NEWS An Open Heaven
In reviewing all the blogs I have written over the past year, several themes or main threads are evident. I wanted to review these themes today, and then reveal a vision the Lord gave me recently that will likely dictate the future direction of the material you will find here. Let's start with the major themes and main threads.
One of the major themes that emerges from my writings is the importance of seeing Christ as something Spiritual and not religious. As I have come to clearly understand, Christ and Christianity are two vastly different things. The Holy Spirit is largely absent from Christianity today (more on this below), but you cannot separate the Holy Spirit from Christ - they are One.
The second main theme, which is closely related to the first, is the centrality of the heart in following Christ. The Spirit connects our heart with God's heart. It's a heart-to-heart connection. Christ shows us the way directly to God's heart. To live in the Spirit is to journey into the heart of God and to live a life of love. This is God's purpose for all of our lives - to see Christ, surrender our hearts to Him, and live a life of love.
The third theme, which is perhaps the most important of all, is knowing God is love (1 John 4:8) and understanding the power - the incredible light - of His never-failing love (1 Corinthians 13). It is the Spirit that gives us the ability to comprehend God's amazing love through our hearts. It is not something we can learn by going to school, or get through studying the Bible, or any other academic or educational pursuit.
Simply stated, it is the Spirit, not any religion man devises in the name of Christ, that gives Light, Love, and Life. If the Spirit isn't present in the heart of the believer, he or she cannot follow Christ.
I would now like to discuss the vision the Lord gave me. It's only a glimpse of things to come, but I believe there will be much gained from following the vision in the months and years ahead.
Last week, as I was finishing up a book by T. Austin-Sparks titled "Prophetic Ministry," the Lord gave me a vision. The vision wasn't crystal clear at first. I saw it dimly, as through a dark glass. However, I could feel the Spirit pulling me strongly toward clarity, forcefully toward the light. The vision I received was a book -a book I would author, guided by the Spirit.
I was captivated by the vision when it appeared. I have written two books (both professional books on investing) over the past decade. I enjoy writing. It's a talent God gave me and I receive joy from using my God-given talent.
What was interesting about the timing of the vision is that not long ago I had a deep, spirit-filled conversation with one of Christine's childhood friends. Christine's dear friend told me she felt she was being guided closer to Jesus, and she mentioned after reading all of my blogs, that she felt the Lord was calling me to write a book.
At the time she mentioned the book idea to me I did not dismiss the thought. I recall saying that it was certainly consistent with the way things were evolving.
Feeling moved by the vision the Lord had given me, I took out a legal pad and wrote down a stream of thoughts. I was writing furiously. In a matter of minutes, I filled a whole page. When I examined what I had written, I saw the words "Spirit," "Heart," "Love," "Brokenness," "Repentance," "Sin," "Religion," "Fruit," "The Cross" and "Holiness." Looking at the words, I saw many important concepts I have been meditating on over the past several years.
In trying to find the common thread that pulled all these words and concepts together, I tried to imagine a title for the book. I struggled to see the title at first. I wrote down several titles, but none resonated with my heart. And then something very special happened. The title appeared, as if out of nowhere. Here's what I saw:
How beautiful!, I thought. What a magnificent book title! An Open Heaven. Immediately, I saw a beautiful landscape. In every direction I looked I saw love. Love was everywhere! My heart was filled with indescribable joy.
I thought about the book title more deeply. An Open Heaven - a Spiritual place - another dimension not of this Earth, that is filled with nothing but God's love. Oh my! Could there be anything more beautiful than an Open Heaven? What living soul wouldn't want to see this place?
My mind raced ahead. I asked the Lord to illuminate the purpose of the book. He didn't respond right away. Days passed. I waited patiently for His guidance.
This morning, as I was finishing Sparks' book "Prophetic Ministry," the main thesis of the book "An Open Heaven" appeared to me. I saw it clearly in a few things Sparks said in the concluding chapter (bold added for emphasis):
"Now, the difference between the dispensations is just that. In the old dispensation everything had to be told to the people. They had to get it secondhand from someone else; it was never their own, it was not original. In the new dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the thing was in themselves; the root of the matter was in them. But Christianity has become very largely a system which has reverted to the level of the old dispensation. That is, so many Christians have their lives based upon addresses and sermons and going to meetings and being told by other people. How many Christians do you find today who are really living in the good of a throbbing, personal revelation of Jesus Christ?
The great need of our day is for the people of God to be re-established on the basis upon which the Church was founded in the beginning, a Holy Ghost basis; and the very beginning of that basis is this - not to have a lot of information given to Christians, but that the Christians should have the faculty of spiritual sight within them, should have the capacity for seeing, and should themselves be seeing. Can you say: 'My eyes are open; I am seeing God's eternal purpose, I am seeing the significance of Christ; I am seeing more and more as to the Lord Jesus'? Unless it is like that, we shall leave the Holy Ghost behind, and we shall have to turn round and go back to find Him where we left Him, because a life in the Holy Ghost right up to date is a life of continually increasing vision. Vision is absolutely essential, both as to faculty and as to object."
The main thesis of the book I saw in my vision was staring me right in the face! It was in the powerful message Sparks was giving his audience over fifty years ago. I read the passage again to make sure I didn't miss anything. When I read it again, I was moved greatly by a few sentences:
"But Christianity has become very largely a system which has reverted to the level of the old dispensation. That is, so many Christians have their lives based upon addresses and sermons and going to meetings and being told by other people."
That's what the Spirit has been telling me for years now. Oh, the tears I have shed asking the Lord to shed light on the problems with Christianity. Sparks wrote his book in the 1950s, but the condition of Christianity is the same today, or perhaps even worse.
Sparks' then asks this penetrating question:
"How many Christians do you find today who are really living in the good of a throbbing, personal revelation of Jesus Christ?"
Not many, I thought to myself. In fact, I thought that I could probably count on two hands all those Christians I have met in my life that have truly seen Christ. And therein lies the biggest issue with Christianity today. It is largely a religion devoid of Christ. Put simply:
Christianity lacks the Spirit of the very Being it is worshiping.
Interestingly, this is the same way Jesus found Judaism nearly 2,000 years ago. Nothing much has changed. All that has happened is that we have created another religion and placed Jesus Christ at the center of it. Meanwhile, the hearts of those who call themselves Christians and who worship Jesus every Sunday in the many churches on this planet (pick one of the 38,000 denominations of your choice) are of the exact same condition as the hearts that spat in Jesus' face and pleaded with the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, to crucify Him.
What do we see when we look at the Christian landscape today? Do we see a landscape of love? Do we see an Open Heaven? Sadly, we do not. Rather, what we see are predominately hearts of stone - the very kind of heart that the Spirit described through the prophet Ezekiel (37:26-27). A kind of heart that is the directly opposed to Jesus' heart.
What would the Lord today say to the leaders of Christianity if He were present to speak to them? I think He would say the very same thing He said to the Pharisees nearly 2,000 years ago:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion (greed) and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matthew 23:25-28)
Jesus would tell Christian leaders - many, but certainly not all - that they are dead inside. Their hearts are stone. There is no Light, Love or Life. They call themselves men of God, but they are no such thing in His eyes. They are full of hypocrisy, wicked and downright evil.
So how does Christianity get back to Christ? Here's what Sparks says:
"The great need of our day is for the people of God to be re-established on the basis upon which the Church was founded in the beginning, a Holy Ghost basis; and the very beginning of that basis is this - not to have a lot of information given to Christians, but that the Christians should have the faculty of spiritual sight within them, should have the capacity for seeing, and should themselves be seeing."
That's exactly the subject that my book is going to explore: How to get back to Jesus. How to see Christ, be blessed with His grace, and live a life of love in the Spirit. How to see the Kingdom of God. The disciples saw Christ. Saul of Tarsus saw Christ. Read The Book of the Acts and see how their lives were utterly transformed by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a precious gift and this gift is essential if we are to follow Jesus.
To see Christ, to be blessed with His Spirit, and be guided by His Spirit is what Christianity should be all about. It should be a Great Life filled with Light and Love! It should be a life filled with all His Spiritual fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is, said the Spirit through Paul, no law against such things (Galatians 5:23).
Christianity should be about having an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus - a relationship, not a religion. It should be about living a life of love that begins by allowing His Spirit to transform our hearts from the inside out. Christianity is not that way today. Many of those who call themselves Christians have lost The Way, just as the Jews did over 2,000 years ago.
A relationship with Jesus, led by His Spirit, will take you into the Kingdom if you do what the Spirit tells you to do. You must follow the Spirit. You must do what He tells you to do. Jesus came so that we could hear the good news (which is what gospel means) about His Kingdom. The Kingdom of God has Christ at its center and His Spirit as the guide. God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are One.
When you see Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, you become part of His Church. The Kingdom is not something that you join or pay money to become a member. It is much more than that - so much more! Your life becomes an extension of His Church (the Greek word for His Church is "Ekklesia"). Jesus was very clear about all of this when he was walking the Earth. The Lord said:
"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
Jesus is building His Church and Satan will not prevail against it. The man-made churches that house Christians here on earth will fade away and die eventually, but the Church Jesus is building is eternal. There is nothing more glorious for a man, woman or child than to be a living stone in the Church the Lord is building and to possess a heart filled with God's love.
I feel very strongly that this book that Lord gave me a vision of will have a positive, uplifting message for all believers alike. It may even touch the hearts of non-believers. It will illuminate the beauty of Christ and the beauty of living in His Spirit. It will help people see that there is something greater out there - a better way to live that has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with having a relationship with Jesus.
To see Christ, to have Christ in our hearts, and follow Him is to journey into an Open Heaven. There is no greater journey I can conceive in this universe. It is the ultimate journey - the journey of a billion lifetimes.
It takes faith to follow the Lord, perhaps more faith than most people realize or know. The key is to never lose hope. Hope is the light that allows you to see Him when there is only darkness in your life. Hope is what gives you the strength to reach deep down when nothing is going right. Hope is what overcomes darkness and despair so you can keep the faith.
Faith and hope will lead you directly to God's heart - to a heart filled with a love that you cannot even begin to understand until you see Christ. And when you do see Christ and begin to comprehend God's heart, all other things will fade away and seem insignificant by comparison. You will see an Open Heaven filled with God's glorious love. You will be One with the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
To be continued...
May you see Christ and may His love reign supreme in your heart.
Agape,
Steve
One of the major themes that emerges from my writings is the importance of seeing Christ as something Spiritual and not religious. As I have come to clearly understand, Christ and Christianity are two vastly different things. The Holy Spirit is largely absent from Christianity today (more on this below), but you cannot separate the Holy Spirit from Christ - they are One.
The second main theme, which is closely related to the first, is the centrality of the heart in following Christ. The Spirit connects our heart with God's heart. It's a heart-to-heart connection. Christ shows us the way directly to God's heart. To live in the Spirit is to journey into the heart of God and to live a life of love. This is God's purpose for all of our lives - to see Christ, surrender our hearts to Him, and live a life of love.
The third theme, which is perhaps the most important of all, is knowing God is love (1 John 4:8) and understanding the power - the incredible light - of His never-failing love (1 Corinthians 13). It is the Spirit that gives us the ability to comprehend God's amazing love through our hearts. It is not something we can learn by going to school, or get through studying the Bible, or any other academic or educational pursuit.
Simply stated, it is the Spirit, not any religion man devises in the name of Christ, that gives Light, Love, and Life. If the Spirit isn't present in the heart of the believer, he or she cannot follow Christ.
I would now like to discuss the vision the Lord gave me. It's only a glimpse of things to come, but I believe there will be much gained from following the vision in the months and years ahead.
Last week, as I was finishing up a book by T. Austin-Sparks titled "Prophetic Ministry," the Lord gave me a vision. The vision wasn't crystal clear at first. I saw it dimly, as through a dark glass. However, I could feel the Spirit pulling me strongly toward clarity, forcefully toward the light. The vision I received was a book -a book I would author, guided by the Spirit.
I was captivated by the vision when it appeared. I have written two books (both professional books on investing) over the past decade. I enjoy writing. It's a talent God gave me and I receive joy from using my God-given talent.
What was interesting about the timing of the vision is that not long ago I had a deep, spirit-filled conversation with one of Christine's childhood friends. Christine's dear friend told me she felt she was being guided closer to Jesus, and she mentioned after reading all of my blogs, that she felt the Lord was calling me to write a book.
At the time she mentioned the book idea to me I did not dismiss the thought. I recall saying that it was certainly consistent with the way things were evolving.
Feeling moved by the vision the Lord had given me, I took out a legal pad and wrote down a stream of thoughts. I was writing furiously. In a matter of minutes, I filled a whole page. When I examined what I had written, I saw the words "Spirit," "Heart," "Love," "Brokenness," "Repentance," "Sin," "Religion," "Fruit," "The Cross" and "Holiness." Looking at the words, I saw many important concepts I have been meditating on over the past several years.
In trying to find the common thread that pulled all these words and concepts together, I tried to imagine a title for the book. I struggled to see the title at first. I wrote down several titles, but none resonated with my heart. And then something very special happened. The title appeared, as if out of nowhere. Here's what I saw:
AN OPEN HEAVEN
Living a Life of Love in the Spirit
Living a Life of Love in the Spirit
How beautiful!, I thought. What a magnificent book title! An Open Heaven. Immediately, I saw a beautiful landscape. In every direction I looked I saw love. Love was everywhere! My heart was filled with indescribable joy.
I thought about the book title more deeply. An Open Heaven - a Spiritual place - another dimension not of this Earth, that is filled with nothing but God's love. Oh my! Could there be anything more beautiful than an Open Heaven? What living soul wouldn't want to see this place?
My mind raced ahead. I asked the Lord to illuminate the purpose of the book. He didn't respond right away. Days passed. I waited patiently for His guidance.
This morning, as I was finishing Sparks' book "Prophetic Ministry," the main thesis of the book "An Open Heaven" appeared to me. I saw it clearly in a few things Sparks said in the concluding chapter (bold added for emphasis):
"Now, the difference between the dispensations is just that. In the old dispensation everything had to be told to the people. They had to get it secondhand from someone else; it was never their own, it was not original. In the new dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the thing was in themselves; the root of the matter was in them. But Christianity has become very largely a system which has reverted to the level of the old dispensation. That is, so many Christians have their lives based upon addresses and sermons and going to meetings and being told by other people. How many Christians do you find today who are really living in the good of a throbbing, personal revelation of Jesus Christ?
The great need of our day is for the people of God to be re-established on the basis upon which the Church was founded in the beginning, a Holy Ghost basis; and the very beginning of that basis is this - not to have a lot of information given to Christians, but that the Christians should have the faculty of spiritual sight within them, should have the capacity for seeing, and should themselves be seeing. Can you say: 'My eyes are open; I am seeing God's eternal purpose, I am seeing the significance of Christ; I am seeing more and more as to the Lord Jesus'? Unless it is like that, we shall leave the Holy Ghost behind, and we shall have to turn round and go back to find Him where we left Him, because a life in the Holy Ghost right up to date is a life of continually increasing vision. Vision is absolutely essential, both as to faculty and as to object."
The main thesis of the book I saw in my vision was staring me right in the face! It was in the powerful message Sparks was giving his audience over fifty years ago. I read the passage again to make sure I didn't miss anything. When I read it again, I was moved greatly by a few sentences:
"But Christianity has become very largely a system which has reverted to the level of the old dispensation. That is, so many Christians have their lives based upon addresses and sermons and going to meetings and being told by other people."
That's what the Spirit has been telling me for years now. Oh, the tears I have shed asking the Lord to shed light on the problems with Christianity. Sparks wrote his book in the 1950s, but the condition of Christianity is the same today, or perhaps even worse.
Sparks' then asks this penetrating question:
"How many Christians do you find today who are really living in the good of a throbbing, personal revelation of Jesus Christ?"
Not many, I thought to myself. In fact, I thought that I could probably count on two hands all those Christians I have met in my life that have truly seen Christ. And therein lies the biggest issue with Christianity today. It is largely a religion devoid of Christ. Put simply:
Christianity lacks the Spirit of the very Being it is worshiping.
Interestingly, this is the same way Jesus found Judaism nearly 2,000 years ago. Nothing much has changed. All that has happened is that we have created another religion and placed Jesus Christ at the center of it. Meanwhile, the hearts of those who call themselves Christians and who worship Jesus every Sunday in the many churches on this planet (pick one of the 38,000 denominations of your choice) are of the exact same condition as the hearts that spat in Jesus' face and pleaded with the Roman leader, Pontius Pilate, to crucify Him.
What do we see when we look at the Christian landscape today? Do we see a landscape of love? Do we see an Open Heaven? Sadly, we do not. Rather, what we see are predominately hearts of stone - the very kind of heart that the Spirit described through the prophet Ezekiel (37:26-27). A kind of heart that is the directly opposed to Jesus' heart.
What would the Lord today say to the leaders of Christianity if He were present to speak to them? I think He would say the very same thing He said to the Pharisees nearly 2,000 years ago:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion (greed) and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness." (Matthew 23:25-28)
Jesus would tell Christian leaders - many, but certainly not all - that they are dead inside. Their hearts are stone. There is no Light, Love or Life. They call themselves men of God, but they are no such thing in His eyes. They are full of hypocrisy, wicked and downright evil.
So how does Christianity get back to Christ? Here's what Sparks says:
"The great need of our day is for the people of God to be re-established on the basis upon which the Church was founded in the beginning, a Holy Ghost basis; and the very beginning of that basis is this - not to have a lot of information given to Christians, but that the Christians should have the faculty of spiritual sight within them, should have the capacity for seeing, and should themselves be seeing."
That's exactly the subject that my book is going to explore: How to get back to Jesus. How to see Christ, be blessed with His grace, and live a life of love in the Spirit. How to see the Kingdom of God. The disciples saw Christ. Saul of Tarsus saw Christ. Read The Book of the Acts and see how their lives were utterly transformed by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a precious gift and this gift is essential if we are to follow Jesus.
To see Christ, to be blessed with His Spirit, and be guided by His Spirit is what Christianity should be all about. It should be a Great Life filled with Light and Love! It should be a life filled with all His Spiritual fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is, said the Spirit through Paul, no law against such things (Galatians 5:23).
Christianity should be about having an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus - a relationship, not a religion. It should be about living a life of love that begins by allowing His Spirit to transform our hearts from the inside out. Christianity is not that way today. Many of those who call themselves Christians have lost The Way, just as the Jews did over 2,000 years ago.
A relationship with Jesus, led by His Spirit, will take you into the Kingdom if you do what the Spirit tells you to do. You must follow the Spirit. You must do what He tells you to do. Jesus came so that we could hear the good news (which is what gospel means) about His Kingdom. The Kingdom of God has Christ at its center and His Spirit as the guide. God, Christ and the Holy Spirit are One.
When you see Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, you become part of His Church. The Kingdom is not something that you join or pay money to become a member. It is much more than that - so much more! Your life becomes an extension of His Church (the Greek word for His Church is "Ekklesia"). Jesus was very clear about all of this when he was walking the Earth. The Lord said:
"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)
Jesus is building His Church and Satan will not prevail against it. The man-made churches that house Christians here on earth will fade away and die eventually, but the Church Jesus is building is eternal. There is nothing more glorious for a man, woman or child than to be a living stone in the Church the Lord is building and to possess a heart filled with God's love.
I feel very strongly that this book that Lord gave me a vision of will have a positive, uplifting message for all believers alike. It may even touch the hearts of non-believers. It will illuminate the beauty of Christ and the beauty of living in His Spirit. It will help people see that there is something greater out there - a better way to live that has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with having a relationship with Jesus.
To see Christ, to have Christ in our hearts, and follow Him is to journey into an Open Heaven. There is no greater journey I can conceive in this universe. It is the ultimate journey - the journey of a billion lifetimes.
It takes faith to follow the Lord, perhaps more faith than most people realize or know. The key is to never lose hope. Hope is the light that allows you to see Him when there is only darkness in your life. Hope is what gives you the strength to reach deep down when nothing is going right. Hope is what overcomes darkness and despair so you can keep the faith.
Faith and hope will lead you directly to God's heart - to a heart filled with a love that you cannot even begin to understand until you see Christ. And when you do see Christ and begin to comprehend God's heart, all other things will fade away and seem insignificant by comparison. You will see an Open Heaven filled with God's glorious love. You will be One with the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
To be continued...
May you see Christ and may His love reign supreme in your heart.
Agape,
Steve
posted by Steve at
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