Do you believe in the supernatural? Do you think that God is a Spirit, angels are ministering spirits, and Jesus is the resurrection and life spirit who rose from the dead? What about yourself; do you believe that you are a spirit and will live forever? Do you believe in heaven and hell and the end of the world as we know it? These are the things a person who has a Jesus Christ experience believes and understands as a way of life.
One of the biggest challenges that we face as people of God today is how to get a historical yet spiritual, biblical story of God that happened two thousand years ago and more, to apply to our lives today. The answer is relatively simple; learn to think and be spiritual, and the story will not only make sense, but it will also apply to your life today and forever. But remember, the only way to perceive the things of God is to receive them by the Spirit of God, just as it was written in old times.
1 Corinthians 2:9-14 But as it is written, Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him — 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Only God can reveal God. Only Jesus can testify of the depths of God because He created them. Only the Spirit of God can reveal secrets about Jesus and His Father because He was sent by them and for them. All three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are the same One Spirit. We need One Spirit to teach us.
We find that our fleshly attempts at wisdom and understanding are built on sand in the presence of God. To know the spiritual Jesus is to experience Him by the Spirit. When you believe this principle and understand it, you will unlock the secret to your learning and growing in the Spirit. You can gain all the wisdom and knowledge from the writings of the Bible, but without the Spirit of Christ helping you understand it, none of it will apply to your life. It will all be an ancient text that you reverence from a distance. When that’s the case, you also become susceptible to joining yourself with an antichrist spirit. The cure for this is to receive the Spirit of God and live in it.
The Spirit is what makes each experience with God personal. Anyone can be taught by someone and be blessed by the word of God, but to have your own intimate experience with God is something that changes your life from the inside out. In the last teaching, number 23, “Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah,” I said concerning the apostles of Jesus, “They didn’t grow up being taught that Jesus was the savior and that He was the fulfillment of the promise of prophecy. They knew of a Messiah but didn’t know who He was. They were all experiencing it by the Spirit in real-time. No matter what generation is on the earth at a certain time, a spiritual experience with Christ will always be in real-time in the story of God.” This means that you can have a real-time spiritual experience with Jesus Christ today just like they did in their generation. That’s because Jesus is a living Spirit and is alive today and wants to reveal Himself to all of us.
The truth of the Bible for us today is that it is a spiritual exercise that must be experienced in the Spirit by faith. To flesh it out is missing the point of having a Bible.
Jesus is the Christ. He was, and is, and will continue to be Jesus Christ. If Christ is the anointing, He is the Holy Ghost. That would mean that Jesus was both man and Christ while on the earth. After His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples for 40 days in a spiritual body. The reality of Him being a Spirit was on full display. He revealed what it would be like after we experience resurrection with Him. We will also have a new body that can live in heaven and earth. When He ascended to heaven, He returned to comfort them in the form of the Holy Ghost. This is Christ in you, and it is what makes it possible for you to be joined back with God and live by the Spirit. The Holy Ghost makes you spiritual.
The Holy Ghost experience.
Jesus knew that if He weren’t present in the flesh, His followers would need to be comforted and continually reminded of the Spirit. The spiritual world can be easily forgotten when living on earth in the mindset of the flesh. This is where the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, comes in. Jesus promised that He would not leave His followers without a helper to guide them. This helper is the Holy Ghost. When you examine the sayings of Jesus just in the gospel of John alone, it’s easy to see that He wanted to prepare His disciples for what was to come. We must also take heed. He prepared them in stages. First, He was God manifested in the flesh. This was needful for His connection to us as people on the earth. Then, as I mentioned above, He rose from the grave and appeared as a spiritual body so that they could see Him and begin to connect Him to a Spirit who was alive and could appear and disappear as needed. Once they made the connection, they were ready to be filled with the Spirit, which is Christ in them. This is where their life was changed drastically, and yours will be too.
Let’s examine what Jesus said to His followers in John 14:15-26; 16:13-14 when He promised them that He would come to them after He departed the flesh.
I will give you another comforter.
He will abide with you forever.
It’s the Spirit of truth. (Jesus is the truth).
You know Him; He dwells with you and will be in you.
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come unto you.
On that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you.
When He comes, He will guide you into all truth.
Whatever He hears, He will speak to you.
He will declare things to come.
He will glorify Jesus.
He will take from Jesus and tell you. (All that the Father has is Mine; therefore, I said He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.)
Acts 1:8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be MY witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
They received the Holy Ghost and proved that everything Jesus told them was true. Their witness became the testimony of Jesus Christ in the world. The Holy Ghost connects the dots for all the scriptures, the kingdom, the churches, the people of God, and all prophesies. It makes you a witness of Jesus and everything you say and do is about Him. Your gospel is transformed into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, you can speak with God’s language and interpret all tongues. You can pray the right prayers and live righteously. You can do the works of God and change the outcome of the future. But the most significant thing you will ever do with being filled with the Holy Ghost is love Jesus Christ, the Lord your God, with all your heart, above everything else. You will testify about His revelation with the greatest zeal you have ever known. That’s what the Holy Spirit is for, and that’s how deeply it changes your life.
Jesus was a man in flesh and blood who was born into the world to reveal the kingdom of God. His teaching revealed God to us, and His works proved that everything He said was true. But seeing Him and hearing His word was only a part of what He came to do. His end game was to be in you, not outside of you. Jesus said that He, as a man, must return to heaven, but that He will send a comforter called the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, who will live in you. This is your Jesus Christ experience. This is how you are made one with Him and the Father.
Let’s be spiritual now.
I want to convince you that you need more than your intellect to serve God. You need your spirit, heart, mind, and soul to connect with God. In short, you need the real you to believe in spiritual things. The only way to make this possible is through the work of the Spirit of God. The answer is found in Jesus. Not just the man Jesus, but the risen Christ that is alive today and is in heaven praying and mediating your return home.
If you believe the New Testament writings, you already believe that you are the children of Abraham by faith. (Galatians 3) This was a key teaching of the apostle Paul and can only be done as a spiritual work. I want you to think of your connection to God the same way. You are born of God by the Spirit through faith. You may not ever talk to the man Jesus, but you can speak to the Spiritual Jesus in the Holy Ghost.
We are no different today than the people of the Bible in that they followed a man who was a teacher sent from heaven. That was what they needed, and that’s what we need today. But the real difference came when His Spirit filled them, and that also will be the life-changing experience that connects us to God today. Jesus went from being outside of them to be inside of them. While having a sent preacher who can hear from God is an awesome and powerful thing to have in your life, nothing replaces having Jesus the Christ in you.
One last thought.
If the first man Adam started the seed line of the sons of God in the flesh, then it would make sense that Jesus, who is the last Adam, ended the seed line in the flesh with His death. This idea is important because it means that Jesus ended the story of Adam and started a new account of the story in the Spirit, which is the story of Jesus. He died in the flesh of Adam and rose in the new body of Jesus. The sons of God got a name change. Jesus created a new seed line for the sons of God, and you can only be born into it by the Spirit through Him. (John 3) Jesus is the firstborn of many. Just another witness to the fact that the work of Jesus was spiritual.
Jesus said, “You believe in God, also believe in me.” John 14:1