THE
RIGHT HAND OF FELLOWSHIP - Identifying you with His Son on the Cross,
the Father not only raised you from the dead to walk in newness of life, but He
also positioned you in the Lord Jesus at His right hand--the right hand of
fellowship. "Hath made us alive together with Christ ... and
raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus" (Eph. 2:5,6).
The Father has finished
the work required to bring you into His very presence. You "are
made near by the Blood of Christ " "He hath made us accepted in
the Beloved " "Who hath made us fit to be partakers of the
inheritance of the saints in light" "Blessed be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ" (Eph. 2:13; 1:6; Col 1:12; Eph. 1:3).
ASSUME
YOUR POSITION! - Through the pause and its pressures, the Father is
motivating you to assume by faith the position in which He has already
placed you. In the midst of your growth He has allowed you to encounter
needs that prove the necessity for constant fellowship with Him. "Let
us, therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy,
and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb. 4:16). You have
discovered that the time of need is all of the time!
KEEPING
COMPANY - Bold, needy faith is not presumptuous; it honors the Father
and responds to His will that "whether we wake or sleep, we should live
together with Him" (I Thess 5:10). It is now that He wants
your company, because it is now that He has you in His blessed
company. "If (since) ye, then, be risen with Christ seek those
things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set
your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye died,
and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col 3:1-3).
There is nothing left
for you to do but acknowledge what the Lord Jesus has already done: His shed
Blood has cleared the way into the Holiest for you, and He Himself has
traversed the way with you.
"Having
therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the Blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil that
is to say, his flesh, and having an high priest over the house of God, let us
draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith " (Heb. 10:19-22).
REST
IN YOUR RESIDENCY - There is no time like the present for you
to begin resting in your Father's presence. He sees you there, in His
beloved Son. It is a simple, scriptural matter of seeing yourself there "in
full assurance of faith." You are there in glory before the
Father, not in the flesh, not in the body, but as a "new
creation" in Christ Jesus.
This is not the time to
visualize, or even to verbalize; and certainly not to fantasize. It is the
time, by faith in the facts, to actualize. It is the time to rest in your
residency, to personalize your position. The Father has seen you
there before His face ever since the day you were saved. In eternity past
He chose you for that place, "according as He hath chosen us in Him
(Christ) before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4).
REVERSED
RESIDENCY - As you by faith in the positional facts realize that you
are in the Father's presence, you will not try to depend upon any sense of
His presence. Adulthood supersedes childhood. Now you know His
presence because you know that your position in the Christian life is a life of
faith in the facts--nothing else [at this point in time]. Thus the Father
enables you to live by faith so as to draw you into His presence--not you, by
sense, seeking to draw Him into yours.
Fellowship between you
and your Father involves oneness, a commonality. As you in faith occupy
your position, you find yourself not only in His presence, but in His
nature--the human-divine nature of your re-birth. You are there in the
full acceptance of His beloved Son. And that is what you are: beloved of
God. "We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren
beloved of the Lord because God hath from the beginning chosen you to
salvation" (2 Thess. 2:13).
FELLOWSHIP
BOTH NOW AND FOREVER - Your responsibility and privilege for now is
to quietly sit where you have been seated by the Father--and that is in His
presence. You have no other place. You occupy your position by faith
in the facts; you will begin to experience the fellowship as the Holy Spirit
prepares you.
As you rest, abiding
above in your Source, in "Christ who is our life" (Col. 3:4), you
will have a new appreciation for a sound doctrinal foundation and
superstructure. Without regeneration, of course, you would not be where
you are; without assurance and security, you would not be sure of where you are;
without acceptance, you would not be at rest where you are.
Further, without
knowledge of your identification with the Lord Jesus in His death unto sin and
life unto God, you would not know of your position before the Father, nor of
your privilege to abide there in His Son. And these same truths assure you
that you have been freed from the old man and made possessor of the life of the
New Man, thereby being made "fit to be partakers of the inheritance of
the saints in light" (Col. 1:12).
"When I look at
this place, He is not here; and when I look at myself naturally I am not fit for
Him. How happy then to know that I belong to the place where He is, and
that through grace I am made suited to Him in that new place; so that I set my
mind there, as the place where my deepest joys are realized."-- J.B.S.
As you wait before the
Father in your heavenly environment, Paul's prayer applies to you. "That
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of glory, may give unto you the
spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your
understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his
calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and
what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to
the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him
from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all principality, and
power and might, and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this
age, but also in that which is to come" (Eph. 1:17-21).
"The basis upon
which the Holy Spirit carries on the subjective work in the believer, is
the objective truth of his eternal completeness in the Lord Jesus Christ:
crucified, buried, risen and ascended (Gal. 2:20; Rom. 6:3-5; Eph. 2:6; Col.
3:3,4).