Shout...Glory

Did you know that every believer has been recreated for the habitation of God's glory? The glory of God was a part of man's being in creation, and it is also the inheritance of every child of God. Jesus reveals in His prayer for all believers, "And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one." (John 17:22) What a wonderful prayer and truth. When the Bible speaks of God's Glory, it is referring to His very presence. To enter into His presence, is to receive all that He is and has, such as, His love, His grace and His divine power. It is His power, which transforms lives by healing, delivering, providing etc.. It also reveals His majesty. Yet many believers have never experienced God's presence where these things manifest. Many are settling for far less in their relationship with God.

The glory of God, is the spiritual atmosphere of heaven, like air is the physical atmosphere of earth. Because the glory is the essence of who God is, everything is complete in His glory, nothing is incomplete. Looking at creation and especially the Garden of Eden, we see this very thing. Everything in the animal and vegetation realm were made in complete form with the ability to reproduce after it own kind. (Genesis 1:11-13, 20-25) This same glory was the life and environment in which the first man, Adam, lived. God created Adam, out of the dust of the earth, and gave him His "breath of life." (Genesis 2:7) Adam was never an infant, a child, or a teenager. He did not have to undergo the growth process that his offspring, or we ourselves experience. The same was true for the woman. They were created and formed as fully mature adults.

In creation, we can see that in God's glory, again, His presence everything is complete and every need that man could ever possibly have, was met. Therefore, we can say without question, the same applies even today for humanity. However, it can only be realized by faith to those who confess Jesus as Lord and receive Him as Savior. The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul tells us,  "and you are complete in Him, (Christ) who is the head of all principality and power." (Colossians 2:10) In God's glory we can expect healing, deliverance, and miracles (even creative miracles, such as new organs being formed and even lost body parts completely restored), simply because this is the heart of God of humanity.

Think about this way, Jesus, though surrounded by numerous people, when a woman with a issue of blood stretched out her faith, came behind Him and touch His garment, virtue, glory, power, flowed and she was instantly healed.  (Mark 5:25-30) When the leper approached Jesus, he says to Him, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed. Immediately his leprosy was cleansed." (Matthew 8:2-5) These wonderful things flow forth in God's glorious presence. Again, this is the heart of our Heavenly Father.

Looking back to the Garden, when man was first created, there was no sickness, poverty, or death because, in God's glory, there is no sickness, poverty, or death. Not only were none of these things present, man himself had no knowledge of them. The Psalmist tells us, "The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord..." (Psalm 97:5) If the mountains melt like wax in the presence of the Lord, then sickness, poverty, death, etc., will also melt, that is, will vanish! Yet, after man sinned by rebelling against God, he had to be removed from God's presence, and he began to experience these dreadful things. (Genesis 3:23-24)

To comprehend what it means to live in God's glory, let's begin by looking at the contrast between the environment in which man lived, in the Garden of Eden before the fall and the environment in which he lived on the earth after the fall. In Genesis one, every aspect of creation on the earth was to prepare the perfect environment, the Garden of Eden, in which God would place man. The word Eden means, pleasure. The word garden means, enclosure and comes from a root word meaning to hedge about, that is, something that protects, defends, covers, or surrounds. When we are in God's glory, it is a pleasure (actually a pleasure beyond human comprehension) and we are protected, surrounded by His presence.

Tragically, man's existence in God's glory did not last. Adam and the woman sinned by choosing to go against what God had told them by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As a result, they were disconnected from the life of God and were exiled from Eden which, subsequently meant, from God's glory. The very thing that connected them to God, the very thing that gave them direct contact with God, had now become enveloped in their flesh, that is, the mind, will, emotions (the soul) and their body. In other words, man's spirit no longer dominated his soul and body, but now his five senses became the dominating factor of his life. In a sense, he was no longer a spiritual man but a natural man. The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul tells us, "But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14)

When Adam and the woman sinned, they died spiritually. However, it took 930 years for Adam's body to stop functioning. (Genesis 5:5) I have no scriptural reference, but I believe the glory of God that was present during creation did not simply leave the earth when Adam sinned, but a residual of God's glory was present and is what kept Adam physically alive for that length of time. I also believe that his descendants lived long lives due to the same residual glory of God that remained on the earth in those days. I say this due to the diminishing years that man experienced from the fall. I believe as time moved forward and sin did its awful destructive work, the residual of God's glory on earth dissipated and the number of years of a man's life on earth also diminished. The Psalmist records, "The days of our lives are seventy years; And if by reason of strength they are eighty years." (Psalm 90:10)

However, we see, when a person is reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, they receive the Holy Spirit, and their spirit is instantly recreated and restored back to a, "...new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:24) Our spirits are brought from death to life, (Ephesians 2:1) and we have access to His glory. (John 17:24) Once again, through faith in Jesus Christ, man can live spiritually in the environment of heaven, that is, in God's glory. Keep in mind, we still die physically because physical death has not been eliminate yet. (1 Corinthians 15:26)

Through the meritorious work of Christ, God's glory is in every believer and Jesus' atoning blood gives us access to the Father and once again connects us with His presence while our bodies wait to be completely redeemed from death. The writer of Hebrews tells us, "For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." (Hebrews 2:10) This refers not only in heaven but by virtue of God living in us in this life, we are sons (and daughters) of His glory. In Christ, we are all carriers of God's glory wherever we go, through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

We know that God is everywhere, all the time, but He doesn't manifest Himself everywhere on earth today. He manifests Himself where He is welcomed and where people are in right relationship with Him. Although the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, every believer must actively seek God
and His glory until the day we are in His glorious uninterrupted presence in Heaven. I want to encourage us all, to always have an insatiable desire to know Him, to know His ways and to desire His glory to manifest in, through and around us. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all...