A Deeper Life in God

Mary took the most precious thing she had and prepared Jesus’ body for burial. We shall also take the most precious things we have: our time, our soul, our spirit—everything we possess, so that Jesus’ body can go through death. We shall lose everything; and when we are purified through death, Christ and the body will meet each other. The Head is to be united with the body. The body of Christ is the bride. If you have broken with everything that is yours, you have sacrificed it so that Jesus’ bride can arise in its most beautiful splendor. The sooner the bride is formed, the sooner Jesus will return. It depends on how much you are willing to sacrifice. It is often said that we have so little time. We shall not keep anything for ourselves; we shall be surrendered to God’s will in everything. We are to do everything for God when it concerns the inner work and the outer work. There is no unemployment in God’s kingdom. Sluggishness is not found there. Our entire being needs to be occupied with presenting the church without spot. There is a deeper life that we must enter into. The person who lives in a deeper, spiritual state doesn’t think that it is that deep; he feels at home there. The depth is our natural environment. The superficial person thinks that everything is so deep, but when we live in the depth, it becomes natural. We must press into the highest forms as well as into the deepest. The more we grow, the closer we come to the Head. The king is the head of the land. Many people grow up in the king’s counsel, and those who stand in his counsel become partakers of his plans and thereby in the most important work for the country. This is also how it works with Jesus and us—His kingdom. From doing small works, we can grow up to do the greater and most necessary works. Everyone is at liberty to come to that place. It is vital to enter into these states and advance in them. Christ is the firstborn over all creation. Col. 1:15. He is also the firstborn from the dead. V. 18. “I am the First and the Last.” Rev. 1:17. Seeing that it is written like this, it means that He shall not only fill the first and last place, but also everything in between—the entire way from beginning to end. He must also not just be first and last in our life, but as far as we have fellowship with Him, He shall fill every second of our life. When Christ is everything to me, it shall also continue like that. We pay so little attention to seconds—we reckon with days and years—but if we knew how important it is to reckon with seconds, we would do it more. Each moment is of eternal value; therefore it is vital for Satan to rob us of the moment. He wants to steal it from us, for he knows that we can be along in building God’s kingdom every single moment of our life. The world kills time and the moment, but God’s children do it as well. If we were truthful we would have to say, “Let us present ourselves before the Father’s face together with Jesus.”

The following example proves that we waste time: I testify that on a certain day I was blessed; I met God; I had it so good. This proves that it was a long time ago that I was with God. When I receive a blessing, I must always stand before God, chained firmly by eternal bonds before His face for all eternity. We know that we shall bear fruit when we make our position in Christ sure. We shall worship God in spirit and truth. Our heart must be fully devoted to worshiping God. Satan wants to distract us, for when we have had a sweet taste of God’s nearness in prayer, Satan says, “Now it is enough.”

It will not always give a person joy; it will even cause him enormous pain. But when God (in prayer) has put us in this state, we must abide there.

Satan steals time from us; he enters our thought life by distracting us. We are inclined to think about the past or dream ourselves into the future. He is keen to remind us about people who have annoyed us, or we think about something wonderful that we remember. We must not let our thoughts dwell on such things or be occupied with them. We must separate them from our thought life. (Eph. 2:3: fulfilling the will of the mind.) We experience an empty joy by thinking about the past. How much more beautiful it is to live in the present before God’s face. We have a tendency to speak about our own thoughts. “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Matt. 12:34.

Living in the future (another theft by Satan) is just as terrible as living in the past. We will often doubt God, which is to charge Him with folly; we desire to control God’s plans for us. We desire to care and be anxious for the future. If we advance in blind faith toward God, we will—with our eyes turned to Him—be blind to everything else. In Acts 2:25 it is written that Jesus saw the Lord always before His face. God’s goal with us can be seen in Romans 8:29. We shall do even greater works than Jesus did by taking up the position as described in Acts 2:25. Jesus is the First and the Last when our face is turned toward God. To the extent that we enter into a God-fearing and deeper life, to that same extent the Scriptures will be revealed to us. To the degree that the self-life dies in me, to that same degree the life of Christ is revealed in me. And for every revelation, the Scriptures are revealed to me. When we have taken a step in faith toward God, large areas of heaven’s fullness will be revealed to us.