Have you ever wondered how the apostles in the book of acts, having been filled with the Holy Spirit, were able to immediately manifest the greater works that Jesus promised they would walk in? They were only 3 1/2-year-old Christians, and they were people just like us who had struggled with questions and doubts and fears and unbelief. Every one of them abandoned Jesus at the Cross, and only John at some point turned around and came back and stood at the Cross with the women who had not abandoned Jesus, yet, they seem to have with great simplicity moved in expressing the fullness of Christ. There doesn’t seem to be in the stages of breakthroughs that they went through to finally manifest the greater works; instead, they just started walking in them the moment they were filled with the Holy Spirit. What was their secret? Why do all of us in this generation seem to have to move from one stage of breakthrough to the next, into the next, and so on. Also, why does it seem that when we read about many men and women of God in past generations who moved in the miraculous ministry of Jesus, that they had a peak season of manifesting signs and wonders and then it would fade never to quite be the same again? I’ve come to believe at this time in my life that the answer is quite simple because I believe the key to everything in the Christian life is about becoming more simple and childlike.
I believe that the apostles, and the early believers in the book of Acts seamlessly manifested the greater works because they understood clearly what Jesus had spoken about and promised concerning the coming of the Holy Spirit, who would make real in them the reality of being in union with Him, therefore they understood that at Pentecost they were now living in the breakthrough of Jesus. They believed that in the new birth every Christian is birthed into the fullness of Jesus, and therefore there was nothing else to breakthrough into. Ask yourself a question; would you like to have your breakthrough or the breakthrough that any other Christian in Church history has walked in, or would you like to live in the breakthrough Jesus lived in. Well, I’ve got good news for you; the very moment you become a Christian you abide in the breakthrough of Jesus, and all you have to do is to go forth in childlike trust and take a swing in Jesus name at everything that has the enemy’s tag on it.
Look at these two verses again from Romans chapter 6:10–11, and noticed particularly the last part of verse 11. “For the death that He died, He died to sin once; but the life that He lives (right now in this moment) He lives to God.
Even so, consider yourself dead to sin, but alive to God (right now in this moment) in Christ Jesus.”
You are in Christ Jesus right now in this moment, therefore, in this moment right now you share the life that he lives to God right now in this moment. Think about that. You are abiding in His anointing, His power, His compassion, His holiness, etc. etc. Now you can understand better what Colossians 3 means when it says “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” This is the sheer simplicity of it all, that instead of us striving to get to the “there” where the anointing is, you have been abiding in the “there” from the moment you received Jesus, because from that moment you have been in Him, and He has been in you and HE IS THE “THERE.”