Hello Dear Reader,
Have you heard the call of Revelation 19:7 "and His bride has made herself ready?" Has the sound of the echo of "prepare ye the way of the Lord" reverberated in your heart? If the answer is yes, then get ready for the He who is coming, "the Lord whom you seek!"
Yes the Lord is coming to His temple, praise God! There is a second coming of the Lord physically coming in a day and moment only the Father knows, but there is a spiritual coming of the Lord as found in Malachi chapter 3 and Revelations chapters 1-3 to the church first.
This presencing of the Lord is happening right now in this spiritual period of time of the end, but few in the Body of Christ in America are even aware of it. It is a time to getting our life in full grown relationship with the Lord. A time of great refining and purification that will prepare us to be a bride without spot or wrinkle.
Many are unaware of this divine work because they are busy working hard for the Lord, and can not hear his call to come and "Walk in the flame!" There is much I have to write about this present work of the Holy Spirit in the coming days so keep coming to this blog site. Yes, we must come and "walk in the flame of God" as the "flame of God" walks in us.
There was coming a time and now is when a remnant of God's people would begin to hear the first sound of that Holy Flame burning in their hearts. A flame that is jealous over and in us with perfect love. This flame of God in us yearns to be united with the flame that God is as a person! It is a holy jealousytthat desires to make us one with Him, as He is one with His Father. John 17:21.
This sound of the crackling of the flame of God in our heart begins first with a desire to seek Him as He would want to be found, and to know Him as He would want to be known. Be careful you don't read that last sentence to fast! Many have a desire to know Him, but from their own understanding on who He is. Another words, they want to know how God relates to them. The difference between the two are light years apart in God's heart. The first knowing we speak of is requires a heart that desires their life to fit into His life. The latter has a heart that wants God to fit into our life.
This is a big deal to God and to us spiritually. Much of the present church understanding of God revolves around knowing God for our needs. We seek Him for salvation, Gifts of the Spirit, Ministries, finances, healing, power and many other things. All this seeking allows those aspects of God's nature and character to "fit" into our life and our understanding! With this type of heart seeking the Lord, we can seek when we want to, work when we want to or not! This type of seeking allows you to keep your life and God's life at the same time and under one roof, you!
The first type of desire for the Lord as He would want to be known is different. This deep desire for Him requires a much deeper love and devotion for Him. This passionate seeking is what the flame of God in you desires to bring forth from your life, a desire to know Him as HE WANTS TO BE KNOWN! John 17:3 calls this "eternal life!" The desire to see the Lord as He wants to be seen or to love Him as He wants to be loved is beyond Human reason and understanding. It must be so or God would be smaller than mankind.
For this passionater desire to awaken in you,r heart, a deeper cry must come forth from your spirit, soul and body. The roaring deep (in you) cries out to the deep (in Him), even at the noise of the waterspouts. Psalm 42:7 When our desire for the Lord is based upon our needs, then God must fit into our box called "our own lives." This is where most Christians stop growing into maturity. They become content with God providing and giving them gifts and ministries. It is here where the love for "the ministry" grows stronger than for the love of the Lord Himself.
This is a very dangerous place where the "work of God" becomes an idol to be worshipped. If that should happen to a minister or a church they begin to worship themselves as God's workers instead of the God of the work. God gave me a name for this called, "false ministry idolatry." It is deadly and causes many of His own ones to be led astray from Him by the working for Him. This where we only see God as our supply "and my God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in Glory." Phil 4:19
That is the difference between the "many who are called, and the few that are chosen." Math. 22:14 The many are those who only go on to know the Lord for "their needs." The Lord does not force us to grow up to maturity. He desires for us to grow up, but the choice is always ours. The many never fully grow up into maturity. Their desire for the Lord ends with the "benes" (benefits)! They will love Him, praise Him and worship Him as long as they are given things and gifts. They will even serve Him and work diligently for Him, but they can never know Him as He wants to be known.
It is hard for me to imagine that God would desire that kind of intimacy with us. At our conference in Colorado, I experienced this drawing of the Lord personally in one of our meeting times. As we worshipped Him, I saw His longing heart and His great vulnerability in being intimate with us. I always wondered why He came down to the children of Israel in a black cloud. I wondered why in the Song of Solomon why He hid behind the lattice. At this conference I got a little glimpse of why He does. Why doesn't He just show us His full Glory now?
The answer to that question has changed my life forever. As I saw the Lord come down like a cloud in our midst, I had an open vision of Him looking over us as a vineyard. He was hiding behind that cloud not afraid of us, but He was seeking whom He could show Himself to as He would want to be seen. As I gazed at His presence, though it was not recognizable by anything I could describe, I gained an understanding of His personality. He just like any person has feelings and emotions. He made us in His image, did He not? He desires and longs for our intimacy and fellowship beyond anything I could imagine. Even more than a Husband would long to be intimate with His wife, His longing is so much deeper and intense than that for us!
I had experienced His longing before, but not like this experience of that intense passionate longing and flame that He has to be one with us. He wanted so much to show us in this meeting His Glory, and be open and vulnerable to reveal who He is to us, but He could not. I wept over this for an hour crying "why Lord, why can't we see your Glory?" Then I received understanding by a revelation of His longing heart in a deeper way than I ever had before.
Just imagine yourself in His place for a moment, not that it is possible to do that, but let's speculate a little here. The God of all creation, The God of the Universe, Yah Jovah is coming to be intimate with us at the highest capacity we were made for knowing Him. He is about to open up the fullness of His heart to us as we were created for. We are about to look at the full beauty of His being, the fullness of His personality as He would want us to know Him . Then in that moment we see His fullness, His Glory, His splendor and Beauty and thenthe revelation came what if we turn away from Him and say "we want something or someone else more than Him. I can't even imagine what that would do to His heart, but it was as real as anything I have ever seen or experienced before. It was possible for us to walk away from that Glory and say "no thanks God!" ARE YOU WEEPING YET, DOESN'T THAT KILL YOU, IT DOES ME?
How would you feel if you were as open and honest as you could be with the one who said they loved you? Imagine telling them every detail of your life and how much you are madly in love with them. Imagine giving them everything you are, all you have, and all you will ever be and then that person walk away from you, and say no thanks, a created thing is better than the creator? So I asked why do you hide behind the cloud and behind the lattice?Because just like you and I the pain of being rejected by the object of His love is unbearable for Him as would be for us, but even so much worse for Him.
The many will never desire the Lord like this, because they are content with being used and not being His alone. They have the capacity to walk away remaining in their heart, so He can not reveal Himself as He would desire to do so. Yet, God does have the chosen. The ones who will desire above all else to"walk in the flameof the Lord" who is that flame of Perfect Love. These believers are being chosen right now by the choices they are making to prepare themselves as bride for the Lord. These are the ones that the jealous flame of love in them has stirred up a passion for Him alone. This passion take them past seeking the Lord for their needs, but to give up their lives to meet His needs.
These chosen ones are the over comers found in Revelations chapters 1-3 and the Bride found in Revelations 19 and 21. The flame of God within them has stirred them up past the natural realm or their natural needs into the realm of the Holy Spirit. Here they see their true spiritual need which is to know what God's needs are and what He desires. They have found the secret access to the very heart of the Lord, the very Flame of Love itself.
This flame of love in the chosen awakens the desire to be changed from seeking God for the "benes" into loving the Lord the way the Lord would want to be loved. This loving the Lord is now beyond their human understanding because it is higher than our human mind could ever comprhehend. This deeper capacity birthed from that jealous flame in us is ready to fit into God's will, God's plan the way God desires and not for God to fit into their will, plans and desires anymore.
For this to become a reality in our heart, a new desire and way of seeking the Lord must be birthed in the heart of the worshipper. The bible tell us that the true worshippers will worship the Lord in the real realm of Spirit and Truth. Jesus tells us in John 4:23 -24 this true desire of the Lord, "But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth! This is worship that transcends an act or expression of worship. It is not a worship service or a christian CD or any other expression of worship. This is a heart of worship that cries, "I must love you the way you want to be loved, and all that I am, all that I have, all that I ever will be is yours!" This worship is what begins to fan the flame of Lord in our hearts. It is the fuel for all spiritual growth.
When we begin to seek the Lord in this manner, then the scriptures take on a whole new meaning and we receive fresh revelation of God's end-time work. Hosea chapter 6:1-3 is an important prophetic picture of this work:
Hos 6:1 Come, and let us return unto Jehovah; for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. Hos 6:2 After two days will he revive us: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before him. Hos 6:3 And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah: his going forth is sure as the morning; and he will come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth.
Beloved, let us look at a couple of points here: Point 1: Let us return to the Lord! This is the same cry found in Revelation chapter 2:4, "nevertheless I have this one charge against you, you have deserted (abandoned, left) your first love. The first call that comes from that jealous flame of love is to "return to the Lord, our first love!"
Point 2: for He has torn us: This tearing is the rending of the heart or a deeper circumcision of the heart. This tearing has to deal with our true desires and motives. The intentions of why we do what we are doing. This tearing must come. It is the time of the threshing floor. It is the time of the seperation of the wheat from the tares in our lives. When the Lord rends our heart it produces a deeper need for Him. It brings forth a deeper brokenness and humility in us and causes a longing in us just for Him.
This process starts with a revelation that we may not be what we think we are. In this place, God begins to remove our masks and fig leaves. This tearing must bring us to the place of being naked and unashamed before Him as I wrote in the last blog. This will require a stripping of the desire for God to fit into our life to a desire for us to fit into His life. This refining fire requires a stripping of the desire to seek God for the "benes" to seeking God as He would want to be known. This is not an easy or pretty process, matter of fact it comes with great intensity.
Malachi chapter 3:1-3 begins to show us how the flame of the Lord begins to burn when we begin to seek the Lord on His terms for who He is, Mal 3:1 "Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom ye desire, behold, he cometh, saith Jehovah of hosts. Mal 3:2 But who can abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap: Mal 3:3 and he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold and silver; and they shall offer unto Jehovah offerings in righteousness."
We will expound on this in the next few blogs, but needless to say, this tearing comes by fire or the Spirit of Burning in our hearts. That burning flame of desire for Him stirred in us causes us to come up and walk in the flame of YAH JOVAH! It also allows Him to take His rightful place in our hearts. Notice in verse 2 this Holy position He takes, "He SITS,(this is a position of absolute rule and dominion) as a REFINER AND PURIFIER of silver. Do you think He is done with us yet? This HOLY FLAME OF LOVE IS A REFINER AND PURIFIER to remove every SPOT, WRINKLE AND BLEMISH in His Holy Bride. The work is conditional upon the heart of each believer in saying yes or no to the Lord's stirring of the flame within us. He will only come to those who desire Him as that very flame of refining. Verse 1, "And the Lord whom YOU SEEK, SHALL SUDDENLY COME TO HIS TEMPLE!" You and I precious reader must do the seeking!
Point 3 And He will heal us! Yes, beloved the tearing only last until we are ready to behold Him as He wants to be beheld by us. When we surrender and cooperate with that Flame of love provoking a Holy jealousy for Him within uswe rise up above our needs to see His. Then we can be healed and be in a new spiritual position to walk in the flame of love with Him.
This is what we are being prepared for if you have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the church. This preparation is found in Hosea 6, Revelation 1-3 and Malachi chapter 3 in a very profound way which we will discover over the next few writings.
I pray the stirring up that flame of His love in you has increased as you have read this word. I pray this jealous love He gave you will reach down into your deep to reach up to into the deep of His love for you. Hosea 6:3 say,"and let us know, and let us follow on to KNOW Yah Jovah!
No comments:
Post a Comment