Come and Take your Stand （Part 2）

You Are Called to Walk Where Jesus Walked

Nita LaFond Johnson

New Orleans 2009 Revival Services

Father, we long to see You glorified in our hearts and in our lives. Lord, we long to find that place wherein we are living for You alone. Where all of the misconceptions and misperceptions are taken out of the picture and we can see You clearly and live for You freely. It is a new and glorious day, Lord, that You are striving to bring Your Church to be a part of. Help us to ride above the storms of life and the distractions of this age and come into the picture as You have called us to come. You are living truth and we want to know You, Lord. Come, Lord, in Your precious name. Amen.

Ephesians 4:20-21 But you did not so learn Christ! Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him].

Our new topic tonight is truth. A couple of years ago, my colleagues were coming into Fresno for several days in order for us to spend time together in prayer before we went up to Fremont to hold our Gathering. I had a place I would walk to early every morning and while I was preparing for everyone to come, I had gone out to my usual place when the Lord suddenly took me up before His throne. There He sat in all of His loveliness as pure truth. I saw so clearly and distinctly that all truth is in Jesus. Outside of Him, there is no truth.

It is nearly impossible to explain what it is like to stand in front of the Lord Jesus Christ and see that in Him is all truth.  I still do not know how to fully explain that experience. Even while it was happening, if someone stood beside me and asked me what I was seeing and how it felt, I would not have known how to explain it fully. All I know is that when the Holy Spirit wants to make certain dynamics of God real to you, He is quite capable of doing so. It was like anything in the whole world that was not truth was separated from Him and could not touch Him; only pure, eternal truth spanning from time immemorial down through the untold ages was found in Him. Truth is not time-dependent; rather, it is eternal. Truth is always there and has always been; you cannot put anything behind the word ‘always’. Truth is; and that is what I saw: all truth is in Him.

Imagine how big truth is. If you cannot count the days of eternity how in the world can you relate to all truth? If you cannot count the grains of the sand along the shore, how do you number all elements, or facets of truth? It is not finite; rather, it is infinite. How do I explain to you the infinite nature of truth that is in Him? The light that emanated from Him was blinding and that light was truth. The love for truth that emanated from Him was so compelling that I found myself undone.

I love it when the Lord gives me such revelation. I do not know whether He does this for any other prophet, but for me, when He gave me this revelation, He did it in such a way that it was comprehensive and made real to me. When He does that, He always accompanies it with His love for this truth so that I will be sure to love it the way He does.

Jesus talked about the man who built his house on the rock. What was that rock? The rock was truth. If you build your house on the sand, you are building it on falsehood. When you build your house on the rock, you build it on truth because anything that has eternal value and existence is based on the foundation of truth which, in turn, is based on the foundation of His holiness. Therefore, what you want is for your life to be founded on truth. All truth is in Him; apart from Him you cannot find truth because it is not there. You can only rivet your gaze upon Him and in Him alone can you find truth.

If your life is solid and secure and founded in Him, where are you looking for truth? Do you get up in the morning looking through your day planner to see what hours you have to find truth in? No, truth is in Christ alone; what He is and how He is. If you want to learn to live by truth you must focus on Him and learn Him. He is the very personification of truth. What I hope to help you understand is that when you enter heaven, your life is going to be valued according to the amount of truth that you became in this life. The Lord is going to look at you and compare your life with His Word and will determine whether you lived or became truth here. He will look at whether or not you embraced truth and how your life was lived in respect to truth; and according to your union with truth, your life will be valued.

This is such a critical thing to understand and embrace because it will cause you to refocus your whole life. You begin to look at trials differently than before and you see the blessings differently than before because you realize that God is attempting to accomplish something in your life through everything that happens to you each and every day. What He is attempting to accomplish within you is to align you with truth. This process seems to give people on this earth a tough time.

When we are put through a trial, instead of trying to align ourselves with truth, we try to align God with our own will. Have you ever noticed the difficulties that occur when we try to move Him? Trying to bend Him to our will can be like trying to move the Rock of Gibraltar. Instead of trying to align our lives with truth, we try to align Him with our will, which all too often has nothing to do with truth.  Let me give you some examples. James said, “So get rid of all uncleanness, the rampant outgrowth of wickedness and in a humble, gentle, modest spirit receive and welcome the Word." We can replace Word with Truth: Receive and welcome Truth which, implanted and rooted in your hearts, contains the power to save your soul.

When we are trying to align God with our will instead of lining up our will with His, there is no humility. Instead, we are moving in pride and therefore there is no truth. When we stand in pride, truth cannot be implanted in our hearts. When we focus on the problem, rather than the will of God, His way and truth within the problem, the problem becomes overwhelming. We try and manipulate everybody and everything in our favor, but when our gaze is riveted upon God who is truth, it is very difficult to look at Him and allow our fallen nature to rule in the situation. When we look at Him, we see beauty, gentleness, goodness, kindness, a heart good to His enemies and One Who gives without expecting anything in return. When we are focused on our problem instead of the truth, our problem amplifies the life of our soul and our fleshly desires and we become moody and demanding. We magnify our flesh to take control of the difficult storm we are in and when the forces of the storm do not cooperate, we get angry and rebellious.

God wants you to know that your foundation must be truth. He is trying to help you navigate your way through life to the path upon which you become one with truth, to bring you out of instability and in to stability, out of the life of the flesh which accomplishes nothing, as only that which is of the Spirit is life. Inside truth is the realm of the Spirit which can accomplish things of eternal value. The place where we are concerned about the trial is the soul realm; though the soul and flesh can accomplish things as well, there is no eternal value in them. The Spirit is trying to navigate us back to the realm of truth where we can walk in the Spirit, grow in God and accomplish things of great value in this life through the good times as well as the bad. However, because we keep forgetting that all truth is only in Jesus and we keep our focus on extraneous things, we lose the benefit of everything God is trying to accomplish when He takes us through a storm.

The Devil is responsible for the storms, but can do nothing that God does not give him permission to do. If the Lord decides you may be buffeted by a certain storm for your good then He is going to let it happen. While you are complaining and groaning, you are turning a potentially great asset in your life into a valueless entity which will leave no temporal value on earth or eternal value in heaven. He wants us to learn how to be Christ-like while we are still on this earth, and it all starts with humility. Unless we humble ourselves, we cannot receive the power of the Word engrafted in our soul that was put there to spring into a mighty tree full of radiant fruit; we cannot even receive the seed until we humble ourselves. Much truth can be given us, but it will only rest upon your mind and cannot go into or be grafted into your heart until it falls upon a seed-bed of humility, the first and foremost virtue; you cannot love the truth without humility.

You were created to love truth; He created you to love truth. It is His highest hope for you. I speak to you not as a man talks to a man, but from the very heart of God: “I created you to be a lover and a bearer of truth; if you are not a lover and bearer of truth, you are not fulfilling the purpose for which I created you.”

When we are not reaching the goal for which we were created, it breaks His heart, because He cannot give you the very best as He desires. You have withdrawn yourself from the funnel of blessing because you will not love truth. There are people that say they love the Word, but do not obey it. I am not sure what it means when we love to read the Word and hear it taught, but will not obey the Word. Why do we love to read it? All it does is convict us. We are not a lover of the Word if we do not live it; living the Word shows God that we love His Word. If we live the sacred set of truths He put into our hands through His own blood then we show Him that we love Him.

He will love you whether you love truth or not, but there is more to this relationship than just God loving you. He wants to have a true relationship with you where your heart is open to the many wonders of His person and He is able to give you an understanding of Himself, the knowledge and experience of Him which you can only have if you love truth.

I never cease to be amazed at the Christians who are so quick to give you instruction on how you should handle your trials, but when these same trials fall onto their plate, the real truth comes out. They are good teachers of the Word, but they do not put what they say into action. The Lord Jesus Christ wants you to put the Word into action so He can bless you with Himself. He said in His Word, “How can two walk together unless they be agreed?” If you do not agree with His truth by living it, then how can you walk with Him? If you cannot walk with Him, how can you know Him? How can you hear the whisper of His voice if your ear is not next to His mouth? How can you hear the thunder of His heartbeat if your ear is not upon His chest? How can you feel the passion that beats through every part of His being if you never get close enough to sense it? If you are not a lover of truth you cannot hear His whisper or heartbeat and you cannot feel His passion.

All truth is in Christ, and that includes your life. Your life is not at the mall, at your business or at your mansion. You may be a very charismatic and influential person, but that is not your life. Your life is in Christ. I want you to feel the difference between walking in the world and walking in the Kingdom the way we were created to walk. What the Church is doing today is not what it was created to do. You hear people talk about others that they think have backslidden even while they themselves are tottering on the fence.

The truth is, the whole Church is living on the fence. It is as though it was living on the path that runs atop the Great Wall of China. The Church thinks it is in the Kingdom, yet it does not realize that it is on the wall, and so few and far between are those that are really in the Kingdom as Christ depicted it. Being saved and walking in the light of the Kingdom are two very different things; to walk in the life of the Kingdom is to walk in the life of the Spirit. You know how close you are walking to life in the Spirit by knowing where you are on the scale of love and anger. A man who cannot rule his own spirit is not a man of the Spirit. Anger is a sin that many Christians yield to multiple times throughout the day, all the while justifying it in their own eyes.

I am trying to tell you that the life you are living in Christ right now is way beneath the life that you were called to, and it is time to rise up and be what you were called to be. You can do it! Why live in the chicken coop when you can live in the lofty heights where the eagles soar? You do not have to be ruled by your flesh or your soul. You can live a life that is wholly yielded to your spirit. The world will look on and wonder and not understand why you do not get angry, even when confronted with the most difficult circumstances, but it will be the manifestation of the Living Word in you!

Television teaches us how to act; it tries to teach us how to raise our family. In the popular sitcoms, the children tell their parents how stupid they are; the parents look like idiots and the children come out looking like geniuses. Everyone in the family gets angry at least once a day. Television will teach you how to live in the soul, so get it out of your house! It does not matter if it is religious; how many Christian broadcasters are truly teaching you how to come up in the life of the Spirit? Get the television out of your house and get yourself in the Bible and in prayer because you are called to walk above the heathen. You are called to walk where angels walk. Every time you give into your sick, putrefied passions of the soul, you pull yourself down from the walk of angels into the walk of those who do not even know God.

His call for you is so incredible; the Lord wants you to come out of the miry clay into the heavenly places next to Him. Do not lock yourself into the life down here where nothing has eternal value. You cannot help a living soul if you are under the bondage of sin; you have got to be able to put your heel on the head of the enemy and you cannot do it when you are under his heel. You have to be above him to get your heel on his head. We have been born into the ruling and reigning position over the devil but it can only be exercised once you come into a place of humility. It is true humility that will allow God to rule and reign in you. Humility gives up all self-rights. If God wants to make a fool of you for someone else’s blessing, He has the right to do it. If He needs you to be an intermediary in some conflict and requires you to suffer for the good of someone else, then do it with humility. This is not about ‘I’. Once we are Christians, we think that God has to conform to our needs when what He is wanting is for us to conform to Him. When you conform to Him, He will conform many things to enable you to do His wil.

This is not a slap on the wrist, but a very strong encouragement from the Lord. In the midst of all truth is where you belong, says the One who loves you and is waiting to reveal Himself to you if you would just give Him time. You must learn that it is in the revelation of Him that you will discover how to glide upon the high currents; you do not have to live under the devil’s heel in this life. Although it is not easy, it takes will, faith, tenacity and humility to be constantly corrected without getting discouraged. Most of all, it takes passion to love Him who is truth more than this lower life.

There is a heaven, there is a hell, and there is a place that determines where eternity will be for you. There are degrees of both heaven and hell; you can go to heaven and find yourself in the lowest degree because you chose not to make Jesus your number one goal in this life, or you can walk the high places of heaven throughout eternity. This life is so small in its extent compared with forever. I have walked over the bridge; what I’m telling you is the truth. There will be a point in time when you walk over the bridge and you look back and realize that all the things He asked you to give up were meaningless in the light of eternity. He continuously asked and we continuously bartered. Then, one day, you get to the other side of the bridge and ask yourself why you fought so hard to keep all those things: wood, hay and stubble, none of it was gold. You will be so glad if you yielded the things He asked for because the other side of the bridge is beautiful and clear. When you are still over here He says, “Come,” and we are so unsure of what is over there and whether we want it. He knows you do not know where you are going. He is exchanging the tangible for the intangible in you. He knows that this is not easy for a human being, so He gives you the mercy and grace to help you along the way if you will turn away from the things that cannot profit your soul.

The world is getting unstable; turn to truth, and you will soon be very glad you chose to; He is the only stability. Come to Truth.