Song – Strip it all away – John Wilds.
Prayer: Jesus, We come hungry before Your throne this morning Lord.
You are the Resurrection and the Life. You are the one who has the words of life. Your words are spirit and they are life. We have no interest in hearing anything but the truth which You have for us this morning. Change us wonderful Holy Spirit, open our understanding and the eyes of our heart so that we may know our saviour and King.
As I (Sylvia) was prayer walking…I felt the Lord nudging me to stop before a painting that I have of the flower sellers at the market in Cape Town.
What are You trying to show me Lord?
You see the flowers that they are holding? They are beautiful, are they not? All their glory on display…
But they are no longer connected to their source of life. Soon enough their beauty will wither and fade.
In the same way, we, who have been given gifts and talents, are beautiful in our design and purpose but if we are disconnected from Him who is life…we will soon wither and fade away. We need to stay connected to Life Himself, for us to be able to fully reveal all that He has created us to be.
You might say, ‘But I am born again, I am connected.’
Yes…if you have surrendered your life to Him at the foot of the cross then you are in the spiritual body of Christ…but like the human body, if we don’t feed it…it will die. It will still be a body but it will be a dead body.
He is the way, the truth and the life… He is our daily bread and spending time in His presence daily is what keeps us spiritually alive.
If we lose our carnal life, in pursuit of Him who is life…then we will find the actual life we were created for. If we don’t lose our carnal life, then the life we were created for will wither away and die.
Matt. 16:24-27 – Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.’
I can tell you from experience, that the joy that comes from staying connected just increases more and more. The deeper you go in pursuit of His presence, the more you want it. Nothing is as rewarding as this…nothing.
But you will have to push through the veils of your flesh in the beginning…because your carnal self is lazy and wants instant gratification. Don’t give up! Be relentless! Pursue Him. Be hungry…for those who hunger shall be fed.
Today, we are going to talk about the secret place and abiding in the Vine.
The Secret Place
Firstly, it is important to know that the secret place is not a physical place.
The secret place is all about the heart and it is where the Spirit of God gives you revelation in the heart and the revelation speaks to you personally. You get the depths of salvation, of how God works and how God thinks.
The only way into the secret place is by the Holy Spirit. He takes you past the veil of the flesh that cannot be passed by the natural man and He takes you into the Holy of Holies. It is the place of divine intimacy within your heart where you fellowship with the Lord.
Here, in this place of intimacy is where you are learning to know Him and through learning to know Him, your heart has come to assume a posture of humility before Him.
It is where you will find yourself bowed down in a posture of worship and submitted to the King of kings because of who He is.
Ps. 91:1 – He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
He who dwells… abides under the shadow. It has become a place of habitation…a residence. And if you remember from our last teaching…this is who the bride is to be…a dwelling place for the presence of God. A place of worship.
John 4:23 – The hour is coming says the Lord, and now is here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth for the Father is seeking such people to worship Him.
Col. 3:1-3 – If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on the things of the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
It’s time to live according to the higher order of the spirit and not to the natural order. We are the people that will manifest…and make known that life that is in Him…thereby making known the life that is in us.
John G. Lake: Our souls have caught just a little flash, a larger revelation of the living God through the blessed word and the Holy Spirit. The divine power to make it real. Beyond our soul is a great ocean of God. We’re just paddling around on the edge yet.
John 15:4 – Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, UNLESS you abide in Me.
V5 I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
V6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out and is withered.
We who desire to be the bride, want to bear much fruit. Well, there is only one way that is going to happen and that is to abide in Jesus. It doesn’t matter how much you know, how many degrees you have, how brilliant or talented you are, how many prophecies have been spoken over you, if you don’t abide in Him, you will not bear fruit.
But, when the branch is attached, it’s not like there is effort…what is in the vine is flowing through the branch.
Are you connected to Him?
Do you know Jesus yourself? Are you content to meet with Moses or are you making the effort to walk up the mountain to meet with God?
Charles Spurgeon – ‘Some of us may not doubt our salvation, yet we are not feasting with Him. He invites us in to the experience of His Person. If you don’t have a vibrant living exchange then my question is, ‘Are you the spouse of Christ, yet content to be without the presence of your beloved?
Francis Chan recounts a discussion he had with a Chinese evangelist:
‘Too many people are content to hear from someone who has met with God. Why do the people not want to go up the mountain themselves?
Do you know how a movement starts? A movement starts when a man really knows God. Do you know how a movement dies? When the followers only know the founder of the movement…and they are not really connected to Jesus Himself. They are feeding off this founder’s relationship with God…but they don’t go up the mountain themselves’.
The truth is… as long as I abide in Jesus, fruit happens in my life. Real fruit. Permanent change.
The question we must continually ask is:
Lord, are You still the first love in my life? What is there in my life that has taken Your place?
As we spend the time in the secret place to make Him the first love in our lives, the Holy Spirit will begin to reveal those areas in us that need to change and that change will manifest as fruit in a heart that longs to please the Father.
Firstly – It’s all about the love…
Matt. 22:37-40 – Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.
The day that I found out that I could have a fresh start with the Lord, I was overjoyed. My life changed immediately. I knew nothing about God except that Jesus had paid for our sins. God, up to my conversion, had been always been someone I would face in the judgment one day and quite frankly I feared that moment because I feared Him.
Now after my conversion… suddenly, I wanted to read the bible, had never seen one before that. I wanted to go to church, couldn’t wait, in fact, to hear the wonderful exciting truths that helped me to understand the relationship I now had with the Father and how much He loved me.
I was amazed that the God of all creation loved us and had done so much to restore us to Himself. That He wanted a relationship with us.
I learned to worship with all my heart. I cried when people gave their hearts to the Lord. I was totally and completely smitten.
This was first love… He had my heart.
1 John 4:18 – There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us.
I stood before the Lord, free, accepted, loved and most notably…not because of my own performance.
Nothing had changed in that moment? I hadn’t suddenly become awesome. No…what had changed was my understanding. I had received the revelation that He didn’t frown upon me in disapproval and annoyance. NO! He just loved me! O Lord…how many people don’t know this.
I was in this atmosphere of acceptance and total love, set free to grow in my knowledge of Him. Secondly, because I was so in awe that I could have this new start with Him, I did not want to do anything that was contrary to His will.
The wonder of…HIS LOVE FOR US…is the foundation of our first love for Him.
It is this first love that He is calling us back to. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind and all your strength.
I understand that but I feel as if my heart has grown cold. What do I do???
When you feel condemnation because you don’t feel this love, remember this:
Rom. 5:5 – Now hope does not disappoint, (why?) because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts (how?) by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
This level of love is not something that we can try to manifest in ourselves. I am going to love the Lord!!! Whatever we try to manifest in our own strength will be all about behaviour modification. When it is just behaviour modification it is completely inferior to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts!
If I do this in my own strength…I will fail, I’ll be mad at myself, I’ll be frustrated and eventually, I will give up trying…so much wasted time and effort and now the enemy has succeeded and will use it against me.
We need the Holy Spirit to do the work in us and as we see in Luke 11:13 Jesus says, ‘If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!’
Why did the Father give us the Holy Spirit? To resurrect us from spiritual death but besides becoming born again…He is the guardian of our soul. Our heart attitudes need the life of Christ infused into them so that our familiar carnal attitudes will die.
Rom. 8:11 – But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
He won’t resurrect our mortal body. We assume all too often that He is speaking about life after death…but then v13 would not make sense.
V13 But if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death (what?) the deeds of the flesh, you will live.
What sort of life are we talking about? (Dzah’-o) to have true life – Active, blessed, endless in the kingdom of God, it is living water, having vital power in itself and exerting the same upon the soul.
2 Cor. 3:18 – we are being transformed into the image of the Son of God by the Holy Spirit. Whatever deeds of the flesh we put to death by the Spirit will also allow the Spirit to give us Dzah’-o… true life.
Gal. 5:22 – the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Love here is = Agape. Love in “You have left your first love” (Rev. 2:1-5) is also Agape.
So basically, returning to our first love will require us to repent, to acknowledge that we need the help of the Holy Spirit to develop this first love for our Lord once more (as well as all the other gifts). In this transformation, there will always be our part and there will always be His part.
This will be a daily continual practice.
You get a revelation of who you are in Him because of the inward working by the Spirit of God not because it sounded good to you, not because you heard someone preach it but because in the secret place, God the Father spoke it into your heart by the Holy Spirit. There is a force to what He says. There is an authority to what He says and it carries weight in you… and you know that the longer you spend in His presence, you are more persuaded, consumed by it, overwhelmed… you are changed.
This is what transpires in the secret place… the place of intimacy
Rom. 2:4 – Or do you despise the riches of His forbearance, and long suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance.
It is focusing on the goodness of God and how much He deserves to be loved and worshiped by us that brings us to His feet in bankruptcy saying, ‘Lord I want to love You like I should… but I need Your help’. It is this undeserved grace that will bring you back to repentance… and repentance is the natural response when we dwell on the wonder of His love for us.
We owe Him our very lives… on every level.
There is none like Him… He is Love… and He is watching over His word to perform it.
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
May your feet carry you swiftly into the Presence of your beloved, in Jesus name.