Spiritual Church (Ekklesia)
Posted: 07/16/2008 at 8:07am

Spiritual Church (Ekklesia)

By Ron McGatlin

We are as explorers moving day by day further into a new land – a land we have never before seen, filled with things we have not yet known. Almost every day of our journey reveals awesome sights about which we may have heard but were unable to understand or even imagine until our eyes feast upon it, and all of our senses are quickened as we examine it with great excitement. Suddenly, what we have only read about and could not fully understand now makes perfect sense as we partake of and experience the reality of that which has previously been only a promise.

The future has come to us now. The glorious reality of God and His kingdom reality is presenting itself more as we reach each new horizon and partake of the previously unseen spiritual reality of God. Truly our eyes are lifted up unto the hills of God far above the darkness of the fallen world unto the heavenly order descending from above. Truly what God has prepared for those that love Him had never entered our natural minds until this blessed day in which the Holy Spirit is revealing it to a new generation of maturing sons of God.

We are more than being revived. We are being made alive in areas where we have never lived before. Our spiritual senses and spiritual lives have been so dulled by centuries of natural living and natural reasoning and understanding that, though we were alive, we were as dead being blind and deaf to supernatural spiritual reality.

The supernatural works of God were foreign and appeared impossible to us. We relegated all current supernatural to only demonic sorcery. The supernatural gifts of the Spirit that should have been part of our daily lives were not functioning. Our natural animal instinctive living led us to look unto our own ways devised by our prideful natural minds to provide for our natural appetites, while the world died spiritually and drifted into a realm of deep darkness far from the light and life of spiritual living in God.

We made church into a human endeavor of natural functions and developed religion in an attempt to reach God with our natural efforts. We took a devious shortcut to life and developed religious forms and ways to eliminate the costly real way of the cross of self denial and acceptance of spiritual reality. In bypassing our personal cross experience, we missed the resurrection life of Jesus that came to move us out of our natural ways and into the supernatural spiritual ways of resurrection life in God.

Praise God we have come to a new horizon, and the brightness of the light of God has appeared. Forerunner scouts have returned to the camp of explorers with glorious reports of real spiritual life of God just ahead, and we are moving out at first daylight to experience the real assembling of God with His people in spiritual gatherings with God.

The Ekklesia church is not a natural thing it is a spiritual reality. The Ekklesia is made up of spiritual beings called out of the natural world and into spiritual reality gathered unto God in the Spirit - a spiritual gathering of living stones – an assembly of Spirit God, Jesus, many angels, and spirits of just men made mature in Jesus. All of our questions about headship, structure, and organization of church are dissolved as the Ekklesia comes together in the Spirit in the heavenly New Jerusalem on earth as it is in heaven.

Heb 12:22-24:  But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

For many centuries the church has been, for the most part, a gathering of natural beings with only occasional visitations of the Spirit touching the spirit within mankind. For the most part, natural effort went into performing religious rituals and praying mostly faithless prayers to a perceived distant God. It became a lukewarm church primarily concerned with social order and well-being. Skilled orators preached from a level of a higher caste than the ordinary laity who sat quietly at weekly meetings. Some received a sense of guilt and need for repentance of their sins, while others day-dreamed or fought to stay awake.

Probably no one even thought or dreamed of a gathering of spiritual beings on earth together with an innumerable company of angels, God the judge of all, Jesus the firstborn, and spirits of just men made perfect. We are so accustomed to living in the natural earthly side of our natural/spiritual being that the concept of the spiritual heavenly Jerusalem gathering on earth is hard for us to even think.

I believe God is speaking to His people today to step out of our natural side into our spiritual being side and look over the next horizon into the gathering of spiritual beings with Christ Jesus, Father God, holy angels, and spirits of others redeemed by the blood and living in the better things of the spiritual realm. The Holy Spirit brings all this to pass. Our spirits come together with the Holy Spirit and the entire God family and multitudes of angels.

Can we see it? Can we allow the reality of the spiritual Ekklesia to enter into our minds? Can we prepare now to come together in our next gathering as spiritual beings and not as natural people? No longer filled with conversation and considerations of natural things but filled with spiritual things – waiting upon the Spirit, instead of natural planning. This is moving into the next horizon of the reality of walking in the Spirit, abiding in Him and He in us. This is God dwelling with His people. The light of His glory will fill the room, and our hearts will knit together with God and one another.

2 Cor 6:16:  ….. For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them And walk among them. I will be their God, And they shall be My people."

Rev 21:3:  And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.

Rev 21:23:  The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.

Supernatural will become natural in spiritual gatherings. There will be no need for pumping and hype, no need for natural human intervention and control. The Spirit of God will rule as the headship of Christ Jesus becomes fully evident. It is the family of God from heaven and earth coming together, worshiping the One who sits upon the throne in perfect harmony – multitudes of angels blending their voices with the spirits of justified men in heavenly melody rising to high crescendos and flowing as a mountain stream lightly through the valley and suddenly flowing with great strength and joy into a glorious waterfall to again come into deep pools of fresh sweet clear life in perfect peace - heaven and earth in perfect harmony praising God upon the throne.

Mat 18:20:  "For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."

John 4:23-24:  "But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."

Keep on pursuing love.
It never fails.

Ron McGatlin

www.openheaven.com
basileia@earthlink.net


Edited by Ron McGatlin on 07/16/2008 at 3:26pm

Spiritual Church reply by Cindy Glinski


Posted: 07/16/2008 at 9:30am

Ron,

You said,

I believe God is speaking to His people today to step out of our natural side into our spiritual being side and look over the next horizon into the gathering of spiritual beings with Christ Jesus, Father God, holy angels and spirits of others redeemed by the blood and living in the better things of the spiritual realm. The Holy Spirit brings all this to pass. Our spirits come together with the Holy Spirit and the entire God family and multitudes of angels.
Can we see it? Can we allow the reality of the spiritual Ekklesia to enter into our minds? Can we prepare now to come together in our next gathering as spiritual beings and not as natural people? No longer filled with conversation and considerations of natural things but filled with spiritual things – waiting upon the Spirit, instead of natural planning. This is moving into the next horizon of the reality of walking in the Spirit, abiding in Him and He in us. This is God dwelling with His people. The light of His glory will fill the room and our hearts will knit together with God and one another.



Can we see it?

Can we allow the reality of the spiritual Ekklesia to enter into our minds?

Can we prepare now to come together in our next gathering as spiritual beings and not as natural people?

All very important questions we all better be asking ourselves.

Personally I can see it, and have heard the Father tell me I can have anything I can see through my eyes of faith.

You said,

We are as explorers moving day by day further into a new land – a land we have never before seen filled with things we have not yet known. Almost every day of our journey reveals awesome sights about which we may have heard but were unable to understand or even imagine until our eyes feast upon it and all of our senses are quickened as we examine it with great excitement. Suddenly, what we have only read about and could not fully understand now makes perfect sense as we partake of and experience the reality of that which has previously been only a promise.

I am thrilled to as Joshua and Caleb did see the land of promise. I know that every promise the Father has ever given me IS just on the other side of the horizen.

I have labored in vain for long enough to produce what God desired to give me as an inheritance all along.
I refuse to help him do his job. In my marriage, in my calling, in my family or even in my provision. He is able. I am calling those things that be not as though they are. He looked at darkness and declared light. I look at a dead marriage and speak life, abundant life.
I look at kids who have loved the world and say God's gonna get you with his love. I look at the fact that God told me that I am done physically working at the end of the month. And I will have no natural provision to depend on, and I say, I have obeyed my God, and I would rather loose every thing this world has to offer, including my family and business. He is enough. He really is my all, and He will be responsible for the cost of my obedience.

Thank you for your post Ron, and for a place where I can share my heart, hear at Open Heaven. I have been rejected in every institution I was ever in. But when they begin falling apart, they may desire to hear.

The God of restoration is at the door step. He is raising the low, bringing down the high places, and straitening out the crooked places. And NO ONE will stop Him. All hidden things will be revealed shortly.

But our greatest weapon is always love, for our friends, and our enemies. Love is the only tool Satan does not have in his tool belt, because you can't fake it anymore.

Blessings,

Cindy Glinski