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The Father in You:
Where Kingdom Rubber Meets the Road

The Holy Spirit has been given to us to convey the mind of the Heavenly Father to us through Christ. From His mind, the Father wants us to know that we are not His grandchildren once removed through Christ. We are His sons as adopted brethren through Christ. The Father is always moving to indwell us through Christ as He indwelt Christ Himself when Christ was here.

 

To be a Father is to be one who reproduces Himself in His offspring. When it says we are being indwelt by the Father, we are being told that the Father is reproducing Himself—His image, His Life—in us, even as Christ exemplified. In this, God is working in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. This is the essence of what is happening to us as believers throughout our mortal journey.

 

The Father in Earth, As He Is in Heaven

This has large implication for the meaning of the kingdom. We have previously noted the connection between the prayer “hallowed be Thy Name” and “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.” We’re taking this a step further today. We want to see that intrinsically, the meaning of “Thy will be done in earth” is not an abstract concept on the level of “things getting done the way the Father wants to see them happening.” That is a very distant concept from what is truly meant. It is not primarily about the changing of the ways and means of systems of operations across the breadth of populations. It is not primarily about “governments” the way we use that term every day.

 

What “Thy will be done” is essentially about, and hence the coming of the kingdom, is the reproducing of the Father in us, in which the Father is laboring through us to will and do of His good pleasure. However and wherever and in whomever that is happening, there you are witnessing the coming of the kingdom to earth as it is in heaven.

 

Not Measured by Objective Evaluation

“The kingdom cometh not by observation.”

 

There is a difference between what we objectively witnessed Jesus “do” in His life and ministry, and how and what was actually done and Who was actually doing the doing. We objectively look at the miracles, for instance, and say, “Look what Jesus did.”

 

But Jesus never saw Himself as doing anything or even saying anything as an independent identity. Repeatedly He would say, “The word that you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.” To the disciples on that final night He said, “The Father who indwells Me, He does the works.”  Jesus was never independently conscious of personally doing anything. Can we see this? This was the meaning of the Father’s will being done in earth. This was the meaning of the coming of the Kingdom.

 

But now watch. Christ then says, “He that believes in me shall do greater works than these.” See what He is saying and what He is not saying. He is not saying about us what we normally envision about Christ’s own miracles. He is not saying “you will objectively do these things.”  He is saying, “As the Father has done His works through Me, so shall He do greater works through you.” We get hung up on our objective doing and witnessing of these things through ourselves.

 

We walk around and ask, “How come we aren’t doing greater works?”  “We” aren’t doing greater works because it was never “we” that was going to be doing the greater works in the objectiveness of our own identity.  That is never what Jesus meant to say. The only one who is intent on doing greater works is the Father who is to be growing in the reproducing of Himself in us according to His good intent, will, pleasure and sovereign empowerment, whenever and wherever He chooses to do so.

 

The True Meaning of Faith and Asking “According to His Will”

This in turn has implications for the meaning of faith. The disciples asked, “How come we couldn’t do such and such?” Jesus said, “because of your lack of faith.” So in light of the foregoing, what do we now see about faith? Faith is not a matter of mustering up belief in the spiritual power to do something or to bring something to pass. It is not about following “seven steps to seeing the anointing work in your ministry.” It is about making improved internal connection to the indwelling Father! Do we get it yet?

 

This explains what Jesus really meant when He said, “Have the faith of God.” He’s saying, “have the Father indwell you and whatever you desire will come to pass.” Why? Because it is the Father desiring it through you. It is His will being done in your earth. It is His working to will and to do in you of His good pleasure.

 

This is also the meaning of, “If we ask for anything according to His will, we know that we have the things that we have asked of Him.” This is not about figuring out if what we are asking for lines up with biblical principles! This is about asking based in a conscious indwelling of the Father, to where we understand that we are but reflecting back to the Father the expression of His own desire made within our hearts.  If you know the Father is indwelling your request out of His own desire within you, you can be sure that it is going to come to pass, in whatever way that might be above and beyond what you can ask or think.

 

Reducing Life’s Burden to Simplicity in the Father

In these few paragraphs, we have come to greater terms with the meaning of the coming of the kingdom, of faith, of His will and the knowing of it, and of doing His works. It is all simply about the expanding increase of the Father’s indwelling action in us. This harnesses further the meaning of the “power of the Spirit.” The Spirit is not separated from the Father in power in action any more than He is from Christ. The indwelling of the Spirit is about the indwelling of Christ, which is ultimately about the indwelling of the Father.

 

Think by way of illustration of those little wooden Russian matryoska dolls—you know those little identical dolls that fit inside one another? You have the Father inside of Christ inside of the Holy Spirit inside of us! The point is that this dynamic is how we are tied to the Father. And it is how the Father’s will has been designed to be expressed in earth as it is in heaven.

 

The more we come to grips with this, the more it takes the burden for correct performance and understanding off of us. This is everything opposite to the “works of the law.” By the works of the law, you are the one responsible “to will and to do of the Father’s good pleasure.” Impossible! You can’t do it. But that is the liability you held under the Old Covenant. (And people today want us to go back to that still???)

 

This is also everything opposite to the world’s mantra, “knowledge is power.” To the world, all success depends on having all knowledge. Yet there’s tons of people with decades of knowledge, education, study and learning who have no more power to do anything their knowledge says they should be able to do to be a success than when they first began. (Ask the millions that have spent their lives chasing the American dream of owning their own home business, who die as poor, indebted and bound to the serfdom of corporation and government as they started.)

 

But no. Not now. The real kingdom coming, the real doing, the real performance, the real knowing and of the real power—is that of the Father indwelling Christ indwelling the Spirit indwelling us. It is the Father doing the works and speaking the words and imparting His knowledge and wisdom and revelation through us. (You see now why the Baptism of the Holy Spirit is indispensable to fulfilling the Lord’s prayer. No Spirit empowerment, no Jesus empowerment. No Jesus empowerment, no Father empowerment. No Father reproduction taking place in us. No Father knowledge or accomplishment. No Father fruitfulness.)

 

The Acts of the Father

It is rightly said that the “Acts of the Apostles” is a misnomer. The book should be called, the “Acts of the Spirit.” True as this is, it really needs to go further. It needs to be called the “Acts of the Father.” Remember, everything that happened at Pentecost and beyond was the fulfilling of the discourse and prayer of Jesus for the disciples to be indwelt with Himself and with the Father, through the Spirit. The Acts to come were to be those of the Father doing His greater works in and through the disciples.

 

Yet this fundamental disconnect remains at large in our otherwise informed understanding of “life in the Spirit.” It’s not about ministry getting done through us. It’s not about whether we are doing miracles or aren’t. It’s not about the potency of “our faith” for anything we are believing for. It’s all about where is the Father at in expressing Himself through us at this point in our journey, whatever point that may be, in whatever context?

 

Am I at ease in the Father regardless of all external appearances and issues, or am I trying to bear the burden of explaining why I’m under this pressure, or such and such is at issue and I have no solution, or of having to hold such and such ministry enterprise together? Can I be alright with wherever the Father is at in me and with me today, no matter what that looks like against any objective expectations? This is the true mind of Christ. It takes time to get to this place. But He is taking us there.

 

Conclusion

This article is intended to give us all perspective and hope on our otherwise difficult and even unrelenting situations in this life. The lesson in this writing applies to every believer on earth, no matter His particular life course appointed by God. What we are here to learn is that at every point in our lives, whether for apparent good or ill, it is to remember that all mortal life experience is finally about the Father working in us to expand the expression of who He is in us—through Christ by the Spirit.

 

This is the only meaning of “working out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  And at the end, this is the only basis on which we will be judged. Jesus says He will deal with every one of us “according to your works.” The only issue will be, did the Father get the expression He wanted to get through the works done in our body? Were they ultimately His works in us? Or were they ours? Were they ultimately His words, or were they ours? No other objective measure of judgment will be in play at that day.

 

So we say,

“Come, Father, fulfil Your works and mind and heart in us today as your adopted sons in Christ by the Spirit. Let Your kingdom come and Your will be done in our earthly temples, applied to every situation, relationship and circumstance, as we commit to You the reward of rejoicing we are to receive, whether now as well as later, in reaping Your fruitfulness in those works by faith over our lifetime.”

 

Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

09/17



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