CHAPTER TWO
OPERATING FROM THE SPIRIT REALM
It is something else to know of the existence of this realm and yet another different ball game to operate from this realm. When we operate from the carnal world, we are left to do the math of how that operation will be a success but the man of the spirit needs not all that stress when he understands that all things hear and obey him. That is why the gospel that we preach has become foolishness to the natural man, he cannot do the math, it doesn’t just add up, it’s not scientific and cannot be explained by any scientific theory this is the realm we have been born into.
It is because the natural man cannot access the power in the kingdom of God that made Jesus to say “… verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit” JHN 3:5-6. Jesus here has just told us that though he was flesh and blood among us, He was operating from a realm that was beyond us, the realm of the Spirit. No wonder His birth did not have to take a natural man but the very Spirit of God So He became the first born of the spirit and this is the sonship that we have all been baptized into as Christians.
For us to be successful, we must learn to operate from the spirit. It has to take a conscious effort till it becomes a natural thing to us. When the man of God Elisha prayed for the eyes of the young man to be opened, it was because he himself had seen the horses and the chariots of fire, it was a natural thing for Elisha to operate from this realm. Seeing the heavenly host that was waiting for his defense was natural to him.
God has baptized us in Christ to walk the supernatural naturally! But being so unaware of the power we possess in Christ Jesus has crippled a lot of Christians and so fulfilling the scriptures “they know not neither will they understand, they walk on in darkness all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said ye are gods and all of you are children of the most high but ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes” PSLM 82:5-7
Did you notice that the scriptures pointed out the instability in the foundations of the earth? … all the foundations of the earth are out of course. Not some, not many but all the foundations of the earth! All of them are out of course. This means that trusting in the world’s system can only lead to a disaster; it means that every system that seems to be holding the world together now will fail as we have started witnessing in these days. That’s by the way; we will look at that closely much later.
“They know not neither will they understand” this is why” they walk on in darkness” if only they know that God has made a way beyond the floods of the enemy, if only they know the victory that we have been born into, if only they know the power that we have at the spiritual birth. It is very important that we know what Christ has done for us, who that has made us and where that has placed us, for until we know these truths we walk on in darkness and forge a trust on the unsure foundations of the world.
Paul writing to the Corinthian church said “for though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh” 2COR 10:3. Many people have always thought that what Paul meant in this verse is that we are fighting spiritual forces though we know that we are also battling spiritual forces in high places. What Paul is saying here is that, we don’t wage war as humans. The new living translation puts it this way: “we are human but we don’t wage war as humans do” NLT. We wage war as spirit beings! We take advantage of the wealth of resources that have been made available for us in the spirit of Christ. This is what constitutes our weapons in the fight of life.
Everything we need has been made available in the spirit hallelujah! We cannot out-use the resources that God has made available unto us in the new birth. Moses can tell you this with all confidence when God provided mana for forty years of the stay of Israel in the wilderness. The realm where we have been brought into is not a realm that depends on the availability of carnal resources for its functionality rather it is a realm where when we operate from, can bring about carnal changes, we subject the world to our will from this realm.
The nature of our spiritual resources
Paul goes on to show us the nature of the weapons we have in God, he tells us of their capability. “for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” 2COR 10:4-5
Paul said they are not carnal meaning, they are not for the natural senses. This goes on to mean that they cannot be used from the natural perspective they cannot be held like a gun or a spear as they do not respond to the flesh, they respond to the spirit. Therefore the man who must utilize these resources must be one that understands the working of the spirit, one that knows that just because he does not see these things does not mean they do not exist for they are more real than what appears and even the things that we see are made of these invisible forces. The realm of their existence cannot be accessed by the natural senses, if we try to access these resources by our natural senses, we would just be chasing the wind that is why to the natural man, the gospel that we preach has become foolishness and when he cannot explain the miraculous that happens in the lives of the few who have accessed this realm, he says “It’s of the devil”.
They said Jesus was casting out devils by the prince of devils because Jesus was operating from another realm entirely. But it is wrong for people to always thing that the miraculous belongs to the devil for Jesus’ coming was to bring us to this very point, this very realm… the realm that only a few of the prophets and servants of the Lord walked in the old testament! This is meant to be our New Testament experience.
In response to the accusation of the Jews when they accused the Lord of casting out devils by the prince of devils He said “…but if I cast out devils by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come unto you” MATT 5:28 Christ was telling them where He was operating from and by whom He was casting out the devils. He was operating from the “Kingdom” of God and by the Spirit of God.
We must understand how this works; Jesus was not talking about a physical kingdom with a geographical location. We must understand also that Satan was oppressing people from a “kingdom” without any geographical location these are places in the spirit so when the higher and stronger kingdom came, the lesser had to give way! Jesus’ illustration in the next verse explains this fact: “… or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods except he first bind the strong man? And then he will spoil his house” MATT 5:29.
Jesus is saying that the devils could be cast out and all their works undone because they have been subjected under Him. The work that Jesus accomplished on the cross permanently put the devil at “gun point” his kingdom was subdued and then Christ brought us into the kingdom of God so that we will now walk in the authority that this kingdom exercises of that of the devil.
“…mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imagination and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” Paul begins to outline the functions of these weapons. Though Paul was talking in the perspective of warfare, it still gives us great insight as to how spiritual resources function
God has made all things available for us in this realm, we don’t have to physically handle them before we know they are ours we must however know how to access them. Peter said “according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the knowledge of Him that has called us to glory and virtue” 2PET 1:3. This verse is a continuation of a prayer that peter made for those he was writing to for God’s grace and peace to be multiplied unto them. Peter spoke of God’s power making all things available that pertain to life and Godliness because he had that knowledge. But the people he was writing to did not know tha
t; so the apostle prayed for them that such grace would come to them by the knowledge of God and of Christ.
By this prayer, Peter makes us to understand that everything we need in this life has been provided by God’s divine power but how much of these do we know? How much of Christ do we know? We are robbed of these things as long as we do not know. Satan capitalizes on the scarcity of our knowledge to perpetrate his works and succeed in the world.
Peter also makes us know that the Lord has called us to “…glory and virtue…” peter is saying here that we have obtained a nature of glory and virtue, he was not just referring to a temporary state or some borrowed state of being he is saying that we are now of the nature of glory and excellence, the very nature of God! Look at verse 4 closely “whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust”
HALLELUJAH! There is a “corruption” in the world. That corruption means a “weakness” that is eating through the world because of desires. The lust (desires) the Bible is talking about here is simply referring to the necessities of life, the things needed to survive this human life and the “weakness” that limits the world comes from these desires. By what Christ did, He has translated us into another realm where everything has been provided for by God because He has given us the very nature of God by which we have access to divine resources not natural resources.
If only we can understand what Christ has done, if only we can understand where that has brought us to and what we can do by reason of that, if only we know that we are not limited in anyway by natural circumstances then we would live beyond the very problems that plague the world. We would not be struggling to make ends meet we would only need to walk into a rest in which everything is provided. God said to Moses “… I have made you a god unto Pharaoh ”
An unstoppable race
In the Old Testament, a few class of people walked in the divine realm. Rulers, priests and prophets functioned in this realm to subdue the limiting forces of nature and of man. We have countless examples as listed in Hebrews 11 of men and women who wrought miracles by faith. The place where Christ has brought us into is a powerful place where nothing can successfully stop whatever we purpose to achieve. It does not mean that there will be no opposing forces but we will always out power them.
We see clearly again in the story of Moses how he prospered in the miraculous before the King of Egypt until every force, both human and spiritual gave way to the purpose of his visit in Egypt.
When Moses came into Egypt to deliver Israel, God had equipped him with the miraculous so the very first miracle he performed was to lay his rod on the ground and it turned to a snake the magicians of Pharaoh did the same as we see in EX 7:10-11 verse 21 and 22 tells us that Moses and Aaron turned water to blood but the Magicians of Egypt did the same. Verses 6 and 7 of chapter 8 show us the third miracle of Moses where he brought forth frogs into Egypt and pharaohs magicians did the same. Then we come to the fourth miracle where Moses brought forth lice upon the land and the magicians of Egypt attempted to do the same but they failed. Verse 17 and 18 of chapter 8 gives us that account and in verse 19, the magicians told Pharaoh “this is the finger of God…”
We can see that Egypt opposed Moses from the very start but as the stakes went higher, the magicians had to acknowledge the “finger” of God. They did not have enough spiritual resources or enchantments to match the power of God.
A lot of Christians would give up the moment opposition arises to challenge the word of God in their lives, they think that just because the problems still stir at them in the face at the first application of the word it means that the word is not powerful enough. This is not the case but we must however understand that there are standards in the spirit and must climb through the ladder rungs until we reach the place that is beyond the devil or the problem.
God is not in the business of suppressing the devil, God lets the devil play out all his cards and then show him a level of glory that his best can never attain. The magicians of Egypt were not suppressed just because Moses the servant of the Lord was there, they kept on matching the power of God with their enchantments and all the demonic power Egypt had to offer until they got to the fourth plague where they saw another realm of glory beyond all they had ever known or practiced. This is the concept that Isaiah 55:11 spells out when God said “… it [God’s word] shall not return unto me void but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it”
The term “prosper” in this context suggests a “cutting” through all oppositions like a knife cutting through vegetable or a chisel cutting through a rock, God’s word can never fail no matter the opposing force.
There is a level in God that readily brings powers and principalities under the control of the servant of God; this is the level that Moses and a few of the prophets and servants of God walked in the Old Testament. At this level, we are not afraid of the forces of darkness no matter what they do. It is at this level that God has made all our enemies our footstool; it is a place in Christ.
The scriptures declared in the prophecy of David in the book of psalm 110:1 “the LORD said unto my Lord sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool” that is talking about Christ. And Paul makes us to understand that we are now seated in Christ at the right hand of God. “…and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” EPH 2:6. We will look at this place subsequently as we study Moses’ rescue mission in Egypt.
So Moses prospered on until he came to a place in the spirit where all the demonic forces of Egypt could not attain. Pharaoh was confident in all his magicians until the fourth plague, he had every confidence to keep Israel bound as long as his magicians could do the very thing that Moses did. As a matter of fact Pharaoh increased their burdens when Moses demanded their release from Egypt. Every time Moses cried back to God when it seemed like the miracle he had performed before Pharaoh did not work-out the intended purpose, God would direct him yet to the performance of another. These were not just random miracles being performed by Moses; they were spiritual levels that he was climbing through.
I said earlier that God is not in the business of suppressing the devils efforts and this is proven through all the scriptures from the way God has dealt with the devil. If God was suppressing the devil, he would have been suppressed to remain under us once and for all. But we must understand that Satan’s powers are not stripped from him nor is he forced to stop using them but where he thought was the end of the game for humanity when he stole this power in Eden, God introduced another level of glory that he never imagined in his wildest dreams.
By these powers, Satan still afflict many people even Christians making life miserable for them thereby limiting them to a poor spiritual state where they remain powerless or at the most less powerful than he is. A lot of Christians have not come to this knowledge that is why they move by the dictates of their environment, they move with the world. They don’t know that there is a spiritual level where they are never limited by the circumstances of the world. “ my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…” HOS 4:6