Many believers like to think that they are having ongoing conversations with God, but what they don’t realize is that more often than not, it is the idea of God, rather than God Himself that features in these conversations. I want to talk to you about this crucial distinction and about what God provided for us to have a true relationship with Him as He invites us to reason with Him in order to gain and retain His perspective.

It’s hard for most to admit that it’s the idea of God, rather than God Himself that features in the self-talk that dominates their faith and prayer life because desire is the only thing that is driving them. Let me just say that having a sincere desire to know God and commune with Him is important as it speaks of the awakening of faith within our hearts in response to the call of God’s grace. Many are experiencing that awakening today.

But just as waking up in the morning is only the beginning of the day, and does not in itself accomplish the tasks needed to feed, cleanse, clothe yourself, and take your part in the world, so too with faith; God assigned and sanctified specific activities for us to take part in His kingdom in order for a true relationship with Him to take place.

If we stayed in bed all day and fantasized about taking a shower, eating, or showing up for work, and all the other needful tasks of the day, we would not get very far at all in life, but simply grow weaker and poorer. We would fail to benefit from all the interactions that are part of the real world.

This is a great analogy to help us to understand that forming a relationship with God in the imagination based on the idea that He would feed us, nurture our faith, provide for our communication with Him, and give substance to our faith would never have any real consequence. We would not benefit from all that God has for us because we are not part of the interactions that take place in the real-world kingdom God has welcomed us to enter into as a part of His family.

The covenant we enter into upon conversion to Christ is the environment God sanctified for actual contact with Him. When Jesus’ covenant is not activated, we don’t have access to the things God has given us in Christ that makes possible a living relationship with Him.

So, what does this say about the desire that a person has to know God? Desire is good if it is joined to the knowledge that activates Jesus’ covenant. So then, what is missing is instruction in the right knowledge.

But before we go any further into the right knowledge God wants you to have, I want to look at two major signs that your relationship with God is being built on desire alone and has not been activated.

SIGN #1: You believe the promise that you can build a deeper, more personal relationship with God if you learn how to recognize God in your life.

What’s wrong here is that although everyone desires to see God involved with their life, some vital steps are skipped and wrong connections are made. God is not teaching you to recognize Him in your life, but rather to first recognize Jesus in His covenant and how His work in you takes place inwardly.

You learn to recognize the 9 operations of God in His grace as you use His gifts; you learn the connections God makes to your growth cycles as you put off the old man and the works of the flesh to walk in the newness of the life of Christ; you learn to measure God’s active involvement to Jesus’ covenant to live by the power of the anointing.

Romans 6:4
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

SIGN #2: You believe the promise that even though sin wedged its way between us and God, God set a nameless plan in motion to restore your relationship with Him.

The problem here is that although everyone desires to have a clear picture of God’s plan, most of the time the perceived plan is not connected to Jesus’ covenant terms. The terms of the new covenant set God’s pre-designed connections in motion to make our faith actionable and effectual. The Holy Spirit only works with the knowledge of God’s covenant plan in Jesus, so we also are blessed with this same knowledge that is set apart from the way the imagination works out a relationship with God outside God’s terms.

Our faith, when it operates apart from God, is met with so many wrong connections that the much-desired relationship with Him does not have a chance to begin. Apostle James instructed the church that faith that is set outside the works of the covenant is not connected to the life of Christ and therefore is dead.

James 2:26
For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Where God’s covenant knowledge is lacking, you will find that your imagination has a way of stepping forward to play out your desires. But our imagination is not God’s power. We all experience the shortcomings of our imagination every day — like the imagined reasons why someone didn’t respond to a text message, or the imagined outcome of a test, or job interview, or budding relationship. All that labor in the mind can be riveting, stirring the emotions and knotting the stomach, and yet has no bearing on reality in the end.

A dangerous misconception: So, when lacking the proper knowledge for faith, most are inclined to lean on their imagination to fill this gap too, and to invent a relationship with God, hoping God will see their heart’s desire and honor their sincerity.

This is a very dangerous misperception which God has addressed from the start. Genesis 8:21b “…for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” God placed a curse (restriction) upon this power, prohibiting us from approaching Him through the power of our imagination.

Many Christians have been taught to use their imagination as a way of reasoning with God, but God is not truly present as the mind projects for outcomes based on what’s stirring the heart at the moment.

God cursed the imagination because Satan entered into that door to tempt Eve. Satan’s temptation to our first parents was to imagine a positive outcome based on God’s promise for them. The devil left out the part about God’s due process and plan and so God’s commandment that Adam and Eve not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not seem important at the moment (Gen. 2:17; Gen. 3:1-7).

Even though God cursed the imagination to set a division there so that we would not use it for faith, there aren’t any safeguards against the imagination when the knowledge of God’s covenant plan has not been activated.

It is so liberating to know that God does not use or need our imagination to build a relationship with Him. But that liberty is not gained or walked in until a working knowledge of Jesus’ covenant is gained.

Even so, there’s a lot of teaching that goes into how a Christian should wine and dine God to entice Him to work toward their goals to have Him get involved with their lives rather than accepting what God has provided for them to get involved with Jesus’ covenant.

One of those manipulations has to do with scripture. When you allow your imagination to frame your relationship with God, scripture is called into action to serve your imagination. But when you allow Jesus’ covenant truth to frame your relationship with God, then the anointing is called into action and we become servants of His grace.

What God knows about the imagination is important for us to take on. When Satan joined the imagination of Adam and Eve to his promise, he joined the imagination to the kingdom of the flesh he was creating to rival God. He was teaching our first parents how to live independent of God while claiming God’s word of promise. Apostle Paul’s instruction to the church makes this distinction clear.

Romans 8:5
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.

When our imagination is allowed to be joined to our faith it means we’re trying to relate to God (build a relationship with Him) based on the things of the flesh; those things that make up our existence in this world. This makes faith reflective of man and his fallen nature rather than God’s holiness.

The things of the flesh that Apostle Paul pointed to is where we see believers try to serve God with their natural interests and talents – an area where the imagination thrives. The unique signature gifts God designed for each of us to walk out our lot in this temporal world is another way that Christians have been taught to use their imagination to reason with God, but God is not truly present in these conversations (self-talk) as the mind projects for signature outcomes.

As sincere as this intention may seem, the reality is that God’s covenant plan is again set aside in order to wine and dine Him to coax His involvement in our lives. Neglecting God’s covenant tools by which He works righteousness, peace, joy, and the fruit of the Spirit, an unfortunate choice is made to not enter into a real conversation with God.

The new covenant is God’s plan for our communication with Him as we advance and increase in His kingdom. God differentiates His kingdom from the kingdom of the flesh and uses the word “darkness” to define the pursuits of the flesh because it is void of His light. Let’s look at a section from the IDCCST Lesson Guide p. 97 (week 11 in the online course):

We might think darkness means “evil” or some kind of evil power, or a segment of society that we believe does a lot of harm. But God means for us to understand that darkness is the absence of the light of the knowledge of Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Where do we see knowledge that is absent of the light of Christ? We’ve already done a lot of work to separate our signature gifts from the gift of Jesus Christ, so we’ll use that as an example we can relate to. Our signature gifts are important to our lives in this world, so God does not call them darkness or evil for that reason, but they do not help us to see Christ, so God calls them darkness for that reason.

Seducing spirits do excite our imagination to believe that our signature gifts and moral code are the perfect pair to make the world a better place, and thus assure our happiness and our ability to please God. So, God calls that perspective (perception reverted to self) darkness for that reason. It is a darkened perspective.

What we learn is that if we resource our imagination to build a relationship with God, then God is not truly present as we reason (wine and dine God) with a perspective that is bent on self. Faith needs instruction in God’s knowledge through His elect stewardship for a believer to be schooled in His due order of covenant contact for us to reason with His grace.

God uses grace. This is God’s revelatory power by which He draws a response of faith from the heart of man. Ephesians 2:10, “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is a gift of God:” The power of God’s grace is what enables faith to reason with Him from His perspective. Jesus Christ is the substance of this power and He is the will of God for us and fulfills God’s purpose in us.

And just as Jesus was the steward of God’s wisdom as He was on the earth, instructing believers in the ways of God and accurately unfolding the scriptures according to His perspective, so did He empower His apostles to continue in that stewardship. Apostle Paul spoke in reference to his own calling that he received of God as a masterbuilder.

1 Corinthians 3:10
According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon.

1 Corinthians 4:1
Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.

God has in these last days again called and equipped living apostles to lay the foundation knowledge of Christ in the hearts of believers. They have been given the measure of grace as a master builder to lay the living stones of knowledge that make up the DNA of Christ in the hearts of believers. The true meaning of grace, faith, righteousness, justification, sanctification, holiness, peace, rest, charity, truth, regeneration and the renewing of the mind is unfolded as a sure foundation for effective, living, and fruitful faith.

God has instructed living sanctified apostles to reeducate believers on how to serve Him with what He has provided for faith in the environment of His new spiritual covenant. By following this instruction, we daily rest in the living experience as we meet with God on His terms, to truly fellowship with Him by accessing all things He has given us in Christ. By receiving the knowledge of His covenant and instruction in the function of Jesus’ spiritual priesthood, believers learn to reason with God.