The Ascending Lifestyle
Table of Contents
Foreword
The Ascending Lifestyle
Sharers of His Life
Where the Eagles Are Gathered
Seeing Jesus Face-to-Face
Going into the Depths of God
Your Destiny, the Throne
The Cross, the Message, the Ministry
Every Eye Will See Him
The Full Measurement of Christ
Grace, God’s Indescribable Gift
Let There Be Light in You
The Marriage Supper of God
The End
Foreword
There are many prophetic messages being given today, but there is one clarion call that has been going out since the days of John the Revelator, which is "Come up here!"
Dan Luehrs has heard this voice, and he has seen and heard a present word for the body of Christ to ascend into the realms of God and receive strength and truth for our day.
We can know present truth through our experiencing the The Ascending Lifestyle. We can rise above the levels of fear, hopelessness, depression, addictions, and other controlling spirits. These intend to manipulate and keep us captive in the earthly realm, when God has His glorious presence and strength waiting and available for us in the heavenly realms.
If we will take the time each day to draw near to the tangible presence of God, He promises to draw near to us and dine with us in the garden of our heart, and manifest Himself to us on a daily basis.
We are about to come into the most intense times of human history and will need to know how to ascend into the Spirit realm of God. Unless we know how to ascend and receive the grace of God daily, we will not make it through the times that are upon us.
This book, The Ascending Lifestyle, will help us to understand the importance of spending quality time with God, and to rise above the temporal earthly events that seek to steal our eternal victory that Jesus has already paid for us.
He, the great Overcomer, lives in us, so we cannot fail because it is impossible for God to fail! God has called us to be the overcomers that will ascend over all that is put in our path, so we can ascend to the throne of God to sit with Jesus, forever and ever!
—Wade E Taylor.
The Ascending Lifestyle
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
Colossians 3:1 (kjv)
God has given you the right in Jesus Christ to seek and find eternal riches (truths) from above, where He is, to keep them in your heart as your very own for all eternity. The riches of heaven are far above earthly treasures, which perish. As Christians, we are (have been) raised up with Jesus into the realm of the spirit world where He sits in His throne on high. Most Christians are waiting to die to go to heaven for this to happen, but I want to show you from the Word of God that you can have heaven here and now. It is God’s desire for His will to be done in earth as it is in heaven; this is why we pray the Lord’s prayer. Now we must start believing and experiencing it in everyday life.
Heaven is touching the earth, and the veil between them is getting thinner by the day until one day, the kingdom of God is going to manifest clearly before all people and there will be no denying its power and glory for King Jesus will be seen by all the inhabitance of the earth. But before that can take place, Jesus will be seen in and through His people, and those with the eyes of their understanding opened will be able to see Him in each other. What makes heaven, heaven is the Lord’s presence, and His presence is what makes for good relationships. Heaven is about relationship. A relationship with our heavenly Father first and foremost, and then with all those who are in heaven we will have great relationships with because there will be no sin found there to destroy them. We crave relationships with our spouses, children, family, and friends, for we must have these to maintain a healthy mental and spiritual life.
Within a few weeks I have met three Christian women that have changed my life for good. Even though we did not know each other after the flesh, we somehow knew each other by the spirit. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:16, "Therefore from now on we recognize no man according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer." None of us have held Jesus’ hand in the flesh, but yet each of us has sensed His presence guiding and helping us at times in our life. Once when I was in my office, Jesus sat opposite from me and began to speak to me, and I said to Him, "Why can I not see you with my natural eyes?"
He replied, "Because you can see me with the eyes of your understanding."
I then thought of Ephesians 1:17–18:
That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.
Notice that the riches and the glory of God are in His people, and God wants us to see Him in each Christian. We have to see Jesus with our heart, or we will not see Him at all. John 3:3 says, "Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’" In other words, we cannot see King Jesus until we are saved. Now please hear me carefully; Jesus wants us to see Him in each other. Can you imagine what would happen to the body of Christ if we could truly see Him in one another? Well, we would honor each other with such respect that the world would stand up and notice that we really love each other for who we are. We will fulfill the new commandment as we see Him in each other.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:34–35, nas
Think of how this will change marriages, families, churches, and the entire world. Truly, heaven will have come down to earth.
I was in California on vacation, and my rental car was late, so I decided to look over the downtown area of Modesto. I went into an ice-cream shop and began to talk to the owner of the store, and she said something about the Lord and then introduced me to her mom who was eighty years old. I took one look at her and noticed something about her that got my curiosity going, and I said to her that I somehow knew her. I spent the next three and half hours in their shop talking about the Lord with them and the whole next day. As I sat across the table from her in an Italian restaurant, I asked her, "How could it be that we know each other so well?" It was like we had known each other all our lives.
A few weeks later, once again, I met a Christian lady, and we talked for five hours about the Lord. As we sat down in a restaurant, I could feel the Lord’s presence greatly there like He put a bubble of His presence around us to reveal Himself. This has happened to me only once or twice in my life with other people. I was intrigued with this lady; it was as if I could see into her heart, and what I saw there was amazing. She had such depth in the Lord. She, like the other ladies, had gone through such horrendous situations, and yet they stayed faithful unto God. I was seeing this in their hearts, and I was amazed at the glory of the Lord that I beheld.
That whole week I thought of the time I had with her and what I saw in her, so I asked the Lord, "What did I see in her?"
He then said, "Me."
I knew that was right because in each of these ladies their familiar spirit was the Lord. The Lord is now revealing Himself in and through His people as never before and is having us make connections with other Christians so that He might manifest His kingdom through us. In Rick Joyner’s "Word for the Week," he writes:
With all of the focus on the outward signs, many are missing the most important one of all—what is taking place right in our midst. There is something so remarkable going on in the church, and few, even in the church, seem to be seeing it. There is a mighty army such as the world has never seen before, or will see again, starting to come together. What we should be looking for more than anything else is for the Lord to come forth in His people.
The way we know that someone is called as a teacher is not by their knowledge, degrees, or how articulate they are, but by seeing the Teacher in them. Likewise, the way we know that someone is a true pastor is not by their certificates or even their compassion for people, but when we see our Shepherd in them. The way I know that someone is called to leadership in the church is when I see my King coming forth in them. We only have true spiritual authority by abiding in the King.
The Lord really is starting to come forth in His people. We are seeing true teachers, shepherds, pastors, prophets, and I believe soon, true last-day apostles, some of whom are among us now. As I shared last week, we will see even the feeble in the body of Christ rise up as mighty warriors like David. We are going to see the great men and women of God who were raised up throughout church history like seeds, with a thousand like Martin Luther, a thousand like John Calvin, a thousand like John Knox, a thousand like John Wesley, a thousand like Zinzendorf, and a thousand like Billy Graham, and so on. These were all seeds and we are going to see the harvest at the end of the age. However, the greatest of all is to see Jesus coming forth in His people.
That is just what God wants us to see in others: Jesus. He is easier to see in some because of their relationship with Him. Some spend more time with Him than others, and the more you hang around someone, the more you become like them. We must stop seeing so much of the negative in others and getting hung up on everything that is wrong with them when we have the same things wrong with ourselves. If we focus on the negative, we will see it; but if we ask the Lord to help us see Him in others, I believe that we will see Him and be dazzled. The Lord of glory has chosen to abide in their heart. So if He has received them into His kingdom, how much more should we? God is truly doing a new work in the earth so let us not find ourselves opposing Him in others even if they are from another part of town or other denominations that we do not agree with. It is imperative that we start looking for the Lord in His people for us to get to where we need to go because we are all a part of the great temple that God is building in the spirit realm. "In whom the whole building, being fitted together is growing into a holy temple in the Lord" (Ephesians 2:21, nas). Jesus is now manifesting Himself in and through His people; we should be excited to seek for Him in all of our relationships. Seek Him who is from above.
Being Raised up in Him
Having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.
Colossians 2:12 (nas)
And raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:6 (nas)
According to these two verses, we have been raised from the dead and are seated with Jesus in the realm of the spirit where He is now. I do not always feel like I am seated with Him in the heavens. Matter of fact, this world feels more demonic at times than it does heavenly.
Notice what Colossians 2:12 says: "Through faith in the working of God … " There we have it. Through faith we have been and are raised up into the realm of the spirit with Him. While we are living in a natural body, God wants us to have a spiritual experience with Him in His realm each day. God has invited us into His realm, for it is our home, so why not take the time to come to Him each and every day? He is our daily bread, and He is our drink that satisfies our spirit man; if we do not take time daily to be with Him, we will just shrivel up and die spiritually.
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)
When Jesus was on earth, He was able to be in heaven and on earth at the same time because His spirit was connected to the Father, and so are we: "That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me" (John 17:21, nkjv). We can ascend in and through Jesus anytime we desire to by seeking heavenly things. Your spirit man is able to soar into the heavens with God because your spirit is already connected to God. That makes your spirit as large as heaven itself. When I am connected to the Internet, I am connected to the World Wide Web and can get whatever I need; and when I am connected to God with my spirit, I am connected to unfathomable riches in Christ Jesus. Whatever you need from heaven, like truth, grace, healing, peace, wisdom, etc., God is there to give it to you by your asking and taking by faith. If all things come from God who is spirit, why should it be so difficult for us to believe God for anything natural or spiritual because it all comes out of Him?
I want to bring this a little further. What you and I really need to be seeking from above is life—God’s life every day: "For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3, nas). I once thought my life to be lived on earth is somehow hidden in Christ and that I needed to find it, but now I understand what life is, it is the power of God like a current of electricity that gives power to this life at all times. Because without God’s life flowing into us daily, we can get depressed and try to find life through many different forms to get an adrenaline high going in the natural so that we might feel alive. We can get high from another person, drugs, alcohol, sex, or something that gets our interest for a short time, but then we begin to look elsewhere until we get our next high. Colossians 3:3, in the Interlinear Bible, reads: " … And the life of you has been hidden with Christ in God." This is my interpretation, "Your energy, joy, and purpose for living is all found in Jesus if you will seek and find Him each and every day." This is how we are to overcome in this lifetime because we have His life flowing through us at all times as we stay connected to the vine.
People use many different avenues to get a high in life. Most think of drugs and alcohol that get people high, but the truth of the matter is anything that gets our adrenaline going is a high, and we can get addicted to it quickly. I believe that God’s life is the most addicting substance in the universe, but very few people know how to obtain it. Seeking the things above is the true and original high designed by God. The problem is, most people will not pay the price to come up to Him daily to get it; they will not lay down their life of sin and pleasure to receive it because the price is too high. But they will pay the price and put down the money to get false highs for a short time from the world because it feels good to the natural senses, but their spirit man is left empty. They go from mountaintop-to-mountaintop experiences.
Before Jesus came into our hearts, we lived on one plain: the natural. It was totally earthly with natural goals and aspirations because that is all we could see and understand. But now we have come to Christ and have been enlightened, for He has opened our spiritual understanding to see that we have a spiritual side to us that needs to be taken care of. To understand this, think of a cell phone and how it works with no wire or cables tying you down. You cannot see the microwaves that the phone is working on, but be sure they are there because you are talking on the phone. Even if you have a good phone but do not have it activated, the microwaves in the air will do you no good because the phone is not programmed. The same is true with our spirit man and the spirit realm where God is. He has always been there, but our spirit man has not always been activated through faith in Jesus to live in the realm of heaven. Once we come to Jesus, we are brought to life, and then our spirit man can communicate with God in prayer and begin to learn His Word and live by faith in the manifest presence of God. It’s a wonderful life. Jesus promises us in John 14:21, "He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will disclose myself to him." By knowing and obeying God’s Word, He promises to reveal Himself to us; what better promise can we have than to have His presence with us? Let us say with Moses, "If thy presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here" (Exodus 33:15, nas). Amen.
But of those who do not know Him, the Bible says that they are excluded from the life and presence of God. How terrible is that?
Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.
Ephesians 4:18 (nas)
If you are not practicing the presence of the Lord daily, it is possibly because of three things:
You are ignorant of the fact that He is available to you at all times. The Lord asks this question: "Do I not fill the heavens and the earth, declares the Lord?" (Jeremiah 23:24, nas). If the Lord is everywhere, that means that we can have His presence anywhere.
Simply because we are not taking the time to seek His face but have time to seek anything else that might get our attention.
Because we have a hardened heart with sin in our life that we do not intend to give up so the presence of the Lord does not penetrate us to convict us because we have said no to the Lord’s wooings over and over.
When the Bible tells us that we are seated with Him, why would we not want to sit with Him each and every day? Our being seated with Him is more than us just sitting down in heaven—it means to be seated in a seat of authority, like the county seat or the seat of government. It is on God’s mercy seat that we sit down together with Him each and every day.
Being Made Alive by Ascending
Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).
Ephesians 2:5 (nas)
Life is what God is; it is not just our existence on earth as we think, but it comes from Him alone. To live without Him is to live without true life; this is the reason why people look for life in many different things, but it only brings death in the end. God breathed His life into Adam, but when he sinned, death—or separation—came between him and God, and only through Jesus can we have true life back in us again. When Jesus breathed on to His disciples in John 20:22, He was breathing His life back into man as He did in the beginning with Adam; and now by His Holy Spirit, He has done the same for us if we have asked Jesus to come into our hearts. But not only then, He wants to breathe His life into us every day if we will take the time to be with Him and ask Him to.
There are different forms of life all around us. When I look at my desk, I see matter (steel and other man-made materials) made into a desk or the bookshelves, or what have you. Science tells us that matter is nothing more than a bunch of atoms put together, but what is an atom? One word: energy. There is life in an atom; just split one and see what happens—boom! The facts are, just a few atoms could kill every person on planet earth. We understand that there is an energy force all around us including in the air with lightning and the pull of the earth’s north and south poles and from the moon and the sun, and only God knows what else there is. And we have not even started to talk about the demonic powers of the air that have influenced man through the ages.
I said all that to say this: the physical body is made of energy, billions and billions of atoms and cells that have life in them. Life must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is Jesus Christ, for He is the life of all things. Jesus is life; He created all things by the power of His Word, and His word gives life to every living thing, and they solely exists for His good pleasure. God’s Word, who is Jesus Christ, is power (energy), and His Word brought everything into existence. Read who the Bible claims Jesus to be:
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
John 1:4 (nas)
Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies."
John 11:25 (nas)
Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through me."
John 14:6 (nas)
For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself.
John 5:26 (nas)
What most of us understand about life is that our heart is beating inside of our chests, and we can see life all around us each day. We get natural life from eating foods that are grown on the earth to maintain physical energy and good health from these foods that we eat so that we can maintain life. No food, no life; it is that simple.
The same is true of our spirit man; when we were saved, we received the life of God in our inner man. But God has made it so that we must come to Him daily to feed our spirit man because life comes from Him and Him alone. Just as the children of Israel had to gather manna each day in the wilderness to live, so we must do likewise in the spirit to receive spiritual food or energy from the Lord. As Christians, the presence of Jesus and His Word have now become our spiritual bread and drink.
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst."
John 6:35 (nas)
The Father gave the Son life, Jesus is life, and if we want God’s life, we must come to the Son every day to receive it. Think of God as an electric power plant. Once I visited a hydroelectric plant on a private tour, and my host said to me, "I want to bring you into the room where the power is being made." As we walked into the door, I could feel the power in the air, and it made me quake from just sensing it. I have felt that same power in the presence of the Lord; this is what God wants to give us: his power to live everyday life. We must come to Him.
Just like a battery in a flashlight, unless the battery has a charge in it, the light will not come on, so it is with Christians that have been regenerated or given life through Jesus Christ. We must abide in Him daily to receive the energy of God to maintain a strong spiritual life and to stay on the path of life. Most Christians will not take the time to do this, and then they wonder why they are so lethargic toward spiritual things. Jesus said in John 15:5, "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing." Notice, unless we stay connected to Him daily and continually, we will not have His life flowing in us; we must stay joined to Him as fruit does to a tree, or we will die spiritually. Our spiritual growth process requires that we as a branch receive its life from the vine, and to do so, we must set apart time to be with Jesus for fellowship and communion. We must wait on Him in His presence as a battery waits on a charger so that His life can flow into us and become a personal reality within us. The Lord is calling us to arise and come up into the heavens with Him. Only as we make ourselves available to Him and reject the path of least resistance and begin to walk in the spirit will this be possible.
Most Christians today do not have the joy of the Lord’s life as their strength because they do not come to Him daily to receive His presence where there is fullness of joy. Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full" (John 15:11, nas). True lasting joy comes from the Lord’s life in us. I don’t know about you, but I have not come to the place in my life that I am living full-time in the fullness of His life and joy that He has promised us. "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10, niv). This is how we can rejoice in and through anything because we are receiving our life from Him continually. This is the importance of us ascending daily and learning to receive His life anywhere and anytime that we need to.
I had a dream that I was in a building looking at a stage with a large stockpile of gold and a person said, "Take some." We did; there was no panic as we took the gold into our heart. Then someone asked me for some, so I gave it to them, and they received it into themselves. I felt like we were stealing it, and I was expecting the police to come after us, but they never did. Then in my dream, I met a man, and he said, "I saved some gold for you; I hide it under the grand piano." I then looked, and sure enough, there was a half a bar under each leg, and I awoke.
My interpretation of this is: an angel came to me in January of 2007 and told me that it was now the time of gold, meaning the nature and authority of God. He is now giving His life and nature to His people for the taking, and we must take it into ourselves. The piano means for us to rejoice in God no matter what happens in our life; His gold is hidden in our worship. "Sing to Him a new song; play skillfully with a shout of joy" (Psalms 33:3).
Not long after this, I met a lady that had a similar vision. In her vision, five people were sitting on a gold stage or platform, and the Lord said to them, "Command and decree what I tell you, and it will be done; you have my platform of authority."
Why Two Lives, Anyway?
For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven; inasmuch as we, having put it on, shall not be found naked.
2 Corinthians 5:1–3 (nas)
Have you ever asked yourself why we have to live here in this fallen state of humanity when in fact the Bible teaches us that we have a new and sinless body and life waiting in heaven for us? Why even go through this life of pain and suffering anyway if we are going to have that which is never going to die or decay?
The way I see and understand this natural world and life is that it is only a testing ground to see who will be willing to pay the price to follow the Lord and become like Him in the process. Then when this earthly life is over and we have paid the price to become like God, He will give us true and lasting riches and a place in His kingdom that is eternal and not temporary like on earth.
So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
Luke 16:11–12 (niv)
Nothing in this natural world lasts forever, for it all will grow old and fall apart in time and will go back into the ground where it came from, including our bodies. If this be true, why do people spend so much time and effort trying to build wealth and their earthly kingdoms when in fact, they will give it all to someone else when they die? Or why do people spend so much time and money on their physical bodies when they are only going to be dust in a few short years? Because they are spiritually blind and shortsighted to the fact that our time spent on earth is only a testing ground to what we will have and be doing in eternity with God.
Before companies put a product out on the market, they test it in real-life terms and see if it will hold up to the abuse and the environment of the product. For instance, if a product was being made for children, the company would try it out on children to see, first of all, if the children will like it, and if the product will stand up to the abuse that it will receive. But say a company wants to make and sell cars, they would first test them in the real world and then sell them in the marketplace. These companies do not want to sell a defective product that will bankrupt the company in the process. In the end, people would get hurt from the product and the people of the company would lose their jobs, so the final outcome would be worse than the beginning. We, like those products, are being tested to see if we will be faithful.
Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:3–4 (nas)
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you.
1 Peter 4:12–13 (nas)
In the same way, God has been doing the same thing as companies do with mankind over the ages to see if we will obey and follow Him so that in the end, He can reveal His life in and through us to the nations. There is no greater experience in life than to know life Himself and to have Him live in and through us. God Himself is the power plant of life; God is life. His very existence gives life just as the sun gives life to all that is on the earth, yet all the suns and stars in the universe could not compare to Him because He created them all. Hear this: the power plant of eternity, God, is inviting you into the very core of Himself so that you may have life in you that is eternal.
And this is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.
John 17:3 (nas)
Notice that eternal life is not time in of itself. Eternal life is God. It is not that God’s life will live for eternity, but that we can know the true eternal life in and through the person of Jesus Christ. By us ascending into the spirit realm with God each day, we are choosing to spend time with Him and getting to know Him through our life experiences that He gives us. As we worship God through the good and bad times of life, we are maturing in the faith and becoming like Him because what we are saying is that we trust Him and honor Him with our life. As we worship, His presence fills our heart with the breath of heaven, and this is what gives us life that we need to maintain a healthy and happy lifestyle.
When we are in His presence, we need to ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit to the full so that we are saturated with God. The days that we are living in are evil, and they will suck the very life from us if we let it. We must guard our heart for out of it flows the very issues of life, and once we have His life flowing in and through us, we can give it away to others that are hurting and needy like my dream with the gold. His life can flow through us in many different ways like: our words, our presence, our touch, and through books and writings like this.
To have intimacy with God is to know true life. How we spend our time here will determine our placement in eternity with God, for the closer we are to Him now like He was with Enoch, the closer we will sit next to Him in heaven. My prayer is, "Oh, God, let me be closer to you than any person who ever lived." Ask Him to help you come closer and closer, as the day draws near. I ask you, if we do not want to be close to God now, why would He want us to be close to Him in heaven?
Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."
Matthew 16:24 (nas)
I do not see how spending time in God’s presence can be a cross, but I do understand that at first it can be to our flesh because we always want to be doing something that makes us feel good. The cross is made for one thing, and that is to kill our carnal nature. Kill your self-nature by spending time with God each and every day.
Many people, including Christians, are stuck in the past when they were hurt. Just because a person has aged in years does not mean that they are mature in their spirit and are becoming like Jesus. They are stuck and hung up spiritually. We must all learn to forgive each other, but if we do not, our present spiritual life will be filled with anger, bitterness, resentment, and the list could go on into lust, greed, and all the other sins of the flesh. God is allowing these things in our lives to mature us like Himself so that we can go higher into other spiritual challenges. This is why we cannot waste our trials by murmuring and complaining. God cannot allow higher spiritual challenges in our lives because He knows that they would only overcome us quickly, and we would give up and quit the good fight of faith.
Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16–18 (nas)
If you knew that what you were going through was preparing you for the throne, would you not be willing to go through it? If you knew that this cup that you were drinking from was from the Lord, would you not drink it? Since we enter the kingdom of God through tribulations and giant pearls (trials and tribulations) are doorways to the kingdom, why not go through them with His grace and strength instead of drudgery?
Unbelievers do not have the life of God in them according to Ephesians 4:18: "Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart." The Bible tells us that we must be careful not to harden our hearts when we are going through trying times, which is easy to do; we can get mad at God when He does not do what we think He should. But when we grow in Him and praise Him through all things, we soon realize that He is fully trustworthy through anything, and we can know that He is allowing the best for us even when its hard, and we have no understanding why God is allowing this in our life.
Who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light (fire); whom no man has seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
1 Timothy 6:16 (nas)
God alone possess life without end, and if we want His life, we must live by His ways and rules according to the Bible. He dwells in a flame of fire that nothing can penetrate, and He is inviting us into Himself; so why not take this opportunity to turn your life over to Him fully and ascend into the heavens with Him now?