For the most part, we do not like being confronted about things we lack or need to work on in our lives. But a confrontation can be helpful. After seeing Christ transformed, Peter, James, and John were confronted by their own inability to heal someone. And the truth is that we are confronted daily by our inability to do the works that Christ said we are to do. We can choose to explain that away, or we can let it show us what we need to seek Him for and press into it.
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Show Notes:
Peter, James, and John were with Yeshua (Jesus) on the mountain when He was transfigured or, in another sense, transmuted into the form He had with the Father before He took on human form. The three disciples witnessed this, just as Christ had told them that they would see Him coming in His Kingdom. When these disciples came down from the mountain, they were faced with a sharp contrast between this revelation of the Kingdom and the application of it in the natural realm. The disciples were unable to heal as Christ expected them to.
This was a tremendous comparison that is very applicable to us today. The disciples saw the absolute difference between the level they were on and the level Christ was on in His relationship with the Father. And we live daily with this same comparison. We are to have a relationship with Christ and the Father in the Spirit. Yet we tend to think that the way we function in the natural realm is normal, whereas the spirit realm is something we cannot explain or relate to or participate in. In contrast, the Scriptures tell us that we are born again of the Spirit to walk and function in the spirit realm.
We need an honest comparison rather than making excuses or trying to explain away what we read in the Word. Let us examine ourselves and ask: What are we not moving in that we as believers should be able to move in? We have been baptized into the same Spirit that empowered the apostles to heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out demons. And it is good to take a moment to evaluate where we are by comparison. Certainly, there are things that we already have. But there are still things we need to seek the Lord about rather than feeling like everything is fine the way it is.
Key Verses:
- Matthew 16:28. “Some … will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.”
- Matthew 17:1–8. “He was transfigured before them.”
- Exodus 33:9–11. “The LORD used to speak to Moses face to face.”
- Exodus 34:30–35. “The skin of Moses’ face shone. So Moses would replace the veil over his face.”
- 2 Corinthians 3:18. “We all, with unveiled face … are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”
- Matthew 17:9–20. “I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him.”
- John 3:3. “Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
- Acts 17:28. “In Him we live and move and exist.”
- 1 John 4:17. “As He is, so also are we in this world.”
- Philippians 3:10. “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.”
Quotes:
- “To me, my walk with God is not fine the way it is. I need to grow into the things that God has for me. I need an experience like this transmutation that comes into a higher form, a higher element of what God really has available for us.”
- “I’m not saying you’re going to walk around in some strange form. You’re going to look maybe just like you are right now, but you are going to be in a higher form, moving in elements of God’s creation as Christ did.”
- “Don’t try to get rid of the littleness of faith. Try to get a belief in the absolute power of the resurrection of Christ that dwells in us.
Takeaways:
- Yeshua told the disciples that some of them would not see death until they saw Him coming in His Kingdom. Then three of them saw Christ transmuted into a higher form in an experience known as the Transformation. This revealing of Christ in the form He had before coming out of heaven into earth is what He related to the Kingdom.
- Immediately after this experience of Christ’s Kingdom, the three disciples who witnessed it were confronted on the natural level by a healing that the disciples were incapable of doing. This was a moment of comparison that we should see as being important for us. It is a good thing for us to evaluate ourselves. We need to evaluate where we are in our walk with the Lord, especially in our ability to live and move in the realm of spirit.
- The Scriptures tell us we are to walk in the Spirit and by the Spirit and dwell in the Spirit in Him. It is not that we only have a little bit of faith in that. It is that we have absolute belief against it. We believe in the natural world and our physical humanity to such an extent that it is impossible for us to believe in our ability to live in the spirit realm. But we were baptized into His death and raised into His life, and that life dwells in us now. We need to learn to walk in that and live there. That is our reality.
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