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Part 3 TEACH US TO PRAY (continued)
In this article we continue our
thoughts on prayer in connection with the mysteries of the
In the lower heavens you know God in a more elementary way. How
wonderful it is to know God in His heavens! Each heaven bespeaks of a
plane of relationship with God by the Spirit. When the Lord unveils
Himself to you on a higher plane, in deeper measures, in richer and fuller
dimensions of His life, wisdom and glory, and you experience Him in it,
you ascend in Him to a higher heaven. In the lower heavens you see and
touch and experience God spiritually in limitation. As you pass through
the heavens you come to know God in greater and grander measures. You
experience Him in a deeper way. You come to know God more fully. In our
progression through the heavens we encounter the laws, or order, or ways
of God in each heaven. What is true in the physical realm is likewise true
in the spiritual realm. The world of the spirit is governed by spiritual
laws just as powerful and precise as the laws of the physical world. They
cannot be discovered by the natural mind, nor by man’s search or
investigation through natural or scientific channels. They can neither be
discerned nor touched by the natural senses. They belong to the order of
divine revelation and are revealed to man only by the Word of God and by
the Spirit of God.
God has dealt with me over many years in the area of His laws. I
continue to share with you in this writing three laws of the Kingdom. They
are not new. You have heard of them on some level or in some context many
times. But I want to set forth these laws that we might understand
precisely the method God is using to bring us from where we are unto the
place to which He has appointed us in Himself. All three laws are found in
Matthew 7:7 in connection with Christ’s great teaching on prayer.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you.” According to these laws, what happens when
you ask? You receive! What happens when you seek? You find! And, what is
the result of knocking? Why, it is opened unto you! Those are exact and
immutable laws. They are not promises; there is a world of difference
between a promise and a law. Jesus says, “Ask, and it shall be given
you: for everyone that asketh receiveth”-there’s the law! Not a
promise - a law. How awesome, expansive, and all-inclusive! How glorious,
positive and absolute! EVERYONE THAT ASKETH, RECEIVETH.
Now listen. I want to share with you an elementary truth of supreme
significance. “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto
your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give
GOOD THINGS to them that ask Him” (Mat. 7:11). Good things! T-H-I-N-G-S!
Those who ask are given things. I draw your reverent attention to the two
significant words: ask and things. If you ask, what do you get? THINGS!
What kind of things? Good things! But they are, nonetheless, things. This
realm of asking for and receiving things is the first heaven. If you are
going to touch God, experience God, and know God in the realm of the
Spirit, the very first dimension in which you will come to know Him is in
the realm of “things”. This is the external realm. And the vast
majority of Christians are content to remain in that first heaven of
spiritual experience. They are satisfied with the forgiveness realm, the
blessing realm, the gift realm where all is received by free grace through
faith. Everything in those elementary realms is free! It is yours for the
asking. There are no conditions, no qualifications, no price, neither is
there any great attainment in God. It is the realm of children, of babes
in Christ. But the realm of children receiving gifts from their parents is
a blessed world indeed!
A minister once asked one of the young boys in his congregation if
he had prayed the night before. The quick response was, “No, I
couldn’t think of anything I needed last night.” A little black girl
came to her preacher one day and joyously exclaimed, “I prays every
night before I gits into bed.” “That’s wonderful,” was the
preacher’s commendation, “but do you also pray in the morning?” Her
immediate reply was, “Oh no, I ain’t sceered in the morning.” We
know that many children, and some who have passed childhood years, pray
for a good day for the picnic, to pass examinations, to win the ball game,
for a new doll, or a new coat. Their prayers are centered in themselves
and their wants. Many times they ask God to do for them something they are
not willing to take the time or the trouble to do for themselves. Perhaps
all school term one drifts along, doing little studying, often missing
classes, and then he asks God to pass the examination for him. Such
praying is understandable in the lives of youngsters, and we know that our
loving Father hears and answers prayers born of distress. Like earthly
parents, out of His love He sometimes “bails us out.’? But there is a
blessed realm beyond the childish prayers prayed, not just by little
children, but by the vast majority of believers who are only little
children in the Spirit.
In this glorious transition from realm to realm we hear a Voice
saying, “Come up hither,” and are translated from the first heaven to
the second. Now, let me present to you the law of the second heaven:
“Seek and ye shall find” (Mat. 7:7). The difference between asking and
seeking, and between receiving and finding, is that in the first heaven
one asks for things, whereas in the second heaven one seeks for God and
His Kingdom and finds the Lord Himself. The line is drawn between these
two realms in the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 6:25-33. “Therefore I say
unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye
shall drink; nor yet for the body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life
more than meat, and the body than raiment? For after all these things do
the Gentiles seek. Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye need all these
things. But seek ye the
The second level in knowing and experiencing God is denoted by this
word “seek”. You cannot think of what it means to seek without
understanding that an element of time is involved. You can ask in a
moment-but seeking is not a single act. It is a process, a series of acts.
Every mother knows that husbands and children think of seeking as a single
act. They will stand in the middle of a room, or pull open a drawer, and
cast one sweeping glance around it, looking for a lost object, and then
call for help. “Mom, where is my red sweater?” And mother opens the
drawer or the closet door and lifts the clothes and there it suddenly
appears right in the place where Susan just looked for it. Searching
involves a process.
It is instructive to note that throughout the scriptures the term
seek is always related to the Lord. One of the very few places where
things are associated with seeking is in Matthew 6:22 where Jesus states
that the Gentiles seek things. But unto His own He speaks of seeking the
Lord. “This is the generation of them that SEEK HIM, that seek THY
FACE...” (Ps. 24:6). This speaks of the generation-a people generated or
brought forth- to seek the Lord. There is a generation, a people generated
out of Himself, that can only find their fulfillment and destiny in Him,
so they seek Him. As the salmon seeks out the place of its spawning, so
these return unto their God. “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in
all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou
hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to
everlasting, Thou art God. Thou turnest man to destruction and sayest,
Return, ye children of men” (Ps. 90:1-3). There is something within us,
when our spirit has been quickened by His Spirit, whereby we recognize
that there is a realm, there is a God, there is a Father out of whom our
life has come, and we have known and experienced that realm in our
origins. The Psalmist proclaims that God has been our dwelling place
before the mountains were brought forth, or ever God formed the earth and
the world. Suddenly, when God reveals Himself in our life, we remember; we
were somewhere before, there is a reality to which we are drawn to return.
Some years ago I made a trip to
There is a passage in the book of Hebrews that speaks of those
great heroes of faith under the Old Covenant, and it says, “These all
died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar
off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that
they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such
things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had
been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have
had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country,
that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God
for He hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13-16). These men of God
were seeking a country-Abraham knew that the ground he walked on in the
land of Canaan was not the true land of God, for “he looked for a city
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” He was
searching for the City of
Blessed be His name! God has provided some better thing for us and
now we can return. The way has
been opened into the presence of God, into the life of God, into the
Do you know what it takes to discover and appropriate all the
glorious and eternal reality of this land- what is required? It takes some
seeking. You don’t just glide into the Feast of Tabernacles. You don’t
slip into God’s glory. You don’t coast into the fullness of God. You
don’t accidentally enter into life and immortality. You don’t just
wake up one fine morning to discover yourself a manifested son of God.
There are laws that govern our ascent. There is a prescribed order for
entering into the
Childishness in prayer is chiefly evidenced in an over desire to
beg things from God rather than desiring above all else the LORD HIMSELF.
The same growth must take place in the life of every son and daughter of
God that occurs in a normal relationship between a child and his parents.
At first the child wants the parents’ gifts, and thinks of the parents
primarily in terms of the things that they do and provide for his pleasure
and comfort. He is not able yet to appreciate the value of the parents’
personalities. A sure sign of a wholesome maturity is found in the
child’s deepening understanding of the parents themselves-his increasing
delight in their fellowship, thankfulness for their care, acceptance of
their ideals, reliance on their counsel, and joy in their approval. The
child grows through desiring things from his parents into love of his
parents for their own sakes. He is then able to enter into a partnership
with them in their business with all the respect and responsibility called
for.
Sons desire the Lord for Himself, for His intrinsic excellencies.
The Savour of the ointment of Christ’s graces draws the virgins’
desires after Him (S. of S. 1:3). “With my soul have I desired Thee in
the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek Thee early” (Isa.
26:9). We desire the Lord not only more than the world, but more than
heaven. “Whom have I in heaven but Thee?” (Ps. 73:25). If God should
say to the soul, “I will put thee in heaven, but I will hide my presence
from thee, I will draw a curtain between, that thou shalt not behold my
glory,” we would not be satisfied. “Where Jesus is, ‘tis heaven
there,” are the inspired words of the old hymn. Truly, “as the hart
pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after Thee, O God” (Ps.
42:1). As a drop of water is not enough for a thirsty traveler, so the
“first-fruits of the Spirit” are not enough for the sons of God. A
glimpse of Christ through the lattice of the gifts and blessings of the
Church age is sweet, but sons of God will never stop hungering and
thirsting until they see HIM face to face. We would be swallowed up in
God, and be ever bathing ourselves in those perfumed waters which flow
from the throne of God.
George
Hawtin wrote: “As a boy I was raised on a farm, an experience
that has been a lifelong blessing to me. As little boys we made games of
the work we saw the men do. When the giant threshing machines came around
in the fall, we played threshing machines. We concocted our engines and
separators. We imitated the shouting of the men, the hissing of the steam,
the fire in the boilers, the turning of belts and the whir of pulleys, and
the clanging of the giant monsters as they waddled about. We even changed
our names to names that seemed more suitable for threshermen, such as Bill
and Jack, Ray or Chet. But for all our threshing and all our noise not one
kernel of grain ever trickled from our toy machines. The people of God
have become like this. They are interested in sound effects and fanfare
more than in reality. They are more concerned about the noise that follows
the train than about the train itself. They are far more concerned about
the signs following the believer than about the true state of the believer
that the signs follow. They are more interested in the conglomeration they
call doctrine than they are in the fullness of Jesus Christ who is the
truth. They are more interested in redemption that in the Redeemer, more
enthused about the work they are doing for Christ, than they are about
Christ Himself, more worried about the tradition of assembling together
than whether or not He is in the midst of them, coveting earnestly the
best gifts but giving neither thought nor heed to the more excellent
way.”
“Seek ye the LORD,” saith God. That is, seek His Lordship, seek
His Kingship, seek the Dominion of God. Seek ye first the
“At the same time, it is the last thing we are willing and able
to do-to cease to be children, and to grow up to be men, in the things of
God. To learn and know that God is a spirit, and that He dwells not in
temples made with hands; but that His true and only temple is the temple
of the penitent, contrite, holy and loving heart- that takes much time for
most of us to learn. My brethren, be no longer children in understanding;
but in understanding be men. Think, my brethren, think! Think your
greatest and your best, your most magnificent, your most deep, and inward,
and spiritual, about God, and about man, made in the image of God. Think
with all your heart, and soul, and strength, and mind about the Divine
Nature. Blessed be the glory of the Lord out of His place. Glory be to God
for His Godhead, His mysteriousness, His height, His depth, His
sovereignty, His almightiness, His eternity, His omnipresence, and His
grace! But it is in the heart of man that God establishes His temple. His
high throne is prepared and set up in the heart of man. His holy altars
are builded and kindled in the heart of man. The sacrifices that alone
please God are offered continually in the heart of man. There, the Holy
Ghost ministers in prayer and praise without ceasing, making intercession
within us with groanings that cannot be uttered. There also is the golden
mercy-seat with the two cherubim above it. And there the Great High Priest
speaketh peace, and pronounceth His great Benediction, because He
continueth there forever.
“Seek thy God, then, in thyself! Oh, ye sons and daughters of the
Most High, seek Him whom ye have lost, and seek Him in your own hearts,
for ye have lost Him only because ye know not where He is. Come, O
prodigal son, come to thyself. Enter into thyself. Enter deep enough into
thyself, and thou shalt come unto His seat. For He still sits there,
waiting to be gracious there to thee. Oh, what a glory! Oh, what grace!
Oh, what a God! Oh, what a heart! To have thy God in thine own heart, and
to have Him wholly there for thee. His whole almightiness, His whole grace
and truth, His whole wisdom, life and power, His whole redemption, His
whole salvation! Arise, then, and enter into God’s holy temple, order
your cause before Him there, and fill your mouth with your best arguments
there. Till you fall down before Him in your own heart, and say, ‘I have
heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee!’
Are you, then, one of those who are this day saying, ‘Oh that I knew
where I might find Him: that I might come even to His seat!’ Then seek
Him where Job sought Him and at last found Him. Seek Him in a humble,
broken, believing heart. Go on seeking Him in a still more, and a still
more, humble, broken, believing heart. Seek Him deep enough, and long
enough; seek Him with your whole heart; and sooner, or later, you too will
find Him. Seek Him like David, seven times a day. Like David also, prevent
the night watches and the dawning of the day seeking Him.
“My beloved brethren! What are you living for? What is your life
yielding you? If you are not finding God in all parts of your life-what a
fatal mistake you are making! And what a magnificent reward you are
forever missing! But, when all is said, it is not to be wondered at that
so few of us seek, and seek out, God. For His greatness passes all
comprehension, and imagination, and searching out of men and angels. It is
only one here, and another there, who ever get the length of crying out
with Job, ‘Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.’ And with Isaiah,
‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself.’ And with Paul,
‘Dwelling in light which no man can approach unto: Whom no man hath
seen, or can see.’ ‘Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and
the knowledge of God!”‘-end quote.
Oh, I want to seek the Lord! I will never truly know who I am, or
what are the riches of this treasure which I have in an earthen vessel,
until I have fully sought out the Lord God, sanctified in my heart. What
does “seek” mean? It means “to pursue, to chase, to follow after
relentlessly and unceasingly.” It means to be unwilling to take “No”
for an answer! It means to be the way I was with the young lady who became
my wife. I only knew her a few days before I was convinced in my deepest
heart that she was the one for me. So I went after her. The Bible says,
“They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and they
that are after the spirit do mind the things of the spirit.” Do you know
what it means to be “after” the spirit? It means to be about the
spirit the way I was about my wife. I went after her! And I chased her
until she caught me! That’s what it means to seek the Lord. This is the
hour for all who have received the call to sonship to seek the Lord, seek
the Kingdom, seek the righteousness of His dominion and authority. Let it
work in us in every situation of our lives -let HIM be Lord. Make Him Lord
in our thoughts. Make Him Lord in our words. In all our attitudes, crown
Him Lord. In our actions, let Him be Lord. Seek the LORD. Seek the
Lordship of the spirit of His life within. Let Him speak and rule out of
the temple within the heart. Crown Him King that He may reign in all that
we are.
The absence of His Lordship is why we had so many preachers that
went bad back during the great healing and miracle revivals of the
1950’s. There were men of great fame who received the power of God
without the corresponding righteousness of God. They had the power of the
Kingdom apart from the righteousness of the Kingdom. Hence the command of
the Pattern Son: “Seek ye FIRST the
There is a beautiful footnote to the second heaven. “Seek ye
first the
The law of the Kingdom is that he who makes the
Ray Prinzing has aptly written: “Some years ago we used to sing
the simple little chorus: ‘He’s all I need, He’s all I need, all
that I need, He’s all I need, He’s all I need, all that I need.’
“Then one day a preacher made the remark that the chorus was not
true, that we also need groceries, clothes, place to live, etc. and with a
smirk on his face indicated that he would balance out this
‘super-spirituality’ that claimed ‘He’s all I need,’ by making
us face up to natural needs. What an insidious attack of carnality! If our
expectation is in what SELF can provide, obviously we are not centered
only in the Lord. But when HE is FIRST in all of our thoughts-we see every
provision that comes as from HIM. How sovereignly HE can make a way where
there is no way. ‘I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers
in the desert’ (Isa. 43:19). It is GOD who provides the job, it is God
who gives strength for the day, and we have come to see that ‘without Me
ye can do nothing”‘-end quote.
It’s like a girl who marries a rich man-she gains a husband, but she
gets the money, too. Before she is married she may benefit in some measure
by her fiancé’s wealth, but married to him all that he has is part of
the package. If it is true love, it is HIM she desires, not the money. The
money is a fringe benefit included with the man. In like manner, seek the
Lord and all the “things” of God come along with Himself. I do not
hesitate to tell you and I say it as a testimony to having tried and
proven this great law of the Kingdom. I have come to the place in my
personal experience where I seldom ask for anything. When I discovered
this law working powerfully in my life I almost got “under conviction”
about it! My mind said, “You haven’t spent time before the Lord asking
Him to meet your needs in months.” As I meditated upon it I realized God
had been meeting all my needs! True, sometimes He supplies at the very
last minute; and seldom does He supply a great abundance beyond what is
needed. But He does supply almost entirely apart from my asking. And why?
Because He has led us in paths of seeking the Kingdom, seeking the Lord,
and finding righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. This is the
law, just as precise, exact and constant as the law of gravity. It works.
I tell you it WORKS! Now, I do ask. I ask for others. I ask of God
blessings upon thousands of people, small and great. I pray over every
prayer request that comes across my desk. I ask for His Kingdom to come,
for His will to be done in earth as it is in heaven. But I ask very little
for myself. There is a blessed realm where you will never again need to
pray about your needs. But you will pray for others. Would that not
release you from a world of anxiety and spent time? Would it not enlarge
your capacity to intercede for other people, to bless humanity, to
participate in a prayerful way in the redemptive and reconstructive
activity of the Spirit on behalf of creation? This truth is beautifully
expressed in the little chorus we sing: “True
worshippers of the King, His
worthy praises we now sing; In
earthen vessels here to dwell, and
we ask nothing for ourselves.”
As we move from ‘‘things’’ to seek the reality of the
Christ within we discover that our goal in life is not to make money or
accumulate things. If that is our goal, then we need to set our priorities
straight. You see, in the world within, that world which you are, there is
no money and there are no things. There is no need for money and there is
no need for things. The only need for money and things is in the world on
the outside. But if we go out and try to seek that which is on the
outside, then we have left the Kingdom. The
To choose or seek anything in the outer world, whether it be a job,
money, relationships, or possessions, must be for the divine purpose of
expressing the inward through the outward. Anything that does not fulfill
that purpose has nothing eternal or of God-substance or life in it. It is
void. It is vanity. It is temporal. It is death. So choosing a vocation is
not for the purpose of making money, but to fulfill the will of God, to
express His life and bless the world. The carnal mind says, “If I live
for God and bless the world, then I get nothing for myself.” But that
isn’t true-because the real world is not the one out there, it’s the
one within. The world within is one of love, life, light, joy, peace,
grace, righteousness and blessing. Therefore the inner world delights to
bless all men on whatever level they are, asking nothing in return. But
the outer world is one of selfishness, ego, pride, avarice, greed,
stinginess and meanness. The resources of the inner world are unlimited;
the resources of the outer world finite. People who live only in the outer
world feel they have a right to cheat one another, take advantage of one
another, use one another. You can’t trust anybody in the business world
today, everybody is out for themselves. They are not for the people they
serve, they are in it for what they can get out of it, and they will lie,
misrepresent, cheat or steal to come out on top. Men will do that to you
because they believe that when they do that to you they are not doing it
to themselves, because that’s the way it is out in this world. They are
living by the spirit of the world. They know nothing of the reality, power
and glory of the inner world, so their perceptions of the outer world are
distorted.
All our choices in the outer world should serve to extend the
reality of what we are in the inner world. When we choose a job or any
activity, we don’t choose on the basis of its value in the outer world,
we choose that which will serve as an expression of the inner man.
That’s where peace is. That’s where joy is. That’s where fulfillment
is. And that’s where success is! Because that is where the Kingdom is,
that’s where life is, that’s where reality is, that’s where heaven
is. So many people work on their job just to make money, to pay the bills
and put food on the table. They don’t really like the job, and are
miserable. That is what the outer world calls “making a living.” But
making a living is more than making money, for “a man’s life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth” (Lk. THE
THIRD HEAVEN- KNOCK AND IT SHALL BE OPENED
Notice the order and meaning of these words: ask, seek knock.
“Ask” is first. A child asks its father for a toy or a suit of
clothing. It is an admission of helplessness. The child cannot earn it or
provide it for himself. And before God there are many times we can do
nothing for ourselves, there is no way out, and we can only come asking.
We are His children, and that gives us the right to ask without shame.
“Seek” is the next word. Many things in life do not come merely
by asking. The old prospectors were looking for gold-and there was no use
in asking. One must diligently search for a place where he has reason to
believe there is gold and stake a claim. The ore must be dug out of the
earth. The gold is there, but awaiting man’s effort. That is as it
should be. We don’t want to go through life as mere beggars.
This brings us to the final, the third heaven. In the first heaven
you ask your Father for things and you receive from His hand all things.
In the second heaven you seek the Lord and find the Lord Himself; and all
things come with Him without asking. The second heaven includes the first
heaven in such a way that it is unnecessary to function any longer in the
first heaven. The two become one, The provision of the first heaven in met
in the overflow of the second heaven. But there is another heaven, a
higher heaven in which we can meet God, touch God, experience God and know
God-and the law of that heaven is knocking. “Knock, and it shall be
opened unto you.” There is a distinct difference between seeking and
knocking, just as there is a difference between asking and seeking. What
happens for the man who knocks? “It shall be opened unto him.” I may
find a box of chocolates. But that is not the same as opening the box and
eating some. In these three words the Lord uses, ask, seek and knock,
there is an obvious difference of meaning. These words are often treated
as though they were synonyms, alternative words for the one prayer. We
have supposed the Lord is saying the same thing three ways. He’s not!
He’s saying three different things. They refer to a progression-each
more intense and demanding than the last. They represent an ascending
scale, stages of increasing intensity moving toward a climax. ASK refers
to the things we pray for. But I may ask and receive the gift without the
Giver. SEEK is the word scripture uses of the Lord Himself-”And ye shall
seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart” (Jer.
29:13). But it is not enough to find God, even the God within.
KNOCK speaks of admission into His realm, to dwell with Him and in
Him. Asking and receiving the gift leads to seeking and finding the Giver.
Finding the Giver leads to the knocking and opening of the door into that
high and holy realm where HE DWELLS. So the Lord says, “Knock.”
Knocking is more intense than seeking. Here, both time and intensity are
involved. Knocking is not a single rap; it is a series of raps. It is a
request for admittance, repeated if necessary. Those who hunger and thirst
deeply enough for entrance into the power and glory of the
Let me put it this way. When you seek you find the Lord, and you
find Him within that temple which you are. The experience is internal. But
knocking admits you into a realm beyond yourself where it’s no longer
Christ in you, but it’s YOU IN CHRIST. When Christ is in me, people see
more of me than they do of Him. Because the treasure is in the earthen
vessel, men see the vessel before they perceive the treasure. When you
have jewels in a jewelry box, is it not true that the box is seen more
than the jewels? When the Lord is in me, do you not still see more of me
than you do of Him? The incorruptible seed of His life is planted within
the earth of the outer man and there germinates, bursting forth into
visible manifestation. It is a wonder, a great and glorious mystery; but
it is still “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
There is a place where we must enter into Him, swallowed up into
Him, until all that is seen is HIM, not us. It is here that we “put
on” the Lord Jesus Christ. It is here that we “put on” the new man
which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It is here
that we “put on” our house from heaven. It is here that this mortal
must “put on” immortality, and this corruptible must “put on”
incorruption. You see, the purpose, the goal, the consummation of God’s
work is that we become what we contain. Multitudes of Christians are
content to be merely containers of God. This mystery of God is entirely
beyond our being containers of God. We have had the notion that we are
containers of God, in the way a bucket is a container for water, and that
God is a great container for us. But when we see God in us as that which
fills a container there is still a separation from God. When you fill a
bucket with water there is no mixture, no commingling, no union, no
oneness between the bucket and the water. The two touch one another, there
is a relationship and association, but no change or blending of substance.
The water is still water and the bucket remains the same. Each is separate
and distinct from the other. When we see ourselves as a container for God
and God as a container for us, we remain one element while God remains
another element. And, therefore, THERE IS NO NEW CREATION.
The law of the New Creation demands a change, a
transformation-everything that God puts within us, WE MUST BECOME, until
we are what we contain. The transition is from mere possession to a state
of being. We have quoted the scripture, “Christ is made unto us
righteousness,” and we have confessed, “Christ is my righteousness!”
We have talked about imputed righteousness, imparted righteousness, and
how Christ within us is the righteous One. That is a great and blessed
truth. But the scripture also says, “He hath made Him to be sin for us,
who knew no sin; that WE MIGHT BE MADE THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD IN HIM”
(II Cor.
Let me illustrate. In the process of a chicken being formed the egg
must first be fertilized. In the moment the egg is fertilized the new
little chick comes into existence in the egg. A tiny speck of blood
appears in the yoke of the egg. That speck is the embryonic life of the
chick formed in the egg. You still have the egg- the white, the yoke, the
shell-and within the egg is that little germ of life living and growing.
But the egg is still the egg and the chick is the chick. Each is separate
and distinct from the other. The marvel of it is that as the chick
develops the Creator has wonderfully provided for the chick to live off
the egg. Both the yoke and the white of the egg are drawn upon by that
life, consumed by that life, absorbed into that life, completely swallowed
up by that life. One of the laws of nature is that what you eat becomes
you. It has been said that you become what you eat, but that is not
correct. What you eat becomes you. Over the years I have gained and lost
weight from time to time-sometimes in significant amounts! When I weighed
fifty pounds more than I do now, every one of those pounds was me. They
were one and all J. Preston Eby. They came from eating steak and potatoes,
and, of course, many other things. The steak and potatoes became Preston
Eby. The beef that once grazed contentedly in the pasture was now raised
up into the human family. Out from the vegetable kingdom, the lowly potato
had now by transformation been raised up into the kingdom of man. That
beef and potato had truly BECOME A HUMAN BEING. They were-me! When I
waddled down the street no one exclaimed, “Look at that 180 pounds of
steak and potatoes!” It wasn’t steak and potatoes walking-it was me.
You could examine that paunch around my middle under a microscope or with
the most sophisticated medical tests and you would not find one milligram
of steak, nor one molecule of potato. What I eat becomes me. What I drink
becomes me. What I contain becomes me-and I become it. I take it in and
contain it to this great end-that it become me. In the same way, the life
of the chick in the egg consumes the egg, and when that little chicken
finally pecks his way out of the egg-where is the egg? It’s walking on
two feet! There it goes! Isn’t it cute! Why, the egg now has feathers!
The egg is the chicken, whereas before the chicken was in the egg. The egg
has been changed -metamorphosed-and has become the chicken. What a
beautiful figure of what is spiritually transpiring in our lives in this
day of the Lord! God puts Himself into us, the hidden man of the heart. We
seek Him and discover the riches of the glory of the divine deposit
within. But we are not content to just contain this life-we are drawn by
the Spirit to truly enter into Life. So we knock, and a door is opened
unto us, the way of Life is revealed, and we find an entrance into God. As
we follow on the heavenly swallows up the earthly and we become what we
contain, Christ is raised up in us-AS US. We become what we contain; yea,
rather, what we contain BECOMES US! Hallelujah!
If you ask, what do you get? Things!
When you seek, what happens? You find-the Lord! And then you begin
to knock. And what is the result? God opens Himself to you and YOU gain an
entrance into the personal appropriation of all that He is and has! There
is a beautiful footnote to the reality of the third heaven. When you come
up into this highest ream of the knowledge of the Lord, you don’t seek
anymore. Neither do you find anything, because now you ARE. I’ve known
brethren who moved in prophetic ministry and a powerful word of the Lord
flowed through them. I’ve watched these brethren prophesy and never
miss-they hit the nail on the head every time. I’ve sat in astonishment
as the secrets of men’s hearts have been revealed, when these prophets
had not met a soul in the congregation and knew absolutely nothing about
anyone. But in a couple of instances I’ve had the experience of having
these same brethren come to me in confidence-and I discerned that their
own lives were utterly confused. They were uncertain about the will of
God, they didn’t know where God wanted to plant them, what city they
should live in, what fellowship they should be joined to-and they asked me
to pray or asked me for a word from the Lord. I’ve seen these brethren a
year, or two, or more later, still just as confused, perplexed, unsettled
and concerned about their own situation, still asking for prayer, still
seeking a word from the Lord. I thought, “My God, what’s going on
here? Here’s a man that has a word for everybody, but he has no word for
himself.” Do you know what the problem is? He sought the Lord and found
the Lord, and the Lord flowed through him. He became a container, a
channel for the outflow of blessing from the Christ within. But he failed
to knock until the Lord was opened, that he might gain an entrance into
the heart and mind of the Father, to become what he contained. The message
and the messenger must be made one. It is one thing to minister peace,
another to be peace. It is one thing to minister knowledge, another to be
knowledge. It is one thing to have the will of God to flow through you in
a word, and another thing to be His will in the earth. It is one thing to
contain something of God, to possess a gift or manifestation of God, to be
a channel for God to flow through-and another thing altogether for all
that we contain to BECOME OUR STATE OF BEING.
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no
place have been sought for the second. But finding fault with them, He
saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new
covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: not
according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I
took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they
continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. For
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
God says that He made a covenant with
The contrast is between the law written and engraved in stones and
the law inscribed in men’s hearts. The law of God is the revelation of
the nature of God. For instance, when God says, “Thou shalt not commit
adultery,” He is not merely trying to prevent us from “enjoying the
pleasures of sin for a season.” He is telling us something about
Himself-how He is. It means that GOD HIMSELF is committed, reliable, true,
dependable, faithful and trustworthy. He keeps His commitments. He keeps
His covenant. He honors His word. He is faithful to all His
responsibilities. He will not cheat on you, lie to you, deceive you,
forsake you or fail you. He loves you and will take care of you, cherish
you, nurture you, protect you, and cleave to you. THAT IS HOW HE IS! He is
love, He is good, He is faithful, and His nature is fixed and unchanging.
He is not adulterous, with a roving eye and a lying, cheating heart. When
you understand the nature of One who is not adulterous in thought, desire,
or action, you understand something about the character of God. And that
is how He wants us, His sons, to be! His law reveals His nature. And when
His law is written in our heart, His nature-how He is- is inscribed upon
the tablets (genetic code) of our inner life.
From the redeemed and transformed heart the law (nature) of God
flows forth as a river of life. This is not the nature of God within you
as a seed, it is not merely the heart feeling the impulses and the power
of His Life within, but it is the heart being fashioned and molded into
the divine image. There is a complete transformation, a complete change, a
divine metamorphosis, out of the natural into the spiritual, out of the
soulish and into the divine. This is BECOMING WHAT WE CONTAIN! This is
knocking until entrance is granted into the very fullness of the life,
character, mind, nature, wisdom, knowledge, power and glory of God-to be
all that He is. There it is HE that is seen, for it is no longer “Christ
in me, the hope of glory,” but “I in Christ”-the glory!
By J. Preston Eby.
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