Every few years a teaching comes around that promises to get you closer to God than ordinary believers get. There is a technique. There are levels. With enough practice and the right posture of soul you can rise past the crowd into the throne room, see what the prophets saw, and come back down with something the rest of the church does not have.
It always sounds fresh. It is the oldest counterfeit there is.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
John 15:4, NKJV
The genuine article
Start with where Paul says you already are. Ephesians 2:6 says God “raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Past tense. Done. You are not trying to get to the heavenly places. You were seated there when Christ was, because you are in Him.
Colossians 3:1-3 says the same thing from the other side. You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Set your mind on things above, not because you have to climb there but because that is where your life already is.
| Term | Original | Strong’s | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| meno | μένω | G3306 | to remain, to stay, to dwell, to continue in |
| sunkathizo | συγκαθίζω | G4776 | to cause to sit together with, to seat alongside |
| anabaino | ἀναβαίνω | G305 | to go up, to ascend, to climb |
Then the word Jesus chose in John 15. Meno. Abide. Remain. Stay where you are. It is the least dramatic verb He could have picked. A branch does not do anything to be in the vine. It is in the vine. Its whole job is to not leave. Everything else, the sap, the leaves, the fruit, comes from the vine through the branch because the branch stayed put.
Jesus uses meno eleven times in that one passage. He is not describing a technique. He is describing a relationship where the work has already been done by the vine and the branch’s part is to remain and receive.
The counterfeit
The ascending counterfeit takes what God has given as a gift and turns it into a ladder. Anabaino. Go up. It says the throne room is real, which it is, and then it says you can get there by method, which you cannot.
It usually borrows Paul’s third heaven from 2 Corinthians 12. But read that chapter. Paul is so reluctant to talk about it that he tells it in the third person, a man in Christ fourteen years ago. He says he does not know whether he was in the body or out of it. He says he heard things it is not lawful for a man to utter. And then he says the whole experience was answered with a thorn in the flesh, given so that he would not be exalted above measure. Paul did not teach anyone to ascend. He was taken, once, told to keep quiet about most of it, and given a wound to keep him humble.
The pattern behind the counterfeit is older than Paul. It is Babel. Let us build a tower whose top is in the heavens. It is every mystery religion that promised initiates a way up through the levels. It is the serpent’s first pitch, you will be like God. The direction is always up, the means is always technique, and the reward is always being above the ordinary. Scripture’s direction is the opposite. God came down. The Word became flesh. And He seated you, so that you would never have to climb.
Babel built up. Bethlehem came down. Every counterfeit in this family still has the tower’s blueprint in its pocket.
How to tell them apart in the hand
Ask which way it points. Genuine teaching about the heavenly places says you are already there in Christ and tells you to live like it. The counterfeit says you can get there and tells you how.
Ask whether it makes tiers. Abiding is for every branch. The counterfeit always produces an inner circle of people who have gone higher, and an outer circle who have not, and the inner circle usually has something to sell. Paul’s answer to that was that the least gifted member of the body is necessary and the most gifted is nothing without love.
Ask what it does with Christ. Abiding puts Him at the center. He is the vine. Nothing happens apart from Him. The counterfeit keeps His name but moves the center to the experience, and the experience becomes the thing people chase.
The heart of it
Some of you have tried to climb. You have gone to the conferences, done the practices, waited for the experience the speaker described, and either it did not come or it came and left you hungrier. That hunger is not a sign you failed at the technique. It is a sign the technique cannot feed you.
Go back to the vine. You are already in Him. You were seated with Him before you knew to ask. The whole heavenly realm is open to you not because you found a way up but because He came down and took you back with Him. Stay. Read His word, talk to Him, obey what He says, and let the sap run. The fruit will come. It always does, to the branch that abides.
Going deeper
Read Ephesians 2:1-10 and count the past-tense verbs describing what God has already done. Then read John 15:1-11 and mark every occurrence of abide. Finally read 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 and notice Paul’s reluctance, his silence, and the thorn.
An exercise. For one week, replace every prayer that reaches up with a prayer that settles in. Instead of asking to get closer, thank Him that you are in Him. See what it does to your rest.
Discussion questions
- Why is a teaching that promises to take you higher so attractive, and what does that attraction reveal?
- What is the difference between setting your mind on things above and trying to ascend to them?
- What does a branch actually do to bear fruit?
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