A Word to Mature Sons

You may come to a point in your walk with God where you find that He is no longer where you have always found Him. It seems that He has gone, and you could ask yourself, "Where did He go?", "What have I done wrong?" You might go a week, two weeks, maybe even a month before you recognize that something had changed, His presence is not there. If you don’t understand what He is requiring, you could flounder in unbelief, self-condemnation or a host of other emotions that trail along with that. But it is His way of drawing you out. We must run after Him. It is the Lord’s desire to pull you up to a higher level. It is so much in the human nature to settle down and not go any further. We need to understand how strong that nature of "settling down" is within us.

The bride in the Song of Soloman states it best:

Draw me and I will run after thee

With God it is always a question, having given man a free will, will you choose to seek Him out, or stop where you are and go no further? God drives us and pushes us into Him. You see the pattern throughout the scriptures; God’s chosen people move into so much that God has given them, only to fall under His hand of judgment when they refuse to follow Him on. You might say, "They just don’t get it". Why is this constant pattern here? It is because of this "settling" thing, the mind or human nature comes in and wants to say that this is fine where I am, but the Lord is always beckoning us to come up higher. And how do we come up higher - but through a deep, progressive purifying of ourselves. It is to be a deep relationship with the Lord where He can come and dwell in us and can rest. He can be at peace within us, because there is nothing He has to continue to work out - we have given ourselves to Him to work out the hindrances. It seems so simple, but it is so deadly.

And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.   1^st John 3:3

When you understand this, you will find a drive to purify yourself. The level God is bringing in the earth is so finely tuned, that the slightest degree of variance can mean the difference of entering into His promises, and missing out. It is very sobering to realize where we have come to as a people, not where we are trying to go or what we are trying to achieve. Men of God throughout the ages have lived and died and never reached this point we have come to. The key to the success of the sons of God in this hour is embraced in this scripture in 1^st John 3:3...".everyone having this hope fixed on Him, purifies himself".

It is all about a humble relationship with Him; anytime something else enters into the equation, then you leave yourself open to stumbling. We need to keep a constant awareness and singleness of focus to our purpose; to be His worshipers, in Spirit and in Truth.

The book of Job speaks of God’s dealings with Job. In all of the things which Job went through he could have responded with bitterness, however, he humbled himself and repented for any openness that he had to move him off of the course that God had set him on. God is looking for sons that can be sifted and tried, who will stand, not withdrawing from His presence because of self-condemnation or anything else. You must come to the place where you can face what is within you, and see what God is perfecting, yet not go through self-condemnation over it, which is a form of arrogance and unbelief.

We have had a religious concept of what it means to actually sit at the right hand of the Father and reign with Him. We have been too rapture oriented believing that at some point, this flesh nature will just vanish, and we will no longer have to deal with it. How wrong we are. God is looking to sanctify us; spirit, soul and body, to be a complete person. As we experience this complete state of redemption we will come to stand before Him, and live in His presence (Hosea 6:3). We were meant to have a will, a free choice, and as we find that will subjected to His, and our motives purified, we will come to live before Him. This puts a great deal of responsibility upon us to fully prepare our hearts.

We are coming to a point where the avenues of access to us will no longer exist, not because we have attained an equality with God, but because we will have seen perfected in our own being that which God was seeking to remove. We are not seeking an immunity from the dealings of God, rather we have come here for the very purpose to overcome. Christ suffered and was tempted in all things, yet He overcame everything. We are set to be those overcomers. This is our mission statement.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; Phil. 2:12

Your flesh may think that once it makes it through round one, it can rest for a while. It does not work that way - you must constantly submit yourself to Him, humbling your heart and letting Him work in you so that He can move through you.

for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Phil 2:13

We have not fully understood this revelation. This is a word to mature sons. We must press into a deep experience of this word, an experience that cannot be taken away. Otherwise, we will always be fighting against God, misinterpreting the signals that come through. The word God is speaking is only a Living word when it becomes an experience in you.

We have been so focused on removing ourselves from something God was no longer in, that when God begins pulling you up short, your reaction can be, "Wait a minute God, shouldn’t you be dealing with them, not me?". The rate at which we will move into what God is releasing is dependent upon the humbling of our hearts and opening up fully to His demands.

As you come before Him, your response can be like the experience of Isaiah the prophet:

Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." Isaiah 6:5

When God exposes Himself to you, you find that anything within you which is wrong, becomes exposed. But we have the promise that when we see Him, we shall be changed, from glory to glory... (2 Cor 3:18). As we enter these days of fulfillment we will become like Enoch, who did not taste death, for nothing could be found in Him - Enoch was found pleasing in the sight of the Lord. And He returned back to the heart of the Father from whence he came.

We can never get to the point where we cease to lean upon Him and love Him with all of our heart. The foremost reason we are here is to love Him and to be His worshipers. Lord, may a broken spirit never depart from us, for we know that God dwells with those of a humble and contrite spirit (Isaiah 66:2).

We have been called to go from life to life. It is time to recognize the destiny that God has set before us to enter into. The fruit of all that we are experiencing at this time is that God is moving us to a higher level.

In the New Testament, Jesus tells the parable of the camel and the eye of the needle:

"And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24

Every time we come to one of those "eyes", God is probably holding His breath, "I hope that I do not lose this one." There is no way that you can carry the baggage of the flesh nature and expect to get through that eye of the needle. God does not always know the outcome; Will you humble yourself and dump the excess baggage? Will you stop pursuing Him? Always the question.

As God begins to bless His people and release His provisions that have been set aside for this day, we must be very careful not to get caught up with the blessing, rather than the blessor. The human nature is very capable of getting sidetracked with "things", the tendency is always there to worship the blessing, rather than He who bestowed the blessing.

Repentance should be a way of life for all of us. It is like taking out insurance; something that you need that is best spent, never used, but you should never be without it.

The issue is not our confidence in Him to complete what He has begun, rather it is His confidence in us. It will be as it was with Job; Satan came before the Lord, and God said, "Have you considered my servant, Job?" God knew that Satan would sift him, yet God had that confidence in Job. He has to have the confidence that He can display us before the nations, and know there will be no deviation, no departure from the path He has set before us. He who is the greatest in the Kingdom will be the servant of all. Jesus, having been given all power and authority, girded Himself with a towel and washed the disciples feet. In like manner we will wash one another’s feet, and those whom God shall bring to us.

God is ready to release a great level of authority upon us, an authority necessary and adequate to complete the job for which we have come.

For behold, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone. The flowers have already appeared in the land, The time has arrived for pruning the vines, And the voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.

Song of Soloman 2:12