The Day of New Beginnings
What’s Going On, Anyway?
And He said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! (Luke 24:25). That’s a good passage to express my own condition lately! The Lord has been speaking for a long time that we have passed into a new day or dispensation. For those pioneering their way into this higher realm of His kingdom, one thing has been spoken over and over. “God is no longer dealing with us in the soul realm, but is dealing with our spirits.” I bet I've heard that a thousand times over the years. Yet it has never quite sunk in. We are all creatures of habit and continue to insist on relating to God as we have known Him in the past. In the previous dispensation God dealt primarily with the soul realm of His people. We would say things like, “God is dealing with my temper,” etc. The Lord tended to put His hand on various aspects of our lives to bring about change. We could always connect the dots. We sensed what God was doing in us.
We are entering a day of Spirit. God deals with our spirits, not to correct bad habits, etc., but to enable us to partake of His nature. It’s in our spirits that His nature is formed. The Lord continually puts pressure upon our spirits to enable them to fully receive of His life. The human spirit, though housing the spirit of Christ in us, still is subject to our individual wills and the contamination of the Adamic life residing in us. So, God puts pressure upon it, squeezing it, if you will, until it yields again and again to His will and purposes for our lives.
I got up today voicing to God I couldn't stand another day of the endless battles and kaleidoscope of feelings and emotions of the soul realm in me. And then God began to bring to my heart a fresh awareness of what He is doing. We will never “connect the dots” in this realm of spirit we have entered. The feelings, emotions, and circumstances of our lives will never reflect accurately what God is doing in us. There is no cause and effect in the realm of spirit. The realm of spirit is abstract. There is no "by the numbers" in the spirit realm. God’s puts pressure upon our spirits and all hell seems to break loose, but that’s only the by-product of the pressures He’s applying. They don't mean anything in themselves. They are not to be examined or pondered as in past days when we labored to figure out what God was getting at in our lives.
If we could just imagine a giant hand squeezing our spirits, molding and making it pliable and submissive to God’s own nature, then we would have a fairly accurate picture of how God’s dealings on us are different from days past. It’s in the sixth day that man is made in God’s own image. God has brought us to a spiritual day in which man isn't just disciplined to know God afar off, but to come right into His presence and know Him in His nature.
If we can fully accept our day to day conflicts are a result of God preparing our spirits for Himself, and stop looking for a “breakthrough” out of the very things that are forming His nature in us, we will have taken a giant step.
But what about our souls? Is there no blessing for them anymore? That’s just what I asked God! He brought to mind the story of Jacob and Esau. If you remember, Jacob’s mother Rebecca, helped Jacob deceive his blind father, Isaac, and take the blessing of the first born, which went to Esau, the oldest. The story is found in Gen. 27. After Jacob had received the blessing from his father, Esau came in to receive his blessing. But Jacob had already taken what God had to give through Isaac. Listen to how Esau laments:
32 Isaac his father said to him, "Who are you?" And he said, "I am your son, your firstborn, Esau."
33 Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, "Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed."
34 When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, O my father!"
35 And he said, "Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing."
36 Then he said, "Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing." And he said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?"
37 But Isaac replied to Esau, "Behold, I have made him your master, and all his relatives I have given to him as servants; and with grain and new wine I have sustained him. Now as for you then, what can I do, my son?"
38 Esau said to his father, "Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father." So Esau lifted his voice and wept.
We can look at Jacob and Esau as types of our spirits and souls. Jacob represents our spirits. It’s to the “Jacob” that God imparts the blessing. The fruitfulness of God, as prophesied to Jacob (vs. 28-29), is manifested in our spirits. That’s why God deals with them the way He does, and that’s why Jacob went through a lifetime of dealings. He became an expression of the nature of God, as exhibited by his name change to Israel, which means, “God prevails.”
Esau represents our souls. As much as the soul life would like to rule and dominate us, it is denied. Esau cried out and wept over being denied the blessing. And that’s just what we do in our own soul lives as they seem to languish with neglect. But here’s the thing: Esau’s prophecy, though much to his disliking, said that he would serve his brother. Part of the prophecy to Jacob, said, “Be master of your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.”
Ultimately, our souls will participate in the blessings of our spirits. Years later, Jacob and Esau met again. Esau had previously sworn to kill Jacob. The story unfolds through chapters 25-33 of Genesis. The climax reads thus:
1 ¶ Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids.
2 He put the maids and their children in front, and Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last.
3 But he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.
4 Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.
Esau fell upon Jacob’s neck and kissed him. There was reconciliation between them. As God has His way in our spirits, our souls will eventually reap the blessings as well.