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I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. – Ephesians 1:18-23
Many may have heard of the adage that “attitude determines altitude”. God’s call for us, as His Kingdom stewards, is to heaven’s altitude. But reaching that requires a completely counterintuitive attitude. That is, reaching heaven’s altitude requires an attitude that heads to the grave.
Ephesians 1 says that God has called us to operate in power that manifests heaven’s altitude. That is the power of resurrecting the dead, the authority we have over death. More often than not, God prepares us to experience and steward such power by taking us to the fish’s belly, through the path of the grave. For us to be resurrected, we must first experience death.
When God puts us into the fish’s belly, He seeks from us an attitude transformation. The fish is our opportunity to work through our heart’s fear and resentment – coming to terms with dying to ourselves in the confidence that we will be resurrected. When we know that the power of resurrection awaits at the end, how will that shape our attitudes towards confronting scarcity, failure, injustice, broken promises, missed expectations, financial distress, betrayal, personal offenses, and attacks on our reputation? God expects us, as He had with Jonah, to take to the grave those manifestations of fear and resentment. Let us not fight against death by trying to mitigate our fears through control or to purge our resentments through revenge. Let us confront our fears and resentments by walking them to the grave in the expectations of God’s resurrection power, in the assurance that death will shape us into vessels vested with greater capacity to contain His capacity.
As the world’s value system promotes the attitude of dominance and control to gain altitude in recognition and respect, God is raising up a generation of market place soldiers who can gain the altitude of heaven through the attitude of the grave. Our most powerful testimonies will come from walking in the expectation of the resurrection and leveraging the power of death as a tool, as a means to Kingdom authority.
God expects us to experience resurrection power. Let’s make ourselves available and walk to heaven through the grave!
