The Ultimate Call of the Believer – Part 1
Dear Reader, this article is a transcription of a private teaching that Nita gave recently. So, please read through it as though you were listening to a message.
I would like to share with you about where we can go in God. I will share one aspect of it in this article, and other aspects in future articles. Through the next few articles, I will give you a good, clear picture of where the Lord is calling us. Then, I will begin to take you on a systematic journey of how we can get there. In addition, I will address some things that are an absolute requirement if you want to enter these deep places with God. You cannot have the things that I am going to share with you without certain investments on your part. The faster you are able to appropriate the things I share, the faster you will move along in your journey with the Lord. I hope to relate things to you in a clear and concise way, so you can run with the things I reveal and it will not take you as long as it has taken me to attain this place in God. Through this series of articles, my hope is that that the Lord, by His Spirit, will meet each one of you in a wonderful way.
Colossians 2:9-10 says, "For in Him the whole fullness of Deity (the Godhead) continues to dwell in bodily form [giving complete expression of the divine nature]. And you are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life [in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead- Father, Son and Holy Spirit- and reach full spiritual stature]. And He is the Head of all rule and authority [of every angelic principality and power]."
Ultimate Call of the Believer
I want to share with you the concept of the "Ultimate Call of the Believer", which through Christ, is to experience the state of being filled with the Godhead bodily. Let me begin in about 1985, at which time I stayed in a cabin with my ministry traveling companion. I took some time off because of heart trouble by the doctor’s instruction.
In my room was a huge picture window, about the size of a patio window, which overlooked the lake. One day I sat at this window in prayer, asking the Lord to heal my heart. He suddenly appeared to me. Immediately I noticed several different things about Him. First, I noticed His eyes. His eyes were not a deep sea blue but they were a most unusual color. (In fact, I have never truly seen the exact color of His eyes any place on earth except in Israel. They are the color of the mineral rich salt sea, also known as the Dead Sea. The color of that water is the color of the Lord’s eyes.) His eyes emanated the very love that He is. They looked like eternal pools of liquid love. His eyes, so filled with love, looked liquid even though I knew that they were solid. Therefore, His eyes were the first thing that I noticed about Him.
The second thing I noticed about Him was His unbelievable compassion for those who are suffering. When He sees His children suffer, it is difficult for Him. The only way I can describe it is to think of a mother who is sitting beside the bed of her little five or six year old son who is very sick. The mother cannot leave the child’s bed because he is so sick and her heart is gripped with compassion over his suffering. This was the same heart of compassion that was in the Lord. So, this incredible compassion was the second thing I noticed about Him.
The third thing I noticed was how complete He is. Not only is He the profusion of the Godhead but also, He is the completeness of all things. I knew as I sat there looking at Him that outside of Christ I needed nothing. He is complete not only with the totality of the Godhead but He is also the completeness of every living thing. If a person has the fullness of Christ, there is no sense of needing anything else in this world. Of course, if you have a profession you fulfill your profession. If you are a parent, you do your parenting. It is not as though you become a recluse because you are complete in Christ, but you do not "need" those things to complete anything in you because He has now become your completion. This understanding and illumination of just how complete Christ is was so incredible to me. As He was standing before me at the cabin that day, I knew I did not even have to ask for my healing. As His love poured through His whole being into me, I knew He was healing me. After our discourse was finished, I got up and went to bed at total peace with my healing.
Not only is He the completeness of all things, but He wants to give us all things through that completeness. Moreover, He wants to be all things in us. Paul says:
"And you are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life [in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead- Father, Son and Holy Spirit- and reach full spiritual stature]."
Perfection
When the Lord brings the Christian to this full spiritual stature, what the Bible refers to as "Adult Sonship", then the things that I saw in Jesus that day are perfected in us. He came to me not magnifying His Godhead, although that was clearly evident, but He came to me magnifying His manhood. The manhood of Christ, the manhood of Christ completely filled with the Godhead. The Bible tells us that Jesus is the firstborn of many brethren. Everything that we see in Him — the love, the compassion, the joy, the peace, the truth, the goodness, the kindness, the fullness of satisfaction, all of these are the essence of His completeness.
Ephesians 4: 12-13 says, "His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints (His consecrated people), [that they should do] the work of ministering toward building up Christ’s body (the church), [That it might develop] until we all attain oneness in the faith and in the comprehension of the [full and accurate] knowledge of the Son of God, that [we might arrive] at really mature manhood (the completeness of personality which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection), the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him."
What this verse says may seem overwhelming and maybe even utterly impossible to you. Nevertheless, the truth is that the Bible tells us that He has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness to bring us into the perfections of Christ. God calls us to reach the height of Christ’s own perfection, the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ and the completeness found in Him.
In fact, the book of Ephesians in Chapter 1:18 says:
"By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints
(His set-apart ones)."
It is God’s will for our heart to explode with light so that the eyes of our heart are open to understand the call to this glorious position of the adult sonship.
It is not enough to hear this truth taught. We need to experience an inundation of our heart by the light of God until our heart reaches saturation level with His light so the "eyes of our heart" are forced open to understand and comprehend the fullness of our calling. What is the fullness of our calling? It is adult sonship in Christ. It is the completeness of the personality of Christ, which is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, kindness and includes the full stature in which He walks. As perfect Man, the stature in which He walked before us here on earth, was that of a man fully developed in God. The life of the Godhead, the life of the Son, the life of the Father, the life of the Holy Spirit, fully saturated His inner most being.
Let me share another vision with you. While on a plane, I was reading something that John G. Lake wrote about "Jesus, the Man". As I was reading, it dawned on me that 95% of my focus had been on "Jesus, the Son of God", not "Jesus the Son of Man". I felt like I was treading new territory because I had spent all of my focus developing myself in the revelation of Jesus, the Son of God. As I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes, I saw a vision of Jesus, the Son of Man. In this vision, I saw Jesus conceived in the womb of Mary. I saw the manhood of Christ conceived in her womb. As the Holy Spirit planted the seed in the womb of Mary, I saw a beam of glory shoot down from Heaven and clothe it with God. This glory surged deep into every part of the fetus. I saw it go through the head, the shoulders, the heart, the soul and through the legs and then it surrounded Him. The glory of God then penetrated into the inner most part of the fetus and exploded with light. The Lord then said to me, "What I have just shown you is Jesus, the Son of Man, the Son of God".
Anyone who knows anything about theology knows that Jesus was all man and He was all God. For twenty-five years, I prayed and ask the Lord what that truly meant. The Lord answered my question that day. After God had totally surrounded and filled the innermost cavity of the fetus, you could not tell Christ the Son of Man, from Christ the Son of God. You could not tell where one began and where the other stopped. Then suddenly in the vision, the fetus became the adult Jesus, the Son of God the son of man, standing in front of me. I saw His manhood utterly clothed with His Godhood. He was utterly complete as perfect man and, of course, He was utterly complete as the Son of God. It was the most amazing experience I had ever had and I sat there in the airplane seat with tears flowing down my cheeks because I knew only God could have done what I saw in the vision.
In these last days there is going to come forth a company of people that the Spirit of God perfects, whose eyes of their heart are open to the wisdom and the revelation of God and the understanding of their calling. Their hearts flooded with light and grace in response to this calling. They will understand the completion of Christ, the perfection of Christ as well as the mature stature and the fullness of the Christ. They will not only understand this with their minds but they will understand with their heart, soul, and spirit. This will become not only their understanding, but also, the living reality within them. These truths will be the life upon which their soul will feed and nurture. Clothed in the fullness of this understanding, they will walk in newness of life. This company of adult sons that God is going to bring forth will be comparatively large.
The Lord took me up before His throne one day back in the early 1990’s. While I was before Him He flooded me with light and bathed me with waterfalls of liquid light. One of the things He said to me during that experience was that He has waited throughout all of eternity for the moment wherein He would bring forth a commonwealth of people who are willing to forsake the world and everything in it to have all things in God. It would be a company of people that He could inhabit the way He inhabited His Son. He said He has waited all eternity for this hour. He is looking into the heart of every man to see whom He can fill with Himself. In this experience, He said to me, "Nita, you have never known yearnings until you have known the yearnings of the heart of your God". After which, He touched my heart with just a little teardrop of His own yearnings and I was filled with the glory of God. My friend Bonnie and I were on a walk talking about the Lord when this happened. Saturated with the longings and yearnings of God I was totally lost and had no idea where I was. Bonnie said that the glory of God came down and covered my body so profusely that she could hardly stand up next to me. God has waited through all eternity for this moment to give every one reading this article the capacity to walk in the fullness of the stature of Christ so that He can bring forth an entire company of such people.
Colossians 2:2-3 says, "…that mystic secret of God [which is] Christ (the Anointed One). In Him all the treasures of [divine] wisdom (comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God) and [all the riches of spiritual] knowledge and enlightenment are stored up and lie hidden."
If this is true, it tells us that Jesus the Son of God is purposely designated by the Father to bear the wisdom of God to mankind. It says "all" of the treasures of divine wisdom. That is incomprehensible to me. How can the finite mind comprehend the "all" in this verse? All the wisdom of the Father is stored up in Christ the Son. What is the purpose? To be revealed to His church by way of the Spirit of Truth.
God wants us to have His wisdom and understanding of the purpose to which He calls us. He does not want us to have mere head knowledge, but He wants our hearts to be enlightened to the point that we are walking in the light of Christ as Christ is in the Light. The Bible teaches us that to walk in the Light as Christ is in the Light means that there is no longer darkness within. The sinful nature is crucified, our souls and spirits are filled with light, and we are, albeit invisibly, clothed with the light of God, the light that is God.
This comes from the indwelling of Christ releasing the wisdom of God to us, in us and through us. This is the hope of every human being. This is the hope of every Christian who wants to go deep in God, that we can receive the Light and walk in the Light as Christ is in the Light. Our hope is that the Son would indwell us with the fullness of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost dwelling bodily within us. Further, as He indwells us, that He would release the wisdom of God so we know the plans and purposes of God and can live in the experiential life of the fullness of the Kingdom, in this life.
Until God began to reveal this reality to me, I saw this the way most see it. I was taught that we live in this life as a Christian, do our best to live for Jesus and then, in the life to come, we have the fullness of all things. However, the Bible does not teach that. God calls us to understand, appropriate, and walk in the establishment of the fullness of God in this life. God calls us, He picks us out to enter into the fullness of God in this life.
1 Corinthians 1:30, "But it is from Him that you have your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our Wisdom from God, [revealed to us a knowledge of the divine plan of salvation previously hidden, manifesting itself as] our Righteousness [thus making us upright and putting us in right standing with God], and our Consecration [making us pure and holy], and our Redemption [providing our ransom from eternal penalty for sin]."
God has designed for us through Christ to experience the fullness of that wisdom that He allots to man, that we might understand the plans and purposes of God and the hope to which He called us. He has designed for us through Christ to know this fullness of His righteousness because without His righteousness none of this can happen. Without His righteousness there is no hope of us ever attaining the depths of God. His righteousness is what keeps us connected to Him and connected to His grace so we can attain these things. Further, once we attain these things we can know the fullness of, and being clothed experientially with His righteousness. This is not only something that we look forward to in faith knowing that when we get to heaven the righteousness will be ours experientially. On the contrary, we can have it in this life. At this present time, the church walks in His imputed righteousness but in the fullness of sonship the believer walks in His imparted righteousness and His redemption. Wisdom, righteousness, consecration, and redemption, Paul lists them in order of appropriation. We start with the wisdom, the second thing is the appropriating of His righteousness, and the third thing is the consecration or sanctification to which His righteousness brings us. The fourth thing is redemption. The church, for maybe all or most of the church age, has felt that redemption is something to happen on the other side of the grave when in truth God never intended it as such. His intention was for every believer to attain redemption, the fullness of eternal life, this side of heaven so that we could walk in the glory of God in this life.
See Part 2