Hello Beloved Readers,
I pray that the Lord is feeding you with heavenly food as you pursue the deeper relationship with truly knowing the Lord as a Person. We are studying the "ways of the Lord" that truly reveal His person to us. Moses, David and all those who hunger for God have one prayer, "Teach me your ways, Oh God that I might know you in a deeper way." That is why I am taking the time to try to share from the Word of God and personal experience these ways to truly know God as a Person. Not that I have ascertained anything yet, but I am pressing on toward the High Calling of God in Christ Jesus. My prayer is to capture the prize that is set before us, Jesus Christ our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
It is my greatest aim to do one thing in these writings if God would allow me to. Bring you to Him! Bring you to the God that hides behind the lattice waiting for you to truly know Him as He is. So let us pick up where we left off in part 3 of this series of Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered. That he too had to allow the "word' the Father spoke to be a living substance in him. Jesus did not do His own will, but the will of the Father that sent him. He is the Son of the Living God in experience.
Beloved reader, after Jesus was tempted in the desert and overcame Satan, a great change took place in Jesus life. Luke tells us that when Jesus was FULL of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit led him into the wilderness. Then Luke writes to us after he was finished being tempted in the wilderness that Jesus came out of the wilderness in the POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT! Dear reader did you hear that? Fullness of the Holy Spirit became the Power of the Holy Spirit. Please dear Lord help us to see and get this. This is the very change God must do in us if we truly want to know and see Him as the Person He is! What is this change?
Jesus comes out of the desert now ready to begin in his ministry of "feeding the sheep" with a Word with authority they had never seen before in all of Israel. Luke 4:14 says, Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region.
Luke's gospel continues to speak of the power of the words that Jesus spoke to the people. This is what we are trying to explain in these teachings. Jesus had a "word with substance!" Luke 4:36 says, "Then they were all amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, “What a word this is! For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.”
Do you see this Beloved Reader? He commands the unclean spirits and THEY COME OUT! It happens! It is a "Word with Authority." Contrast this with our present prophetic words speaking everywhere in our nation. An old Wendy's commercial sums it up best, "Where's the beef? Where is the proof of what you are declaring in God's name?
Beloved do you see our great need? Do you see why we must grow to know the Person of God as Jesus knew the Father? I am so saddened that today so many pastoral, prophetic and many 5-fold ministers and intercessors don't feel they have to wait for God to make that word "power" in them. If we did cooperate with God's ways we could truly change the spiritual atmosphere over cities and our nation.
We can't miss our Lord's instructions or interpret them in our own understanding. Jesus said, "But you shall receive power AFTER the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” The lack of waiting on the Lord to make the "revelation" our life's experience is serious before God. Many believe we don't have time to wait, so just speak it, just declare the word. OK, if you want to, but it is lifeless, powerless and ineffective and so our the prayers being prayed in the same manner.
The "power to speak a word in season" comes AFTER the Holy Spirit comes upon you. Not before, not during, but after the Holy Spirit come on you. Why? God has to make the "word become flesh" in us, and then the POWER comes to PREACH IT! The true power to pray effectively is when you stay long enough for God to make the "revelation of what he is showing you to pray, to become real or birthed in you through a spirit of travail. The old time saints knew how to "pray through till they got a break through." They were effective and "red hot" in their praying and they "availed much."
Our cities aren't changing because of God's prophetic word's being powerless but because we are powerless! We are having the problem not God, but because we fail in cultivating that word from God in prayer until it became real life in the minister or believer who is supposed to speak it. We are not supposed to declare "just words from God, but the VERY WORD OF GOD IN POWER"
If we continue to ignore God's ways of teaching us to speak His word in powe,r He will bypass us and choose a new generation that will press on to know the Lord and do it His way. I have seen this already happening in the cities of the USA and in the nations. We must not continue to hurt the Lord and stifle the prophetic army that He is rising up if we continue to teach and live on the lower plane of spirituality (emotional revelations) instead of the "spiritual substance" by allowing the Word to become "flesh with in us." It must become real within us as it did with Jesus!
I understand that the prophetic moves in the instant speaking as God speaks, but if that prophet, minister or believer would spend quality time with the Lord, The "Word of God" will come forth with a deeper spiritual substance and power when spoken. It will be a "word in due season! The Lord says the following in the book of Isaiah, "The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should have a word in season to those that are weary. He awakens me morning by morning, he awakens my ear to hear as the learned. Is. 50:4
Do you see it Beloved? God will give us the tongue of the learned. The tongue of some one mature and seasoned to speak "His word" that will effectively change the lives of the church, city and nation. This takes a real "intimacy with God in quality times of fellowship with Him as a Person." "He awakens me morning by morning" speaks of an active seeking by the believer to set times of listening, receiving the very life of God's word as their own personal experience.
Isaiah writes, "He awakens my ear to hear." First we have to have an ear to hear God speak. The book of Revelation the Holy Spirit says, "To him that has an ear, let him hear, what the Spirit of God says to the churches." To truly hear God we must allow God to work His Word in our lives "morning by morning He awakens me," and then we will develop a seasoned tongue of the learned to speak a "word in due season" to those in need."
The other element that keeps the "Word" from changing cities is that many"traveling prophets and intercessors and even local pastors and ministers" will not wait upon the Lord until the true power from the Lord comes to their own lives. It is quite financially profitable for those called to this ministry to not wait. Many earn their living by going to these cities, and often they find the biggest churches to welcome them in order to get the most financial support and biggest crowds. The "hot new revelation" from these meetings must become a "now book" or "10 CD" teaching series to support their ministries.
We must grow in our pursuit of God past these elementary things and selfish motives, so we can see and know God more clearly. We do need the gifts of the Spirit and how they work in our lives. We need to know that God provides for us. Amen to that Brother and Sister, but it is imperative that we grow past this state of self-centered stage of our Christianity and all its presumptions about God to truly become mature to know the Person of God as He really is.
When we first get saved the Lord appreciates the new birth and reveals himself to us by giving us these things we ask for that keeps us happy. But he expects us to grow up, and grow past our self-centered needs to press on toward the prize of the High calling of God in knowing His person and His desires.
The focus of this teaching is to get us beyond seeing God for our needs, but to see His needs. You can not truly know the Lord's desires and needs when all you can see is your own. Yes Beloved he created us to please Him, to know His desires, and to fill His heart with the deepest love and affection. For this we were made.
This is the highest state of experience and blessing God could ever bless us with by becoming intimate with us and making us one as Jesus is in the Father and them in us. This relationship with our Lord must become as being one with him like a husband and wife. Those that desire this relationship and pursue it as the great aims become the very "friends of God" like Moses. They have a different relationship with our Lord like what he told the twelve on the passover, "I know longer call you servants but friends, because servants do not know what their Master is doing."
Our knowing God and us being known by God requires some key ingredients to put into our spiritual lives. Let us read this: Jesus says in John 14:20-22 (New King James Version)"At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.”
Do you understand this beloved of the Lord? Jesus says, that love requires knowing what He desires and doing it, but more, “he that love me will be loved by my father, and I will (not might) manifest myself to Him.” What a blessed and deep life God offers to all who will truly know Him.
The word manifest means this: readily perceived by the senses and especially by the sense of sight: easily understood or recognized by the mind : to be made obvious to a person! This is the intention of our Lord that He would be readily perceived as a person by our senses and made easily understood. I will share a testimony of this reality in my own life and then close this section of teaching.
In the 1990's I was pastoring a church in Connecticut when the the Lord spoke through His prophet that God was going to uproot the foundation of this church I had planted. He said to me that He alone would lay the foundation of this church. The prophet spoke that many would have the opportunity to be a Judas to this ministry and leave. He announced that the day would come I would be crying on the floor of my office, and all the people would be gone and I would say, "God their all gone" but in that day God himself will lay the foundation of this church.
Beloved, within 6 months that word became true. As my last Elders gave me their resignation and left, I fell to the floor and began to cry uncontrollably. Like Job, I said, “thou you slay me, yet I will trust you.” Through my bitter tears, a spirit of worship rose up in me to say Lord I love you, I love you, they are all gone, but I still love you.
In the next moment a brilliant sound came into my office and God spoke to me in an audible voice. (and I do not make apologies about this). I said, Lord, Lord they are all gone, but God answered me like an earth quake in that room. His voice reverberated in the room and shook me at my core. He said, “but Henry, I am still here.” Then I lost it beloved!
That is all He needed to say. He came and “manifested Himself" to me, to the hearing of my ear, and the feeling of His power and majesty in the room. He came in and revealed His person to me, His Glory, majesty and power were there to behold, and I was readily able to perceive by my senses and especially by the sense of touching and hearing andrecognize by the mind, He was there! He made himself obvious to my person!
The word of God says in Proverbs 8:17, "I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me." These simple words, "I am still here", changed the course of my life forever. His coming into my office and manifesting Himself caused me to press on to know this God that wants to be known in a deeper way. Plus He wants me to be known by Him. He even called me by name, Henry.
John 10: 3-5 declares this deep relationship God desires to be known and for us to know Him. “The watchman opens the door for this man, and the sheep listen to His voice and heed it, and he calls his own sheep by name, and brings them out. When he has brought his own sheep outside, he walks before them, and the sheep follow Him, because they know His voice. They will never follow a stranger, because they do not know or recognize the voice of strangers or their call.
Do you see the intimacy God so desires to have with us? This relationship must be cultivated with the Lord every day. In my situation, the pressure God applied caused me to go past my leaders, past trying to fix things, and pour my heart out to the Lord. It caused me earnestly to seek His face, to hear His voice and then the Lord came in His manifest presence. Like Isaiah, I can say, "I saw the Lord high and lifted up and His train filled the temple."
Amen and Amen
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