Dear Beloved Reader,
You made it to part 6! Praise God, there is more to come. This teaching series is to help us understand the person of God and His desires to manifest Himself to those who truly want to know him for who he is.
But the requirements are demanding if you truly want to know Him as a person and for him to manifest himself to you. John 14:23 says, 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.”
I can say I love someone, but that doesn’t mean I do. To really love someone is to be able to give up your life for them but even more. It is to live with one desire alone. Psalm 27:4 David cries, "One thing I desire of the Lord, that I will seek after, to dwell in the presence of the Lord all the days of my life." David set his heart to please the one he set his love upon, God alone. God sets His love upon David and said "he was a man after his own heart."
Do you hear that beloved? Do you see what the Lord desires in us to truly know the person of God? "One thing I desire of the Lord, that I will seek after."He loves us and wants us to experience the depth, height and width of that love as Paul writes to the Ephesians. Beloved, we can know this one true God and Jesus Christ he sent. We can know we are loved like a lover loves His bride. His desires is to "dwell in the presence of the Lord all the days of our lives, to behold His beauty and sweet attractiveness and to meditate in His temple!" God wants us more than we want him! So arise at once and let us go out and meet Him!
Merriam and Aaron thought they had this same kind of relationship with the Lord as Moses. They believed by their "emotional revelation" knowing of God was equal to the "substance" revelation Moses had with God, but they did not. Listen to their confession: Numbers 12: 1-3 "And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us? And the LORD heard it. (Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.)"
There is a lower level of relationship with the Lord and a higher level. The scriptures above demonstrate to you God regarded these 3 people in a totally different way from each other. We will look at this more in a moment. But first let me show you this contrast of relationships throughout the bible. It starts with Cain and Abel. Both Cain and Abel brought a sacrifice to God.
Cain brought that which came from the earth, and Abel brought a lamb to be slain. God respected Abel’s sacrifice and rejected Cains. Cain is jealous and kills his brother. Abel had the "substance" knowledge of God. He gave to God what God desired and it pleased the Lord (the higher). Cain had the "emotional" revelation of God. He brought God, "his understanding of sacrifice" of what God wanted, and gave what he want he felt was fitting to God and God rejected it.
Let us look at Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac was the son of promise that loved God and inherited the promise, Ishmael was born of a slave woman. Isaac's life was based on the "substance of God's ability" while Ishmael was Sarah's "emotional realm suggestion to help God do His will."Ishmael was a man of war, his hand against every mans hand. He was put out of the camp of God.
We move to Jacob and Esau. Esau readily gave up His birthright for a bowl of stew, while Jacob was going to get that birthright no matter what. Then we move to Joseph and His Brothers. God favored Joseph above his brothers because of the real love and respect he had for His father. The other brothers did not honor Jacob as Joseph did and did evil in the sight of the Lord. Joseph gets the coat and the birthright, the others get nothing from the Lord because what they knew about God was not intimate or holy.
Let us move to King David and King Saul. David was a man after God’s own heart and trusted God. Saul was a man that desired to please people over God. God repented of putting him as King of Israel, God ripped the kingdom from one and gave it to another. God said to Samuel He was sorry for this choice of choosing Saul and to go anoint another King, a man after His heart. Each of these relationship I am sharing are paired in twos for a reason. There are always 2 choices.
The choices reflect to us there are two ways to know God and be known by God. We can know God by His acts or we can know Him as a Person. The difference is like night and day in our spiritual walk with God. Knowing God for his acts can get us a ministry, a Pastorship, or even be called Apostles, or Prophets, but it doesn't make us friends.These are offices that God gives as gifts, and they release the works of the Lord to His people, but they don't make you mature.
Again back in the early 90’s, God manifested himself to me in prayer and showed me in a vision my 3 pastor friends and I being together. We were all off to build the churches God gave us to build. The 3 pastors said to me, “Henry, let’s go to Home Depot to buy the supplies to build the church.” They then took out a measuring tape to measure the size their church would be.
As they spoke to me, I knew the Lord was not pleased, plus I had no measuring tape to build with. Matter of fact I had nothing. These 3 men were so much physically stronger than me and each had been in the natural in the contracting business building homes. I was a former restaurant manager who fed people and served food. I heard them say to one another, (this man will never build a church for God.) Then they got mad at me because I would not build the way they would. To my present knowledge they all have big churches today.
Since then, I have been able to travel in almost all the States, Canada, Mexico and South Africa and through the Internet have fed thousands of people and 100’s of pastors’ who find the food from heaven through our website. It may not be seen as much with the natural eye and that is good. The only one that should be seen is our Lord the Shepherd that feeds the sheep.
Yes, God gives us gifts and talents for service and in them ministers can find much fulfillment of God when their desire to please God is for God to say, "well done my good and faithful servant." Many minister’s today desire to be filled with “what they do for God” instead of the God of the works they are doing. Beloved, a severe mistake we as ministers make is to believe that "well done" means "much done." When the Lord speaks of "well done" He is inspecting the "quality of the work", not the "quantity."
1st Corinthians chapter 3 speaks of God's very desire for the "quality" of the work birthed and done through a vital union with him that He will test it by fire. Let us read His word to view this:1 Corinthians 3:9-15 (New King James Version) For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
He doesn't ask us to "do work for Him" and then ask for him to bless it. He desires complete submission and obedience to His desires and plans. If we are not careful our "good works"will produce in us a desire to hear God say, "well done" because of what "we accomplish in the name of God." Beloved, if what we do is not birthed in 100% obedience to His voice and will, He may say something much different, "your righteousness is but filthy rags," and burn them up before our eyes.
Beloved we live in an "instant potato society" where we have to have everything quickly like a fast food restaurant. We have taken that same spirit and brought in into our churches. Our goal is to get people in and out of church so they go about "their business!" Many a preacher has said, "I won't keep you long today, I will make sure you get home for lunch." I was taught that and preached it in my early days of ministry as well. I didn't know any better.
This has produced horrible effects in the church. We have today a generation of believers that don’t even hear God anymore, speak in tongues, give interpretations of tongues, or have a prophetic word to bring to someone in need. I was once told by a spirit filled Pastor in Connecticut that he believed God only speaks to a person one or two times in a life time. He said this to “rebuke the developing relationship God was birthing in me.”
I was amazed at this statement and heartbroken over it, because what would I do without hearing my Lord everyday or getting to know Him as a person. As he kept rebuking me and correcting my theology the Lord told me to ask him this question. If God only speaks to us one or two times in a life time, what do we do in between those times? Needless to say, he did not like that question and politely told me he had things to do and I needed to go.
Beloved, The Lord will allow us to live on this lower plain of knowing him and even let us operate in the gifts of the Spirit, but this doesn’t guarantee our truly knowing God or being known by Him. The Holy Spirit is a gentlemen and won’t force himself upon anyone.
In the Song of Solomon he portrays himself to the potential Bride as one that hides behind the lattice. Song of Solomon 2:9, My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice.
The Lord does not hide himself in his acts. They are gloriously to be seen, but when he chooses to reveal His person, He is much more guarded. Like us, God has feelings and emotions. His are perfect and ours are not. He understand what rejection is and when Isaiah prophesied of the Messiah he declares,
Isaiah 51:1-3, Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Yes, beloved, our Lord was rejected and despised on the earth. When the Word became flesh or to be like us, He could accept this rejection as a penalty for our sins and willingly accepted it. You see Jesus laid down all the Glory of His Lordship in heaven to become a man like us. So it was acceptable for him to feel rejection.
That is not true however now or when the Lord shines in the brightness of His Glory. To reject Him in that Glory would be the biggest insult and pain we could ever cause Him. That is why those who reject Him will have no part of Him and His kingdom, because they reject not just Him as God, but as a person who created them and wants to be known to them. A God who desires to dwell in us and be a God to us and we be His people.
When God wants to be seen or reveal His person to us, he hides His glory to see who will go on to pursue Him to know Him intimately in that glory. This was Esau’s birthright to behold, but he sold it for a pot of stew. The Lord goes on to say of Jacob and Esau, Romans 9:13 "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."
When King Saul rejected to truly know the Lord intimately and His desires, and chose not to pursue the Lord for His will, God tore the kingdom from him. 1 Samuel 15:11 “It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.”
King Saul knew the works of God, his knowledge of the Lord was on the lesser level of what God desired. He turned back from following the Lord in knowing Him as a person. A person has thoughts, desires, hopes and dreams. We get those attributes from God who said, “Let us mankind in our likeness and in our image.” Genesis 1:26.
This contrast is fully explained in the Song of Solomon contrasting the Shulimite woman verses the Daughters of Jerusalem. The Shulimite becomes a picture of those who desire to know the Lord as a person. She is a picture of the Bride, Over-comers, and Sons God is preparing in these last days. The Lord takes a special interest in the Shulimite woman because she prays the prayer, "Draw me, we will run after you, the King has brought me into your chambers." Song of Solomon 1:4
God prefers her over the daughters because of her desire to know him as a person verses the Daughters of Jerusalem. This seeking heart to know His Person allows God's "favor" to be upon her. That means He now relates to her as if she were the only person in creation to cultivate this love relation with her. His approbation rests upon her. The rest of the church (Daughters of Jerusalem) continue to seek the Lord on a lower level of blessings, gifts, power or authority and He must relate to them differently.
They are satisfied with salvation, blessings and what God could do for them. They have no desire to press on to know the Lord intimately. They are content with what they have. Sadly, this is the state of many believers in our country and even in the world. They have settled for the lesser spiritual life to be satisfied in working for God and accomplishing things for God instead of being known for God.
This is where we begin to see God differentiates His Bride from the daughters, or Moses from Merriam and Aaron. The relationship He has with Moses and the Shulimite is different with God because of their "desire to know Him as a person."There are two type of believers found in heaven that have a specific testimony of their relationship with the Lord.
The first is found in Revelation chapter 5:9-10. And [now] they sing a new song, saying, You are worthy to take the scroll and to break the seals that are on it, for You were slain (sacrificed), and with Your blood You purchased men unto God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And You have made them a kingdom (royal race) and priests to our God, and they shall reign [as kings] over the earth!"
This is the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, David, and Jesus. This is the spiritual position given to those who truly know God as a person and those who are known to God. Contrast that now to the second group of saints and their testimony. The first group we just read about are singing, the next group will be crying.
Revelation 7:11-15 (Amplified Bible) And all the angels were standing round the throne and round the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] and the four living creatures, and they fell prostrate before the throne and worshiped God. Amen! (So be it!) they cried.
Blessing and glory and majesty and splendor and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and might [be ascribed] to our God to the ages and ages (forever and ever, throughout the eternities of the eternities)! Amen! (So be it!) Then, addressing me, one of the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] said, Who are these [people] clothed in the long white robes?
And from where have they come? I replied, Sir, you know. And he said to me, These are they who have come out of the great tribulation (persecution), and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.For this reason they are [now] before the [very] throne of God and serve Him day and night in His sanctuary (temple); and He Who is sitting upon the throne will protect and spread His tabernacle over and shelter them with His presence."
Beloved, as we close this part of the teaching, there is a difference in knowing God or knowing about God. This is a divine choice for you to truly know the Person of God, and for you to be known by God verses the choice just to know about God (dreams and visions). Merriam and Aaron knew God and God knew them, “in dreams and visions," but Moses truly knew God’s person and was known by God, "as a man who speaks to his friend face to face and has seen my substance.”
These are two spiritual positions in heaven. The Miriam's and Aaron's have the testimony of those crying, salvation, salvation. That is all they have. They didn’t grow to truly become one with the Lord in the intimacy they desired. They settled for the ordinary and that is what they got.
I am not diminishing this at all. They are saved and that is better than being in hell. But they are crying now because they understand the higher place God had for them that they lost and will never be able to get. They will serve him day and night in the sanctuary, but let's contrast their testimony with those who overcome. They are singing, He has made us a Kingdom of Kings and Priests who will rule and reign with Him forever and ever." The choice is ours to make today.
Merriam and Aaron chose the lesser realm and Satan tempted them to believe that they had the same authority as Moses. They did not have that same authority as Moses because they "didn’t have the same relationship as Moses did with God." They had “dreams and visions.” Moses had, “face to face as a man talks with His friends.”
Which type of relationship do you desire in the Lord? Would the Lord be able to call you his friend and meet you face to face and see His substance? If not, let us pray, repent and change our minds and direction while we still have time to be known as His friends. Let us return to our First Love!
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