Dear friends,
The Washington, DC was a powerful time of intercession for our nation. Our deepest appreciation is extended to those of you who joined us as we prayed for our nation! We look forward to seeing the fruit of our time together shortly. We will get a report out to you as soon as Nita has a chance to rest.
Our corporate intercessions will resume this Sunday, March 23, 2014! Please join us as we continue to intercede on behalf of the nations.
Blessings in Him,
Ricci
Click here if you would like to contribute to General fund, the work of the GOEs or Joel's Army
Click here if you would like to contribute to our Cedarwood Blessings
Following is "Part B" in our next teaching, "Choose to Trust: Trials and Truth" by Nita Johnson. Last time Nita shared with us the call, the trials, the victories and the necessity of becoming fully dependent upon the Lord through it all. It is not our flesh that pulls us through, it is Lord. I pray "Part B" further encourages and strengthens you for the days ahead.
Blessings in Him,
Ricci
Choose To Trust: Trials and Truth Part B
By Nita Johnson
Seattle
He knows how to overcome the flesh and the sinful nature in you. He knows how to overcome the devil, and He knows how to overcome the world. But you have to do it. You have to set your will to stay in the cycle of victory. That is your job. You have to look for the wisdom of the victory in His Word. He will speak to you. He will guide, lead, and help you. He will show you what you need to know because no one wants you to gain the victory more than Jesus. You do not want it more than He does. He wants you to have the victory over your self-life more than you could ever want it. Remember that.
2 Cor. 3:6 Amp. [It is He] Who has qualified us [making us to be fit and worthy and sufficient] as ministers and dispensers of a new covenant [of salvation through Christ], not [ministers] of the letter (of legally written code) but of the Spirit; for the code [of the Law] kills, but the [Holy] Spirit makes alive.
You were created as a spiritual being. You did not just become a spiritual being when you accepted Christ. The fact that you are a spiritual being is why, deep inside, you have been searching for a long time for this spiritual connection. Because you are a spiritual being, you must have a connection to a spiritual kingdom. Either you are connected to the satanic kingdom, or you are connected to God's Kingdom. I really do not know many people who are really true atheists, but even if you have been able to convince yourself that you are one, deep inside, you want to experience a connection with the realm of spirit. In fact, you are actually connected with the kingdom of this world. When God begins to lead you out, and He connects you to Himself, you have the higher connection that your soul needs. Then you have found what your soul has been looking for from the day that you were a little child. You have an innate need to be connected because you are a person of the spirit.
When you become connected to the realm of the Kingdom of heaven, it begins to breathe life into your soul. It is a life that is beyond anything you have ever experienced before because it is not of this world; it is of the Kingdom of God. You are connected with the life-giving Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to bring you into perpetual life. Now, those words may mean much or little to you depending on how long you have been saved. But you cannot imagine what it means to have the life of God breathed into your soul from the Spirit's perspective. The reason you cannot imagine it is because if the light of that reality were breathed into you upon your salvation, your soul could not contain it. It would explode.
It is similar to a newborn infant's experience of light. Have you ever seen a newborn baby opening its eyes for the first time? The first time it opens its eyes and it sees light, it closes them right away because the light is too bright. They say that a baby can see images, but it cannot see clearly when it is first born. The eyes have to develop the capacity to discern the images that are before it. This is like the life of the Spirit. Our spiritual eyes have to be developed. Our spirit being has to be developed, not only in knowledge, understanding, wisdom, and such as that, but it has to be developed to be able to stand before the Presence of God, let alone to contain the Presence of God within. When you are freshly born again, you are like the little baby that God has to develop and nurture. Then you grow to be one year old in the Spirit, two years old, ten years old, and so on until maturity, if you so desire. Most people never get beyond two or three years of age in the Spirit before they get to heaven because they never put the effort in to really come to know God. For that to occur, He must dispense the grace for this work to be done.
2 Cor 3:7-8 Amp. Now if the dispensation of death engraved in letters on stone [the ministration of the Law], was inaugurated with such glory and splendor that the Israelites were not able to look steadily at the face of Moses because of its brilliance, [a glory] that was to fade and pass away, Why should not the dispensation of the Spirit [this spiritual ministry whose task it is to cause men to obtain and be governed by the Holy Spirit] be attended with much greater and more splendid glory?
Consider what happened at the time the law was given. Moses was so filled with the glory of God that the Jewish people around the bottom of the mountain could not bear to look at his face. The glory flashed like lightning from his face. The top of the mountain was surrounded by angels that looked like a wall of fire. A trumpet blew that seemingly called the entire creation to attention. The Word of God spoke from the top of the mountain down to the people at the bottom of the mountain. They were not just bland words. Every word was living, released with power. His words were full of revelation, which means that they were full of light and illumination. As God spoke, an entire race of people was being transformed in their inner man to see and understand God and His Kingdom. We still have not seen it, but these people saw it. Have you been taken to heaven and shown the Kingdom of God throughout? Not only did these people see it, but they were taken into it. Every word God spoke built up their inner man to be able to contain the revelation they were being given.
Now I want to tell you something that happens with revelation. Revelation will do something very good for you, or it could do something very bad for you. If you are given a magnanimous revelation from God, where your entire being is taken into the experience, it causes your spirit to come to a new level of life. It also causes your soul to be stimulated very deeply by this new level of life. If you abide by, meditate on, pray over, and chase God in respect to this stimulation, then you will find a certain level of transformation taking place in your soul as a result. If you do not, and you treat it like something that is unimportant, the very next thing your soul will do is desire more of the world. This happens because your soul has been excessively stimulated, and you have to do something with it; you cannot just sit on it. Your soul will become so active that you have to respond to it, either by moving deeper into the Spirit and running after God, or by moving into the lust of your flesh. The latter is what happened to Israel. They did not know to run after God, the Author of this stimulation.
What is the very next thing that Israel did? They got busy making themselves an idol. People will make all kinds of idols behind revelations, including letting the revelation become the idol rather than the Author of the revelation. What Israel did in that season is very normal; so we can quit condemning them. It is exactly what you will do if God visits you, and you do not do the right thing with the revelation.
What is His goal? He has inaugurated a dispensation of grace through which His intent is to let the world see the Kingdom of God. He desires to grant to the world a revelation of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the Author of salvation. That is why so often when people get saved, they want to go out and get everyone saved. Not many will retire to their room and say, “I think I'm going to become a mystic.” They want to go out and get people saved. I was terrible in that way. I wanted to get my whole real estate office saved. It got so bad that when I came in, they would leave. It seemed like the safest thing they could do.
Something was stimulated, and for me, the stimulation drove me to the Word. I was so hungry for the Word; I could not get enough of it. I spent hours a day in the Word. Then the Word began to create in me a stimulation of the desire to worship the Lord. I wanted more of Him, and I cried out continually, “I want more of You, Lord! I want to know You more! It just seems that there's something I don't have that I'm supposed to have.” The thing I did not have was the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Lord made sure I received that, and then I was really crazy for Him—just ballistic. I had to have even more of God. I had to be in Church all the time and I had to get everyone saved. I was seeing dreams and visions. I had no idea what that was. I was born again in the Charismatic era, and they did not know about prophets back then. So here I was experiencing the maturing of a prophet, and I did not understand what was happening to me, but that did not stop me a bit. I just kept running harder and faster, wanting to know more. I would get the Bible out, and I would read it and cry, “Please help me understand Your Word! Open Your Word to me.” Something had been stimulated. My spirit man was now in connection with Jesus and His Kingdom.
What is the purpose? When we were born again, there was in you and me an inauguration of glory. It was a glory that God wanted to use to lead you into the depths of understanding the ways and the nature of God. The goal is to bring you into a glory that is greater than what Moses experienced. What exactly did Moses experience? When your heart and your soul have been properly conditioned by the Lord, by chiseling away or burning away the chaff that is in your soul, He fills you with glory. Jesus talked about the baptism of fire, and the reason that this is desirable is because when that baptism happens, that fire comes in and begins to expose the dross that needs to be removed. The light of the fire and the heat of the burning expose the impurities, for the purpose of removing them. You may see things about yourself you never knew before. You did not know you did that or were like that. It is because the light is revealing the darkness in you. The fire is revealing what needs to be burned in the dross, and the purpose of the baptism of fire is to create an inner climate where the glory and light of God can reside. When the soul is completely refined, God will so fill your soul with light that if you could open your flesh and see what was in your soul, all you would see is a cavern of light. That is God's goal.
To be continued...
In Him,
Nita |
