The Ascended Life

This Sunday at church we began worshipping. About midway through the first song, our worship leader exhorted us to not just wait for the feelings to come in our worship, but to speak to our soul and tell our emotions to line up with God's truth. I then heard the phrase in my spirit, "high praise". There was an old song we used to sing at our house church back in Indiana and the lyrics went something like this, "let high praise come forth among us now, let a sword be in our hand..." I kept singing and worshipping, but the phrase "high praise" kept resounding in my spirit. I even wondered to myself, 'what really is high praise?" Finally, I looked it up to see if there was an actual Scripture with the words "high praise" in it and I was led to Psalm 149:6 "Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand." When I looked it up in the Passion Translation it said this, "His godly lovers triumph in the glory of God, and their joyful praises will rise even while others sleep. God's high and holy praises are their weapons of war. These warring weapons will bring vengeance on the nations and every resistant power- to bind kings with chains and rulers with iron shackles. Praise-filled warriors will enforce the judgment decreed against their enemies. This is the honor he gives to all his godly lovers. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!"

As I continued to worship, God presented me with an image of a person rising higher and higher. As the person ascended higher into the heavenly realm, certain things that were attaching themselves to the person could no longer stay. It was like the higher he/she rose in the atmosphere, things that would normally survive at a lower level were unable to survive at these higher heights. I saw parasitic forces that were trying to attach themselves to this person completely fall off. These parasitic forces were trying to drain God's people of good energy and were trying to leech off of them to steal joy and the radiant light that God's people are to be filled with.

I got thinking about the verse in Eph. 2:6 which says, "He raised us up with Christ the exalted One, and we ascended with him into the glorious perfection and authority of the heavenly realm, for we are now co-seated as one with Christ!" (TPT). I had a sense that God was showing me what high praise looks like. We are to come boldly before his throne of grace, this is above the first and second heaven distractions and warfare that seek to derail, exhaust, and wear us out. God was inviting us to worship and praise Him from the ascended place that He has gone before us in. The verse from Ephesian 4: 7-8 also came to me as I was mulling this over. It says, "And he has generously given each one of us supernatural grace, according to the size of the gift of Christ. "This is why he says:

"He ascends into the heavenly heights

taking his many captured ones with him,

and gifts were given to men."

Further in verse 10 it states, " The same one who descended is also the one who ascended above the heights of heaven, in order to begin the restoration and fulfillment of all things." When we ascend with Christ, we are no longer going to drift to sleep. As we ascend with Him, He will pull us up into our divine purpose and assignment which includes setting the captives free, opening blind eyes, and releasing healing to the sick and oppressed. In warfare, you always want to take the high ground, you can see the enemy's movements and have a better defensive position. When we battle from a position of high praise from the heavenly realms, we enforce the victory over our enemies that is already ours in Christ.