“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:8-11.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
In order to live a heavenly life both now and forever, your thoughts have to become like My thoughts and your ways like My ways. In My presence is fullness of joy and the same should be true in your presence because joy is in the fruit of the Spirit and it is the anointing of your High Priest and He has made you a royal priesthood unto Me as well. Imitate Me as My dear children, but it is far beyond imitation, it is assimilation, you can be filled with all My fullness even now. In Christ, you have made partakers of My divine nature, the very core of who I AM.
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.” 2 Peter 1:2-4.
And that is today’s Life Lesson about Heaven as we continue to explore living days of Heaven even now, “Assimilation not Imitation.”
Assimilation, in anthropology and sociology, is the process whereby individuals or groups of differing ethnic heritage are absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. Assimilation does not denote “racial” or biological fusion, though such fusion may occur.
“Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation and You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth.” Revelation 5:9-10.
Assimilation generally means the process of taking in and fully understanding information or ideas. And in biology, assimilation means the absorption and digestion of food or nutrients by the body or any biological system.
So, to sum up, assimilation into the culture of Heaven, if you choose that as the dominant culture for your life, consists of being absorbed into the culture of Heaven by taking in and fully understanding My Word (the information and ideas of Heaven, which originate in Me as their source and are shared with you by My Spirit) and absorbing and digesting My Word, by which I mean reading, hearing, meditating upon and doing My Word. Jesus told you that man does not live by bread alone but every Word that proceeds from My mouth.
If you do not choose to align your thoughts and words with Mine, then your default choice is to be assimilated into the culture of Hell, that is, the realm of darkness, and that is not a culture of life as Mine is (righteousness, peace, love, and joy), but of death (sin, confusion and unrest, anxiety and stress, worry and fear, hate, bitterness, regret, and depression, grief, and sorrow). You choose, but I would advise you to choose the culture of life that you and your descendants may live, and live the abundant life of the BLESSING forever in the culture of Heaven.
In His parables about Kingdom living, Jesus tells you how you assimilate into the culture of Heaven and live a life of blessing upon the earth. He likens My Word to seed sown in your heart which you can reject and choke it out of your life or receive into your heart and cultivate it to harvest. But this process is not new with the parables of Jesus, you will find it all through My Word, it was the instruction I gave the Israelites out of Egypt, the instruction I again affirmed with Joshua, and later in the psalms and prophets. The only way you are going to immerse yourself in Kingdom culture is immersion in the language of Heaven, which is entirely based upon My Words. All things were created by My Word, respond to My Word, are sustained by My Word, and are in existence because of My Word.
Isaiah talked of Heaven in various prophetic utterances but he also addressed the question of how to live days of Heaven on the earth. He quoted Me, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David.” Isaiah 55:2-3.
Your assimilation to the culture of Heaven begins when you realize the things of the world cannot satisfy you, that you are spending your time and energy in toilsome labor to obtain things that are not fulfilling. Instead, listen to My Words if you want to be satisfied with what is good and delight yourself in abundance and come into Covenant with Me. Covenant will give you Kingdom rights.
Then I begin to tell you how to enter into that Covenant, that continuum of love that brings the flow of Heaven into your heart. “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” counseled Jesus. “Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” Isaiah 55:6-7.
So to transfer to My Kingdom from the kingdom of death and darkness, you must renew your mind, that is, forsake the ways and thoughts you had before you were born again from above.
“So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, 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; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:17-24.
And then I tell you how to renew your mind so your thoughts and ways match Mine and you enter the flow of Heaven on earth: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My Word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:8-11.
My thoughts and ways are found in My Word. And how do you access that Word? I send down the living water of the outpouring of My Spirit to regenerate and soften your hard stony hearts and then I furnish you with the seed and bread of My Word to grow and to eat, and that Word contains the power of the promise it is sent to perform. And if you receive and grow that Word, it will manifest in the harvest of what it promises in that seed and return one hundred fold, or sixty fold, or thirty fold depending upon the degree to which the hearer assimilates it.
“Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the Word implanted, which is able to save your souls.” James 1:21.
My thoughts are high thoughts, thoughts from above. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth.” James 1:17-18. And when I raised Christ from the dead, I raised you up with Him and seated you with Him in heavenly places. Ephesians 2:6. “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” Colossians 3:1-2.
The first parable Jesus taught is again about the seed of My Word trying to plant in your heart. Of the four kinds of hearts He mentions, only one assimilates into the culture of the Kingdom. The others remain in the culture of the realm of darkness, lost among the adversities, cares, lusts, and indifference of the worldly minded. There is stony ground with no soil that receives no seed, rocky ground with shallow soil that starts to grow the seed and then when the sun scorches it, it withers and dies for the roots are not deep, soil filled with thorns that choke off the seed and stop its growth, and finally there is good soil where the seed grows all the way to harvest. In that parable the devil is the one that is controlling what goes on in the hearts of the first three, but My Word is in charge of the good and generous heart that refuses to let go of My Word until the promise contained in it manifests in the fourth scenario. Matthew 13:1-23.
Jesus also likened the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the winged of the heavens come and encamp in its branches. Matthew 13:31-32, Mark 4:30-34; Luke 13:18-19. “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.” Psalm 34:7.
And Jesus likens the Kingdom of Heaven to seed planted and growing to harvest without the sower ever knowing how it takes place but enjoying the harvest. Mark 4:26-29. “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” If you just keep putting My Word in your heart, reading it, hearing it, declaring it, doing it, and not turning aside to any other words that are contrary to Mine, Joshua 1:8, suddenly, you know not how, you begin thinking the thoughts that I think and walking in the ways that I walk and reaping the harvest of Heaven here on earth.
I love you. I have made you who are citizens of My Kingdom by birth, that is, you who are born again by My Word, My ambassadors on earth. And the interesting thing about ambassadors, even representing nations here on earth, is that their preparation for their position is in learning the ways and diplomatic protocol of the nation they represent and not so much the country to which they are going. To be qualified as My ambassadors you must know My thoughts, My Word, and My ways in order to accurately represent Me. And even more, I have made you ambassadors of reconciliation. You are to show My love and mercy, you are to show them Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and He is My Word. Preach the Word and how He died for your sins and cleansed you in His Blood so that the Kingdom of Heaven is yours. Even now.