Out and About 5 Living in the Spiritual Dimension

[HKHaugan]

Today I want to hit something special, the spiritual dimension and how we live in it.  We want to see its breadth, our limitations and the resources He has given.  No matter where we are or what we are doing, we are in the midst of unseeable processes and forces that are attempting to shape and manipulate the way we operate in the invisible dimension all around us.  We have already spoken about them from Ephesians 6 as the principalities and powers from the dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (vs.12). 

 

Note the two environments identified, dark world and heavenly realms.  The first, the dark world, is the everyday unseen world we inhabit.  This is a spiritual world where sin commands motivation spurred on by spiritual currents not of God.  This is darkness and in it without Christ we are spiritually blind.  In this darkness human nature is vulnerable to its influence since sin has torn apart the initial spiritual seeing relationship God created in Adam and Eve. 

 

The moment of their separation from God was also the moment of their plunge and our plunge into inner darkness, the inability to see one another and separation from the Holy Spirit, the light of God the Son.  All they could spiritually sense was their aloneness in the midst of other alone beings like themselves.   They had physical sight but not inner or outer spiritual sight.  They discovered God was outside. They had a new consciousness, isolation from God and isolation from one another.  They also experienced in their aloneness what they had not experienced before, fear, the loss of intimacy, pride and its defensiveness, the need to hide, the need to blame, physical pain, emotional pain and spiritual emptiness.  Now they are in the realm of darkness and its self-centered aloneness.  

 

The heavenly realms are those not of God’s Heaven (Paul having been caught up in His, the ‘third’ Heaven 2Cor.12:2, Eph.4:10) but of that part of the spiritual dimension in which evil exists.  Here we find the devil and his angels whose goal is the deception of the faithful in Christ and the maintenance of sin and its cohorts of fear and pride.  Here is the realm of darkness where the devil reigns as the prince of this world, the deceiver of the faithful and the one who tempts us to enter his gates through denial of God the Father, denial of the of God the Son, denial of the God the Holy Spirit, denial of sin and evil.  He is constantly on the prowl “seeking whom he may devour (1Peter 5:8).”  He wants people to stay alone and in darkness.  Then he controls them through their sin-produced fear by needling them with his spirit of fear to be totally absorbed with mind, heart and spirit survival.  His methodology is simple, tempt, deceive and attack low down and in the back with his evil spirits.

 

Obviously, because of sin, we are limited in our ability to fully understand the spiritual dimension.  That’s why we have a Savior, Redeemer and Lord.  That’s why we have been given the Holy Spirit to bring our mind, heart and spirit back to the One to whom we really belong.  It is Jesus, God the Son, who brings us the picture of what a true Holy Spirit motivated and living person looks like, thinks like and acts like.  His perfection is our righteousness, which He restored for each of us through the Cross.  He defeated all the power of darkness, its temptations and deceptions.  The hiding, frightened, prideful devil still lurks in the darkness but he knows his end is sure.  And we know in Jesus that the devil and evil stand banished forever.  Our hope is not only given us in Jesus’ Resurrection.  It is a daily hope that is real, spiritually real, really alive and the second rung in the three step ladder between faith and love, God’s eternal qualities.

 

How then we operate in the spiritual dimension is dependent on our daily absorption in the means the Lord has shown us are the foundational blocks in the temple He is building in us. 

 

First, we have been given faith to allow the Lord Jesus to reconstruct us in a personal relationship with Him.  Jesus-consciousness is THE foundation.  “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God (Col.3:1).”

 

Second, we have been given His Word.  As Paul told Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2Tim.3:16-17).”

 

Third, we have been taught to pray.  Reading Matt.5:5-15 is a start and Jesus gives us a beginning sample in ‘The Lord’s Prayer.’  There are other examples of Jesus in prayer like John 17 but the important thing is that we pray often, biblically, personally and honestly. 

 

Fourth, we have been made members of His family, the Body of Christ, “…so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others (Rom.12:5).”  We grow only as we relate to one another as brothers and sisters in the Body.

 

Fifth, we have been given spiritual gifts to build our identity and serve one another in the Body.  It is through spiritual gifts that we build the Body, grow spiritually and do the works He has prepared for us in advance to do (Eph.2:10).

 

Sixth, we have been given the Holy Spirit to accomplish all of the above.  It is the Holy Spirit who makes us Jesus-conscious, Word hungry and faith-active.  “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory (Eph.1:13-14).”

 

Seventh, we have been given power in the Cross of Christ.  “And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power (1Cor.2:1-5).”

 

So we stand together, walk together, believe together, pray together, study together, minister together and daily give God the praise and the glory.  As the old hymn says, “Trust and obey, trust and obey, there’s no other way.”