God’s Invisible Realm

One of the aspects of the early church that was emphasized and lived out from day to day was the realization that there was another world that was much higher and more real than the one that we could interact with concerning our senses.

As we all know our Lord dwells in heaven. His will there is done completely and perfectly. He reigns there with complete and total response to His desires.

I want to touch on a couple of aspects of where He dwells. First, it is the real world. This world that we can see with our natural eyes and interact with from our senses is only a shadow of that realm. When people many times tell us to live in the real world, they don’t really know what they are talking about. The real world is a spiritual world, a land of spirit. The physical world is the world that is secondary.

That is why when Jesus responds to the request to teach His disciples how to pray, one of the things that He tells us is to ask that His kingdom would come and His will would be done on this world in the same way that it is done in heaven.

Jesus didn’t come to take dominion in heaven, He came to take dominion of earth. Heaven is perfectly executed in His rule and reign. It’s the earth that He has purposed to reveal Himself in.

When I say the earth I mean that inner work in the hearts of brothers and sisters. Jesus revealed to us that it is what is inside of us that needs the cleaning, not the outside. If we clean the inside, the outside will take care of itself.

This is why when He reveals the pattern of the tabernacle and the temple to us in the Old Testament, we always have the inner place that moves out to the outer place. This is that inner work that Christ does within us through the Spirit. This is heaven coming down to earth.

Again when we look at New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, we see that river flowing out throughout the city, this is the Spirit of God moving from within to without.  

The point is that God brings this world into the spirits of believers. This world is none other than Himself living in the very recesses of our beings.

Heaven itself, in the person of Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit dwells within us in a most real way. Nothing anywhere in earth or in heaven is greater than this reality. Nothing is more intimate or transforming.

Yet few really comprehend what this amazing Christ within us means. We are told that our hope of glory is Christ within us, and that is very true.

We need to embrace this with everything that we are able so that Christ may have His way in the earth.

Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God does not come with observation. That’s because of the truth that His kingdom isn’t of or from this world.

The religious leaders of Jesus’ day were flustered by not knowing where Jesus came from. They saw the kingdom of God being revealed within their midst and yet quibbled about what city He had been born in; like this had any relevance to heaven coming to earth right before their eyes.

The first Adam was from the earth, the second Adam was the Lord from heaven. His roots were in another realm, and so are ours. That’s why Jesus says of His disciples that they were not of this world either.

When you believe you are born from another realm, another world that is different and greater than this one, you will cause great offense to some people, including other believers. Whether you know it or not this offends many of you. You are trying to please those in this world rather than our Lord who is from heaven.

We must understand that our roots are in heaven and this is what we pray will come down and expand into this tragic world.

We must learn to love this deep, inner working of the Spirit of God within us as He shapes and forms us into the image of Jesus Christ.

We live in this world but live from another. We will never be able to respond to our Lord’s desire if we don’t hold close the reality of a world beyond the one we see with our natural eyes.