Dear friends, 

Thank you for your faithfulness over this last week. It’s been an intensive time of corporate intercession and we value the time you committed to these critical issues. 

Whether you are have been an intercessor for a year or for twenty years, when you join calls like the ones we’ve had over the last week, the call to prayer draws you in so intensely that it can be nearly impossible to remain standing under the weight of it. For me personally, Thursday night was particularly heavy and I struggled when I hung up. I had to spend some time in worship because my heart remained so heavy. Time worshiping the Lord helped provide the faith necessary to press on when we came together again on Friday. However, by Sunday, we had done enough intercession that the tender hand of our Lord came in and I felt it as He lifted the burden off my heart that we, as intercessors, carried together for the last week. How faithful He is! With a topic this heavy, it would be easy to continue to carry the burden. We usually tackle this type of intercession in a Gathering when were we have worship, intercession and warfare to bring us through. When we return home, we know we’ve won the battle! It’s a little different when you are on a prayer call. Thank you for your willingness to embrace the call and thank you for pressing in until we had the victory. The Lord will surely reward you for your faithfulness!

Just a quick reminder, the Gathering may be three months away but we don’t have many seats left, so if you plan to come, you need to get yourself registered. I’ve spoken with the hotel, they were able to add additional rooms to our room block in an effort to accommodate our group, so don’t delay!

Finally, Mom and I, along with our entire team here at WFJM/JA/CW want to wish all of the Mothers, Grandmothers, and Aunts out there a “Happy Mother’s Day!” We bless each of you in the name of our Lord and Savior! 

Much love,

I love those words. What would the life of a Christian be if you could not hear His voice or be taught by the Holy Spirit? I think it would be the most miserable life a person could live. Do you want to hear Him and be taught by the Spirit of God? If so, then climb onto the potter's wheel, enter into His waiting room and let Him do whatever He must to prepare your ears to hear and your heart to be taught. Tell Him, “Lord, I'm tired of supposing that I know how You work. I'm tired of thinking You always have to do it my way. I'm tired of constantly misunderstanding You or thinking that You are misunderstanding me. I'm tired of this way. I want to learn truth.”

This is what I am feeling right now in my heart from the Holy Spirit that your will must be firmly nailed down with a golden peg into the soil of God's will. Your heart must be nailed right into God's will because, if it is not you will not stay on the path for very long. You will get frustrated and walk away. But when your will becomes engaged and you nail it to the will of God, you will stay. 

Ephesians 4:20,21 Amp. But you did not so learn Christ! Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him].

Those are really powerful words from Paul. In that one simple sentence, he absolutely separates everything about Christ from everything about the world. Someone tells you something, declaring, “This is the truth!” And yet, you just saw the opposite happen ten minutes ago. You say to them, “Really? This is the truth, huh?” They say, “Yes. I'm telling you the truth, that's what I did.” Not knowing what else to do, you say, “I see.” All truth is in Christ. He will not and cannot lie to you. He will bring you out of what the world calls truth into what the Father calls truth. The two are different. We see just a little bit in His Word, yet we could spend a hundred years in the Bible and never see all that is hidden in it. It is true. 

I believe with all my heart, just by the things God has shown me about the chambers of a man's heart, that He could spend a hundred years looking into your heart and the chambers would never end. We have created so many. He has to come in and divest every chamber of the deception and plant the truth. If you are not a person of prayer, a person of the Word, and one who believes in obedience, He never will get those chambers transformed. 

For you to understand and recognize truth, you must love it. Every jewel and every precious stone of truth has an incredible price, but He will not let you buy it even with the highest price if you are not worthy of it. What? God would withhold truth? Yes. If your heart and your soul have not been prepared through your yearning, your act of cleansing, and your decisions to separate yourself from the things that oppose truth, then He will not let you have the truth. Your heart could not bear it, and your soul could not stand it anyway. That too is love. 

If you want truth, you must separate yourself from the lie and from the deception. When you have provoked your own will to separate yourself from the things of the world, the lusts, the loves of the world, and the ways of the world, then God will find Himself a place in your heart where He can plant truth. Once readied, God knows the soil of your heart will then sustain His implanted truth.

I just saw a vision. Not only will your heart sustain the truth, but the truth will also take territory or land. In the vision, I saw the seed of truth being put into the heart. Then the light of that seed burst forth and claimed more of the heart. That is the Holy Spirit dealing and working with your spirit and heart to make you a man, woman or child of truth. As the two of you work together in cooperation, the heart is overtaken, more and more, by light. That is why the Psalmist cried out, “Enlighten me.” That is why the Lord said, “I desire truth in the inward parts.” (Ps 51:6) As the light of His truth explodes in your inward parts because of your decisions, it creates the place where Christ can own your soul. You can become one with Christ, who is light. 

It is not His choice to make you love truth, it is yours. You say, “Yeah, but Lord, I can't live my life by that. What You're asking me to do is too hard. I can't give that up. I don't know how to be different in that area. I can't do that. Isn’t there another way?” He says, “We're not negotiating here. Do you want truth or don't you? If you want it, you will do what I said. If you don't, then I will let it go.” If He lets it go, that is where your growth stops. 

Truth is what changes our hearts, our minds, our souls and our destinies. There are many in the body of Christ who will never fulfill their destinies because they will not embrace the truth that would allow them to. He is a good God, and He will work with us and work with us. All truth is in Christ. He wants to be everything to you. He wants to own your heart, your soul, your mind, and your flesh completely so that you can be and do all for which He created you.

I am going to really humble myself right now. One time, I said to Him, “Lord, is this all there really is to being saved? I have these wonderful experiences with You, and the majesty of that experience will last about three days. Then it just filters out, and we pick up and keep moving forward. And then there is the aridity. So is this all there is?” I was very serious. 

In response, He gave me another experience. In this experience, He showed me how to make it last forever. He did not say to me, “I'm answering the question that you asked back there.” He just said to me, “This is the way I designed the Christian life to be. This is possible for any who will.” We do not have to live in the desert. We do not have to go up and down repeatedly on the roller coaster ride where God draws near, and then He pulls away. It does not have to be like that. It is not Him that is keeping us from the constancy. We do it! 

To be continued next week...

 

In His love,

Nita (LaFond) Johnson