Christians should know more about the spiritual realms than the rest of humanity, but sadly, this is not true in our generation. For far too long, we have allowed our freedom in Christ to be robbed from us by a clever thief. This thief does not want us to explore and gain understanding of the spiritual realms, because keeping us bound to the temporal in this age ensures we do less damage to his kingdom.
I believe the main weapon Satan has used against believers to keep us from exploring the unseen, yet eternal realms of the spirit, is fear. We are told by God that he has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound thinking. Sound thinking is spiritual thinking. This type of thinking sees beyond the temporal universe that is fading away, into the depths of the spiritual realms which fade not.
What we as believers have often done is throw babies out with the bathwater that we found dirty. For some reason, we have often seemed to be incapable of separating the baby from the bathwater, or the corruption of the bathwater from the baby. For example, in Scripture the prophet has an experience, seeing and hearing what the enemy was doing in secret, planning against Israel. The corrupt form, the counterfeit of this, is the out of body experience or astro-projection of the soul. New age and occult teachings instruct people concerning how to experience such. We should not condone such perversions which do not acknowledge God’s will, but keep people in rebellion against him. But, we shouldn’t fear exploring the spiritual abilities we have with the Holy Spirit, because of the counterfeits.
Today, when believers do begin to explore further into the spiritual realms, and learn how to operate beyond the natural, they may find themselves spoken ill of and even persecuted. We cannot expect the average believer to understand us if we explore the vast depths of God, exploring his eternal abode. It is inevitable that we will appear different and even peculiar. It is also likely we will be accused of being demonic when we operate more supernaturally and out of the norm. Many Christians tend to label anything demonic or at least questionable, if they do not understand it. Snap judgments based on ignorance can be called “discernment,” but they do not discern spirits, they simply exalt their understanding as the judge over all.
My advice is to forget about what people think. Do not be a professional man-pleaser. Be a God-pleaser. Go after God, through and in Christ, with all of your heart and being. Be an explorer of the spiritual. Ever be a learner longing to experience God more, and know God better. Build your foundation on Scripture, but only Scripture in the Light the Holy Spirit brings, not by the carnal reasoning of the natural mind. Beware of the counterfeits of Satan, but do not fear such, or stop exploring because you are afraid you will find a counterfeit. You will see counterfeits. Fear not, you are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Let us explore the vastness of the spiritual realms with the Holy Spirit as our guide! Blessings in your exploration!
May 27th, 2009 - 11:33 am
I was just now googling around about this when I found your blog post. I’m simply stopping by to say that I very much liked seeing this post, it is very clear and well written. Are you considering writing more on this? It looks like there is more fodder here for future posts.
May 28th, 2009 - 4:53 pm
Thanks for posting, I really liked reading your most recent post. I think you should post more frequently, you obviously have talent for blogging!
May 29th, 2009 - 1:17 am
Yes, I planned on building up on this subject through several posts. How far I’ll go with it I have not determined yet, but I’m starting by exposing the issue and dealing with the basic problems that keep Christians from exploring the spiritual, focusing first on fear, the root. I hope to build up to actually writing about some aspects of the spiritual realm that we can and should be familiar with but few Christians are, and being familiar with such can do to increase our faith in practice and fellowship with God.
May 29th, 2009 - 1:17 am
Thank you for the compliment and encouragement!