“How To Walk Close To God During Troubled Times”
Session Two
By Nita Johnson
Seattle Services
Part A
If you had an opportunity, do you think you would choose to go into union with Christ? The Lord wants to give that to us – each of us. It is really up to us – will we do what is required?
My previous secretary and I were out for a walk; she and I would go out five days a week and walk for two hours through a park that looked more like a nature park than a park. It was an extraordinary place to walk. While we walked we would either pray or go through scripture together. We had this little box of cardboard scriptures and each time we would take one or two so that we could talk about the Word. This particular day the scripture was about God's love for His Church and the greatness of the calling upon her. We were in discussion when suddenly I found myself in Heaven in His throne room. The Lord was weeping. He said to me, "Do you know what it is like to want something with all of your heart? To desire something to the point that you would do anything to bring it about?" Well, He already knew the answer to that question as He knows me better than I do. He followed that with as a series of questions beginning with Creation. He asked, "Do you know why I created Heaven and earth?"
Now, I tell people all the time I learned a long time ago that when the Lord asks a question He is not necessarily looking for an answer. (I share this with you now so when He visits you, you can learn lessons from me on what not to do.) Remember, He already knows all the answers. At times, He simply wants to hear what I know or what I would like to know. Having learned from previous experiences, I try to just look at Him and wait on Him to see which it is. Again He posed the question. "Do you know why I created Heaven and earth?" I said, "No, Lord." He said, "So that I could make a garden."
Amazing isn’t it? He created Heaven and earth so He could make the trees, the greenery, all the beautiful things that He put in Heaven and earth. Then He said to me, "Do you know why I did that?" "No, Lord, I don't." And He said, "So that I could create the animals that I wanted to put in the garden and in various places of the world."
Well, we went on and on and on, one issue after another, until finally He said to me, "Do you know why I wanted to create a garden?" I was feeling very overwhelmed by this time. Tears starting to well up in the Lord's eyes and He said to me, "I wanted to create that for you. I wanted to create a special place for man." I said to Him - I mean the very first thought that went through my mind is the Great Sin - and I said, "Why? You knew what we were going to do to You. Why? Why would You want to do that?" I was thinking about how much I love Him – I am sure that is what you would be thinking as well – and that even now so many years later I would do anything to stop what happened but I couldn’t. It's already occurred.
Finally, a teardrop fell from His eye onto His cheek as He thought of the great love that He has for every human being. I said to Him, "Lord, we are so sorry for what we did to You." He said, "Wait! Wait!" Suddenly I realized there is something wonderful about to be said. He said, "Wait! There was a hunger in My heart, a hunger that was so great that it had to be met." I said, "Lord, what was that hunger?" He said, "That I would have a people that would give up anything that I ask, and do whatever I would demand of them in order to live in Me." I could see the hunger He was talking about in His eyes because it's there. I was looking at it. "I had to have that hunger met," He said. “The cross was not a bad thing. It was a good thing because at last, My heart's desire would be fulfilled.”
I want you to know and understand how much God loves you. He doesn't see things the way you do or the way I do. What He sees is a plan, a plan for eternity. I wish I'd known that I was going to share that with you tonight because I would have liked to have given it to you verbatim. It was so rich and so wonderful, so pure. But regardless, it's still a wonderful experience. And the Bible tells us all about it, right? It takes a few more pages than I have available here, to do so, but the Word tells the story of His great love, and His great sacrifice to have union with His creation. This is a beautiful drama unfolding in the sands of time where we are learning more and more and more about God.
I can remember being a child hearing these words, "The days are coming when knowledge will increase." As a child I thought, "Knowledge of what?" And I've always wondered; knowledge of what, what are we supposed to look for? This was a constant question within me because I was really a lover of knowledge. A knowledge of what? Well, one of the things is the knowledge of God, His plans, His purposes, those things that only He can give, and only He can know, that will lead us closer and closer to the destiny that He has designed for us.
How many of you would like to have that kind of talk with the Lord? "You know the destiny thing, Lord, I'm sure that we both have an idea of what we want my destiny to be and it would be great to know Your thoughts on that." Amen? Unfortunately, it doesn't happen that way.
We want to learn how to walk with Jesus.
Romans 13:12-14 (AMP)
“The night is far gone and the day is almost here. Let us then drop (fling away) the works and deeds of darkness and put on the [full] armor of light. Let us live and conduct ourselves honorably and becomingly as in the [open light of] day, not in reveling (carousing) and drunkenness, not in immorality and debauchery (sensuality and licentiousness), not in quarreling and jealousy. But clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah), and make no provision for [indulging] the flesh [put a stop to thinking about the evil cravings of your physical nature] to [gratify its] desires (lusts).”
It's amazing, isn’t it? Clothe yourself with Christ. Clothe yourself with Christ. It's not offered to us as a suggestion, but an instruction: “Clothe yourself with Christ.” Well, how do you do that? How do you clothe yourself with another man? It's a mystery. It's a mystery of the life of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. In order to become like Him, you have to let Him fill Himself with you. You have to give up your desires and your designs. You have to cease with this constant need that we have to be worshiped and adored by other people. We have to come to a place where we don't want to be seen, we don't want to be heard, we don't even want to be lifted up as being noteworthy.
Now, this may seem to a lot of people to carry very little weight, but when you walk with Jesus and you see what He is, you see how He is, you see His kind of thoughts, His kind of sacrifices, His kind of doings and you compare it to yourself, it can be disheartening. It helps you know that you must allow Him to change you. That is lesson number one in entering into union. You've got to be willing to be changed. It is the biggest problem anyone has that has a quest for union.
How to Walk Close to God During Troubled Times
Session 2
Part B
People don't want to be changed. They don't want to be told that they need to change. Do you ever find yourself struggling in those areas? Thank you for your honesty. If there is a struggle, that means there is a battle for truth. If you're not battling, you've already lost. Truth has been lost and Satan has won. Ouch, huh?
We must come to a place where we are willing to unclothe our soul with us and to clothe ourselves with Him, ultimately, completely. And it's the hardest battle there is. It's doable. You can do it. Anyone can do it if they want to badly enough. It's doable. It is just that not all people really want it. Not all people are willing to be taught. People come to me all the time, years, I'm talking about decades of seeking God, and people will come to me and say to me, "Please mentor me. Help me know how to walk with God so that I can have union. Please mentor me." And in the past I would often say, "Okay. I'll teach what I know, that's all I can give."
But you know what I learned? I learned that people don't want to change. People don't want to be told that they have to change. People resent being corrected. Do you know anyone like that? It's understandable, right? It's not easy to be corrected. The Bible clearly tells us that life in Christ is a life of correction. So whereas you may know people that don't want to be corrected, the fact is, if you are going to walk with the Lord you are going to have to learn how to receive correction. It's really the hardest part, what I'm giving you right now. It's the hardest part. Everyone wants to think that they are lovable just the way they are, and maybe they are lovable just the way they are but that's not going to necessarily help the real deep things that hide in our soul that will destroy the life of Christ. We can't like ourselves too much. Do you understand what I am saying?
What did Jesus say to the rich, young ruler? Remember when the Lord kind of corrected him, "You know what to do, now do it." And when he was told that, that was a correction, right? What was his response? He turned and walked away. And what did the Lord say about that? Yes, but how do we discern what is rich? Does it mean that he's really a rich young ruler and only that class of people will find it difficult? Or does it further mean, deeper mean that the people that are going to struggle with this the most are the people who are rich in their self-love?
If a person is rich in their self-love, does not like correction, loves the Lord, loves hanging around with the saints, maybe they have a great ministry, maybe they don't have any ministry at all – in the eyes of the church that person is highly prized, but what is hidden deep in the recesses of the heart is “I love who I am, what I am, what I want. I don't like to be corrected. I don't like to be challenged, to be changed. I don't like those kinds of messages.”
How many of you know what that feels like? But the fact of the matter is if you really want union you have to come back to the center and the center has to be changed from self to Christ. When that happens, things inside of you will change. Maybe even some of the old things that are so deep you never thought they could be changed. The Lord just doesn't pay attention to the “couldn'ts” and “can'ts.” If He knows that He owns you, He will bring you through whatever it is going to take to make the changes that have to be made.
But if you are not willing to be corrected, if you're not willing to take off the old, how can you put on the new? How can you clothe yourself with Christ so beautiful, so pure, so desirable if you're not willing to take off the old man, wrinkled, spotty? If you're one of those Christians that always has to be right and no one can question you on it no matter how badly it's needed, you'll never have union, ever. He won't even play with someone like that.
You have to be a person who is broken. Can you say broken? Who is contrite. You have to be a person – I'm feeling His love so great right now. Don't reject what I have for you tonight. Don't. Please don't. Please don't. He loves you so much and He loves you enough to tell you the truth. I've learned in my walk with Him that the best thing I can do is just never try to hide myself from the things that need to change. Just don't. Be the first one to mention it then you don't have to wage the battles publicly. You can take them in before the Lord and He'll help you. But if you are always one of those that can never admit that you are wrong, never take correction, never – you are so afraid to see what He sees every day.
Can I share an experience with Him that I had in my earliest days of knowing Him? May I? Now when I got saved, I got saved out of a pretty worldly life and my life was like that because I was very broken as a young adult. I had lots of family problems, lots of family issues. I was very broken so it was very hard to take correction. I didn't even know where to go to get the kind of correction I needed, actually. But I needed correction, I needed it so badly and the very correction I needed I just wasn't yet ready for. And so I would talk to the Lord. I'm not saved, but I would talk to Him and I would tell Him, "I want Jesus as my Savior but somehow, some way I feel like it's not what everybody says it is."
You know, you don't get saved and move into the happy camp of life. You have to look at things you don't want to look at. You have to change in areas you don't know how to change in. I mean deep inside my heart. I don't know if you guys went through this but I am a real analyzer – I analyze everything. It's like my brain never wants to shut off and I'm that way with the Lord, too. So anyway I am thinking, "How am I going to deal with this? I want to get saved but at the same time all this picking of the pricks sounds so scary and so painful I don't know if I can handle it." Did you guys ever feel that way? I’m the only one, huh? Oh, okay!
Little did I know that what I was seeing in my heart was what life is like when you want deeper things in God. I didn’t understand that part. And I also didn’t understand that there is a living grace that helps you to see what you don’t want to see, what you feel like you can’t tolerate. When you finally come to the place of realizing that if you don’t like it He probably doesn’t either, so the best thing we can do is get on with the plan. Once I came to grips with that – that no matter how bad it looks, He will remove it and move me into greater places, and that it does not mean rejection. Can you say that? “Does not mean rejection.” Being corrected only means being redirected. It does not mean rejection.
How to Walk Close to God During Troubled Times
Session 2
Part C
So here I am. I am saved now, baptized in the Holy Spirit, spend lots of time in prayer. I am trying to understand this thing now called salvation. And I don't know exactly what happened to trigger what I was about to experience except that He knew the truth about me that I just shared with you. And so, I said to Him, "Lord, I don't quite understand this holiness, righteousness thing." This would have been a great time for Him to give me a vision of somebody else. You ever feel like you wish it weren't you that you were having to look at? That's where I was. But what He wanted to do was to show me how He sees me.
I would love to tell you that He saw me as a princess sitting on a throne: my hair looked like I had just been to the beauty shop, I had the most beautiful, gorgeous robes on. I would love to share all that with you, but then I would have to throw the vision away because it wouldn't be true. But what He did show me was the darkness of my soul. Oh no! Yeah. It really was like that. He showed me the darkness of my soul and I am thinking, what do we do with a mess like this? This is scary to think that all of this garbage could be in the heart of a human being, let alone me. It was really scary, but nevertheless it is true.
So now what do we do? And I said to Him, "How do you stand to look at me when this is what I am inside? What about this righteousness, holiness thing? What do you do with someone like me?" I am thinking He is going to throw it in the trash heap. "Why would you want to have to look at that very often?" He said, "This is how I see you every minute." I said, "Oh my gosh. I thought we agreed that I was beautiful." He said, "This is how I see you every moment." I said, "How do you deal with that? How can you love someone that is so ugly inside?" I mean it's one thing if you can get up in the morning, put on your fine apparel, get your makeup on, look at your newly designed hairdo and think you're looking okay! But boy, it's quite another thing if you have to look in the mirror and it is gunk, it is ugly. It's as undesirable as anything could be. What do you do? Yeah, run! Well, I have even done that once when He showed me what I looked like inside. I didn't even think twice. I ran, hit the wall, collapsed.
You know, this stuff is real. I'm not “little Miss Princess” sitting on a pea. This stuff is real and to think that I would offend my Lord with what He has to look at. I said, "How do You deal with it? What do You do? How do we deal with it?" He said, "Nita, watch."
So then I saw this clothing that came over me and it was beautiful. It was absolutely magnificent. It was everything I could ever hope for. He said, "When I look at you and I see the work that needs to be done I know that it is going to take more than your hands can handle and that's why I give you the gift of righteousness." Are you with me? "So that I can look at the righteousness, at My righteousness given to you by My Son while I am doing the work of repairing your brokenness. Because of this you are always beautiful to me because I look at the righteousness, My righteousness given to you through My Son and nothing in the whole world in all creation is more beautiful than that."
Amen? Are you with me? Yes. We have to have that. We have to have it for His sake. We have to have it for our sake. He wants to see us as beautiful. He wants us to be beautiful. He wants us to be so beautiful that we look like His Son for His glory, yet His heart is so compelled with love, say “love,” "Love." His heart is so compelled with love that He can't endure the distance, so He has to give us a way that we can stand in His Presence so that He doesn't have to endure the distance. Are you with me?
So, He just keeps loving us. He keeps filling us with His righteousness. He keeps filling us with His grace, His mercy, His power, His strength and He just keeps loving us, just keeps loving us because He can't help Himself. And He knows that when the work is finished that He is doing within us we are going to look just like His Son. Why? Because He is going to rebuild the image into the Image of His Son. He does not look at us every day and think, "Yuck, I can't believe I have to come back to this mess." He does not look at it like that. Listen to me. He looks at the stuff that He needs to deal within like it is our enemy. Say “our enemy.” "Our enemy." He looks at it like it is our enemy. That is how He sees it and He has to chisel away until He can bring us into the full protection of His righteousness.
We have no idea on this earth how much our Father loves us. Maybe people see you as a bother, they see you as troublesome, they see you as someone they'd rather not see today. Maybe that is how some people see you but to Jesus, He sees you as His child. It just simply doesn't matter to Him all the things that we might think matter to Him. What matters to Him is that He has a project and He loves the project. He loves the concept of redefining who you are so that you can be brought into a permanent resting place in His presence.
Now, you guys are the strangest group because you know when He started showing me all this stuff – I'm crying, I'm laughing – I've got a thousand emotions going on because every hindrance has just been picked up and thrown away, and all that is left is my Savior who is going to deliver me from all of those. We are not perfect. We are in an imperfect world but if we will work with Him He will take us to a place of perfection. Isn't that what the Bible says? Be ye perfect. Why? Because what? Because He is perfect. If the Bible is calling us to perfection it must be that it's possible. The word isn't going to tease and tantalize, bruise and wound by giving us false hopes, right? The word is loving letters from our loving Father and God wants to bring us to a place where we will look like Jesus and shine us off before the world.
How to Walk Close to God During Troubled Times
Session 2
Part D
I remember after He began to take me through these incredible experiences, and He's not doing it to make me shine above the rest, I want you know that. I have to experience this stuff so I know how to tell you. I am simply a mouthpiece giving information from our Father that to Him is the most important information He could give to this generation. I am the least of the least. So you take the least and diminish it some more and somehow down there in all that rubble, I am. Are you with me?
You can't look at me and say, "Oh, it's because she's so beautiful, or oh, it's because she's so perfect, or oh, her English is so wonderful. She's such a good writer. She can sing like nobody's business. So obviously she's a good choice." The Lord took me from the pile of the rubbish called "the least" and put me in the pile of the rubbish that says "of the least" and then He said, "This is the one that is going to teach them how to find Me." And He chose me that way because He wants the church to know that it's not about us, it's about what He can do – it's about what is important to Him. Are you with me? I didn't have the greatest personality. I wasn't the most likable, you know, in my classroom growing up in school. I don't know that I was the least either. Kids don't think about stuff like that. All I know is that wherever there was a measuring line, the least from the greatest, I was always at the bottom.
My sister and I were talking the other day on the phone and she's telling me about her gymnastic excellence and I said, "You know, I didn't know that." She was four years my junior in school. "I didn't know that. I've always known that you were more inclined to things like that, by far, than I was." You know, I was one you never wanted to run next to because it would make you look pretty stupid and I didn't know how to do the sports. I could never the throw the ball right. Whatever I did when it came to sports, it was always exasperatingly painfully terrible and she was just the opposite. Here she is brown-eyed, blonde, natural blonde, California-tan type of skin, thin and capable. I knew she was capable, I just didn't know she was as capable as she was.
So we were talking about one of the things that she was particularly good at. It was the very thing that I was particularly bad at, and I said, "I can't believe this. I can't believe that I actually have a famous person in my family. And you're my sister. This is so wonderful." And she said, "This is the way our family looked at it, Nita. Some of us had the excellence in physical things like sports and gymnastics and so on and so forth, while some like you had an excellence in another area." And I said, "Oh, that's a good way to look at it. What's my excellence?" That was a very real question. But do you hear what I am saying?
The Lord took up someone that He Himself said, "Now, the world will not ever be able to look at Nita and say it is because of Nita that these things became possible, but rather it was because of the most capable and powerful God." Can you feel His love? I can too. It's really rich. It's hard to stand up, up here. He wants to enfold you in the knowledge of Himself. He wants to enfold you in the understanding of how to find Him. He is not a God that wants to be far off. What did He say? But I AM a God who is near. That's what He wants to be to you. You can't be too rich and you can't be too poor for Jesus to say, "I want you." You can't be too powerful in this world or you can't lack in the things that you may lack in and have it be more real to the Lord because it is His doings, not ours.
When you finally come to the place of saying, "You know what, I feel like I've been really emptied," the next thing you should think is "I bet that's how Nita feels," really emptied of self because when you get empty enough He will fill you with Christ. You must be a person of prayer. You must love to pray. You must be a person of the Word. How else are you going to learn Christ? I mean visions come a dime a dozen, right? You can have a thousand visions a day and not one of them be of the Lord, right? Just because you have a vision or a dream doesn't mean God is speaking and the only way you know whether or not it is really Him is if you know the Word.
I feel Him. I feel Him. He is so rich. He is so wonderful. He is the expression of the Divine. He is the very expression of the Father. He's so wonderful. He's so inviting. He doesn't play games with your mind. He wants you to know how He is so you can learn how to walk with Him. He doesn't say, "You don't know Me, you don't understand Me," just so you can feel frustrated. Do you understand what I am saying? People do feel frustrated, don't they? How am I ever supposed to know You? How do I recognize when it's You and when it isn't? Well, I will give you a whole book that will help you understand everything and then My Spirit will be your guide, will be your teacher. I don't want you to feel a loneliness in this race.
May I share one more thing with you and then I think we'll close. I said, "I want to know how You are so much, the desire consumes me, Lord. I don't think there is anything in the whole world that I want to know more than I want to know You." I think that whatever I would learn, whatever I would find would be so extraordinary that the path to it would not seem mean or unreal. I'm so hungry to know You." Have you felt that way about Jesus? Do you know He feels that way about you? Do you really? Do you? I want you to want Him like that because that's what it's going to take. You have to want Him with everything that is within.
How to Walk Close to God During Troubled Times
Session 2
Part E
I went through about two years and all my friends and family decided it was time to rise up and tell Nita to “fly right” – ministers that I knew, and so on. One minister and his wife took me out to lunch, and this was back when I could do that, and he said, "We need to talk to you about your private life." I said, "Really, what is it that you would like to know?" "It's what you should know." "Oh, I'm sorry, what is it I should know?" "Nita, you are too monastic. You'll never find God like that." I said, "Really." "You pray too much." "Really, I didn't know that." "Well, you needed to know it, that's why I'm telling you. There is something clinically wrong with you." I said, "Okay. Are you finished?" "Well, yeah."
I said, "I don't know anyone in the whole world who prayed more than Jesus did when He was on this earth. He was the Son of God. I've yet to touch the hours that He used to spend in prayer." "Yeah, well, you're not the Son of God and you don't need to do that." I said, "To have Him the way I want Him, I may have to do a little bit more than the average bear. I mean if I'm doing this and He's not responding to me that's one thing, but if I am responding to a call, that's something else." "Well, I think you're losing your mind." I said, "Really? Because I pray? What would Paul have done? Do you think he lost his mind, too?" I said, "You know, we've got the New Testament primarily by this guy that you think was a nut. How do you feel that the Lord feels about that?"
"Let's not get the focus on Paul. Let's keep it on you. We've been friends for many years. We know each other well through thick and thin but I cannot let you in my pulpit anymore because I think you have tipped the scales." I said, "Well, I want to make a promise to you. I'm not going to stop praying. I will pray as long as the Lord is telling me this is what He wants from me. If He says cut it or extend it, I will do that, too. I just want to be obedient to the Holy Spirit. If He's not saying to do it, then there's really no reason for me to do it, but if He is, I think I should obey. What do you think?" "Well, yeah, of course. Of course I think that way. Of course." And I said, "So I will do that. I will try to keep my life governed by the Spirit of God. If when I try to talk to the church, but the church does not care to hear what I have to say, then I will go out of the church and I will go the street and I will stand on the corner the way Wesley used to for my voice to be heard. And if when I go to the street and I am being heard like Wesley was heard but the church doesn't want me there either, then I guess I will go wherever I can go and do whatever I can do, even if I can only get a paragraph uttered, I will, I will tell the truth about Jesus.
He said, "You're going to have the whole church too monastic. The whole church, instead of being evangelists, they're going to be wanting to be in their prayer closet praying all day." I said, "I don't feel a need to answer that critique so I won't. You might be right, you may not be but you might. But as long as I have an ear to hear I am going to speak. When I quit having an ear to hear then I guess we're all in trouble and I'll go and hide. But I know two things. Number One - I love the Lord Jesus Christ and I know that you love Him as much as I do and I know that He loves me and that He has a plan for my life just as He does for yours. And I really want to see both of us fulfill that plan, don't you?"
"Yes, of course I do. You know I do. You know my whole family. You know how you are." I said, "I do, I do know your family and I know how you are and I know how you love to preach. You love to talk to people about Jesus. I know that. You just don't understand me, that's all." "If you continue in this lifestyle I will never ask you to come back to my pulpit again." I said, "That's fine – that's fine. If that's what our friendship is built on, then I guess we will say goodbye today, but if our friendship is built on years of coming to know one another and the relationship that we've had, then it will make it through this storm, right?" "Well, yeah – yeah. But I think you're going to have to change." So anyway, long story short we ended that conversation.
May I talk to you for just a few more minutes? How do you like the way I entrap you? I don't know how to tell you. It is hard. I don't know how to tell you the love that He has for you. He's not asking you to be like every other Christian. He's asking you to be like the son or the daughter of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is different. It makes a huge difference. He loves you so much. I mean, we see the emblem of Christ and it has kind of gotten old, hasn't it? It doesn't have the impact maybe that it did in the beginning. I remember how I would see the cross and I would just weep, just weep because He went to that cross for me. He loves you so much. Sometimes He has to discipline because He has to help us to conform to righteousness so that we can be made afresh and anew in Christ. And we are practical people, we understand that, correct? Yes? No? He must, and we must let Him.
Does it mean that everybody has to have this extraordinary prayer life to go into union? No. Madame Guyon prayed a half hour a day. That's it. She made it into union. It's not about how much you pray, it's about the obedience in the life. Do you understand?
Here you have a Father that is loving, desirous, passionate. Passionate. If you've ever wanted to be around an impassioned person, He is right there before us filled with fiery passion. He doesn't want you to feel like you have to spend your whole life chasing after Him. All He wants is love and obedience. It's not huge, is it? But we want to make it huge. We tend to want to make everything about God so huge we can't touch it. But what He wants to give us is a clear and simple way to have the most in Christ we can have this side of heaven. You'll never find anyone that loves you like He does. I know it's one thing to hear – it's another thing to believe. It's another thing to experience, right?
All you have to say is, "I don't know what the future holds. It's kind of scary. I don't know what You're going to ask. That too, can be scary. But please, let Your grace be upon me to be able to say 'yes' in everything that You ask." Can you do that?
When He touches a life – He is touching me so deep right now – when He is touching a life and He is laying claim to that life, we all have the opportunity to say yes or no. We all have the opportunity to go as deep as He is willing to take it or to stand alone and never go another step further because we are not willing to pay the price. But think things through clearly. Don't say no just because it seems hard, because you have to have the grace factor, the enabling factor of His loving grace. He will give you all the encouragements, not that you want but that you need. He's given us already everything pertaining to life and godliness. And what is life if it is not filled with Christ, right?
When you get to heaven He is going to ask you, "You were there when Nita taught on this subject - how did you let it impact your life? He will ask you and I hope you are going to be able to say, "It changed my life simply because it redirected my life."
It's not the easiest thing in the world to go into union. It is really tough. But it is doable. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself said what I am going to say to you. Write it down. He said, "The battle for union is the highest of all wars. The highest of all wars. The most noble of all victories." You can talk about your battles and your victories the rest of your life, all the time you get to heaven, but I want you to know if you didn't make union, you forgot the most important war of all. The war for your soul.
When you leave here tonight, go home, think about heaven. Think about Jesus. Think about the cross. Think about the opportunities you missed because you didn't understand. Think about what it might be like if you never missed another opportunity. Are you with me? And begin to make it your most noble quest in life.
I am not telling you all that you have to become. You know people that will pray 10 or 12 hours a day. I'm not asking you for that. Neither is He. He knows that we have lives that we have to live. He knows we have business, we have calls that He has placed upon us and if we spend all day in prayer and we do not fulfill the purpose for which He has called us, we have failed everything. So everything has to be tempered with rounded truth. But make it your one quest in life. You can be in the ministry or you can be in the ministry in such a way that God is remaking your character into something noble and pure. Do you understand the difference? Make it your one quest. And in the call that He has placed on your life, should there be one, do it as unto the Lord and you will never be sorry. Don't ever make Him ashamed but do it with pure nobility. Amen.
I'm going to start helping you week after week as long as you come. If you start missing I'll close it down. But as long as I see the interest and I see that the people are growing because I know how important it is, I will help you learn how to go into union. I will teach you how to walk with God. I'll teach you about my mistakes. I'll teach you about things that, thankfully, I didn't have to learn through mistakes. I'll help you become what He wants you to become but if I start seeing interest wane I will shut the services down. Do you understand? It is not a message I have to teach to pews. I need people in the pews. Time is short. Amen.
I love you guys very much. Please don't be offended when I'm too honest, too truthful. Choose not to be offended. And when the devil tries to tell you, "You need to be offended," you just tell him, "I need the truth, that's what I need. And the truth is, you don't need to be here, so get lost." Right?
God is great. God is good. God is wonderful. I love Him so much. Oh wow. Dear Jesus. I'm sure you feel it too, often where you feel so filled with His love you feel like you are going to explode.
In His Amazing Love,
Nita Johnson
