Transcript:

Hello, this is Jean. And we are talking today about do we have a spirit world? For many of us, that question is already answered because we’ve experienced the spirit world and we know by our own experiences that it’s very much real. But others, like myself before I met Jesus, had this idea that there was heaven and hell. They were both way out there, somewhere beyond the cosmos. And one day I would go to one or the other, and that was all that I knew.

Is there a spirit world? All that changed the night I met Jesus. I had been seeking him and asking all the hard questions. Jesus, are you for real? Do you really want to talk with me today? Do you really? Are you really who you say you are? And then that night Jesus answered my questions by walking through the wall in the room I was in and standing in front of me, a big smile on his face and his arms reaching out toward me. Terrified me. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I did not want to go near him. I did not want him to come near me. I was afraid. But I did surrender to him. And when I surrendered to him, he reached out his hand toward me. He didn’t come any closer. He knew I was afraid and didn’t want him to, but when he reached his hand toward me, I felt a lightning bolt come from the top of my head out my feet. I opened my mouth to say something or to scream, and I began to speak in a language I could not understand.

Later that evening, after Jesus had left, I was speaking in that language, trying to understand what had happened, when two demons in the physical came into the room and started coming toward me. I was terrified. I really thought I was going to die. I knew Holy Spirit was inside me from that earlier moment with Jesus. And Holy Spirit simply said go and when he said go, those two demons fled in a big swish of motion. And that night, there was no question at all that there was a spirit world and it wasn’t out there past the cosmos. It was right here in this room with me. It was all very real. And I recognized that I was living simultaneously in two worlds, a spirit realm and a physical realm.

David was aware of that, too. And you can read through the Psalms about David’s experiences with the spirit world. Take, for example, Psalm 18. Just looking a little at verse 4, the cords of death entangled me the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The chords of the grave coiled around me. The snares of death confronted me. In my distress, I called to the Lord. I cried to my God. Form His temple, he heard my voice. My cry came before him, into his ears, and then David describes how God came, and then he shot his arrows and scattered the enemies. Great bolts of lightning and rooted them. The valleys of the sea were exposed. The foundations of the Earth laid bare at your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of breath from your nostrils.

David was very much aware that there was a spirit world and described it in vivid detail many times through the Psalms.

Let’s look at the New Testament and see what Jesus has to say about the spirit world. We can look at the story of the Samaritan woman. Jesus asked for a drink. And then the woman and he entered into a conversation. And he said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

The woman asked Jesus for this living water. And then she asked another question. She said, “I see that you’re a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain. But you Jews say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem. Where do we worship?”

“Believe me, woman,” Jesus replied. “A time is coming when you will worship the father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you don’t know. We worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews, but the time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking, such as those to worship him. God is spirit and his worshippers must worship him in spirit and truth.

I have read that verse many times and it never occurred to me how I read it recently that the woman asked for the location to worship God, wanting to receive living water. And Jesus responded with the location when he said Father is spirit and those who seek him must worship him in spirit and truth.

So when we come to worship him, we don’t worship on the mountain or in Jerusalem, but we worship in the spirit, in the spirit realm, and in the spirit realm is where we will find this living water.