This has been a most unusual two years in the Lord……Even apart from meeting and starting the Sonshine blog with Jack........
About a year and a half ago I was awakened in the early morning with a startling sensation. It felt like low voltage electricity moving up and down my body, stopping at my shoulders and then circling around again. Along with this sensation was an overpowering presence of the Lord. I began to lift my arms and Praise God. It both released and increased the sensation…..It is so hard to explain but so real.
In my heart I kept asking, what is this? What IS THIS? The spirit answered saying, this is the “quickening”. Up to then, I had few hints as to what that meant and couldn't even recall this familiar scripture:
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Romans 8:10-12
My only thought as this continued throughout the day was of my own experience with quickening. After five pregnancies I understood and expected that first movement on the inside of me with each new life. That was my assurance that all things were coming along as they should and that first flicker let me know this little one was indeed, alive. That's about as far as my deductions had taken me and I finally settled my waverings, God could do as he wished with me and change my understanding/traditions at the drop of a hat if he decided to..........He truly is God and I am not....lol...In these days I hold lightly, the things I've been taught. God is moving and sweeping us clear of the traditions of men. At times, I could just scream with joy realizing no box of tradtion will hold our God..........he is INDEED MIGHTY....
I had been taught that Romans 8, was an event that happened after our death at our own physical resurrection..........and now it seemed my own experience would belie tradition.....How I wondered at what was happening and spent the day switching between tears and singing praises.
The sensations continue to this day on and off. Most often as something is made real to me by the spirit, when I read an anointed message…or if someone is praying for me…..I believe it could be much like the record of Elizabeth exclaiming to Mary, the child inside leapt when he heard your salutation so it must be that the spirit in me bears witness with the spirit in you and leaps with joy. As strange as this “sensation” continues to be, I have grown accustomed to it and even find myself longing for it's return as it assures me of life within. Still I wonder. Yet, something is alive on the inside of me and is capable of leaping for joy at the Lord's voice..........
The last couple of months, as I am coming awake in the morning I am congnizant that I am having dialogue in my dreams with the Lord. When awake I am unable to recall what was being said in the dream, just an impression that it was important.
Tuesday morning, I distictly remember hearing, “the way up is a……", then I came fully awake. Those five words kept rolling around in my head all day. I started to tell them to Jack but they seemed so inconsequential, until today....when I read a link Jack posted by Eby.
At this part of Eby's message (below), I nearly came out of my seat as suddenly I was able to remember what the Lord had been saying to me while I slept…As I read Eby's article, the words from Tuesday were recalled, “the way up is ABOVE”. Sometimes my lunch time readings are not conducive to a restaurant setting and this day was no exception, I began to weep realizing just how real and yet hidden the dealings of the Lord are. Eby’s whole article was directed toward me by the Holy Spirit………..I love it when He does that………
The Law of nature is: Except a mineral be born "from above,,—from the kingdom just above it—it cannot enter the kingdom just above it. And except a man be born "from above, he cannot enter the Kingdom just above him.
“Birthed Into the Kingdom”
It is not said, in this statement of the Law, that if the condition be not fulfilled the natural man will not enter the Kingdom of God. The word is, cannot. It is not that God arbitrarily shuts out the spiritually dead from the kingdom of the spiritually living. There is a great Law involved here. Paul by inspiration pointed out this Law: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,, (I Cor. 2:14). It is not simply that the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, but he cannot. It is as utterly impossible for the carnal mind to know spiritual things as it is for a stone to spontaneously generate life. The entrance of the natural man into the world of the Spirit of God is simply a scientific impossibility!
As speaking in tongues and the gifts of the Spirit are the evidences of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, so the redemption of our bodies from the power of decay and death is the evidence of the manifestation of the sons of God. "We ourselves too, who have and enjoy the firstfruits of the Spirit—a foretaste of the blissful things to come—groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies from sensuality and the grave, which will reveal our adoption, our manifestation as God's sons" (Rom. 8:23, Amplified Bible). This change in our bodies shall not come by the mighty working of Christ crashing down through the clouds, but by the DIVINE INWORKING OF HIS INDWELLING LIFE as Paul by inspiration said, "He shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. "
The Kingdom of God means many things to many different people, according to their understanding. This is only natural, because of the many figures under which the idea was presented by Jesus, and also because people are at different stages in their progress along the way to the Kingdom, which means that they have attained different degrees of growth as children of God in the family of God. Jesus said that one must be born again in order to "see,, or "enter,, the Kingdom. Here we find Jesus laying down the preliminary requirement for an understanding of the Kingdom, as well as entrance into the Kingdom. But He does not say that upon being born again one would immediately fully see or completely enter into the Kingdom. But spiritual birth is the prerequisite. Understanding the Kingdom spiritually and laying hold upon its reality can only follow the new birth—not precede it. Until you are born from above you have neither the ability to see nor the potential to enter into the Kingdom of God.
First of all, then, the Kingdom is not a natural state, for it must be entered following a new birth. And a man can no more bring about his second birth—the birth into the spiritual world—than he could have brought about his first birth—the birth into the physical world. It comes to one from another world. He is given birth from a higher realm. lt is the work of God alone. It is a new order that one enters into under entirely new conditions. It becomes accessible by the experience of a new life, a new identity, a new citizenship, a new spirit, a new nature, a new will, a new attitude, a new ability, a new objective.
When men come into the world, they are born outside of the Kingdom of God, and they cannot see into it. They may go round and round it, and examine it from the outside, and pass an opinion on it. But they are no judges. They are not seeing what they are speaking about. For that which is born of spirit is spirit, and that which is born of flesh is flesh; and fleshly men can only give an uninformed and unenlightened criticism about something spiritual that they do not and cannot understand. Therefore the critical value of a natural man’s opinion on spiritual matters is nothing. His opinion is simply ludicrous—he is talking about a thing that he has never seen. (Link to full article by Eby below)
http://www.gem-international.org/eby/kog-5.htm
Love you,
Joian and Jack
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