God is awesome—He knows exactly what we need. He also knows when to give it to us. It isn’t always in our timing, is it? For years, I prayed that God would unveil the twelve fundamental pillars of the kingdom the Bible teaches us. Understanding the twelve pillars will cause growth, thus taking us into the higher places in God. I repeatedly asked Him for an understanding in as much as if a Christian possessed them; they could go as deep in God as they wanted to go and do for Him all they were created to do.

While I was in the San Francisco area, we just finished our Gathering and Pastor Grace, as she always does, asked me to minister on a Sunday morning. It is interesting because, by the time I get up to the pulpit to preach Sunday morning, there is not much time left to minister. Yet, the Lord spoke to me in a vision that morning and said: I am now going to give you the twelve pillars of the Kingdom, and I want you to teach them here. I thought; “how would I do this? It would take weeks to teach on the twelve pillars of the Kingdom and here I am going to try and do it in forty-five minutes?” That seemed amusing at the moment; the Lord has a sense of humor, right!

He began giving me visions, rapidly, one after the other. They came so quickly I knew I could not write fast enough to record the details of each vision fully at that moment. So, I strove to record the key points. The 12 Pillars of the Kingdom; truth, justice, righteousness, mercy, love, faith, holiness, humility, fear of the Lord, goodness, obedience, and faithfulness. Now, they’re not necessarily in this order of importance; I don’t know how you could say one is more important than the other. We need them all to have a well-rounded character. He wants to raise us up into such a place in intimacy with Him that He reflects His Son through us. That is His goal and desire.

The giving of the Word is for our growth. I have never met someone who could hear something only once and become fully developed by it, so this is something you need to write down and go back to it again and again until you can make it yours.

Years ago, long after the Lord began appearing to me and talking to me about what it is like to walk in union with Him, I had experienced many wonderful and wondrous things in Him. One of the most outstanding was His love and how a believer is to walk in the element of love. I was listening to a popular Baptist broadcast; this program goes across the world. He minister had a strong theological background which I really appreciated. One day he did a program on the love chapter. He said right in the middle of his programs, “If you think God expects you as a Christian to walk in the same kind of love Jesus walked in; I want to relieve you of that burden because He does not expect that from you in this life. In fact, for you to think that you could ever come to that place is a deception.” I thought: what is it all about then?

Paul said it was about entering into love divine. In fact, he let us know if we don’t enter there, we are nothing better than "gonging symbols," our life a little more than waste. So, if it’s not something we’re called to walk in, then why did he make such a big issue of it? More importantly, however; love is freedom. You do not know the liberty of the faith until you have mastered divine love. Love is freedom; the quest for it is not a bondage which was the implication in his television broadcast.

Love is freedom. When you have learned to walk in divine love, you tower over the difficulties and the problems. That is the place above the storm, the refuge under His wing; it is the highest and the best place to walk. I can promise you what I tell you is true; anything less and you are under a cloud. When you walk where He walked, you walk above the cloud. Do not ever let anyone convince you that it is not worth the journey—because it is.

Divine love means you learn to love those who hate you. That means all of your enemies. You not only get to love, but you also get to do good for them. You get to show love when you don’t feel like it and give of yourself when you do not have the energy to do so. You get to love your neighbor as yourself, and you love the Lord your God with all you heart, mind, soul, and strength. As you walk through the journey of love, you will be amazed as to what you have to relinquish. On the surface, it sounds like love would be an easy place to go, but there is a lot of dying when we learn the way Jesus loves, but it is the only place of freedom.

So, if we’re talking about the fear of the Lord then why am I going on and on about love? Because, just as critical as love is, so is the fear of the Lord. One cannot walk in liberty from the fear of man until you walk in the fear of the Lord. You cannot walk in the liberty of the fear of circumstances until you walk in the fear of the Lord. You cannot walk in the liberty of the passions of your soul until you walk in the fear of the Lord. Satan will always ultimately put you under his thumb any way he can get you there, until, you walk in the fear of the Lord. The more you walk in the fear of the Lord, the freer you become. It is a place of freedom, highly to be desired by a Christian who wants to go on in God.

The days are dark and they are getting darker—I will never tell you anything different. There are a people-group who want to rule the world of which you are a part. Therefore, they want to rule you. Days are going to keep getting darker, but your goal today is to rise against the coming storm so that no matter how dark it gets, you walk in the tower of the strength of the Lord and it starts right here with the fear of the Lord.

to be continued next to

In His Amazing Love,
Nita Johnson

Taken from our 7-10-2010 Service