Colossians 3:3 – For you died, and your life is hid together with Christ in God.
Part 1 ~ The Abundant & Glorious Life of Jesus
God has granted us an abundant and glorious life, but our thoughts and affections must be immersed in it or we will spend all of our lives hanging around on the periphery of all that has been given. Living on the border of our inheritance is a terrible existence! We look across the divide and see the beauty and the splendor of all that has been promised – the spiritual riches that are ours; yet, we are held within the clutches of what seems necessary for daily life.
Paul says to set your affections, your cravings, your longings on things above. The remedy for our earth-bound temporal and fearful existence is to be caught away with the realm of the Spirit; and through the activity of faith, step in to a heavenly participation with the Holy Ghost. We have been translated from the kingdom of this world into the Kingdom of the Dear Son to function in the glory realm of Heaven (Colossians 1:13). We have been entrusted with access by the Spirit to take our place in the Heavenly realm where Christ Jesus is presently seated (Ephesians 2:6). We have been given the authority to function as sons in all the gifts of the Spirit; but unless it is our one desire above all other things, we will never realize these blessed things.
God demands that our cravings for the things of the Heavenly be first and foremost above all other things – that the passion of our souls should be the Kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33; Colossians 3:1-4; Hebrews 2:3). Our greatest need and deepest desire should be to see the power of God and the operation of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives and in our assemblies. Jesus modeled for us what it was like to live out a life of days of Heaven upon the Earth. He showed us the beauty of our spiritual inheritance when He was baptized in the Holy Ghost, and went around driving out devils and ministering the blessed, glorious life of the Kingdom of God.
Blessings,
Pastor Mark Spitsbergen
