Description
Walking with Jesus is a journey of looking the right way — in all circumstances keeping our eyes on Jesus.
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:18)
Therefore learning to keep our spiritual eyes open for Jesus is a crucial first step – followed by a second, learning how to be transformed and what to expect in that process of transformation.
In this three month course (12 weeks) we will explore these two different aspects of our walk with Jesus –
- Learning to “see” (sense, feel, hear, etc) what the Lord is doing in our lives and in the lives of those around us
- And as we learn to see Jesus we gain a better understanding of what a journey of being transformed looks like – favour, pruning, seasons, encounter, etc..
Class begins Monday night March the 23rd in Kamloops. For more information please contact Murray at murray@samuelsmantle.com
Lesson One
Who We are In Christ
The basic foundation of all things in regards hearing God’s voice is who we are in Christ. We are His bride! (Eph 4) I like to say “What We Think Jesus Thinks About Us is the Most Important Thing About Us.” Do we see God as judge, friend, lover, distant, demanding…? All these things influence how we encounter the Lord: Are we willing to encounter, do we enter His presence with joy or trepidation, etc… So to have a good foundation Ephesians 1:3-17 is important – called, chosen, adopted, filled with the Spirit – but it is connected to what follows, our ability to see – For this reason I pray God would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so you would know Him better (Eph 1:17-21) – the Spirit of Revelation is always linked to the why, and that is who we are in Christ.
Lesson 2
Probably will be called “The Journey of Faith.”
If we believe the above what does that look like walking it out. Very important. Is our faith about getting it right? Is it about success, or is it process? We can all get really hard on ourselves if we think we are not living up to what God expects of us, or what we expect of ourselves – but Abraham, the Father of faith (Rom 4) failed continually – and God called Him a prophet and the father of faith (tried to sell his wife off as his sister twice, had Ishmael, etc) But God was into making Abraham into a man of faith through life experience with Him. In the end, with his son Isaac, after 30 years, Abraham learned not to manipulate out of a problem but to trust. And we can take 30 years too – if we just don’t quit, learn our life lessons like Abraham and let Jesus develop us into who we are to be – His bride without spot our wrinkle – but that development is Jesus’ job – Rom 12:1-5
Lesson 3
That is quite a bit of teaching at this point, lots of sitting so if the group is mature we may do some prophetic (listening activations at this point) or a little more teaching – I will lean on one more teaching class
Lesson 3
Paradigms and belief systems
So important, and this connects to our ability to screw up, get it wrong, and why Jesus still loves us. Paradigms and belief systems. A paradigm is a worldview we can grow up with and it is how we see the world – and this establishes belief systems within us that we often don’t know are operating, or we assume are true because we grew up with them or everyone in our culture believes them- culturally things like
- I am what I do, Big boys don’t cry, he who dies with the most toys wins
- But church culture has these too
- Dispensationalism – God quit speaking in the time of the Apostles, for example
We have been poking at this in lessons 1-2 but time to be more specific for hearing God’s voice, and following Him, requires removing blocking belief systems.
So what are paradigms, where do they come from – which is the garden of Eden – before the fall man had “Eyes to see and ears that could hear” after the fall – same God but Adam and Eve are hiding, blame shifting, etc. The fall created a paradigm we see the Lord through – and such things affect our ability to hear God to this day. So for example I think there at at least 234(ish) references to dreams and visions in scripture– and many, many examples of dreams changing the world, and Jacob says specifically, “does not the interpretation fo dreams belong to God.?” If this is true and valued in the bible why do we not put time into dreams in the church and in our personal lives? Paradigms and belief systems. God can speak but if we don’t value the language our paradigms actually block us from hearing Him. To be able to spot faulty paradigms, and find our true paradigm in Jesus (lesson 1) opens our spiritual eyes and ears to hear the Beloved.
Lesson 4
Activation
Graham Cooke, write out a prayer drill
Great little activation, you have everyone write out a prayer for a partner, and then convert it into a prophetic word – this brings up all the false belief systems, “what if I get it wrong, (not about success lesson 2) “what if I can’t hear God speak,”(that was lesson 1) so we push up the blocks so everyone sees what’s functioning internally, and then God comes through and speaks, and we reinforce the first 3 lessons, build some community, and a good foundation to move forward
Lesson 5
Going to be journeying with eyes wide open (so walking journey with the Spirit) – Acts 10
Acts 10 the Gentile church is born – but why didn’t Jesus just give Peter a vision and tell him – “Let the Gentiles in?” Why all the symbolic language, why all the step by step events? – because of the false belief systems we all have functioning in us from the fall. Peter was led into truth – and the same with us (John 16:13), hearing and seeing the Lord is about walking a journey of change – just like Peter did – and that journey, just like Peter’s births wonderful things in us– if we walk with Jesus – In this Murray will give some personal stories of journey – its about becoming Christlike as we move along The Way, throughout our life.
Lesson 6
The Developmental Process
So to sum up the above we could say God speaks to develop us into who and how He sees us to be – His eternal companion, His bride.
Going to lay out the developmental process hear I think. And we can see how Jesus does this with Peter in Acts 10 – and so He does with us today
- Impactful Event
- Spiritual Principle
- Core value
- Life Goal
This pattern happens throughout our lives, for example:
I heard God speak to me at YWAM (1984) impactful event
I believed fully God spoke today, and if you could hear Him you would love Him (Spiritual Principle)
I started to attend meetings and churches who had the same belief and learn from people that believed that (core value) – but it meant changing churches, lost some friends, changed the direction of my plans of life – because we live out of our core values
Samuel’s Mantle began – life goal
Now like a DNA strand God layers these things in all our lives as He develops us to be His bride (see lesson 1)
For me I can list a whole series of impactful events that developed such things – Father Heart, prophetic movement, working with street kids, renewal, dreams, orthodoxy and Fr Mike – the resting place from Eric – but God is very intentional in our development, if we are listening and God is speaking we can find this pattern and learn to work with Him in it. Thus to put it in brief: God Speaks to us to transform us (1 Cor 1:18)
Now with each stage hear also comes with a cost test – maybe we’ll talk about that – what God is looking for is what has been revealed – will we continue to grow that seed or let people, fear, worry, love of the world choke it out? Renewal breaking out would be an example for me… cost me a lot of credibility in the church by embracing it, or working with street kids, or etc… what are we willing to do to follow – for something to become a core value we follow not for what we get out of it – but what Jesus gets out of it
Lesson 8
Seasons
I think here we will essentially talk about how do we know if we are in a season of
- Character
- Favour
- Gifting
To function for the Lord we need all three—no character (humility, patience, long suffering, mercy) – we can end up like Jimmy Swaggert or Todd Bentley (God bless them) lots of gifting but not the character to carry it
Favour – and Jesus (and Samuel) Grew in favour with both God and man – how does that work – Joseph was given favour with the Jailor of the prison – But favour can be removed – God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and Jacob saw Laban was not favourable toward him anymore – in Favour we grow in outward manifestation – anointing, honored by people, public use of gifts -in a season of character favour is withdrawn and we grow in patients, humility – but after pruning (John 15:1-2) we bear more fruit.
To walk with God is to understand how he matures and transforms us (keep in mind the impactful event cycle – and brings us around to bear more fruit – usually beginning with a new impactful event to start a brand new journey with him all building on our walk so far)
Lesson 9
Activation
Lots of sitting around, maybe too much – at this point I will either have people write out an impactful event and how they journey through to life goal – (which I think will be tough for some people so may put that off or work on the seeing aspect – learning to look and picture
Actually upon thinking about this we will go back to Eph 1 – but now focus on vs 17-19
I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,
19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength (Eph 1:17-19)
This is connected of course to Eph 1:3-17 about who we are in Christ – which is what we have been talking about – now I think would be the time to do some work on this next section of scripture– but first we would need to lay this out with a class called “I am blue Water.”
So I’ll just grab a few classes off the “list page”
Lesson 10
God’s View of the Imagination
We are here discussing how our spirit and God’s Spirit are one, and how that affects the eyes of the heart and Spirit of revelation as discussed in Eph 1:17-21. We are told in this passage that when our spiritual eyes open we will receive three things:
- The hope of our calling,
- His glorious inheritance in the saints, and an understanding of the Lord’s
- incredible power.
We break down the meaning and difference of these three points, and look at the word “eido” to “look.” It occurs 1400 times in scripture (O.T. & N.T.) and is in fact a command. As well we begin to activate the eyes of the heart using the armor of God as a starting point.
Lesson 11
Looking to See
We are now beginning to activate our spiritual eyes (in truth we started that in lesson one, but I am now breaking down the biblical mechanics of it all—which is all found in the beginning of my book “On Things Above”.
- A) kiononia
- B) Asking
- C) Looking to See
- D) Naba flow
Here we are really working on the concept that kiononia means fellowship, and to have fellowship we need to step in—just like seeing a friend in a coffee shop across the street, to dialogue we need to walk over there, open the door, and say “Hi,” but in this case we step into the Temple, our Spirit. We then ask, look, and let it flow—connecting these biblical concepts together.
Lesson 12 “Ask and It Shall Be Given”
This would be an activation – asking and receiving
Now that we have some understanding of fellowship with Jesus and how that works with the eyes of the heart—what can we ask for? Gifts, promises, settings, looking through Jesus’ eyes (mind of Christ/abiding), asking what is to come, etc. Settings are important here as settings begin a new parable journey between us and Jesus. In scripture multiple settings are pictured, for example: green pastures, still waters, strong towers, etc… We want to learn to use the biblical principle of settings found in parables, and how the Lord still uses these settings today when He speaks to us when we look.