known as The Kingdom of Heaven). Where does The Kingdom of God originate? From God Himself and from Heaven where The Kingdom is established. When we are born again, God puts The Kingdom in our hearts.
Luke 17:21
Neither shall they say, Lo [behold] here! or, lo [behold] there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
Romans 14:17 describes The Kingdom of God within us.
Romans 14:17
For The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
Jesus, God in the flesh, tells us in Matthew 6:33 to put God and His Kingdom first, and everything we need and desire in this world will be added unto us.
Matthew 6:33
But seek ye first The Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Let’s go back to Matthew 6:10. Jesus taught us God wants HIS will done in this earth. Jesus also taught us to enforce God’s will in the earth. One such verse that reinforces this is Luke 19:13 where a certain nobleman delivered his ten servants a pound each. When the nobleman delivered the money to each, he charged the servants to “occupy till I come.” Jesus was speaking of Himself and of us in this parable.
Luke 19:13
And he called his ten servants, and delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, Occupy till I come.
“Occupy till I come” was Jesus’ direct command to you and to me to bring The Kingdom of God to our sphere of influence and grow and enforce it. We all, as Believers, will give an accounting to Jesus at the Bema Seat of what we did, in faith, for The Kingdom of God. It starts with us first. We, as Believers, are commanded by God to enforce His foundational will in our own lives. When you study the Words, “Occupy till I come, ” you will find out it is not a defensive position, but an offensive position. We are to be on the offense attacking satan’s kingdom with The Kingdom of God, not hiding in our churches. We are to be equipping saints with study of The Word to go on the offense using The Kingdom of God and not lowering ourselves to living like the world. God created us to live “above” all nations and peoples of the earth (Deuteronomy 28:1). Our Kingdom is in the Spiritual realm, above the physical or natural realm. We can use Spiritual Words to enforce and manifest things in the physical or natural realm.
III John 2
Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.
As we grow and develop in The Word of God, our soul [our heart, will, and emotions] prospers receiving, for our diligent seeking, rhema wisdom and revelation, the secrets of God, and the hidden mysteries of God. When this happens, we are able to prosper and be in health, in this earth, by faithfully decreeing The Word of God in every single situation, circumstance, and event in our lives. If it weren’t so, God would never have put it in His Word to us.
Why does it start with us? Because the world has to see natural evidence of The Kingdom of God in you, on you, and around you. We, as Believers, are charged by God to manifest the Garden of Eden that is within our Spirit into the tangible earth. We are, as Jesus in Matthew 5:16 commands us, “to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father which is in Heaven.”
In closing, and going back to Matthew 6:10, when Jesus, God in the flesh, commands us to enforce God’s will by bringing His Kingdom into the earth, how, physically, are we, and our surroundings, to appear to the saved and unsaved? Yes, exactly LIKE Heaven. This is the same thing God charged Adam and Eve to do with the Garden of Eden in Genesis. Is there sickness, weaknesses, infirmities, financial struggles, strife, discontent, diseases, fighting, enemies, fear, anxiety, doubt, unbelief, unforgiveness, and ugly things in Heaven? No. And Jesus is commanding us to grow and develop in God’s Word to where our lives are free of everything of the curse. We are to ATTRACT people, saved and unsaved, to us. Why? Because they will want what we have. And for those of you struggling with religious dogma, it HAS to be a physical or natural realm attraction to the unsaved and to the saved who are ignorant of God’s Word (Hosea 4:6). It will be the things of the natural and physical realm that will attract them to you so you can share the Spiritual realm, The Word of God, with them (study Jacob meeting Pharoah in Genesis 47). This is why Jesus made it PERFECTLY clear in Matthew 6:33 that Believers who learn and understand how to operate in The Kingdom of God will outwardly, physically manifest great health, prosperity, joy, peace, righteousness, etc. The world will SEE it, in the natural, and WANT it, in the natural. This is how God partners with us to help us develop a platform from which we can share the Spiritual, wonderful, amazing, and attractive Truths of our precious Father, God. No one unsaved, or saved but ignorant of God’s Word, is going to listen to a Believer that looks much like, or a lot like, them. It’s like going to the gym and asking for a trainer to help you, and out walks a very overweight person. Are you attracted to or believing in what this trainer has to say? Of course not. You don’t see anything in the physical or natural to attract you to listen to anything this person has to say. Jesus’s question to us is “how do we look to the unsaved and to the saved, but ignorant of God’s Word?” Do we look like them, or worse, or do we look like and have the surroundings of Jesus Christ and The Kingdom of Heaven?
In Christ,
Larry