“How To Walk Close To God During Troubled Times”
Session Two
Part C
By Nita Johnson
Seattle Services
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.
To be continued next week...
In His Amazing love,
Nita Johnson
