Last night in a brief exchange with Albert, something came out that has kept my attention as I’m meditating. It was said that “what we’ve got of Him on deposit isn’t worth measuring yet. But oh, as Paul said, to be found in Him, that our measure would be found mixed in the fullness of His cup. Now, that will be a day of rejoicing.”
As I give consideration to this statement, I’m sensing Life, so here I’ve stayed for awhile. I’m led to look up prayer and our disposition toward it and the Spirit’s instruction regarding it. And I see a number of times where it’s obvious that we are to be “devoted to prayer”. I don’t need to reference all the passages for you to recall that that was the heart of the apostles from the beginning (Acts 1:14, 6:4), and continued to be their line of counsel throughout. But then as I looked at these scriptures there seemed to be some sort of understanding about prayer that was second-hand to them – I mean it was somehow a knowing they had and walked in; not something they had to teach on or coach one another about. It was an understanding that they had that as far as I can see, we don’t have. And it’s stated quite clearly in Ephesians 6:18, and I think maybe Darby says it best:
“praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication, in Spirit”.
And I know I’ve read that verse hundreds of times but for some reason, now, it is compelling me to give another look. What I’m hearing is that there is to be a heart-and-time devotion given to prayer. And that is not the sitting down and open-mouth monologueing with the God that is out there somewhere, but a devotion of our being to an in-Spirit communion with our Spirit-God.
And so as to keep from going into a presentation of the dozen or so scriptures I looked up, there was a second pivotal verse with regard to this topic; Romans 8:26:
“In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us…”
Adding this verse to the other was lending a thought that was coupled to our current Mind of being coalesced in Spirit with Him; that thought giving way to two descriptions. One description is of our being organically joined to His Life in the seed within our being, and the other being a dynamic of spiritual fellowship. In other words, we are always organically conjoined in Spirit, but we are not always coalesced in Mind, due to the consciousness of the adam man. Therefore there is a need for us to be devoting our consciousness to our Spiritual union with the Christ within.
And then I discovered in this verse in Romans, a unique verb that’s only found in the Bible twice, and it is a Greek word with three elements that means: ‘to take hold, ‘together with’, and ‘reciprocally’. The other account of this word’s usage is in the place where Martha is wanting Mary to come and help; for Mary to come and do her part, to do ‘her share’ of the labor in the kitchen. But we see this Greek word really exercising the fullness of its meaning in this verse in Romans, describing what is supposed to be the dynamic of prayer’s operation – the dynamic for effective fellowship and communion with our Spirit-God.
With Christianity having so authoritatively taken the reigns of Truth out of the hands of the Spirit and renaming it ‘doctrine’, and the ‘churched’ having ignorantly presumed that the mantle was passed rather than usurped, Truth has become mixed with the rationalizations of the carnal mind and these misunderstandings have become somehow canonized in our come-from. We come at these scriptures with a settled position based on what we’ve been taught, rather than the unmixed and unadulterated divinity of Truth’s essence, and as such we often times wander through, walking almost sideways regarding these things.
Now if I may, these two verses encapsulate a truth held in all the other verses I was given to examine, and this first one says it plainly while the second verse adds clarity and substantiates the truth in the first, and so I want to put them side by side:
1. “praying at all seasons, with all prayer and supplication in Spirit”.
2. “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; …the Spirit Himself intercedes for us…”
Now we’ll typically pass over these scriptures as speaking of things we understand quite well, having long been in the way of these things and having had them further settled by the persuasion of our own study as we’ve looked into these verses, in the context of what we were taught. And of course I’m referring to ‘praying in the spirit’. But if we just step back and allow the Spirit to speak into us on these things, apart from what we already ‘know’, I think a door will be opened to a reality that goes deeper than the gifts of the Spirit, and into a reality of living out of a certain state of Life.
The first part of the first verse I’ve listed says as the Word says in many other places and in several different ways: ‘pray without ceasing’. And the second part of the first verse just sort of adds onto that first part an understanding that is threaded everywhere else, but is seldom said in those words: “in Spirit”. Pray at all times and in all seasons, without ceasing, in Spirit.
This is a place where you have to appreciate having an Interlinear translation which gives every single Greek word in the original – every if, and, but, and so on. As you are aware, not every word in the original finds itself fitted into the English translations, but more troublesome are the many times when extra words are added based on the subjective understanding of the translators. And in this instance we find the case of the latter. In most of the versions, whether KJV, or NASB (my standard), or NIV, or the 23 others that I have, only the Interlinear and the Darby leave out the word, ‘the’, as in Praying at all times ‘in the Spirit’. The Spirit’s original wording is “in Spirit”. Pray at all times, without ceasing, “in Spirit”.
So as I was considering this – what it might mean to be “in Spirit” – I came across the Romans 8:26 passage, and then in that scripture verse the unique verb giving clarity to our understanding; the English word ‘help’, or ‘helpeth’ in the KJV, which is supposed to be giving expression to the original Greek meaning of: to take hold, together with, and reciprocally, or mutually.
And so we have: The Spirit helps our weakness; …the Spirit Himself interceding for us: taking hold of us and the need and together with us, as we have submitted ourselves to His headship in our union, a prayer of mutuality ascends, giving voice to our now joint concern. But ONLY the holy Spirit of God, that pure essence of His God-life deposited within, is able to come from the right place regarding the need, and therefore address it according to the Divine, foreknowing intention, whether the need be internal or external to us. And as we properly take our humble position as passive matter in the infinite, eternal, explosive quality of His Life in the seed, our come-from regarding the need is properly aligned, and our hearts properly adjusted, and our thoughts properly established.
So what does it mean to be ‘in Spirit’. Well, I don’t think I have to go far to suggest that when John stated in Revelation that he was ‘in Spirit’ on the Lord’s day, that he was speaking of a state of being, a consciousness, a place in Spirit. The apostles devoted themselves to prayer and in fact at one point were given counsel by the Spirit as to how to free themselves from the daily ministration of the Body-needs, that they might devote themselves completely to prayer and the Word. And even though they may have spoken in tongues more than we all, we can’t imagine that the extent of their intentions was exercising anything, but faith and patience. There was a place they needed to spend more time, a realm they felt drawn to and compelled to enter and abide, for when ‘there’, they were where He was, still walking with Him as before, still learning of Him as before, but now their abiding with Him had transitioned from where they were, to where He was. And to enter into THAT place required a different abiding. Separation from this world and all its concerns was required, to enter into His. The key for entrance into that place was a holy passiveness and humility as they sat quietly, as if before Him. A door would then be opened in heaven and then an invitation: “come up hither and I will show you things…”
There is a sense I’m getting that I want to put forward. We are all the time concerned with our progress, our growing up into Him in all aspects, our maturing, our becoming as He is, in this world. But this meditation has brought what for me is a heightened sense to that mind of things, and it’s this: We are becoming spiritual again, being transformed from adamic men of flesh to enChristed sons of God. But we’ve more or less seen that as new wine being poured into this old wine skin – well, a new wine skin but more or less of the same design, just transparent in nature. I’m not saying this well but what I mean is that the essence of ‘we’ is not our bodies, whether physical or spiritual. And so as ‘we’ become as He is, being coalesced in His infinite, eternal, explosive essence, a body giving representation in this realm of things cannot possibly contain all THAT. And so what I’m ‘hearing’ is that our becoming as He is will be much more expansive than we have considered, and that we will actually be moving in Spirit, through these new bodies, but that as the Temple in the wilderness could not contain but a representation of the fullness of God, neither will any body represented in the earthen realm be able to contain but a sample representation of what it is we will have become in Christ.
My point then is that my come-from regarding growing up in Him is shifting from one in which I become a perfect man, as how I perceived my Lord Jesus to be – walking this planet in His resurrected body – to one in which I am becoming an expansive infinite, eternal, life-giving Spirit (as coalesced in Christ), which will have authority and vocation to be as He is, in this world. And He at different times said such things about Himself, and at one point in particular said while standing in their midst: “I am no longer here” (John 17:11). And we are becoming of that same Spirit, that spiritual seed that when planted in the earth produced more than just another seed (even a ‘glorified’ seed), but a whole plant of multiple ear-producing corn; this explosiveness of Life coming from out of that seed of Life planted, a quality of Life so profound it could not be contained by so simple an expression of the husk of its humble beginning.
There is so much more in Mind for us than a glorified body. In fact, that is for them! WE ARE SPIRIT! Our transfiguration is a witness or their destiny, a symbol, a shadow of what is before them. And it is a testimony to the fact that His Life within is the power by which their destiny is reached.
But for us, we will have become AS HE IS, and THAT cannot be contained by a temple representation on this earth.
So the point of this meditation this morning, the challenge really, is to embrace all that He intends for us, to “let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and…, and…” (Isaiah 54:2-4).
To know the power of His resurrection is a greater pursuit than walking this earth in glorified bodies. The greater understanding is found in what Paul prefaced that statement with: “oh, to be found in Him”, that our measure would be found mixed in the fullness of all that is Christ.
Be devoted to prayer, the kind of prayer He means: that Spiritual communion, that intimate Spirit to spirit fellowship, set apart unto Him. Put on Christ; be only that holy passive and humble matter in the coalesced Life. Be swallowed up in His expansive Self.
And then one last thought. You know, as my sister Lenella pointed out, there is ample reason to esteem our relationship to one another as members of one another, in Christ. And I’m not speaking so much of our hearts of charity toward one another as I am of our comprehension of how God’s designed the working of the thing. He’s so designed it that we NEED one another, as connected to Him. And as we give ourselves over to that heavenly designed working of things, and present ourselves graciously and humbly to one another, we find His Spirit working through each one into the other. We have not recognized the potentiality for increase that finds its release through our interconnection. But it’s becoming increasingly clear to me, as evidenced once again by what came of a simple exchange with my brother, that Christ is thereby administering measures of Himself into each part through the dynamic of our Spiritual relatedness.
Glory to our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ!
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