"Walking By the Spirit—It's Time to Break Out of the Limitations We Have Walked In"

by JoAnn McFatter

Jun 9, 2009

It is our privilege and delight as the Body of Christ to pursue the mystery of the knowledge of our God. Most are in agreement that this is a time of acceleration where the things of the Spirit are concerned. As a God-driven hunger for Spirit and Truth increases in our hearts, we are finding ourselves hitting a wall again and again as we attempt to understand the things of the Spirit via the mind of man.
We seem to have a problem in this present age comprehending what it means to have the mind of Christ. We must seek God to find just what it means to live by the Spirit.
"For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart."—1 Corinthians 2:16
We've lost the fullness of what it means to be a new creature in Christ at our conversion—to the truth that Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, shed His Blood that we might be freed from the curse pronounced upon mankind when sin entered through the first Adam. If indeed Adam and Eve lived outside of the curse before they sinned, why then are we, though redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb who bore sin on our behalf, still living as though nothing happened to negate its hold on us?
In the Garden
I can't imagine the world which Adam and Eve lived in before all of this happened. God walked with Adam in the cool of the day, so His glory had to have filled the atmosphere. I've heard stories of people who have been in the kind of glory cloud that was so thick, you couldn't see the person next to you! It was described as breathing pure oxygen and was absolutely exhilarating.
I believe the "speed of light" was different in the garden before the fall, that would have made the atmosphere contain a different level of oxygen, etc. which would have sustained their bodies in a different way. Their minds would have been much more alert. Breathing a different level of oxygen increases everything in our bodies.
I imagine they had use of a much larger capacity of their brain. If the curse has been broken, shouldn't we, at the bare minimum, be living as they did in the garden before the fall? What I ponder these days is: why are we not living in that same environment? Just as God was with them in the garden, He is IN us at our conversion. It seems the atmosphere they were surrounded in would be the very atmosphere we should be carrying inside of us—the very glory of God! Christ IN us, the hope of glory!
"Christ purchased our freedom (redeeming us) from the curse (doom) of the law (and its condemnation) by (Himself) becoming a curse for us, for it is written (in the Scriptures) cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (is crucified)."—Galatians 3:13
"Therefore if any person is (ingrafted) in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old (previous moral and spiritual condition) has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!"—2 Corinthians 5:17
Born Again By the Spirit
The old has passed and the fresh and new has come. We can now walk in His manifest glory right here and right now. When Moses was in the presence of God's glory, his face shined so that he had to wear a veil over it. Something happened to him as he beheld the measure of glory the Lord allowed to pass by Moses as he hid himself in the cleft of the rock. Should not that glory reside in us today? Should we not be "leaking light" as we become one with Him by our spirit communing with His Spirit?
As we become born again by the Spirit of God and we become one with Him, we come into alignment with who we were created to be—one who is made in the image of God. As we walk on this earth, we are to navigate by allowing our mind and body to follow our own spirit-man as we are led by His Spirit. I'm afraid we have no idea how to do that! We have so navigated for centuries by the mind of man, that even when we think we are being led by the Spirit, we are still following our linear, rational, left-brained, Greek/Western thought processes.
"Jesus answered, I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, unless a man is born of water and (even) the Spirit, he cannot (ever) enter the Kingdom of God. What is born of (from) the flesh is flesh (of the physical is physical); and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not (do not be surprised, astonished) at My telling you, 'You must all be born anew (from above).' The wind blows (breathes) where it wills; and though you hear its sound, yet you neither know where it comes from nor where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."—John 3:5-8
"If I have told you of things that happen right here on the earth and yet none of you believes Me, how can you believe (trust Me, adhere to Me, rely on Me) if I tell you of heavenly things? And yet no one has ever gone up to Heaven, but there is One Who has come down from Heaven - the Son of Man (Himself), Who is (dwells, has His home) in Heaven."—John 3:12-13
Notice that Jesus says about Himself that He is in Heaven. He's standing there on the earth, telling Nicodemus that He is in Heaven. We are seated with Him in heavenly places. He didn't say we would be seated, He said we ARE seated. That would mean present tense. The ability to be in two realms at the same time is something we need to grasp as we let our own way of thinking fall away and take on the mind of Christ. If it were not ours to have, He would not have put it in front of us the way He continually does in Scripture.
We have rationalized the life out of what Jesus really said until there is no Spirit left in it—just the mind of man in his small box of what is possible and acceptable by our limited thinking and understanding, not to mention our religious ways of processing His words.
I believe God is going to illuminate our minds as we give way to His Spirit communing with our spirit-man. It is a time in history when the sciences, the arts and spirituality are coming to a shift as He allows us to see the fullness of how He put this world together for us to live in—both in the physical realm as well as the eternal realm—AT THE SAME TIME! As we meditate on Him and His Word, He is going to help us to get our heads wrapped around the things of the Spirit.
He's going to help us step into and take on the mind of Christ. It would behoove us to ask Him to reveal just how He meant for us to live on this earth. Again I say: we need to ask Him just what was in His heart when He created man in the very beginning to commune with Him. It would be good for us to ask Him how to walk with Him truly as a new creature in Christ—one with His Spirit, with Christ in us, living through us, and with our spirit-man taking the lead.
It's time to break out of the limitations we have walked in for the past decades upon decades! The choice is ours as to just how deep we go into the mind of Christ.
"Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or as His counselor has taught Him?"—Isaiah 40:13
JoAnn McFatterWhiteDove Ministries