As mentioned in the previous Fatherly Talk 8.04, it is important that we have a heart that is pure in order to receive with 100% purity and accuracy the spoken word of God through dreams, visions or other means. Since only the pure in heart can truly see God, it is important to understand more this purity of heart. The heart involves our spirit and our soul. For out of the heart proceeds all manner of evil (mark 7:20-23). The spirit of all those in Christ are pure, holy and undefiled as it is born again and old things are passed away (2 Corinthians 5:17). The soul, on the other hand, has a lot of renewal and transformation to go through. Everyone who sees in the spirit and receives downloads will require both the operation of the Holy Spirit and angels upon the spirit and soul. Just a slight difference or diversion of soul, through bias, or other human emotions, wrong understanding or teaching, or wrong wilful intention not necessarily evil but with other subconscious agenda, would straightaway pollute the stream of reception in the Spirit.
God can speak clearly into our lives only in proportion to:
- the strength of our spirit man
- the renewal of our mind
- the purity of God’s perfect love flowing through us
1. The Strength of our Spirit Man
When we were born again, our spirits are like new-born babes which need to grow through the milk of the word (1 Peter 2:2). The rate of growth is not measured by physical time but rather by how much time we spend with God and with godly spiritual fellowship in the church. We are all like plants that need to be nourished and nurtured. Everyone will have to go through the challenges of the four types of ground of the sower and the seed (Mark 4:13-20). And we also need to meditate on the word daily until we are like the tree planted by the rivers of water (Psalm 1:1-3). God’s tangible presence in our lives is directly proportional to the growth of our spirit man. Paul prayed that Christ would dwell in fullness in the Ephesus Christians through their inner man being strengthened through the Spirit (Ephesians 3:16-19). The tangible presence of God and Jesus is in our spirits (2 Timothy 4:22). A strong spirit man is a container for the greater degree of Jesus’ tangible presence in our lives. Even our Lord Jesus Christ had to grow and become strong in Spirit for the greater and greater manifestation of God’s tangible presence in His life (Luke 2:40). This concept of degrees of God’s presence in our lives is beyond our normal understanding of time-space-energy for we cannot conceive of the fullness of God in Jesus life increasing since Jesus was as much the fullness of God at one month as He was at the age of thirty-three. Yet we do acknowledge that the tangible presence of God grew in His life and when He began His ministry at the age of thirty, when the Holy Spirit also came upon Him, to the time of His crucifixion and resurrection, that He was indeed demonstrating more and more of the fullness and power of God’s presence within Him.
I was once shown, how my spirit man needed to grow and it was not the same as the soul. In my soul, I had gained some intellectual capacity to study and do well in theology and the Bible but at the end of three years of theological training, God showed me that my spirit man was still weak and needed to grow and be strengthened. That was when God taught me how to meditate and grow my spirit man. There was a stage when I had spent eight to sixteen hours a day over a period of about a year meditating on God’s word, that I felt more and more the tangible presence of God in my life. Some of the gifts of God started operating. I wondered about these things and the Holy Spirit showed me that in a small way, we were like batteries and when there is not enough electricity, the gifts in its various form could not manifest, as it require a certain level of ‘anointing’ or God’s presence for the gifts to manifest and become tangibly present in our lives. The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are considered manifestations given to each one for the profit of all (1 Corinthians 12:7-11). When they started manifesting, it was another step to understand their manifestations and apply them to do miracles and works of God energized by the Holy Spirit.
Thus in order to receive more accurate dreams, visions and download, our spirit man must be strong and daily feed on God’s word and breathe the oxygen of God’s love and presence. Through time we will graduate from the milk of God’s word and be able to partake of the meat of God’s Word (Hebrews 5:13-14). There is no limit as to the growth of our spirit man on earth nor do we have to leave earth and go to heaven to grow our spirit man. As Jesus lived on earth and grew His spirit man here, so can we do so. It is possible on earth to grow until we know the fullness of God and of God’s love, all of its width, length, depth and height, to know the love of Christ experientially which surpasses knowledge until we are filled with the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19).
2. The Renewal of our Mind
All prophecy is in part and everything received is in part until the perfect comes (1 Corinthians 13:9-10). The perfect does not have to come only when we leave earth and go to heaven. The perfect can come if we renew our minds to prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect Will of God while on earth (Romans 12:1-2). Note that the permissive or the perfect Will of God has to be ‘proved.’ This requires several things to take place first:
- We must consecrate our bodies to God as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1)
- We must be freed from thinking like the world or being conformed to this world (Romans 12:2)
- We must be renewed in our mind to think spiritually like Jesus thinks (Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 2:14-16)
- Finally, we can prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect Will of God
The word ‘prove’ is from the Greek word ‘dokimazo’ which means ‘to test, to discern, to examine, to prove, to try, etc.’ Many people think that the perfect Will of God is given on a silver platter or in a special book that says ‘This is the Perfect Will of God.’ They forget that the perfect will has to be discovered by actual testing, examination, checking out the boundaries, trying it out, etc. Paul did not know where to go Jerusalem council, which settled the Gentile question for the church in general. So he visited the old places where he had preached the gospel and then in time went through the regions of Phrygia and Galatia but they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia (Acts 16:6). After that they tried to go into Bithynia from Mysia and the Holy Spirit did not permit them (Acts 16:7). Not knowing where else to go, Paul and his team went to Troas, a seaside town, and there received the Macedonian call (Acts 16:9-10). He interpreted the vision as the perfect will of God to go and preached the gospel in Philippi, Macedonia. Note that he had to ‘try’ various places before he discovered God’s perfect Will. God could have just told him where to go but it is not the Will of God that He reduces us to mindless robots that do not think or make decisions for ourselves. Paul had to find out what was NOT God’s Will (Asia and Bithynia) before he found out what was God’s perfect Will (Macedonia). If he had stayed back in Antioch waiting, he would NOT have heard a single word or revelation.
Similarly, when one needs leading from God to buy a house or a car or to venture into a new business or go into a new job, one cannot just sit at home and twiddle one’s thumbs till God appears. It is important to go forth out there to ‘test, prove, examine’ what is God’s perfect Will. The prophet Samuel, despite his great ability to see visions (known as a seer) could not discern who was God’s perfect Will to be a king replacing Saul UNTIL he actually went to the house of Jesse to find the chosen man (1 Samuel 16:1). And when he was in Jesse’s house, his own mind thought that Eliab was the chosen one but God told him this was NOT the one (1 Samuel 16:6-7). And then God let him went through each of the seven sons so that Samuel would know that NONE of the first seven were chosen (1 Samuel 16:10). It was ONLY when David came right in front of him that Samuel knew and discerned that David was God’s perfect Will and choice for Israel (1 Samuel 12-13). Why waste time going through this whole process? Why not just tell Samuel the exact son and name? God expects us to be fully functional humans (not mindless robots) when we test and discover His perfect Will through a human process of exercising our free choice and evaluating with our minds. That is why BEFORE the opportunity for proving the perfect Will of God comes, we must have our minds RENEWED. Without the renewal of the mind, we will think in the natural or like the world and in the flesh and God’s perfect Will can be standing right in front of us and we miss it. We cannot recognise it because God’s ways are higher than our ways and God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Also when God chooses a path of His perfect Will it always involve the path of the cross (followed by a resurrection) as this is the path that causes us to die to self and bring all the glory to Him. Without renewal of our minds, we will NEVER be able to discern God’s perfect Will for our lives. Who could imagine that it was God’s perfect Will for Joseph to meet the butler in a prison. The fact that God was with Joseph and that his gift of interpreting dreams was developed in prison reveals that it was God’s special and perfect Will for Joseph to be there for a time (Genesis 39:21; 41:12-13). Many people always look for the broad way to do God’s Will (eventually dying spiritually and losing everything like Lot) but it is the narrow and more difficult path that requires self-sacrifice that eventually proves to be God’s perfect Will (Luke 13:13-14).
You can see that even the most mature leaders of the New Testament church in Paul’s time struggle to discern God’s perfect Will for Paul to go to Jerusalem (Acts 21:12-14). Only when Paul said that he already knew what God had spoken to him about being bound, and that he was ready to die for Jesus to do God’s Will did all the others relented and said, “The will of the Lord be done” (Acts 21:14). Why couldn’t they see that it was God’s perfect Will? Because it involves suffering and potentially dying for Jesus? Their minds were still conditioned like many human minds, to escape the cross and suffering and take the easy path. It was a good thing that Paul was insistent on doing God’s perfect Will no matter what the sacrifice is, that they agreed. A renewed spiritual mind is the ONLY mind that can discern the perfect Will of God because it sees things from heaven and not from the earth’s perspective.
In order to be accurate in the reception of dreams, visions and downloads, we must have our minds renewed until it synchronizes with the mind of Christ. Then only are we able to receive, understand and interpret dreams, visions and downloads accurately. Don’t look at things carnally but rather have a spiritual mind, so that life and peace can flow freely and in this purity of heart and mind, one can see God clearly.
3. The Purity of God’s Perfect Love flowing through us
All the gifts of the Spirit are practically useless and worthless unless perfect love reigns in our heart and mind. Without love, prophecies, tongues, power, revelation and any other manifestations of the Holy Spirit are absolutely unprofitable and worth nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). The problem is NOT how genuine the gifts are. The problem is its usage and power of edification and building up. A gift used wrongly is absolutely worthless without love. For without love, one is operating in darkness (1 John 2:9-11). And when the darkness is present in the absence of love, even the gifts of God become polluted and used by the devil to deliver his words of death, condemnation and destruction. For the devil cannot create, he can only take the gifts that God freely give to men and women and twist and turn them into evil and destructive use. For the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).
At the root of this darkness is fear. For only perfect love can cast out fear (1 John 4:18-19). He who fears has not been made perfect in love. A person who has hidden or subconscious fear in their live can NEVER operate the gifts of the Holy Spirit perfectly or accurately. Prophecies that come forth will be tainted by fear. Guardians angels are assigned to our lives because through pre-existence and training they have the most harmonious synchrony with our spiritual and mental resonance, which sometimes causes them to resemble us, like Peter’s angel mistaken for him (Acts 12:13-15). And most people who see or hear angels (especially through the realm of thoughts), think that an angel speak certain ‘words from God to them’ but it is actually the bouncing of their own thoughts to the angels and back to them because of the echo of synchronized thoughts. God took me to heaven and showed me this occurring in many people who think that they were speaking to angels, especially some ridiculous words and sentences that they report ‘hearing from angels’ (visible or invisible). They did not realise that it is their own soul and thoughts reflecting of the angels. It is my calling to teach people to be more accurate in interacting with the Spiritual realm, thus God continues to take me into many visits of heaven and showed me from heaven’s perspective what is truly happening.
You can feel and taste and smell the fear present in such prophecies for there is no perfection of love developed yet. Everyone of us is growing into the perfection of love and we need to allow God’s perfect love to flow through our lives. No human being can love like Jesus love, so we can only die to self and let Jesus live through us (Galatians 2:20). Allow Jesus to be Lord. Lord over our thoughts, our feelings and emotions, our whole lives. Don’t look at people through your own soul or through your own mind. We all were born with bias in our lives and we inherit it from the imperfections of sin nature present in this world. It takes time to look at each individual human through Jesus’ eyes. When Jesus looked at each and every human, His thoughts and His feelings say, “I love you unconditionally and I want to give you all the best that God your Father has created you to be and to have, of which I am prepared to die and give myself to you.” Can we feel and think like Jesus to each and every human; including those who are harder to love, and more unlikeable in people’s eyes, full of faults and weakness and imperfections? Only when you can love, think and feel like Jesus can you receive God’s word perfect and purely for them. Anything lesser would mean that your reception is faulty and thus contain some prejudice and bias tainting what you receive in the Spirit realm.
Let us all grow into the fullness of the emotions and the mind of Jesus. Only when we are exactly like Him can we operate and function exactly like Jesus. Then we will have the fullness of Jesus in us and do the works of Jesus and the greater works of Jesus (John 14:12). Amen.