MATTHEW 6

 

WHEN UNION COMES

By

Nita Johnson

 

New Orleans Revival Services

 

 

He is a good and wonderful God, and He knows exactly what He is doing. Soon enough, so will we. To stand in the glory of His presence is worth any price. To stand in the glory of His presence—truly, it is worth any price. As we begin to understand individually that this life is all about being trained for the glory, we begin to pursue it with a passion, flinging to the wind everything that distracts. It does not matter if you are high-born or low-born in the eyes of man. It is not about education, race, or any of the things of which man always wants to make an issue. You do not have to be beautiful or dashingly handsome. You do not have to be old or young. You only need a desire to seek the Lord with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your soul, and all of your strength. If you will do that, He will reveal Himself to you.

 

Jesus is the image.  He is not only the image of God, but He is the image of the Church.  Until the Church lines up with that image, we are far away from where we are supposed to be. Jesus is the image of the living God. Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren, of which you are one. In some families, no one looks alike. There are six children and they all look like they came from different parents. There are other families where they look so much alike that even if you saw them at opposite ends of the town, you would still know they were related. Jesus is the firstborn among many who are to look just like Him. We are to look like Him, act like Him, and be like Him. That is not easy to do because even though He took dominion over the flesh from the beginning, we are still trying to decide if we want to take dominion over our own flesh. I am telling you the truth.

Matthew 6:9 Amp  Pray, therefore, like this: Our Father Who is in heaven, hallowed (kept holy) be Your name.

When you pray, do you pray like you know Him? Or do you pray like you have heard about Him? Do you pray like He is someone that is more important to you than the very air you breathe? If you do not, you do not pray like you know Him.

 

One time the Lord came to me, and discussed something with me. Suddenly, the Father started to talk to Him. The Lord did not even finish what He was saying to me, but immediately turned away and entered into the Father’s presence. The fellowship and the communion that took place between the Father and the Son were so beautiful. I just stood there and wept. I felt so jealous; I wanted to be there with them and share in what I was seeing. It went on for quite some time, and it seemed like He forgot I was there. It was so beautiful that I just stood there weeping as I watched them.

 

When they were finished, the Lord walked away and got something that belonged to me. He brought it to me and said, “You’re going to need this to finish your call.” I will not go into detail about what that was, but the whole subject matter of the conversation had changed. The Father had something else that He wanted the Son to relate to me. This is what He is calling the Church to. Someone may be talking with you, and suddenly the Father calls. Without even a thought, hesitation, or doubt, you turn away from the conversation. You go to have living communion with the Father, so that you might hear what He wants to say to the one your were talking to. And the glory—His glory—encompasses you. Then, what you give will come out of the glory.

 

That is what was so beautiful about Moses. I think it is very interesting that Moses did not take a new tent, take it outside of the camp, and make it the tent of meeting. Instead, the Bible says that he took his own tent and it became the tent of meeting with the Father. (Ex 33:7) It became such a regular experience, day by day, that when Moses would go into his own tent, all of Israel would come out of their tents to watch the glory descend. Whether they liked what the Father was saying or not, still, in their heart of hearts, they knew that what this man Moses said came out of the glory that descended upon that tent. That is what life is supposed to be for you and me. It is not about this other stuff that the Church is so engaged in—the world, the world, the world, and the lower life. It is not the life, His life;it is the lower life. Jesus warned us that if we sought to save the lower life, we would lose the higher life. The Church fell into the trap anyway.

 

We have sought to save the lower life and we continue to do it, not realizing that every day it is costing us the higher life. The price we pay for this is too dear. The day will come when we are going to be so sorry that we made this choice for so long. Suddenly, we are going to awaken and realize what we have done. We will realize that we got things confused, mixed up, and turned around, but now our eyes are open and we are standing before the truth. Now, we are no longer seeking to save the lower life but rather to crucify it. We are seeking the higher life. When we look back on our path and see what life was because we did not make that choice before, for a moment, there will be sorrow. There will be sorrow, but then joy will come in the morning because we have finally made the right decision.

 

 

When you pray, do you pray to Him whom you know? When you pray, do you remind yourself daily Who it is you are praying to and what His glory desires to bestow? The problem is not with God; the problem is with us. You pray, “Send Your glory. Send Your glory, Lord.” He says, “I am, but you’re under the wrong spout.” You tell Him, “Fix me. Heal me. I want to know You.” He replies, “Yes, I want you to know Me. Yes, I want to fix you. Yes, I want to heal you, but you’re in the wrong place. Come over here.” Yet because we do not really know Him, we do not realize what He is saying to us, and we do not recognize where to go to get the answers.

 

When you pray, do you remember who He is? If you could have seen the Lord Jesus Christ that day, and the beauty of that fellowship, you would want it for yourself. You would never let anything keep you from having it. Hallowed be Your name. Holy be Your name. When we remember that His name is holy and He is holiness to us, we realize that we must be holiness to Him. When we remember His holiness every day in all that we say and do, a fellowship begins to form that is much higher, much more beautiful, and much more glorious.

 

(Song) “There is a place so very high to which you have been called, and this place is so beautiful. He will take you there if you will go. He’ll come and He’ll raise your faith, your understanding. He will raise your soul to embrace this place if you will come.”

 

Sometimes the beauties of heaven are so extraordinary, the only way you can release them is through the anointing of a song. That is why David wrote psalms. He became so enraptured with God that to speak was not enough—he had to sing. It is a glorious place, full of beauty and grace. 

 

Your kingdom come. I would like to touch on this from a different perspective than I have before. I would like to tell you part of an experience that I had. I was taken to heaven, and I was standing before the throne of the Father. He began to speak to me about what I am going to share with you. I will just share with you the end of what He said. All the time that He was speaking to me, liquid light was pouring down over my person like a gushing fountain that could not be stopped. It washed down over me again and again and again. It was not enough for Him to utter the words; they had to be accompanied by light—the light of His glory—so that my soul could retain what He was trying to give.

 

So I was standing before Him. He gave me a very detailed, beautiful, and wonderful message. Then He said to me, “I have waited from the beginning of time for this hour when I would find those who were willing to give up everything to have union with Me. I have waited passionately for this hour and you have never known passion until you feel the passion of your God.”  When He said that, He deposited into my heart a passion that was not even the size of a tear drop. It was so miniscule, but when it entered into me, I thought I was going to burst at the seams from the passion of His heart.

 

His passion for union with His children is so great. If you can imagine, consider one whom you love more than any other human being on the face of the earth. You just cannot believe sometimes how much you love this person. Then, imagine that you have such a passion to see God’s kingdom come to the earth and to see His desire fulfilled, that it compels you beyond your very self to give this loved one unto death for the purpose of God’s will to be accomplished. Even then, you cannot comprehend the passion that lives in the heart of God for union with you. Anything else that the devil ever tells you is a lie. God wants you, and He wants to be in union with you. He gave it all, and He is just looking for you to make the same decision.

 

 

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. What did He say? “If they tell you, ‘Go out into the desert to look,’ don’t go.” (Mt 24:26) Don’t go because the kingdom is where? In you. Thy kingdom come—in you. The revelation of the kingdom must flow out of you. I have seen the kingdom. When the glory of the kingdom breaks forth on the earth, it is going to break forth from the sons of God—those who have come into union with Christ. It is going to break forth through their heart, from their bosom, into the earth. So great will be this breaking forth of light that it would be unbearable except by the grace of God. The kingdom is not going to come forth out in the desert, nor in the valley, nor in the city, but in the Church. It is going to come forth from the very bosom of the Church. The light of the glorious kingdom is going to break forth on the world like a new dawn from the bosom of those who have paid the price to go into union with Christ. We can ask Him to come to New Orleans and bring the greater revival. We can ask Him to come and let His Spirit of reformation pour forth on the city. However, revival, or even reformation, is but a foundational work. What He is really after is the release of the kingdom. He wants the kingdom to explode on the earth, and He wants it to explode through the heart of His completed ones.

 

If God has you in a fiery trial today, praise Him. Thank Him for it because you want the flesh to be cut away and gone. You want the chisel of the glory of God to cut away the flesh so that the light can break forth from your heart. You want it, and the trial is the only way to help you get what you want. So praise Him! That is not to say the trial is not difficult. Why would we call it a trial if it was so easy? It must be difficult, and we must quit fighting the trials. The trials must be so difficult that you cannot survive without pressing into God.

 

It is similar to the pressing of grapes. The grape is not completely pressed and fulfilling its highest purpose until it is squeezed out beyond measure; the skin can no longer contain the meat, and the meat is no longer solid, but has become wine. The trials and tribulations that come into your life are God’s gift. Paul said there would be tribulations, and that word tribulations speaks of a pressing until all that is inside is pressed out. It is a compressing of your very person until the glory is squeezed out like wine. 

 

We can and we must thank Him for the trials. The heavier and more dramatic the trials, the more you must force yourself to praise Him because they are a gift. The minute you say, “I’ve never hurt so bad,” well, praise God.  “I feel bruised and buffeted. I feel squeezed out,” and my favorite, “I don’t even know who I am anymore.” Praise God! If you have gone through this kind of trial where you are squeezed beyond measure, to the point where you cannot cope with your trial without pressing in, you are getting close. However, if you have never gone through these kinds of trials, you are far from the glory. If life is so peaceful, you need to start crying instead of praising God. Do not say, “Oh, I’m so glad I never have the kind of trials that Miss Nita has.” You do not want to do that, because you are missing out on what you need to have the glory. Trials are a gift.

 

Your kingdom come. One night, I was in my room, and the Lord opened up a funnel of revelation. He came down from heaven, and a glorious light came upon me. Coming through this funnel was revelation to help me understand human nature. It gave insight to help me understand my own soul, God’s thinking, and to help me relate to what He does and why He does it. I understood what He has done in man and what sin has done in man. I could not write fast enough to record all that He was giving me. I would like to share just one nugget from that night.

 

The nature of sin lives in the soul of every man, woman, and child. By saying “the nature of sin,” I am not talking about the acts of sin, but the sinful nature. Sin entered in, and sin lives in the soul of every man. You were born in sin, as David said. A place that was designed to house God has been corrupted, and because of this corruption the soul lives in silent agony from day one. It is devoid of that for which it was created, namely the living God. The soul of man was not the only thing created to house God. You have the temple, the soul, and the spirit. If you are not born again, your spirit is still alive because you are a spiritual being. The spirit is still alive, and if you are not born again, your spirit is not filled with God, so it seeks a spiritual connection; it will automatically connect to the kingdom of the evil one. It has to. It has to connect to a spiritual kingdom. Every spirit and every soul does this. Since this is a kingdom of darkness and death, your spirit lives in death if you are not born again. It is filled with the darkness of the evil kingdom, and this filling gets darker and darker the older you get. Your soul is in this quiet anguish. You do not know that you are in anguish because you need God. It is quiet, but deep in the inner sanctums of your soul.Your soul feels it and is under its dominion in constant anguish.

 

Now, as a child, it creates within you an intense need to cling to love: your mother, your father, your sister, or your brothers. If you cannot relate to love and have love relate to you, then even greater damage is done to this area of the soul that was made for God but has been filled with corruption. As a young child, you are not totally corrupt; this corruption is something that increases over the years of a person’s life. The more it increases, the more anguish your soul enters into. If you cannot get a healthy love from a mother and a father, a sister or brother, friends, family, and so on and so forth, you start looking for other things to fill this area that is in this quiet anguish. You may look for money; this is how the love of money becomes intensified and becomes a veritable stronghold. You may look for inappropriate love from the same or opposite sex. You may look for material things. You may be someone who grows up to be a taker. You just want, want, want from people all the time because you are trying to fill this void. Some turn to drugs. Some turn to alcohol. There are probably fifty-nine ways that the soul turns to different elements in this lower plane to try to heal the anguish. What it really wants is to have God dwell where He wants to dwell. You want to have this part of you filled up with the love that can only come from God. When He comes in and dwells there, there is a security that is unlike anything you have ever known before. When He dwells where He is supposed to dwell, where He intended to dwell, He then clothes you with Himself, like a house. You feel locked away, shut off, and cut off from everything that is not like Him. You are no longer in active communication or communion with the spirit of the world.

 

This temple area inside of you, created by your Creator so that He could fill it, is now filled with light. Because it is filled with God, it is filled with love and glory. On top of that, He clothes you with the fire of God so that you become like the fire of a torch. It is glorious. At last, you are complete. All of the things you thought you needed to be complete before that moment have lost their power and hold over you. You no longer need anything of this world; you are sustained by God. That does not mean that you do not eat, drink water, or sleep. You still do all of the normal bodily functions, but you do not eat as much; you do not need as much because His will become your food.

 

Your kingdom come, Your will be done. What is God? He is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, grace, and truth. When His kingdom has come, He is all of these things in you. Your natural human personality is ingested by Him who is Life. You no longer feel human love; you no longer feel human happiness. All of that dies, and it was not very satisfying anyway. The lower life is gone, and the higher has come. So now you are walking in divine love and divine joy. You are walking in divine goodness and all the other attributes of God. Jesus has literally opened up your soul and walked right into it and has taken up residence. When union has come, you are lost in God, and you stay lost in God. Your will is now swallowed up in Him and in His will. You have no will except to obey His will when union comes. You look at the world through different eyes. You do not see people through the same eyes. You never again look at people in terms of what you need from them.

 

During one of these kinds of visitations from Him, He spoke to me and said, “Love divine is a love that is fulfilled in what it gives, not in what it receives.” You are brought to a place where the love that is in your heart is fulfilled in the essence of love—not in whether or not the person receives it or returns it. Human love feels fulfilled when the love is received and returned, right? Not so with divine love. Its fulfillment is just in loving.

 

So the life of God has burned out all corruption, and you are free to be absorbed in the life of Christ. You are no longer just living for Christ; He now lives His life through you. He lives His will through you. The Bible says Jesus went up on the mountain to pray, and when He came back, He selected His twelve disciples. He went up to discern the Father’s will. When the Father’s will was totally revealed to Him, then He came down and did what He needed to do by selecting His disciples. How many times the Bible tell us, “And Jesus prayed,” and then He acted? It is just like what I experienced that day. I am talking to Him; He is talking to me. Suddenly our conversation comes to an end. He did not say, “Excuse me,” or “Pardon me, I’m sorry.” He just turned around and was absorbed in the glory, having fellowship with the Father. You know, in human terms that is downright rude, but as it goes in the divine life, it is the only thing that could have happened because the Father called.

 

There is a place in this life where your will is no longer yours. Your kingdom come, Your will be done in me as it is in heaven. In this place is where God begins to give the revelations that carry you through the plan and purpose of God. It is not enough, for instance, for me to just simply try to do what He is asking me to do. I need all kinds of information in order to walk out what He is asking me to do. However, of all that He has commissioned me to do, the highest of all of these things is to love God with all of my mind, all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my strength. The second highest is like it—to love my neighbor as myself.

 

Unless I am fulfilling those two things first, there is so much in my calling I cannot fulfill. Because of my complicated makeup, there are many things I need to know and many things I need to understand in order to be able to fulfill those two things. Someone else who is simpler may not need to know all the things that I need to know. But I am complicated, so unfortunately He has to tell me lots of things. Whatever we need, He will give it, if we make Him our first choice.

 

I do not know how to tell you the kinds of things He has to reveal to a person when He is equipping them to fulfill His will. Because it is a supernatural kingdom, so much that He has to put in that person is of a supernatural nature. You cannot even retrieve the information and the insight in the natural; you have to get it straight from Him. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Because God does not have enough of this kind of people that have been separated away from the world and separated unto Him, the earth has not been won for the Gospel. It takes this kind of people to receive all of the divine instruction that is needed to win the world the way it needs to be won, with power and authority. In order to receive this divine instruction, there must be an altering of our mentality, the way we see things, the way we think, and the way we perceive. The alteration must be a complete alteration, so if you are the kind of person who can never be corrected, you can also never be altered to receive the higher things of the kingdom. And yet, it seems that so much of the Church refuses to be corrected. If you tell them that they did something wrong, they will attack you or justify everything they have done, rather than be corrected. They do not realize that if you cannot be corrected by man, neither can you be corrected by God. If it takes Him five years to correct something in you that could have been corrected through an authority figure five years before, how far are you behind His purpose and His plan? Five years.

 

So, if this happens a few times, you may find that you are sixty years old and God’s will has never been performed. It is imperative to allow God to humble you. Plead with Him to humble you. Plead for the humbling, so that you can be teachable and breakable. He must break you to use you. He must break you so that you can know Him. May I say one more thing? You are not going to like this one. He must more than break you—He must crush you like cinnamon. There are certain flowers on the earth that have no fragrance until they are dried and crushed. Only then is their fragrance released.

 

Once, in a prophetic experience, I saw myself walking down the street. I came up to a man and he held in his hands a dried bouquet of roses. As I walked up to him, he said, “I’m selling roses today.” And I exclaimed, “But your roses are dried.” He responded, “Watch.” He began to break and crush the roses in his hands. I asked him, “Why are you doing that? You want to sell those to me. Why are you breaking and crushing them?” He answered, “Because there is no beauty in the rose until it is crushed. Only then can heaven smell the fragrance of the rose. Will you buy them from me?”

 

We do not run from the crushing. We learn to endure by the grace of Jesus Christ. If everything in your world seems to be topsy-turvy, in a whirlwind that just will not go away, praise God for it. He is crushing the rose to create the fragrance that only heaven can smell.

 

One time, around the year 2005, I was going through a horrible storm. As I was ascending a small flight of stairs, suddenly the Lord appeared at the top of the stairs. I asked Him, “Why are you here?” He held out His hand, and the palm of His hand was filled with crushed cinnamon. He held out the cinnamon to me. The crushing is so that He can own us, and so the kingdom can come and His will can be done in us, even as it is in heaven.

 

There is a glory—a greater glory. There is a glory of the light flowing from heaven. This glory awaits His people. There is a fellowship that is yearning and burning in the heart of God. This fellowship is born in the light. Let your life be crushed to powder. Let His mind fill your soul. When you let go of this earthly kingdom, His kingdom and its glory will come. Rush to the feet of your Master, for He alone knows how to make you into the image of His Son, born of the light of glory.

 

His kingdom come, His will be done—in you. Pray for it. Contend for it. Stop the compromise. Let it go. It is stealing the light from you. It is stealing the kingdom to which you have been called. Stop the compromise. God wants commitment to Him and commitment to the quest for the higher life. Contend for the life of the kingdom. Give God what He wants. You need it more than He does. Stop the self-justifications. Stop the reasoning. Just die. Go ahead; do it. Come out of the life that is attached to Babylon. Run in the life that is attached to Zion. God will meet you there.

 

I love this. He said, “Go to Jerusalem and wait for Me. Wait for the Promise of the Father.” He wants you to leave Babylon and meet Him in Jerusalem. He wants you to meet Him in Jerusalem, where He becomes your all and you become His. Let go of the compromise. Cling to commitment. Cling to the quest. Go after God. Go after Him with all of your mind, your heart, your soul, and your flesh, and He will meet you. He will do it. There are things that no man can do; God alone can do those things, and He will do it. He will do it, but you have to die. You must die. You cannot enter into life except you pass through death. Run after Jesus. Run after Him. Run! Run! Don’t walk. Don’t skip. Run! Run to win the marathon! Run after Jesus! Give Him your best. Give Him your all. Fling away the world. Run after Him. You will never be sorry.

 

Listen, it is love that calls. Do not run from love. He will teach you how to leap over the mountains like a hart. He will give you strength, valor, and courage. He will beautify you as no man can do. It is love that calls. Repent. Repent for not running after Him harder today. Tell Him you are sorry, and go after Him.

 

Precious Jesus, You captivate our hearts. You captivate our hearts, Lord. What can we say? You do. Lord, we are so sorry we take so long. We are so slow, but You do captivate us. You are the King of glory, and it is at Your feet that we will bow. We want You to use us, Lord, but more than that, we want to be one with You.