My spiritual father and mentor once said, “God always holds the past, the present, and the future before Him in His mind. Therefore, a man of faith who comes to God may claim the promises of the past or prophecies of the future as the provision for the present moment.”[1] God wants to get us out of the bondage that we have to time. Then we can take the promises of the past or the prophecies of the future as our provision for the present moment. “Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrew 13:8).
[1] John Robert Stevens, “Breaking the Time Barrier,” in This Week, vol. 8 (North Hollywood: Living Word Publications, 1977), 841.
You Will Be Transformed as Your Mind Is Renewed
The Lord spoke to my heart that people would be better off if they stopped worrying so much about their sin or Adamic nature and started being concerned about the bondage of their minds to time. That may sound radical at first but then think about the Scripture in Romans where Paul says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). The transformation that you are looking for comes by the renewing of your mind. That is an interesting concept because it shows how conditioned our minds are to this world. Our greatest conditioning is to this issue of time and the temporal things around us. But you will be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
As long as you are focused on your old nature and problems in your flesh, you are never going to get the transformation that you are looking for. True transformation comes by virtue of your mind being renewed. According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the term renewing means, “To make like new: restore to freshness, vigor, or perfection. … Implies a return to an original state after depletion or loss.” So this Scripture about renewing your mind is saying that your mind is returning to the original state that God created it to be. You are not looking to break through into something that you have never had before. The Father “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4). Your mind is just not in that place right now because it has become accustomed to the world around us. Our minds have been conformed to this age. But God is looking to remove this conditioning that we have accepted in our thinking.
These Scriptural Promises Are for Us Now
The renewing of your mind is the first step to becoming a spiritual being. We are to live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit, but the natural mind excludes the spirit realm (Galatians 5:25; 1 Corinthians 2:14). Your mind limits what you see and hear. It is totally possible to see the glory of the Lord because Yeshua (Jesus) said, “If you believe, you will see the glory of God” (John 11:40). If you believe, you will see. So it is not unusual for us to see spiritual things. But right now we consider it to be impossible because our minds are conformed to this age. Just because you do not see or perceive something does not mean that it is not there. In the natural realm if you step around the corner away from something, it does not disappear. It is just beyond your sight for the moment. Likewise, the spirit world is real, but your mind has erased it as though it does not exist. This does not mean that we go by sight rather than by faith.
We know that without faith it is impossible to please God. “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God” (Hebrews 11:5). By faith he was pleasing to God. But let us define faith: “He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6). We must believe that God is. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). The Hebrew word hayah means “to be, exist, become, come to pass.” It expresses God’s active presence and involvement with His creation. So again, you can take all the prophecies or promises of the past and all the prophecies of the future as your present provision right now. Why? Because God exists; He is. That means now.
When you get this idea that He is and He is with you and everything you are looking for is in Him, then the moment you are looking for exists now. You can have it now as your present provision. We know that in Christ we will be made alive and have a heavenly body (1 Corinthians 15:22, 49). We also know that we will see the Lord, our Teacher (Isaiah 30:20). These scriptural promises are for us. If you know they are going to be your reality in the future, then you can have them now as your present provision. Make a list of all the scriptural things you know you are going to experience. Then challenge yourself to recognize that every one of those things is available now because it exists in the presence of God.
Our God Is the God of the Living
Yeshua said, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). But we compartmentalize everything, so we put resurrection life off in the future for when we die and go to heaven. You may respond like Martha, who said, “Well, I know my brother will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (see John 11:24). You are convinced; you believe. But Yeshua is saying the same thing to you that He said to Martha: “I AM the resurrection now. Everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (see John 11:25–26). When Yeshua says, “I AM,” it is not some trite little name He is giving Himself. People are trying to restore the holy name of YHWH. But just try using Hayah for a while. When you pray, immerse yourself into God and become one with Hayah, I AM, because all these things exist now.
Without faith it is impossible to please God, for if you come to Him, you must believe that He is. You must believe Hayah. You must believe I AM. You must believe that He is and that all these promises exist in Him now. Remember, it is the renewing of your mind that you are looking for. Your mind already knew this at one point. It is not as foreign as you might think. You simply need to get your awareness back to where you came from in His presence.
In Matthew 22:31–32, Yeshua said,
“But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
I love that! Yeshua is quoting from the same discourse in Exodus where God gives His name and says, “I AM … the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:14–15). Yeshua picks up that thought again and says, “God spoke this to you about the resurrection of the dead. ‘He is not the God of the dead but of the living.’” In other words, “They all live in front of Me. They are all still alive with Me. I am still their God.” Even though we think of them as being dead, God is still relating to them. And He does not relate to the dead; He only relates to the living. We have made both time and death into something they are not.
Bring the Future Into Now
Read the stories in Matthew the eighth chapter about Yeshua in His ministry. First, He healed a man with leprosy because He wanted to. Next, a centurion came to Him saying,
“Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.” Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion said, “Lord, I am not worthy for You to come under my roof, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come!’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” Now when Jesus heard this, He marveled and said to those who were following, “Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven [remember, they are still alive]; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go; it shall be done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed that very moment. (Matthew 8:6–13)
Then Yeshua went to Peter’s home, healed his mother-in-law, and she got up and waited on Him.
When evening came, they brought to Him many who were demon-possessed; and He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were ill. This was to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: “He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.” (Matthew 8:16–17)
Everything you just read in Matthew 8 culminated in verse 17. Yeshua did all these things “to fulfill what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet: ‘He Himself took our infirmities and carried away our diseases.’” How could Yeshua be fulfilling this prophecy in Isaiah 53:4–5 about the sufferings of Christ and His going to the cross if that had not happened yet? Could these people be healed by His stripes if Yeshua had not yet received His stripes? The amazing thing is that Yeshua was healing people at that present moment to fulfill the prophecy Isaiah made in the past about Him going to the cross in the future.
We Are to Walk as Yeshua Walked
Yeshua brought the past and the future events into the present moment. I am not asking you to do some strange thing; I am telling you to walk as He walked. Yeshua took the prophecies about Himself from the future, and He walked in them at that moment. So Yeshua Himself reached into the prophecies about Himself and performed these signs and wonders and these acts by taking a prophecy of the future and making it His reality in that day. That is how men and women of faith have always walked.
Peter gives us another perspective after the cross of Christ.
Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. (1 Peter 2:21–24)
Peter is seeing in the past the same event that Isaiah prophesied, which to Isaiah was the future. Peter said, “Yeshua has already gone to the cross. And now by virtue of that you can reach back to the cross and find your sins forgiven. You can receive healings today by virtue of what He did in the past.” Christ bore our sins on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness in the present moment. What Yeshua did on the cross is good throughout eternity: “for by His wounds you were healed.”
Bring His Resurrection Power Into Your Present
What Yeshua did thousands of years ago is valid for you today. All you have to do is reach into it today and you will be healed. Just reach into the cross today and you will be saved. Christ is the resurrection and the life. It will work for you today because of Hayah, because He is. Yeshua and the Father are one. And the Father “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4). Yeshua is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8, KJV). I know we talk about the future but really it is the past. “His works were finished from the foundation of the world” (Hebrews 4:3). We are going to have a revelation of the power of Yeshua’s resurrection and know how to step into that moment and focus His resurrection power into our present.
Paul said, “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). That is a future prophecy. But I suggest that you make it happen in your life today. What Yeshua did for us goes back to the very foundation of the world. That is why people in the Hebrew Scriptures were able to accomplish the things they did. The crucifixion of Christ has always been available because it had already happened in the heart of God from the foundation of the world. Yeshua said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad. … Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am” (John 8:56, 58). Abraham saw Christ’s day and embraced it. All these things have happened. So whether you reach forward or you reach back, the same experiences are available to you. Why? Because there is no concept of time in the realm of spirit.
You Can Become Spiritual
How do we become spiritual? How do we begin to move into the things of the Spirit and move out of having our minds so conditioned to this age? Paul instructs us to pray in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:18; Romans 8:26). When you pray in tongues or in the heavenly language given to you when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit, you are immediately disconnecting from your mind because your mind has no ability to understand what you are praying for. One of the reasons you fast is to subdue your flesh so that it is not controlling you with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24). When you fast and pray, you begin to have a greater awareness of the realm of spirit. As you pray in the Spirit, you will find yourself moving more into the things of the Spirit and into the spirit realm.
In Daniel chapter 6, King Darius saw that Daniel “possessed an extraordinary spirit, and the king planned to appoint him over the entire kingdom” (Daniel 6:3). Daniel was pretty busy, but he still found time to get on his knees three times a day to pray. I know many of you have heavy schedules. But I want to challenge you to do something very practical. Can you find five minutes to pray? Set the alarm on your phone for a specific time each day: during your lunch break, when you first wake up in the morning, or at night when you go to bed. Honestly, if you prayed in the Spirit for five minutes even just once a day, it would change your world. If you did it three times a day like Daniel, you would tap into the principle of a prophet and find things change in an amazing way.
So I encourage you. However you do it, find some way to pray in the Spirit. Make time in your day when you take your mind out of conformity to this world and the things going on around you. By praying in the Spirit, you will put your mind in another place, and you will see it be renewed. Today we take a practical step into these things. Father, we know it will work because we come to You believing that You are. We come knowing that Hayah is our reality, and we move into this with all our hearts in the name of the Lord.
Make a List
- “By His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
- “Conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29).
- “Filled up to all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19).