Zechariah 12:1 is a mini picture, it’s like a flash of lightning, it doesn’t give you very much explanation. But the first time I saw this it was like lightning. I just saw a flash of something! Zechariah 12:1 says,"The burden of the word of the Lord." That’s important. That’s saying that this is the burden of the word of the Lord. Then it goes on to list three things of creation:
1. The Lord stretched forth the heavens.
2. He laid the foundations of the earth.
3. He formed the spirit in man.
God is spirit, and he formed spirit in man. Oh, I hope you can see this. You are not just a carnal human being with a natural personality, but you are spirit. Deep within the recesses of your being, far past what you can think or know by
natural methods, YOU ARE SPIRIT.
John 4:23-24 Jesus said A time will come, however, indeed it is already here, when the true (genuine) worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth (reality); for the Father is seeking just such people as these as His worshipers. 24 God is a Spirit (a spiritual Being) and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth (reality). AMP
That means for you to really understand God, for you to really worship God, for you to enter into the presence of God, is not a matter of your intellect, it’s not a matter of your mind, it’s not a matter of your conduct, it’s not a matter of how good you are, it’s not a matter of how bad you are, it’s a matter of understanding that you are spirit. And to contact God is simply a matter of contacting spirit. God wants to fully infiltrate, permeate, and saturate your being. You see, your problem is not your conduct, your problem is not your habits. The problem is you haven’t understood that you are spirit, and that God, regardless of your condition or conduct, wants to, from the spirit person you are, infiltrate and possess every area, every avenue of your thought and brain. The Spirit of the living God wants to permeate every cell so that, as the Scripture says, "If He that raised Jesus from (Rom. 8:11). So to worship God is a matter of spirit. And if you think it’s a matter of conduct, you will never, ever feel worthy enough, you’ll never make it into genuinely living in His presence.
There used to be a time when I would touch God by accident. I’m sure you all experience times when you’re in the Scriptures, or in prayer, or you’re singing with the Lord, and He just fills you up, and it’s glorious. It’s almost like, "I don’t know how I did it, but God touched me." So we make up these songs about God, "He Touched Me!" But I’m telling you, our experience is to be that we absolutely live in His presence. Not only do we live in His presence, we are His presence in the earth. You must understand that you are not a carnal human being, but you are spirit. And when you understand you are spirit, and then you begin to understand how you could be His presence in the earth. You’ll also begin to understand some of the deep mysteries like Paul wrote about in Ephesians 5:23. He said that you are bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. Paul told the believers, "You are the fullness of Him who fills everything everywhere with Himself"(Eph. 1:23, Amp.).
You cannot receive the gospel of God with the carnal mind. You can’t try to figure out how this could be, because it will never happen according to your intellect. Aren’t we all well experienced in the failure of trying to be and live as Jesus lived on the earth? Do you have a problem when someone really upsets you, when someone does you wrong? Do you have a problem with resentment? Do you ever have a problem with anger? As you begin to enter into the reality of the Kingdom, you find yourself with the nature of forgiveness instead of resentment. As you begin to feel resentment rise up within you, you realize that those feelings come from the carnal realm, and you learn to turn to and release the spirit within you, and your resentment dissipates.
Awake, You Who Are Sleeping!
You have to know that you are not a carnal human being, you are spirit. God is spirit. What are you saying Gary, I am God? Not in the sense that I am my Father God, no! But let me ask you something, are you a human? Why are we human? Because we had a natural father, and he was a human. And so we are a product of the first human man, Adam and we have a human life because we are human. If you begin to understand that you are spirit and God is spirit, then you begin to understand that you have His divine life and nature. The apostle Peter teaches this in his epistles.
People all across the world are beginning to wake up and hear the truth. As Paul said so many years ago, "Awake, you who are sleeping." Wake up! You see, Adam, the carnal you is sleeping and is in a dream state. But when you begin to wake up, the spirit man realizes who he is. In the very core of your being, you are spirit, and when you begin to wake up, you realize God really is my father. I do have His life. He created me. What did He have to create with? What kind of life does He have? The God kind of life, for lack of a better terminology. So what kind of life has He given you? Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). In the original language of the New Testament there are basically three descriptions for our word life. In Greek you can use the word "bios", which is biological life. You can use the word "psuche", which is your soulish life, your mind, emotion and will. And there’s also the word "zoe", the highest form of life, which is God’s life. When Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life," He used the word "zoe". In essence He said, "I have come to give you my life. The same life that courses and flows through my being, I am come that you might have that life, the life of almighty God! The life that knows no bounds and no limitations. The life that has never tasted of death. The life that has never been tainted by sin."
You have, within the very core of your being, the life that is really life, because it’s spirit. Your spirit man, the real person that you are inside, has never really known what sin is. The carnal nature has covered over your true nature. And when your spirit is regenerated and wakes up, guess what happens to you? That wretched person that you think you’ve been begins to fall away from you, the seed breaks forth within you and produces once again on the earth God manifested in the flesh.
You don’t have to be good to experience this. You can be bad and have this happen to you. The modern day religious folks can look at you as the scum of the earth, but God will speak life to you. You may feel there is no hope for you, but I could speak just a few words to you and bring life and restoration because when I speak to you the seed of Christ within you will begin to stir. And your heart will begin to burn, and your ears will hear life, and your inner man will begin to rise, and the outer man will begin to fall into the dust. You don’t have to be good. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God. And we haven’t had the power of God because we haven’t had the full everlasting gospel revealed to us.
Where Should We Worship?
Religion has said that if you (meaning the human personality, your carnal nature) want God, you must stop sinning, you must change your life, you cannot live this way and be godly, so you must change your ways to enter into His presence and to be favored by God. If this were true then none of us would qualify to enter in. If you want to worship God, you must worship Him in spirit. The woman at the well in John chapter 4 said to Jesus, "Lord, where should we worship? Should we worship in Jerusalem or should we worship on this mountain?" We are always looking for the right place to worship. Where is God? Where is He? For years I wanted to know, "God, what church are you in? Where do I go to find a place to worship you?" People have all kinds of different doctrines and theologies. You could run here and run there. "God, where do I find you?" I was looking for Him in the wrong place. The only place you can find Him is in spirit. You are spirit, and that is where you worship Him.
I knew years ago that the answer, of course, is walking in the spirit. But to me the spirit was the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit to me was out there somewhere. I was told that the Holy Spirit was within me, but I didn’t know how to get to Him to experience Him. So I was trying to walk in something that was confusing to me. The only way that you can overcome carnality is by understanding that you’re not a carnal human being you are spirit. And as you learn how to enter your spirit, you find that your spirit is one with the Holy Spirit. If you learn how to live and function from your spirit and release your spirit, , you are walking in the spirit. That’s why Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be bornagain," for that which is born of flesh is flesh. The physical Gary that was born from my natural father is flesh, it’s a carnal, human personality. Flesh and blood cannot, and will not ever, no matter how good it gets, enter the Kingdom of God. You must enter in through the spirit, for he told Nicodemus, "That which is born of spirit is spirit." That which is born of the Holy Spirit is your spirit. Paul says, "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17). What does that mean, he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit? It is so simple, but because of our religious teaching we haven’t understood it. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. So if I have been joined to the Lord, if I have been quickened, if I have been regenerated by His spirit, then that means my spirit and His spirit are one spirit.
If I learn how to enter into my spirit, and I learn to speak from my spirit, and I learn how to function from my spirit, then God once again is manifesting Himself in humanity. But if I take my carnal nature and clean it up, and I go to Bible school and learn homiletics and hermeneutics and how to prepare sermons, I can then graduate and begin to teach you all that I have intellectually learned about God, but I’m dead and you’re dead, and you’ll never have anything of real spiritual substance with just intellectual learning. Everywhere I go, I tell people, listen, we’ve had nothing, and I mean almost nothing, more than a performance-based Christianity. I’m talking about the systematized thing that we have out there calling itself Christianity, and denominations calling themselves the Church. For the most part, we have nothing but 2000 years of just dry, dead, theological teachings, with no power to give you life. You’ve got to understand that flesh and blood does not count in the things of God. All the wonderful sermons and all the soulish prayers and the demon chasing mean nothing when it comes not from the Holy Spirit in your spirit.
You’re going to see what the religious system considers the scum of the earth arise in a mighty awakening. When they find out that God loves them and that they can turn to Him and enter into His presence, then that will bring them change. You do not need to be good to change, you just need God. When God begins to arise in you in reality, all your old habits and way of life begin to just disappear. The more you fellowship with God and enjoy Him, the quicker you will see yourself change.
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