Living in Heaven, on Earth

“No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3:13, NKJV).

Jesus spoke these words while He was on earth, living in a human body. Why, then, did He say He was in heaven?

Because He was.

Jesus lived and ministered from heaven to earth. He was in heaven and on earth at the same time. So are you and I. We live and function in the physical world and the spiritual world simultaneously.

Jesus led by example. From His “boots on the ground” position, He was showing you and me how to live our lives too. We, imitating Jesus, get to operate here on earth from our seat with Him in the heavenly places.“God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:6, NIV).

The amazing thing about the heavenly realm is that it is more powerful than the earthly realm. God’s throne trumps every inferior reality. Every day, He empowers us to pray “Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Every day, He intends to answer that prayer.

He wants us to continually pray over the eyes of our hearts, that we would learn to see with them better (Eph. 1:17-18). When God called us to live by faith and not by sight, He meant that we aren’t to rely so much on our physical sight. Instead, we are to learn to live by the eyes of faith. He intends for us to see into His realm – into the Kingdom realm, the heavenly realm – and to operate from there. He desires for us to minister from there into the earthly realm around us.

In His Kingdom, righteousness, peace, and joy abound. When we are tuned into His realm, we become keenly aware of these abundant spiritual resources always available to us. This is the walk not by physical sight but by spiritual faith-sight. When we learn to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (Heb. 12:2), we tap into His inexhaustible resources of hope and strength. Of course, humanly, we get tired. However, as we focus in on Him and His realm, He pours new strength into us day by day, moment by moment.

The more we have our senses trained this way (Heb. 5:14), the more aware we become of God’s constant activity in the world around us. We learn to see what the Father is doing, and follow Holy Spirit’s lead to join Him in it.

We become like Jesus, not “judging by what we see with our eyes,” or “deciding by what we hear with our ears” (Is. 11:3). Those are physical eyes and ears Isaiah 11:3 is referring to. Those physical senses are not our primary leaders. Imitating our Savior, we don’t react to negative physical circumstances observable with our natural sight and hearing.

Instead, we learn to make decisions based on what we see with our spiritual eyes and hear with our spiritual ears. With our spiritual eyes we perceive the Father’s movements. With our spiritual ears we become keenly, intimately tuned into His voice guiding us moment by moment. His voice always fills us with hope. He is always doing beautiful things in the earth. Our daily lives become responsive to His life-giving initiatives, instead of reactive to the enemy’s activities in the world.

To the physical eye and ear, God’s movements and activities are usually invisible and inaudible. They are hidden. That is why you and I are “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). More and more, we are operating in the invisible realm too. We are learning to partner with Him there. That’s why this same passage invites us to “set our minds and hearts on things above, not on earthly things” (vv. 1-2).

What a mind-blowingly liberating way to live! Truly, God has “blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). Only He can teach us how to walk in them. Every day, let’s lean into Holy Spirit and ask Him to train us in stewarding the infinite spiritual wealth He has put at our disposal. (1 Cor. 2:12).

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Can you think of a recent occasion when your heart caught a glimpse of what God was up to? What was that like?