Look Up!

This post really follows on from Sunday’s post on the ‘Remnant Rising‘. The vision of the firebird, or phoenix, rising from the ashes is one that God keeps showing me lately, and a large part of its message is to do with what I shared previously, on God’s remnant leaving behind the ashes of religion, to burn with holy fire just for Jesus. But even as I shared on Sunday, I knew there was more to wrestle through, and this morning I felt like the Holy Spirit expanded my vision to go deeper.

I came to prayer expressing my inner wrestling over how we balance the call to live a life of extraordinary purpose with the mundane necessities of everyday life – how do we practically fulfil the great commission, healing the sick, raising the dead and saving the lost, when so much of life is taken up with keeping our homes tidy, raising children and paying bills. The latter is every bit as important as the former, and yet it can feel like there is a real tension between the two that I was wrestling through (I like wrestling with God: it’s not comfortable but His blessing rests on the Jacob-generation who seek God’s face as in Ps 24:5-6).

I had been considering the great generals of faith of recent history: Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kuhlman, John G Lake, Maria Woodworth-Etter, Aimee Semple McPherson etc, and wondering how they handled the same mundane struggles of bill-paying, house-cleaning, child-rearing life – how did they balance that with the miracle-working power that God released through them. Because my heart longs to see miracles, and indeed I have been blessed with seeing several in my own life, but I am not satisfied. I know there is so much more available, but get so easily frustrated with having to deal with what feels like the distractions of practical life. So I knew I was missing something but couldn’t see what.

And in my wrestling God brought a few things to remembrance that He has brought up lately:
1/ the Gospel of the Kingdom that Jesus preached.
A brief study revealed that the first time the Gospel was mentioned in the New Testament was as the Gospel of the Kingdom (Matt 4:23), and the first time Jesus was recorded as using the word ‘Gospel’, it was as the ‘Gospel of the Kingdom’ (Matt 24:14). And Strong’s concordance makes clear that the word translated as Gospel, or Good News – euaggelion – refers to “the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God soon to be set up, and subsequently also of Jesus, the Messiah, the founder of this Kingdom”.
So why, when we think of preaching the Gospel, do we present it as a Gospel of salvation? It’s true that Paul referred to it that way once (in Eph 1:13), but that is not ALL it is. The Good News that Jesus came to share (and John before Him, as in Matt 3:2, saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near“) was that through Him, the Kingdom of Heaven was available to us on earth. It’s not just about going to heaven when we die – we are citizens of Heaven HERE and NOW!

2/ The repeated call to the Church over lockdown season to fix our eyes on Jesus, not on what is going on in the world

3/ The derogatory put-down favoured in my late teens where people were labelled as “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use” – and how God wanted to expose and break that lie with the revelation that Jesus was a) the most heavenly-minded person who ever lived, and b) the most effective person who ever lived, by His practical actions breaking the power of sin and death over every living being.

4/ A song by Jason Upton called ‘Fly‘ which God keeps taking me back to, with its call to soar to new places & a heavenly perspective.

5/ and of course the recently repeated visions of the phoenix representing the call to rise higher than the ashes and dust of the world. I do not believe for one second that this is referring simply to the ascension of our spirits to Heaven when we die, but rather something much deeper and stronger that God is calling us to right now.

Lazarus raised from the dead
Peter walking on water
Every demon-possessed person restored to sanity
Every sick person healed
Five thousand men plus their families being fed by one child’s packed lunch
Jesus Himself taking the curse of the sins of every person who ever lived and ever will, straight to Hell, where He overcame every power the enemy could and would ever, to rise again – establishing His total rule and reign in God’s Kingdom

All of these things are signposts to a single truth that God was revealing more of to me this morning. We are called to live from the Kingdom, not from the world. Yes we live on earth, but we are not its subjects any more. And I know we know that in our heads, but we have to receive a deeper revelation, so that we stop being ruled by opinion or the cares of this world. How can we claim to be citizens of Heaven while worrying about where the next meal is coming from, or the sickness that a loved one is facing, or what someone thinks of us, or even what we ‘should’ believe? These are all glaring signposts that we are living double-minded lives. I’m not claiming to be any better than anyone else, I welcome the conviction. I want to press into it in order to be set free from the sneaky deceptions that are hiding in my subconscious. I want to live a Kingdom-minded life, because that is surely the only way I can be set free to see the glory in the mundane and walk in the power of the Spirit.

There is a scene in the popular series ‘The Chosen‘, in Season 2 episode 6 where Jesus is restoring Mary Magdalene to relationship with Him after she has fallen away from Him. It’s not a scene from the Bible but an fictitious extra scene (I don’t agree with all the non-Biblical parts of the show but I love the over-riding heart it carries for the Gospel). Anyway, in this particular scene Jesus looks at Mary, hanging her head in shame, and says to her, “Look Up” (to look at Him). In a commentary, the series creator Dallas Jenkins says of that moment that for him it is the Gospel in a nutshell. At the time I thought it was an odd thing to say, but this morning God reminded me of it – and I am inclined to agree.

Because as I came to the end of my wrestling earlier today, God took me to Colossians 3:2, which says “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” – or in other words, “Look Up”!

Verses 1-3 spell it out more clearly:
“Therefore if you have been raised with Christ to a new life, sharing in His resurrection from the dead, keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind and keep focused habitually on the things above the heavenly things, not on things that are on the earth which have only temporal value.  For you died to this world, and your new, real life is hidden with Christ in God” (AMP)

or as TPT puts it,
“Christ’s resurrection is your resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honour, and authority! Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm. Your crucifixion with Christ has severed the tie to this life, and now your true life is hidden away in God in Christ“

I ran out of time to study the verses further this morning, but I certainly plan to asap! But still it is apparent that the Good News Jesus came to bring was that He has made His Kingdom available to us. Not just after this life, but we can live in it here and now if we accept Him as Saviour & King. And if we do so, focusing on Him, we will rise like the phoenix: burning with holy fire; filled with the power of the Spirit; living in the world but not of it (John 17:15-16).
And so I get up early each morning to seek God’s face, because if I don’t, my perspective too easily stays in the dust of worldly concerns. God is calling me – calling each of us – to LOOK UP and rise like the phoenix to where we are seated with Christ in Heavenly places, far above the concerns and self-opinionated trappings of earthly life. Only once we take our focus from the Kingdom are we empowered to live out the mundane and the miraculous with equal spiritual weight.

So look up, beloved. Set aside the cares of this world and rise like the phoenix to a heavenly Kingdom perspective where your spirit is set on fire and equipped to conquer whatever each day brings. Amen!