If you’re a parent of more than one child, it is likely that one of the great enigmas in your life is how two children who came from the same two parents can be born so different in nature. Then, we need to consider how we all have the same heavenly Father, yet every human being is so different! This has implications that can either help us or hinder us in understanding our world. How?

       First, if our God loves uniqueness and diversity so much that He sows creativity into each of us like this, why is the church, which is supposed to be His dwelling place and His family, so boringly uniform? Why does the devotion to unity in it come with so much pressure to conform? Why is it not filled with the encouragement to be creative like our heavenly Father?

       There are great teachings and principles revealed in Scripture to help guide our lives, but there are also themes that are too big and expansive to be reduced to principles. Love is one such theme. We have many descriptions of love in Scripture, but none of them are adequate without the others. Even if all of them are put together, they are not meant to be conclusive but to point us ever higher to knowing God, who is love.

       When Søren Kierkegaard was asked to define Christianity, he refused, replying that if he gave a single definition of Christianity, people would try to conform to his definition rather than seeking to know Christ. Some truths are too big to be reduced to principles or definitions. These I call “themes,” which is an inadequate term to fully describe them, but it at least points to an ongoing, ever-expanding knowledge that must become our lives to be known at all.

       A theme of the book of Revelation is the contrast and conflict between the church that God is building and the one that man is building. One is called “the Great Harlot” because of how she prostitutes herself to the ways of this world. That is man’s church, and it is in contrast to the true bride, which is “a pure, chaste virgin.” How?

       One of the great miracles of redemption is how we can be so corrupt and sinful, even be a prostitute, be born again, and become a “pure, chaste virgin” again. That’s how we become a part of the true bride, not by joining an institution that man has built.

       To fully understand this world, we must understand how it is influenced by the spiritual for both good and bad. We must understand that the physical laws of the universe can be very different from spiritual laws and that the spiritual laws trump the physical laws—and can even nullify them. Is that not how the Lord preached the kingdom? He demonstrated the kingdom of God by showing how the authority of heaven could change any condition on earth. For example, there are no disabilities in heaven, so He would demonstrate the authority of heaven to change this condition on earth. He demonstrated heaven’s authority over every condition on earth, even death.

       It seems that in typical church services, we are seeking to bring God down to us, to come into our realm, our service, and touch us where we are. His plan is to bring us up to His realm and for us to even be seated with Him in the heavenly places on His throne. What would our services be like if that was our goal?

       The prayer Jesus gave to us in Matthew 6 begins with, “Our Father, Who is in heaven.” First, He is our Father, so this is a family thing. His goal is not to build a good organization but a great family. Then, it states where His address is—where He dwells—in heaven! So, He is not wanting to come down to inhabit what we have built, but He wants to draw us up so that we abide in Him where He is—in heaven. What He is building for His dwelling place is in heaven, not on the earth. However, when it is finished, it will come down to the earth, bringing heaven with it.

       In 1 Corinthians 14:1, we are exhorted, “Pursue love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts.” In English translations, the word “gifts” is italicized because it is not in the original manuscripts. This would more accurately read, “Pursue love, yet earnestly desire the spiritual.” Paul was not just talking about spiritual gifts here but the spiritual realm, or the heavenly realm where the Lord is reigning now. In the prayer Jesus gave us, we pray for His kingdom to come and His will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

       Heaven is God’s home, and if we abide in Him, we will also abide in the heavenly realm. Jesus said we cannot see His kingdom until we are born again, but we can be born again and not see it—and so not grow in our spiritual nature. Much of what is considered Christianity now reduces our life to just adding Christian influence to change our earthly nature, a nature which is supposed to be dead.

       If we are truly growing up into Christ, His home will become our home, and we will be more at home in heaven than we are here on earth. Our goal should not be to bring Him down but to lift up our eyes to see Him where He sits and join Him there.

 

© 2026 Rick Joyner. All Rights Reserved.