DREAM of Restoration Ministries, Inc.
An Apostolic Faith, Word, and Healing Ministry
Can You See Thru Your Ceiling?
Well, can you? Can you also see thru walls?
If you are living and seeing entirely thru the glasses of your educated human Adamic reason, then you will never get beyond those reasonable obstructions and into the supernatural life that God intended you to have. Your vision will always be occluded. The only way you can be a supernatural wind-seer is to begin to see people and things as God sees them, and He always sees from a higher place than your human reason. His ways are higher than your earthy reason.
Since I have already taught about healing and faulty judgments (see Auto- Immune Disease article), let’s begin by using that as an example of ceilings and walls.
Judgmentalism, by definition, means you judge others according to what you see with human reasoning. Judgmentalism always limits you to a life of human reason, whether you like it or not.
People often try to confess faith, and faith confess, to arrive in the realm of the supernatural, but unrighteous judgments limit them to earthly resources - doctors – jobs with little or limited income, lack of true favor etc. No matter how much you confess promises, if you’re judging unrighteously the miraculous is often out of your reach – beyond where you currently are, and beyond where you currently live. The simple reason is because you are not confessing according to the Rhema Word of the Holy Spirit in the now. You have probably built a ceiling between yourself and an open heaven, and the miracles you need will not come from a closed off heaven. Let me explain.
I believe with all my heart in faith and confession, and believe and receive, and name and claim, but a lot of what people do does not fit the Scriptural definition of the confessional teaching of Jesus. As all Rhema students know a lot of this teaching is based upon Mark 11:22-24. In fact, you cannot get me to believe you are really a Rhema graduate unless you can toss your Bible on the table and have It automatically open to Mark 11.
In this passage of Scripture, Jesus is teaching a lesson based upon what his disciples have seen happen to a fig tree (that represents Israel and the pharisaical religion of that day), in response to Jesus cursing it because of its lack of fruit. There is a lot of prophetic significance to this cursing verse, but the bottom line comes when Jesus explains that if “whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you whatever things you ask for when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them” (NKJV). Then, in the next verses, Jesus makes the law of good confession dependent upon grace, by placing answered prayer in dependency upon a forgiven and forgiving heart. In other words the real power of confession must come from the heart that is the grace filled heart, empowered by the God kind of faith that only comes from the grace of The Holy Spirit as He quickens your belief. This kind of belief does not come from the rational mind, or from strife full struggle to believe. It is not a kind of faith you can work up through many repetitions, as the Pharisees prayed with phylacteries and many repetitions, but it is the kind of faith that comes from the hearing of the Rhema, now speaking Word of God.
When Paul says, “Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17), the Word of God in this verse is the Rhema, the Now speaking Word. When Jesus responds to the first of the devil’s temptations about turning the stone into bread, He says, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God”, again this word Rhema is being used as the God is saying It Now Word. When Paul writes about taking up the Sword of The Spirit which is The Word of God, Paul also uses the Rhema, Now speaking Word for word. When the Now Word of God really comes into a heart, there is no struggle to believe, you just believe and say, and His Word, now your Word comes to pass. One does not have to say it over and over again to make it happen. Honestly, how many times did Jesus have to say to the storm, “Peace be still”, before it happened? How many times did Jesus have to bless the few loaves and fishes before they began to multiply? I could give a lot of instances where Jesus spoke to things, circumstances, and illnesses etc., but you should be getting the point. It’s not about repetition, but about hearing the Now Word in the heart, out of a relationship of knowing the Voice of God.
Where repetition comes in is when a hard heart needs the hammer of the graphe, written Word, to break that stony heart open so it can receive the written word in such a way that it becomes the Now Rhema Word that is Now presently believed and spoken with authority and power. The law cannot break that stony heart open. Only the love and grace part of the graphe Word can open the heart beyond the limitations of human reason. When you have to do repetition after repetition, it simply means your heart is not full of the faith that comes by grace to speak the Word with power. Your heart is still too hard to receive and subsequently speak with Now power and authority. The kind of faith you need is the same kind of faith that is the “saved by grace thru faith” that results in a real confession of “Jesus is Lord’, and “He is risen bodily from the dead”. That is the same type of confession that gets one saved, the greatest miracle.
Where people miss it and their confessions seem to continually fall on the floor, instead of producing mountain moving miracles, is when they are trying to do repetition confession under the law. You can tell that it is an under the law kind of confession when you see them getting hysterically strife full if they think you have somehow broken the power of their confession by not being in agreement with them or by somehow cursing them. This kind of reaction always betrays such a confessor as someone that is not living under love and grace imparted righteousness, but instead is someone who is trying to work faith up because they do not understand that a person with grace imparted righteousness cannot have a curse light upon them (Proverbs 26:2). The kind of person that is the yellin hissy fit mad confessor betrays a heart that is hard, and not a forgiven, forgiving, grace filled heart, nor a love-faith-visioned heart. This person needs to receive a whole lotta love and grace full encouragement in order for their heart to be able to hear the Rhema Word and then speak it with the authority that brings it to pass.
Jesus was able to speak the Rhema Word with such authority because He heard the Father speak it. When you hear the Father speak you hear the Father that so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, and when you speak the Word that this Father brings to your heart you are speaking a love-faith Word that will not fail! Nobody can mess it up, or curse it up, and you will not be in strife about it. It is a word that is believed and counted unto you as righteous, and it will be fulfilled.
This righteousness comes from your receiving and believing God’s vision about yourself and about others. You agree with what God says about you, as to whom you are in Christ, if you are a Christian, but you also must agree with what He says about others, and the others part is what people usually miss. You see, if you have eyes to see, then you see that Abram’s righteousness was based on Abram’s believing God’s vision about himself and future others (descendants) as well.
When you’ve judged others – Big fish like Rick, Rick, and the other Richard, Joel, Oral Roberts (back when), Kenneth, Billy, Benny, Joyce, or even those small fish you know and see everyday, you probably judged them by the seeing of the fleshly eye, and the hearing of the fleshly ear. You are almost never judging them according to Isaiah 11:3. (We’ve all been guilty of this kind of judgments way too often.) You judge them instead according to how you reason about correct doctrine, and lawful righteousness, according to your human understanding of the law and the Scriptures, and their adherence thereto.
But, your righteousness and the righteousness of others are never achieved by preaching or following the Law, or having correct doctrines. This is the pharisaical model of reasoning which put Jesus on the cross. True righteousness is only achieved by agreeing with God’s vision of superabundant grace and love, agreeing with God about yourself and others. It comes about by believing that the power of God to accomplish Eph. 3:20 is the power of Agape love.
The Law kills, always. When you look for righteousness according to your standard and vision of legal and doctrinal perfection, you pronounce a death sentence. The miracles you need and expect will often then die on that unfruitful Law vine.
At this point you are probably wondering why I am going on and on about righteousness, and heart confessions. How does this have anything to do with seeing thru walls and ceilings? Well, it’s like this. If you can’t get the part about the most basic tenant of the Christian faith, that you cannot ever achieve righteousness by all your rational and human effort, then you will not be able to see beyond what you can rationally see. God vision is always rooted from the soil of grace and the grace seed of the possibility of a super abundant life and super overcoming peace which only faith can receive.
Adopting God’s vision of you is a necessary and good beginning. But it is not necessarily enough to make you righteous, as you also must finish well. Being entirely self focused can and often does result in spiritual pride. In this case that pride may result in a fall from grace according to Galatians 5:4 (you probably should look that one up).To be declared righteous by God’s standard, and to finish this race well, you must eventually have God’s vision for the present and future of others as well as for yourself. Abram believed God about himself and about future offspring, numbered more than the stars or the sand, and it was counted unto him as righteousness.
Jesus, The Righteous One, only did miracles and healings because He came for the sake of others. He only did them to reveal a loving Father. The disciples only had signs and wonders as they went, because they were going out to bring love and grace, The Good News, to others.
Just as you cannot be forgiven unless you also forgive others, and believe for their future blessings, so too you must have a love-vision for others that you see now, and those that will come to you in the future. You need to see them as becoming the forgiven and the superabundantly blessed, in order for you to have God’s imparted righteousness both now and in the tomorrow.
This is what true prayer for your enemies and those who persecute you is really about.
Blessing those who spitefully use you is about adopting God’s love-faith-vision and created purpose for them– and putting that vision on your tongue.
Unrighteous judgments about others, such as our enemies, persecutors, biting sheep, and other sinner types, like church folk, will always become our ceilings that block an open Heaven. If we judge others according to our human limited standards of judgment, then God’s superabundant standards of blessing never become fully available to us. As we judge, so are we judged! The sad thing is that men, women, and especially children, let other’s judgments limit them because they often believe what others say about them.
In the same way, if you judge others according to your perceived standards of perfection, it may very well limit them, but you will also be limited by those same standards of humanly reasoned perfection. Your hopes that are then deferred, and the resulting depression, frustration and anger over your limitations, will in all probability be directed both inward and outward. As you judge, so will you be, and are judged.
For some time now I personally have been marvelously afflicted with God’s grace.Every time I say or do something stupid (wrong or unwise or sinful) I say “I am so stupid, how could I have said that or done that?” “I am so stupid!” I say, and God immediately says, “How dare you call My servant stupid!” Whenever I say, “I am so stupid”, God says, “How dare you call My son stupid!”
If I see someone else doing or saying something stupid and I say (maybe about Julie my wife, God forbid!) “How can you be so stupid?” God says, “Don’t you dare call my daughter stupid!” But beyond the fact that God has now rebuked me, I now also have acquired a kind of auto immune problem where the body attacks the body as I am suddenly eating my own foot and find I may have forsaken the blessing of a wonderful home cooked meal. The cash register person at the florist may think how lucky my wife is that I so regularly buy her flowers. “Oh how much he must love her”, they might say, but they also probably wonder about my limp. Even after my foot is out of my mouth, and the flowers are delivered, I still will probably have to eat prodigious amounts of crow. I have more recipes for crow than the Israelites had recipes for manna. But somehow crow never really has a great taste. There is no such thing as gourmet crow. You see the fact is that judging someone else wrongly may carry a higher penalty than judging oneself. The good Lord probably needs an abacus to keep up with all my resultant fallen crows. I am glad they are not sparrows.
The worst thing about this deal is that the unrighteous” stupid” statement becomes an unrighteous judgment that puts a ceiling and limitations on my ability to minister out of, and ability to receive of “The Spirit of Wisdom”, “The Spirit of Counsel” and “The Spirit of Understanding”, all prerequisites to becoming a true wind seer.
When we want to walk by love-faith we are unable to do so if we are judging ourselves or others according to Moses’ law. I may err on the side of stupidity, but God never sees me as stupid. That is not His vision of, or for me, and I cannot receive of His superabundance if I am in disagreement with His love-faith vision.
Walking by faith not by sight is really only possible if we do not walk alone. Walking alone by faith does not work very well. That is the reason Jesus had a Jesus sending 2 by 2 principle. He always sent His disciples out by twos, under the 2 commandments. 1 commandment: Love God. 2 is like unto it – same genre-same kind, Love your neighbor as yourself. This mission faith walk is virtually impossible unless you first receive God’s love yourself. “We love Him because He first loved us”.
We are not enabled to love God or others until first we receive God’s love, and Believe God’s love for us. If we don’t walk by faith with God’s love-vision for others it means we have not received God’s love-faith-vision for ourselves yet.
Remember, God kind of faith always works and is empowered by God kind of love.
That is a Love that never fails, never gives up, and always believes the best about others and self. This Agape love always casts love’s vision and love’s purpose for us and others.
If we say we walk by faith and not by sight, and judge others without that judgment being a loving, superabundant purpose and possibility of God’s blessed and highly favored type judgment, then we lie to ourselves about our faith walk, and our so called faith confessions will not have the fruit we anticipate or expect. Neither will those requests and confessions have the fruit of superabundantly more than we ask or expect.
The end result of a true love-faith walk – a true righteous walk, will be a huge Spirit of encouragement released upon you and through you to others. This same Spirit will release miracles, all blessings, and favor to others and to you.
This kind of righteous walk by faith, not by reasonable fleshly sight, is in actuality only possible by “Taking up your cross daily”. Being offended and making commensurate unrighteous judgments simply means you are not crucified with Christ. You still retain your selfish life and have not laid your life down, and have not gained His superabundant life of miracles. Again, this lack of personal vision is because you are not filled with His love-faith-vision which lays down ones life for others. Love-faith-vision always involves “taking up your cross daily” – an hour by hour, and moment by moment lifestyle.
If you are laying down your life today, you can have His life and the miracle that is heading your way today – the miracle you are expecting today – and you can bring the miracle someone else needs today! There are always miracles headed your way and this crucified loving others lifestyle is the way you position yourself to receive miracles and to dole them out.
You will begin to see the unseen and you will begin to do the impossible! Let me say that again, just because it feels so good to say it! You will begin to see the unseen and you will begin to do the impossible!
This is really serious stuff because, The Church is under judgment and the US is subsequently under judgment because we have not pulled out the superabundant possibilities of others around us. We have judged our neighbors, employers, employees, government officials, etc., rather than blessing them and encouraging them with God kind of love-faith-vision.
Judgmentalism thinks evil of men and others and when God sees the hearts of men are always bent on evil thoughts, “He saw the hearts of men continually turned towards evil”, (Genesis 6:5) then righteous judgments that God alone is qualified to make, begin to happen. Because men thought evil of their neighbors, they spoke evil of their neighbors, planned evil for their neighbors, and selfishly pursued their own interests, one end result was Noah’s Ark and cataclysmic judgment.
Men are always ultimately judged by The Lord according to the thoughts of their own hearts. When we the Church, lose The Jesus love-faith-vision for ourselves and others, then widespread judgments that effect nations can result. This is when judgments in the earth come, as the earth groans under the weight of sin-quakes.
Hear and See this: No Scripture can be interpreted correctly without seeing that God’s vision and purpose for all Mankind is good. We do not understand Scripture until we know His plans are always made in accordance with His love and purposed blessings.
This is why Jesus could tell the Pharisees that had they understood Moses, “Moses wrote about Me!”, then they would have understood Him and would have recognized Him as God’s Christ.
All of creation groans to see the manifestations of the Sons of God that have this love-faith-vision. If the Church does not begin to be such Ones, for such a time as this, then only destruction and calamity await ahead until the “if my people”, learn this vital lesson of love.
The bottom line is that your lack of vision and your degree of blindness is caused because of your inability to see Jesus in yourself and Jesus in others. You also lack the vision to see the possibility of Jesus coming into another’s life and expanding that life into a divinely abundant life. You must come to understand that the only thing worth seeing in yourself or others is the love-faith-vision of Jesus. The only thing worth seeing in visions of world shaking events is to be able see how Jesus is now in the scene, or by seeing how Jesus can be brought into the picture.
“I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold”, the old song says, but would you rather see Jesus than angels untold? Even Myriads of angels? Then you could brag about the angels you saw, but you probably would not fit the humility profile required to meet the “if my people” verse, because that rules out braggarts! What or Who you are looking for often determines what you will see, because your focus equals your pursuit. Are you looking out for Jesus all the time, and everywhere?
The more you see Jesus in others, or even the possibility of Jesus in others the more the ceilings and walls will disappear. The more you see Jesus the greater the miracles you can expect to work (the works of The Father) and the greater the miracles you can expect to receive. The more you see Jesus the greater the quantity and quality of miracles that will always be coming your way.
If you can’t see Jesus then your best hope is to cry out like blind Bartamaus, “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me”, “That I might receive my sight!” Admit your blindness!
Only Jesus can call schools of fish to strike the net. Only Jesus can calm the storm, multiply a little boy’s lunch to feed the many thousands, walk on water, and cause the blind to see. But, the more of Jesus you see, the more Jesus you will have in you. “If your eye is full of light your whole body will be full of light.” When you get full of Jesus and His love-faith-vision, then you can see and hear The Father, and you can begin to do the same works Jesus did, and even greater works than these.
If you see Jesus in the eyes of a hungry child, the next thing you know you will be super abundantly feeding thousands of hungry children and adults. There will definitely be times when you will see food supernaturally multiplied. If you see Jesus in a leper you could become the next Mother Theresa, with even more accompanying miracles. If you see the Jesus possibilities in an unwed mother, a street walker, a fornicator, or an adulteress you could open many homes and shelters for battered women.
Could you see the possibilities of Jesus in a drag queen flamer? If you could you would never be an anti-gay basher again. You might even get God’s wisdom to develop a cure for AIDS. What about a love-faith-vision for a radical Muslim? You could bring real freedom and purpose to a life that would otherwise be in bondage to a horrible fear.
When you really see Jesus, you see the One Who would not break a bruised reed, and you begin to see the many around you that are so deeply bruised.
When Jesus sees you stand before Him on your personal Judgment Day, the only thing He will be looking for is how much of Himself He can see in you. The only ones registered in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be the ones who have “the Lamb that was slain” in their hearts. If “That Lamb” is really in your heart then you will have learned to love. If “The Lamb that was slain” abides and reigns in your heart you will never again judge someone according to the ears or eyes of the flesh. Nor will earthly reason determine your limits (1 John 4:17). Are you ready to see the invisible and to do the impossible? Isn’t it about time that your ceilings and walls disappear? If so then let’s pray now!
Father God I come to you now and ask you to help me to believe in Your great love for me. I know I have put myself down and spoken evil of myself and others, and I want that to change. I want to see myself and others as You see them. Help me and remove my blindness. Remove the scales off of my eyes! I believe you sent your Son, Jesus, to die for me, and to die for them, while we were yet sinners and far from perfect. I know now that I will never be good enough to earn that love, but that You love me anyway. God, You love me in spite of my flaws and shortcomings, so I can love and accept myself and others, just as we are. Sometimes I have not really believed You have forgiven me of all my sins, and I have beat myself up about them, instead of just confessing them. I now believe that You love me enough to talk to me, teach me, and help me to change. I believe You love me so much that You are changing me to become more and more like Jesus. I believe you are making me into a loving, easy to get along with person. Lord, I ask and believe for a faith that is working continually by and empowered by Your love. I believe in Your love-faith-vision and purposed goodness towards all men everywhere. I ask that others will see Your love in my eyes, and hear Your love in my words. Help me to demonstrate works of Your love every day. Lord, I declare I am in agreement with your Word, and I am forgiven. I am in agreement with Your Word so I forgive myself and refuse to condemn myself anymore. I also confess that I forgive all others that may disagree with me, and I will not condemn them. I forgive all others that have spoken ill of me. I forgive all others that have hurt or wounded me, just as You, Jesus, forgave the very ones that nailed You to the cross. I command all darkness and condemnation to leave me now in Jesus Name, and I receive healing in my soul and in my body. Your never failing love works in me, Now! I ask for and believe I receive Your wisdom which is pure and full of peace. I believe for Your peace to flood me now to overflowing. Prince of Peace, fill me with Your Peace. Holy Spirit, shed Your all gracious love abroad thru my healed heart. Fill me with Your Spirit of Wisdom and The Spirit of Understanding. Make me an encourager of others. I believe and I receive all of this in The Name of my Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world. AMEN and AMEN!
This is a sequel message to the Auto-Immune Disease healing message on our website, dreamministries.com. If you do not have web access and have received this newsletter via regular mail, I will send you a printed copy free of charge, if you write us at DREAM, PO Box 300, Glendale Springs, NC 28629
May I John 3:22-23 Lodge in Your Heart,
Don Robertson dreamministries.com