“Once again, Jesus spoke to the people and said, “I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows Me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of Life,” John 8:12.

“And the city has no need of sun or moon, for the Glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its Light,” Revelation 21:23.

Light. One of the most important, and most significant words used in the dispensation of Holy Spirit.

Without light we have darkness. Without Spiritual Light, we have spiritual darkness. The whole New Testament revolves around this one word and what is captured in it by its very definition – Light!

Jesus came to be the Light. We have heard it said and preached, but do we come close to capturing what it truly means?

For most, the phrase speaks of salvation, of being “blind but now I see”, very few, however, see or understand that Jesus had within Him the very Radiance of the Light of the Father’s Life!

He was a vessel, fully filled with the Life of the Father – The Spirit had filled Him – He was the living expression of the Life of the Father, and that Light that was shining through Him, would become the Light that would “enlighten” (or ignite) every man and women who would come to follow Him with the same Spirit-Life that dwelled in Him!

Jesus came to make us partakers of Christ (The Anointing, the Spirit-Life of Father, being Unified with His Children). Jesus came as the “Connector”, Who would bring us to the place where we would share Union with the Father, to be One with the Father through Him, as He and the Father was One.

To be born-again is to be born into the realm of the Spirit. It is to receive the Life of the Father within, and as a result to become a living part of the realm of reality in which the Father lives.

Suddenly a whole new life emerges, where Spiritual things are seen, heard and discerned, which previously was unknown.

The experience is surreal, hard to explain, but glorious to experience. It is a Living encounter, not something that can be explained by words, but only in the experience thereof.

It is like a Light that has been switched on, that has illuminated that which previously was hidden in the shadows, obscured and veiled from our lives. This is what it means when Christ becomes our Light, not only does He drive the darkness of sin away, but He brings us into the arena of seeing what we can only see with His eyes.

He brings us into the place wherein Him and through Him, we are given eyes to behold the Glory of God.

He brings us to Spirit-vision, or revelation, where we begin a life and a journey of beholding the very Life of God Himself in us, and where we are guided and led by His Life, that becomes the Light directing and steering our lives into the revelation of His Spirit, guiding us into His will.

There is nothing more beautiful, nothing purer, nothing more Glorious and Powerful, than a man and a woman, presently being led by the Spirit (the Life of the Father) expressing Himself in and through them.

This is the great secret of living an Anointed Life – Allowing the Father to presently express His Spirit-Life, in and through you!

This was the secret of Jesus – He was ‘Christ’ (The One fully filled with the Spirit, the One expressing the Life of the Spirit, the One in Whom the Father dwelt and through Whom the Father was making Himself seen).

The city of God does not need any source of Light, because the Spirit of God Himself IS THE LIGHT, the Son of God is the Light!

So IS HE the Light in us, when we allow Him to fully possess us and to fill us with the Beauty of His Life-Light. We need nothing more except the Presence of the Spirit in our lives. There can be no greater revelation in our lives, than God’s Own Spirit within us.

So many people seek to mix some of the Spirit, with some of themselves. They want Him to fill them, but they also want to share their own ‘revelations’ of wisdom and seek to be seen and glorified by the people. They want God to“perform”, but for the sake of their own glory to be shared with Him!

I have spent nine months teaching a group of people on surrender. A great portion of those nine months we met two and three times a week for no less than two to three hours at a time.

At the end of those nine months, I made the following statement,

The greatest lesson we can learn is the lesson of living completely empty of ourselves and completely filled with Him. Yet this life costs the price of WILLINGLY scaling the cross, eager to die to self, to self-esteem, and to the praise and adoration of others.

This life does not tolerate some of us, and some of Him, neither does it make any provision for the flesh to celebrate its greatness and to want to find a place of honor before men.

When the Life of God truly comes Alive in us, it brings the man of flesh to rest. It causes us to lay our lives down with all of its self-glory and personal ambitions, to rest in peace (RIP) from our works, and to become the vessels through whom He works! No more room for the entertaining of others to please our own flesh!

Therefore few choose this life and few possess it, because to have it means to die!

Yet those who do choose to have the Honor of God, rather than the hand claps of mortals, who do press into this Life, hidden behind the veil of the flesh, that can only be accessed through being conformed to the death of the cross with Christ – do enter into the Light of His Life!

They become partakers of a ‘New World’, the World of Light, where God’s Glory is the Light. Such enter into the realms of knowledge, not by means information obtained, but by seeing, while gazing upon the Glory of the Father. They know by Living experience and encounter!

The difference between living in the realm of the reality of being in this Light, or stumbling around in the darkness of knowledge without the experiential reality thereof, is the difference between Life and death! Between religion and true intimate fellowship through Living experience and intimate relationship!

We are born again to see, to experience and to become a part of the New World of God, the world of the realm of His Spirit and the reality of beoming a new being, where we are recreated in Christ Jesus, to function in and to live as a living part of His New World. Children of the Spirit, born into the New Realms of His Glory!

Without this reality of touching eternity, and walking within the circle of new revelation in the Light of His Glory, we are merely playing religion, and have no real sense of the reality of the true Life and realm of Glory that came through the cross.

Religion worships what it can see, feel and touch, it lacks the imagination to reach beyond the scope of the known, it is fixed on the roads of the natural world that surrounds it, and what is visible in that world.

It worships with what it can see, handle and touch, never to be caught up into Heavenly realms, reaching beyond the borders of the natural sphere it knows as its reality.

Religion feels most comfortable in what it knows, and completely uncomfortable with what it does not know, or cannot logically explain or find reason in.

Today, we have only to take away what is visible from the so-called religious institutions of our day, called the church, to discover how naked we appear in the things that are unseen!

Take the building away, take soft seats and religious environment away, take the worship team and the musicians away, and tell the people that they will be gathering together under the trees in the park from now on (even just for a few months), and you will quickly find out that you have no “church” left!

Yet the early church had no Bibles, had no building, had no worship teams, had no musicians, had no soft seats, had no religious setting, had no smoke machines or spectacular lights to create a seemingly spiritual atmosphere, or to ready people for the “supernatural”…..

All they had was the Presence of God, and they lived in Union with His Presence. They walked in Him as He walked in them, they had His present Glory and needed absolutely nothing else or more….. They walked in the unseen world of the Spirit, where lived in the reality realm of His Glory!

Today the true Spirit-filled church looks no differently. They too need no more than God’s Living Presence, and quite frankly desire no more either, they do not want any part of human entertainment, or contributions of the flesh.

The Spirit-born man and woman has entered a world that is unknown and that beckons to be explored, gazing into the Glory of God, he or she desires to be led into unchartered realms to grow in experience of God and of Him and to be changed by His Glory as they do. They have forsaken worship at the foot of the mountain, and have scaled it to the top to enter into His Glory!

They have left behind mere worship of “what they know not”, to enter into the realm of Spirit, to worship in the true and real reality of seeing Glory of the Lord and being changed from one degree of Glory to the next.

They have come to the Living Presence of a Living God, and as a result have counted all else as being worthless to be compared with His Glory!

Not all can see into the realms of God’s Spirit and Glory, in fact very few do!But it has been given to everyone who has been born again to see!

It is not for the few who are regarded as being fanatical, over-spiritual or spiritual lunatics – It is the inheritance of the saints, it is the standard of true Spirit-Life, the standard of a Life fully controlled and guided by the Light!

“But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked intently into Heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
“Look,” he said, “I see Heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God,” Acts 7:55-56.

Stephen could “see”, can we “look” and see Jesus also?

Are we gazing into an open Heaven, are we looking into the Glory of the Father, or is all we see the present realities of this world, that which we can touch and handle, with the reality of the Spirit-Life of Christ being veiled from our lives?

Are we reading Scripture, or hearing Living Words being given utterance to our hearts by the Holy Spirit?

Do we believe because of what we can “see”, or merely believe in what we do not know as a Living reality at all?

Are we serving a God Whom we know, or a fairytale god we ‘believe’ is there, but have never seen, heard or encountered in Person?

God IS and because we know Him and walk in the reality of His Being, we walk in the realm of the reality of faith, having eyes to see, ears to hear and having our lives flooded with His Spirit-Life!

Knowing this life, is nothing less than our reasonable standard of worship – A life lived beyond the veil of the natural, gazing upon the Glory of the Lord, and in so doing, becoming a city on hill, that has no need for anything other to make it shine, than the Radiance of His Presence – A city wherein the Glory of the Lord is the Light, and wherein the Son is the Lamp!

We were saved to be a Light unto the world – To be the body of Christ – Do we understand what this means?

Do we understand that we have become His physical body, the bearers of His Christ-Life, His Spirit-Life, His very Living Presence, that is hidden in us as a Treasure in earthen vessels of clay?

Do we understand that in so doing, that He now becomes Christ through us to the world! Not by us becoming equal to God, by becoming the very body (vessels in service) in whom and through whom He can showcase His Spirit-Life, and through whom He may present Himself in all of His Glory as Christ – to the world!

You and I are the body, He gave His body, so we may become His body, all over the world, and we are the carriers, the bearers of His Presence and His Being. He has chosen us to inhabit us, so that He may Live, and be Alive in us and through us, speaking, working and living His Life through ours.

We are His temple of worship, His sanctified residence, His living Body, and His true sanctuary on earth today – A temple not prepared by the hands of men, but a living body fashioned by the hands of God Himself – He has prepared for Himself a dwelling place on earth, in you and in me!

“May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality].
May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God’s devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it]; [That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!
Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams] — to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it),” Ephesians 3:16-21 AMPC.

 

~ Johann van der Hoven

---

Johann van der Hoven is in South Africa. He has been serving the Lord in ministry since 1991 and has hosted numerous apostolic revival meetings in South Africa and in South America. He also currently pioneers a organic church planting movement across South Africa. For more information about him and his ministry visit www.sonsofsovereignty.com or Revival.

Back to Top