For Heaven's Sake

By Rick Joyner

It is the calling of every Christian to not only experience heaven now, but to live a life that demonstrates the reality of heaven to this earth. We do that by living in heaven now. It is our calling to bring heaven to every place that we go, to our homes, our jobs, where we shop, everywhere. As we grow spiritually, our home, our heart, and our perspective, should be a heavenly one. The Christian life is supposed to be filled with the bliss of heaven. That bliss is the love of God, the peace of God, the patience of God, and the power of God. As we grow into and begin to demonstrate the reality of heaven, we will become contagious, causing all those that we come in contact with to begin looking up to seek the Lord.

The characteristics of God are shared with man in the form of the fruit of the Spirit, and the gifts of the Spirit. These are together a demonstration that the Lord has risen, that He loves man, and continues to seek our redemption, restoration, and our glorification—which is to take on His nature. The gifts of the Spirit are the special, personal, demonstrations of His love and willingness to help us. They are also a touch from another, a higher, reality.

The power of the gifts of the Spirit cannot be explained through our earthly intelligence, but only from a heavenly one. The gifts are a call to the earthbound that they can live by another reality. There is a glib saying that some people are so heavenly minded that they are not any earthly good. That sounds witty, but the truth is that much of the church is so earthly minded that they are not any good to either heaven or earth.

Christianity is not just another, better, philosophy of life, but it is another reality. It is another life altogether. We are called to walk the earth, and do good on the earth—but we do it with the power that is not of this earth. Saint Francis of Assisi was once walking with a priest who was pointing out the splendor of a cathedral they were passing. With a touch of pride, the priest remarked that “we can no longer say ‘silver and gold have we none,” to which Francis replied, “And neither can we say to the cripple, rise up and walk!

The true Christian witness that impacts this world will never come from just having better things on earth. There are a number of beautiful church buildings in our city, a couple of them probably as large and splendid as any in America, but the banks and other corporate buildings in the city dwarf them. The people in our city spend much more time serving the banks and other corporations than they do serving the Lord. However, if a single believer begins to touch and demonstrate the reality that heaven has authority over all cancer, that believer may live in a cabin, but the world will beat a path to his door.

The fact that the world has better buildings than the church should not bother us. If the church had the largest, most glorious building on earth it would not, by itself, result in the salvation of a single soul. One Christian anointed by the Holy Spirit can result in much more being accomplished for the kingdom of God than all of the buildings combined that have been constructed in the name of the Lord. This is not to say that buildings cannot be useful to the church, but nothing from or on this earth can ever be compared to the Holy Spirit that we have been given. The power that resides within a single Christian is greater than that which is found in all of the armies on earth combined.

The Spirit moving brought forth this glorious creation. The Spirit moving can, and will, recreate the world. Since the Lord delegated authority over the earth to man He now moves on the earth through men. Because, “The heavens are the heavens of the LORD; but the earth He has given to the sons of men” (Psalm 115:16), the Lord requires the cooperation of men to move on the earth. This is why, even though the Lord knows what we need even before we ask Him, He requires that we ask Him before He moves on the earth. When He demonstrates His kingdom, and the powers of heaven, to the earth, He does it through men.

The Lord could have parted the Red Sea without Moses, but not without violating His own principles of authority. He could have brought down fire on the prophets of Baal without Elijah, but that is not the way that He does things on the earth. He gave authority over the earth to men, which is why even the Son of God, Jesus, continually referred to Himself as the Son of Man. He had to come as a man to retake the authority over the earth that had been lost by man’s transgression and subsequent subservience to Satan. That is why, when Satan tempted Jesus he tried to get Him to wrongly use His powers as the Son of God, but Jesus responded to Him with “Man does not live by bread alone” (see Matthew 4:4).

Jesus did use His heavenly powers, but never to fulfill His own human desires, or to testify that He was the Son of God as Satan tried to trick Him into doing. When Jesus used the power of the heavenly realm, it was in obedience to the Father in heaven, and as a witness to the Father. Because He gave Himself to witness of the Father’s love, the Father sent the Spirit to witness of the Son. The power of heaven is never selfish.

This too must be our constitution. We must not seek power, or use it, just to testify of our ministries or ourselves. If we have truly beheld the wonder of the cross, and the glory of His resurrection and where He now sits, it would be one of the most profane acts of a perverted fallen nature to use His power to testify of ourselves.

When we truly begin to perceive the glories of heaven and the One who rules in heaven, like King David, we wonder why the Lord would even consider man, much less choose to dwell among us. Even so, this is the message of the kingdom that we have been given to preach on this earth, and the message that He will back up with demonstrations of its reality. We are messengers from another kingdom who have been sent ahead to proclaim the coming of our King who is “not of this world” (John 8:23). We cannot represent a kingdom that we do not know. We must know ourselves the reality of His kingdom, and live in obedience to it now. Our home must be in heaven. Our dwelling place is with the Lord in the Spirit. We are called to be seated with Him in the heavenly places, as Paul declared in Ephesians 1:18-23, 2:6:

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come."

"And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus."

Before the King returns there will be a witness and demonstration of the reality of the kingdom of heaven on the earth. This will come through messengers who know and live in the reality of that kingdom now. That is your calling.

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