8. Where on earth is God today?
Last updated 9th June 2018, minor grammar changes.
Where is the presence of God to be found in the world today? It's not in a place but in a Person......the anointing is where it is at.
In the old testament times, the anointing was the pouring forth of oil upon the head of the High Priest. Psalm 133:2 describes the anointing oil as the precious ointment that was poured upon Aaron's head first, and then it ran down over the clothes of his body to the skirts of his garment. It is important to note that the oil was poured over the outside. This is because the oil is to be especially seen on the outside. Oil is used in the Old Testament as a type or shadow of the Holy Spirit, or the Life of God which was to come upon the Earth in Jesus Christ. The anointing is Authority. We need to know that in the New Testament also, the anointing of the Holy Spirit is only upon the Lord Jesus as High Priest and Head of the Church, not directly on His Body as the Church. The Lord Jesus is directly anointed by God. The Church is not. The Church has anointing but only because of the Head. Where there is the anointing, there is Authority. Where there is the anointing, there is the manifest presence of God.
Because Jesus is anointed, therefore His Body is a recipient of that anointing. Because Christ is anointed, all that which is of Christ also benefits. Only that which is the Life of Christ in us is anointed, nothing of us is. The only thing in us that is anointed is our new Born Again spirit. It is comforting to know that there is at least something in each one of us that is holy, righteous and without sin. This is our new Born Again spirit, which is born of God and comes to us from out of Christ. Only that which has been formed from the substance of Christ is the Body of Christ and this constitutes our new spirit. If any man does not have the spirit of Christ, he is none of His (Romans 8:9). It is only here in the spirit that is of Christ, that we experience the anointing. What is the anointing? It is the manifested presence of God coming from inside out, to be seen on the outside of the Christian. When you or I have the anointing, we radiate the presence of God because we radiate His Life. The presence of God on earth today is most of the time confined to being located inside of the believer's spirit. But are there not times when we allow Him to express His life through us, to the extent that He is observed on the outside of us? This is akin to the oil running down from the Head and being seen on the outside of Aaron's garments.
The purpose of the anointing in the Church, is to manifest the physical presence of God with all power and authority to the body of believers. All who have spiritual eyes, can see the Lord Jesus or see His expressed life when a believer has the anointing. The immediate spherical area outside of our spirit is our soul, composed of our mind, emotions and will. Our soul encases our spirit. When we express His life, we permit His Holy Spirit to travel from our inside to our outside. When we express His Life, our soul magnifies the content of our spirit. The content of our spirit is His life. When our soul expresses our spirit, Life flows forth out of us and touches others that are around us, giving life to them. This is what the anointing is. The anointing is the presence and power of the Life of Jesus being transmitted by us instead of just remaining hidden in our heart. The law of the spirit of life is what the anointing is all about. The Lord Jesus came and gave us abundant life; this life is Him not us. He is the Life. Basically our heart is a combination of spirit and soul, yet how joyful it is when the Spirit of the Lord Jesus fills our heart and spills over to touch others through us. This is the anointing of God coming from out of our spirit to be felt and expressed in our soul, and not only that but also to transmit life to others through our mouth.
When I detect the Life of Jesus radiating from a brother, towards me, I am instantly warmed, encouraged, comforted, set free, built up and edified. Because he has the anointing, I instantly receive life from him because he brings to me the manifested Presence of God. Quite often what he says may not mean all that much to my mind or my understanding, but he has communicated something else that has set me free, and I know I have been touched by Life. This is because of the anointing. The anointing breaks the yoke. The anointing sets us free. The anointing is the coming forth of the presence of God on the scene. The anointing has to do with the life that comes forth from us expressed in the words that we speak. To speak the truth of God's word only is death, but to speak God's word from out of the anointing in Truth and Grace will bring Life to all who are around us. The words that we speak should be spirit and life. Spirit means that the word is from our heart; life means that what we say is anointed by the Holy Spirit of God. Do we start to see what the anointing really is? Just as the words that we speak must be related to the truth of God's word, so also the source of what we speak must be related to the Life of God.
For God's Word to have impact upon spiritual ears that can hear, we need those same words to be propelled by God's Life. If there is no life then all we are doing is transmitting mental knowledge from our mind to the minds of our hearers, and that is not only worthless and useless but also it can be "death" to the spirits of those who listen. By this we mean that what is communicated dampens the recipients' heart or spirit. We quench the Holy Spirit both in ourselves and in others when we speak rubbish. Our new, born again spirit hungers for life, not death. There is so much death ministered today in the Church and that explains why there is so much failure. When there is an absence of the anointing, nothing of value is transmitted. When what is ministered is of the principle of the law, then that is not life but death. When that which is ministered condemns our conscience then we are receiving the ministry of death not Life.
The Church is full of so called "ministers of righteousness" today instead of ministers of Life. To be convicted is one thing, it leads to Life; but to be condemned leads you nowhere except to death. But the Bible affirms that there is now no condemnation from God on the life of a Christian. Even should the Christian sin, God does not condemn him; yet the new spirit, within the believer, will spontaneously convict him of sin and lead him to confess that he is wrong. Then the cleansing power of the precious blood of Jesus can restore him to fellowship with God. God is no longer the Judge of a Christian but the Justifier. We frustrate the grace of God when we minister the principle of the law. To be precise, the principle of the law says that I must do to in order to meet the demands of God; the principle of Grace says that God demands nothing from me, He will do for me all that He demands. He is both the law giver on the throne and the keeper of the law in my heart.
Many there are today that instruct us to be Holy by cutting out our sin and replace it with acts of righteousness. This is a great folly that always leads to failure. We have to learn the hard way that there is nothing that 'we can do' or produce from 'out of ourselves' that can ever please God. If we can be righteous by obedience to God's word then Jesus Christ has died for us in vain. So-called Ministers of Righteousness proclaim man's way, not God's. As hard as we might try, we can not produce one ounce of righteousness in ourselves. Holiness or righteousness is not of us at all. It is the Life of Christ in us that is holy and righteous. Jesus Christ is our only righteousness as He is our holiness. We do not have any righteousness or holiness in ourselves, we have Jesus. He is our righteousness and He is our holiness. The life of Jesus in us is already anointed, and should we choose to express Him instead of us, then Life will be ministered. This then is what the anointing is all about. It is not more knowledge or more faith or the boast of authority, it is Life. It is His Life expressed in us to be seen and experienced by others on the outside. The cost is great, it will cost us everything of self to minister Life and have His anointing. It is a dying to self so that His Life will be ministered by us to others. It takes time for God to form or make a minister of His Son's Life. The anointing is never upon the self of the soul, it is only upon the Life of the Lord Jesus in our spirit. For the soul to express the Life of the Spirit, it has first to experience the departure of the life of self. This always is preceded by much tribulation and many failures.
It will cost us everything of self to enjoy the presence of the Life of the Lord Jesus for our soul. For the Church to experience the presence of God it is exactly the same, that which is of man's own independent self life must go. The principle of Babylon is the principle of the efforts and presence of man in place of the Grace and Presence of God. Babylon is false and it stands as a reminder of all that constitutes false Christianity. The principle of Babylon always ends up in confusion and failure. Today the Church is living in the time of spiritual Babylon. In reality there is no such thing, but these are they who pretend there is, they pretend that something of man is something of God. They mix the thoughts of man with the Word of God; this is corrupted Christianity, it is the effort of a man to pretend to be spiritual so as to please man and so derive the praises of men. Whenever what we do or what we say does not match our actual condition, we are in the principal of Babylon and the truth is not in us. Many wonders in the Church today are counterfeit; many prayers are unreal.
Those who pretend have no expression of Life, no anointing and therefore no authority in the Church of Christ's Body. Their way leads to confusion and spiritual stagnation. Many there are today that started out right with a touch from the Lord when they were first saved, but because they give their allegiance to the priests of Babylon, they are today spiritually decadent. They were alive in Jesus at the start and they showed it, but today ten years down the track they appear to be spiritually dead. Why does the Church continually have to thirst for revival? It is because of the on going lack of Anointed Life from the pulpit, which is a lack of the Presence of God. When we have the anointing we have the presence of God. This is not a "charged" atmosphere. It is the Life of Christ being ministered from the pulpit in spirit and truth with power and effect to the congregation. People will never ever be moved by our mighty thoughts or our powerful feeling, but only by the power that comes with the Anointing which is the Presence of God. The Bible affirms that it is not by our might or our power, but by His Spirit.
Where the anointing is there is conviction and confession, yet also, there is freedom, there is joy, there is comfort, there is revelation and there is a building up by the refreshing Presence of God. Where the anointing is, there is fresh food from heaven, fresh manna from the Presence of the Lord Jesus Himself in the person of His Holy Spirit. What a joy and a refreshment it is to have been in a meeting that has been lead by one who has the Anointing. Here it is that we have encountered the special presence of the Lord Jesus Himself to give us Life. His Word to us is the 'Rhema' of God. His Word to us is not just the truth but also Life and the grace of God. God is still speaking directly to us today in two principle ways. One is from His Presence, which is the anointing in His Body, the Church. The other is from personal revelation. When we experience the anointing, we experience the presence of the Lord Jesus, and when we have the manifested presence of Jesus, we have a refreshing and encouraging Word which is truth and Life and grace to us. The anointing is God speaking audibly the Word of Life to us.
Many believe that God has only spoken once, and that the Bible is the full, last and total Word of God. No, not true, that is only the 'logos' of God's Word. Many believe that when Jesus went back up to Heaven, He left us the Bible as His New Testament present, to be the solution for all our problems. No, He never did that, He left us His Life, which is the promise of the Father. He left us His Life to be our Life so that we would have something in us to that would make us complete and give us eternity with Him. Jesus Christ came to solve the problem of man's incomplete life, not just to redeem him from his state of sin. God is still speaking today from out of His Spirit. His mouth is that anointing and His mouth is located no where else but in His Body. The one who has the Anointing in the Church is the one that wields the sword of the Spirit, he is the mouth of God. The one that has the Anointing is the same one who brings Truth, Life and Grace to all who can hear.
The one who has the Anointing has the Authority of God because God's presence is invested in that same Anointing. The Authority, lets be very clear about this, is not the person but only the Anointing that at the time is manifested on the person. God's Presence is the Anointing. God is continuing to speak to you and I today in two main ways. One is from His Physical Presence which is manifested in the Church by the Anointing, the second is His Spiritual Presence in us by Revelation . Both are Life giving. One is the revealing of Christ to us individually and personally, the other is collectively from the Anointing or Presence Of God in a meeting. In a meeting, this is when a brother stands up with the Anointing and ministers Life; but it is not just a large meeting that experiences the Anointing, it can be as small as two or three. The prominent common thing in either, is that Life is ministered.
Now that we are Christians we are no longer under bondage to the law of sin and death. The law of sin and death is the outcome of the obedience principle of trying to obey the commandments of God. We are not under the law of commandments any more, we are now under the law of the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ. This is the Grace of God and it supersedes His demand of obedience to His Law of Commandments by replacing them. In no way does the Spirit of God do away with the commandments of God, it itself, establishes the law and the commandments. If the law of commandments is the pen, then the Spirit of God is the ink. Today many so called ministers of righteousness have no "ink", the result is they just scratch the paper. The anointing is the presence of the Life of God. No anointing means no presence, therefore no Life. Any of us can experience the anointing of God and have his presence, it requires but one thing and that is the choice of separation for the self life from the soul. The soul once again is the faculty of mind, emotion and will, not the content. The content is that which our will chooses to magnify and express.
Our choice is very simple, either we choose 'His Life' or we choose 'self'. Please note, that the doing is His responsibility alone, ours is the choosing, willing and co-operating part. God is much more willing to establish His anointing on us than we are willing to receive it. When we are willing to obey Him and consign our self life to the cross, the way is then open for Him to pour forth His Life for us to experience in our soul. We need to take a fresh stance of obedience in relegating the self to a place of death and separation from our soul. We need to vigilantly maintain separation from all that is of the natural us, that we gain what is of Him from out of our new born again spirit. We must form an attitude of death and separation from our self life first, that we might gain His Life for our soul and have His presence abiding in us before it will be seen on the outside of us.
The salvation of the soul is not the salvation we receive instantly we accept the Lord Jesus as Saviour. This salvation is the saving of our will to the extent that we choose always to represent His Life by having Him express His Life in our Mind and our emotions. Our will, in fact our whole volition, needs to undergo drastic change. Our will needs to choose His Life from out of our spirit in preference to the self life. When we choose to express the Life of Jesus whole heartedly, in place of what was there before, then we open up the way for Him to express Himself and anoint all that is expressed. May we seek the Anointing for His sake, and the sake of the Church and not just for our sake alone. The Church today more than ever before, needs anointed Life-giving members because of its pathetic and decadent state. The whole function of the Body of Christ is to express the Life of Christ. The manifest Presence of God is not an option for today's Church, it is an essential necessity. We need the Anointing now. We need Anointed Church Leaders and Pastors today, that will bring to the Church a fresh Presence of God. We can be assured of one thing, God will do what He has said He will do. Failure is not an option with God.
God will Present a Glorious Church to His Son as the Bride of Christ. It will be a Church without the stain or conscious remembrance of sin, it will be a Church that is full of Life, full grown, mature, Holy, and complete in every detail and clothed with the robe of Righteousness and the garment of Praise. We don't know exactly how God will do this, but we can be assured that what God has promised, He will also do. My guess is that God will perform all this through the Overcomers. These are the Anointed that stand on behalf of the rest. They are the few who have made themselves ready by their choice.
Many have been called but these are the chosen few. These are the few who have chosen to have Jesus as their personal Lord and to loose their soul life to death. These are they who act not just for themselves, but they act on behalf of the whole Body of Christ. They are those who constitute the few, the whole Body of Christ constitute the many in the aspect of the fact that 'many are called'. I believe that what God will ascribe to the whole Church, will be the state or readiness of the Anointed, which are the overcomers. When the overcomers have obtained the state that God requires, then I believe God will accept that as being the state for the whole Church and the return of the Lord Jesus will be at hand.
