Seeing in the Spirit - Part 1
As Christians, we face the daily choice of where we are going to draw our power:
- The power of the flesh – where we simply do ‘what feels good…’
- The power of our soul – where our mind, emotions and will direct us
- The power of the Holy Spirit – where we allow God living within us to lead us.
As we turn away from fleshly and soulish living, we simply must have intimate, dialogue with God so that His Spirit can lead us. We need to hear from Him – we don’t know how to live in the Spirit, unless we are in touch with the Spirit.
Which is why we are learning how to have authentic DIALOGUE with God – we aren’t talking here about one-way prayer, instead we are talking about training ourselves in the joy of having two-way conversations with God!
Thus far – we’ve learned that:
- God’s voice in our hearts sounds like the flow of spontaneous thoughts. Therefore, in order to hear Him, I must tune into spontaneity.
- God speaks in the stillness, not in the noise, confusion and hurry. Therefore, I must embrace stillness in order to hear His voice.
Today – we move to the next step in having dialogue with God. And it is this:
- God uses visions and dreams to speak intimately to our hearts. Therefore, I will fix the eyes of my heart upon Jesus, seeking to see in the Spirit the dreams and visions of God.
PRAYER
Look at Habakkuk 2:1 –
“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.” Habakkuk 2:1
Here you see the process that one of God’s prophets went through to hear from God – and notice right in the middle of the text: “I will look to see what he will say to me…”
Habakkuk is LOOKING TO SEE what is BEING SAID – and interesting turn of words – why doesn’t he say, “I will listen to what God is saying”? – Because, Habakkuk understood that God speaks through visions and dreams – Habakkuk is LOOKING for the vision that God will send!
This may strike you as a new idea – it certainly has me – until I looked deeper into the Bible and discovered that there are hundreds of verses from Genesis to Revelation that demonstrate that God has chosen to reveal Himself within our hearts by use of dream or vision!
And, since this is one of the ways that God speaks, it is vital for your spiritual growth and maturity for you to learn to see in the Spirit what God is saying!
At the day the church began in Jerusalem – the Day of Pentecost – the day that the Holy Spirit came – Peter quoted Joel 2:28 in Acts 2:17…
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” Acts 2:17, 18
The Holy Spirit of God is given to all who call upon Jesus! As a result – there will be prophesies, there will be visions, there will be dreams – all of which bring us into a greater revelation and experience of God!
It is time for us to move into this dynamic power – to allow Christ to set our hearts aflame with His love – to pursue Him in such a way that He opens us up to that realm of revelation that we have largely ignored!
Our problem is that we have all grown up with a cultural bias against spiritual life! Our culture bows down at the throne of Rationalism – to the complete exclusion of the spiritual realm! We must come to see that this is not God’s problem – this is our problem! The world says: There is no realm of the Spirit – there is only the material world, that which can be observed through the five senses! And much of Western Christianity has bought into this world view blindly – forgetting that as Christians our very hope lies in the fact that there is more than we can see – that God exists and has a Kingdom that is unseen to the natural eyes! We must repent of allowing the world to force us into its mold! If we are ever going to move into truly Spirit-filled living, we must willingly break out of the hold that our godless culture has on us!
Paul prayed for people like us in Ephesians 1:17-18…
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,” Ephesians 1:17, 18
• We need the Spirit of wisdom!
• We need the Spirit of revelation!
Why? So we can ‘know Him better’!
• We need the ‘eyes of the heart opened and enlightened’!
Why? So we can ‘know hope and inheritance!’
Why is this so important? Because it is with the eyes of your heart that the heart of the Lord for you is revealed!
Let me illustrate:
HEAD KNOWLEDGE: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
• God loves everyone.
• God sacrificed His Son.
• I must believe.
• When I believe, I am saved.
Let’s be honest – to hear that with the head doesn’t do much to thrill us!
But hear it with the heart…
HEART KNOWLEDGE:
“I am loved. I am loved deeply, personally, eternally. In spite of my mistakes, in spite of my most wicked moments, even when I said and did horrible things – God was busy – not condemning me, but loving me! His love for me is so extraordinary that He did the unthinkable – He willingly , planned, allowed and carried out the sacrifice of His only child so that I could be brought back from my stupidity, my foolishness, my failures and my eventual death! Imagine, because of this great love, I can experience peace right now. If He loves me like this, I must be of some importance. It doesn’t matter what my parents said, what my classmates or teachers said, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t finish college, that I don’t make a million bucks a year – that I won’t win any beauty contests, that I am not famous: I AM LOVED BY MY CREATOR! And now, I can talk with Him, and he’ll talk with me. I can pour out my heart to Him, and He pours out His heart to me! I can go into any circumstance and He goes with me! Why? Because He loves me! He – loves – me! I – am – loved!”
When we begin to operate and live from the eyes of the heart – our experience with God takes on a vibrancy and life that simple head knowledge cannot ever replicate!
Today and next week – I want to:
• define what vision is
• provide you a biblical foundation
• show you ways to prepare the eyes of your heart for God to speak to you
• and give you a series of ways to test vision to make sure of it’s origin.
VISION DEFINED: Vision is seeing the movement of God with the eyes of the heart.
When God gives vision it is always to help you and I see what He is doing or is about to do! He gives vision so that we can participate with Him in what He is going to do.
There are two worlds and two sets of eyes.
• The seen, temporal world – which are viewed with the eyes of the flesh.
• The unseen, eternal world – which is seen with the eyes of the heart.
It’s not hard to see what is going on in the natural world – it takes no skill or revelation. It’s obvious. But God gives vision so that you can see what He is doing in the unseen, eternal world!
Perhaps the best example of this is found in 2 Kings 6:15 – where the enemies of God have camped around the city where Elisha was staying. Let’s read the text:
“When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” the servant asked. “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.” 2 Kings 6:15-17, NIV.
Elisha saw his servant’s fear, and prayed for Him – “God open his eyes so that he may see!” And God did – he gave vision where there had only been fear – and the unseen, eternal world – the activity of God was revealed.
• Vision is God showing up and letting you know what His plans are! And isn’t it amazing that He loves you enough to do this for you!
• Vision helps you in your communion with Christ – as He opens your eyes to His plans, your hunger and desire for Christ grows! Your love relationship with Him increases! His presence, His reassurance, His gentle word – draws me closer to Him.
• Vision also helps you as seek to minister to others – He shows you what He wants to do. (Christina – I saw in the Spirit the word “YES”)
VISION AND JESUS – A BIBLICAL FOUNDATION
TURN TO JOHN 5:19-20:
“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” John 5:19, 20
Jesus saw vision – “…he can do only what he sees his Father doing…” “…For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does…”
TURN TO JOHN 8:38:
“I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.” John 8:38
Jesus spoke what He saw in the visions - “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence…”
TURN TO MATTHEW 13:34
“Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” Matthew 13:34, 35
Jesus taught with visionary pictures – “parables, things hidden since the creation of the world…”
TURN TO COLOSSIANS 1:15
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Colossians 1:15
Jesus is a visionary picture of God – Do you want to see God – look at His image – Christ!
CONCLUSION:
If Jesus needed vision – you need it too!
Jesus opened acknowledged that all of His strength was the result of His intimacy with His Father in Heaven. If Jesus needed strength – you need it too!
We speak often about the spiritual battle we are in – how the enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy you – how you are in Christ potentially a powerful agent of transformation
The enemy doesn’t want your spiritual eyesight opened, he wants you to muddle through life, doing the best you can, living according to whatever soulish power you can muster up - but Christ offers you His vision – He offers you His reality – He offers you His life!
People ask: What is God doing at SUMMIT Church? And the answer is: He is building a truly SPIRITUAL house! He is calling us to pursue hard after Him – to long, to seek, to go after – to be willing to throw every lesser thing away – so that we can truly know Him!
Is this your desire?
Tune your heart into spontaneity.
Turn away from the noise and move into the stillness
Seek to see in the Spirit of GOD!
- The power of the flesh – where we simply do ‘what feels good…’
- The power of our soul – where our mind, emotions and will direct us
- The power of the Holy Spirit – where we allow God living within us to lead us.
As we turn away from fleshly and soulish living, we simply must have intimate, dialogue with God so that His Spirit can lead us. We need to hear from Him – we don’t know how to live in the Spirit, unless we are in touch with the Spirit.
Which is why we are learning how to have authentic DIALOGUE with God – we aren’t talking here about one-way prayer, instead we are talking about training ourselves in the joy of having two-way conversations with God!
Thus far – we’ve learned that:
- God’s voice in our hearts sounds like the flow of spontaneous thoughts. Therefore, in order to hear Him, I must tune into spontaneity.
- God speaks in the stillness, not in the noise, confusion and hurry. Therefore, I must embrace stillness in order to hear His voice.
Today – we move to the next step in having dialogue with God. And it is this:
- God uses visions and dreams to speak intimately to our hearts. Therefore, I will fix the eyes of my heart upon Jesus, seeking to see in the Spirit the dreams and visions of God.
PRAYER
Look at Habakkuk 2:1 –
“I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.” Habakkuk 2:1
Here you see the process that one of God’s prophets went through to hear from God – and notice right in the middle of the text: “I will look to see what he will say to me…”
Habakkuk is LOOKING TO SEE what is BEING SAID – and interesting turn of words – why doesn’t he say, “I will listen to what God is saying”? – Because, Habakkuk understood that God speaks through visions and dreams – Habakkuk is LOOKING for the vision that God will send!
This may strike you as a new idea – it certainly has me – until I looked deeper into the Bible and discovered that there are hundreds of verses from Genesis to Revelation that demonstrate that God has chosen to reveal Himself within our hearts by use of dream or vision!
And, since this is one of the ways that God speaks, it is vital for your spiritual growth and maturity for you to learn to see in the Spirit what God is saying!
At the day the church began in Jerusalem – the Day of Pentecost – the day that the Holy Spirit came – Peter quoted Joel 2:28 in Acts 2:17…
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” Acts 2:17, 18
The Holy Spirit of God is given to all who call upon Jesus! As a result – there will be prophesies, there will be visions, there will be dreams – all of which bring us into a greater revelation and experience of God!
It is time for us to move into this dynamic power – to allow Christ to set our hearts aflame with His love – to pursue Him in such a way that He opens us up to that realm of revelation that we have largely ignored!
Our problem is that we have all grown up with a cultural bias against spiritual life! Our culture bows down at the throne of Rationalism – to the complete exclusion of the spiritual realm! We must come to see that this is not God’s problem – this is our problem! The world says: There is no realm of the Spirit – there is only the material world, that which can be observed through the five senses! And much of Western Christianity has bought into this world view blindly – forgetting that as Christians our very hope lies in the fact that there is more than we can see – that God exists and has a Kingdom that is unseen to the natural eyes! We must repent of allowing the world to force us into its mold! If we are ever going to move into truly Spirit-filled living, we must willingly break out of the hold that our godless culture has on us!
Paul prayed for people like us in Ephesians 1:17-18…
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,” Ephesians 1:17, 18
• We need the Spirit of wisdom!
• We need the Spirit of revelation!
Why? So we can ‘know Him better’!
• We need the ‘eyes of the heart opened and enlightened’!
Why? So we can ‘know hope and inheritance!’
Why is this so important? Because it is with the eyes of your heart that the heart of the Lord for you is revealed!
Let me illustrate:
HEAD KNOWLEDGE: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16
• God loves everyone.
• God sacrificed His Son.
• I must believe.
• When I believe, I am saved.
Let’s be honest – to hear that with the head doesn’t do much to thrill us!
But hear it with the heart…
HEART KNOWLEDGE:
“I am loved. I am loved deeply, personally, eternally. In spite of my mistakes, in spite of my most wicked moments, even when I said and did horrible things – God was busy – not condemning me, but loving me! His love for me is so extraordinary that He did the unthinkable – He willingly , planned, allowed and carried out the sacrifice of His only child so that I could be brought back from my stupidity, my foolishness, my failures and my eventual death! Imagine, because of this great love, I can experience peace right now. If He loves me like this, I must be of some importance. It doesn’t matter what my parents said, what my classmates or teachers said, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t finish college, that I don’t make a million bucks a year – that I won’t win any beauty contests, that I am not famous: I AM LOVED BY MY CREATOR! And now, I can talk with Him, and he’ll talk with me. I can pour out my heart to Him, and He pours out His heart to me! I can go into any circumstance and He goes with me! Why? Because He loves me! He – loves – me! I – am – loved!”
When we begin to operate and live from the eyes of the heart – our experience with God takes on a vibrancy and life that simple head knowledge cannot ever replicate!
Today and next week – I want to:
• define what vision is
• provide you a biblical foundation
• show you ways to prepare the eyes of your heart for God to speak to you
• and give you a series of ways to test vision to make sure of it’s origin.
VISION DEFINED: Vision is seeing the movement of God with the eyes of the heart.
When God gives vision it is always to help you and I see what He is doing or is about to do! He gives vision so that we can participate with Him in what He is going to do.
There are two worlds and two sets of eyes.
• The seen, temporal world – which are viewed with the eyes of the flesh.
• The unseen, eternal world – which is seen with the eyes of the heart.
It’s not hard to see what is going on in the natural world – it takes no skill or revelation. It’s obvious. But God gives vision so that you can see what He is doing in the unseen, eternal world!
Perhaps the best example of this is found in 2 Kings 6:15 – where the enemies of God have camped around the city where Elisha was staying. Let’s read the text:
“When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” the servant asked. “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “O LORD, open his eyes so that he may see.” Then the LORD opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.” 2 Kings 6:15-17, NIV.
Elisha saw his servant’s fear, and prayed for Him – “God open his eyes so that he may see!” And God did – he gave vision where there had only been fear – and the unseen, eternal world – the activity of God was revealed.
• Vision is God showing up and letting you know what His plans are! And isn’t it amazing that He loves you enough to do this for you!
• Vision helps you in your communion with Christ – as He opens your eyes to His plans, your hunger and desire for Christ grows! Your love relationship with Him increases! His presence, His reassurance, His gentle word – draws me closer to Him.
• Vision also helps you as seek to minister to others – He shows you what He wants to do. (Christina – I saw in the Spirit the word “YES”)
VISION AND JESUS – A BIBLICAL FOUNDATION
TURN TO JOHN 5:19-20:
“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these.” John 5:19, 20
Jesus saw vision – “…he can do only what he sees his Father doing…” “…For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does…”
TURN TO JOHN 8:38:
“I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.” John 8:38
Jesus spoke what He saw in the visions - “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence…”
TURN TO MATTHEW 13:34
“Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.” Matthew 13:34, 35
Jesus taught with visionary pictures – “parables, things hidden since the creation of the world…”
TURN TO COLOSSIANS 1:15
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Colossians 1:15
Jesus is a visionary picture of God – Do you want to see God – look at His image – Christ!
CONCLUSION:
If Jesus needed vision – you need it too!
Jesus opened acknowledged that all of His strength was the result of His intimacy with His Father in Heaven. If Jesus needed strength – you need it too!
We speak often about the spiritual battle we are in – how the enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy you – how you are in Christ potentially a powerful agent of transformation
The enemy doesn’t want your spiritual eyesight opened, he wants you to muddle through life, doing the best you can, living according to whatever soulish power you can muster up - but Christ offers you His vision – He offers you His reality – He offers you His life!
People ask: What is God doing at SUMMIT Church? And the answer is: He is building a truly SPIRITUAL house! He is calling us to pursue hard after Him – to long, to seek, to go after – to be willing to throw every lesser thing away – so that we can truly know Him!
Is this your desire?
Tune your heart into spontaneity.
Turn away from the noise and move into the stillness
Seek to see in the Spirit of GOD!
posted by Doug Love at 6:19 PM
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