The Holy Spirit loves consistency. He grows it in us by magnifying the wonderful nature of God. He will focus our intention on a single aspect of God’s nature and magnify the truth for us.
My testimony is that God is the kindest person I’ve ever met. The father began specifically to teach me about his nature and my lifestyle, in order that I could be made in his image personally.
Whatever God is, he is relentlessly. He is relentless against the enemy. He is a persistent warrior king determined to release his people from bondage into victory. His love is undeviating. His faithfulness is so perpetual all we can do is give into it. His promises aren’t broken. His joy continues unabated. His goodness is unstoppable. He sustains us with his own nature. He is relentless in the most amazing and surprising ways. He is wonderful so that we might become full of wonder.
As the Lord began to teach me about his kindness, I enjoyed the contact, the lesson, the experience. I simply assumed after a while that the lesson would cease. I would get it, and God would move on; I would know the truth, and be set free, and he would show me something else.
I got it, loved it, and had some great experiences of God’s kindness. I found myself restless to move on and learn something else of God’s nature. The lessons continued, day after day, month after month until there was not a part of my life that had not received kindness. Still, it continued, every day was marked by a specific act or word of kindness.
I was confronted in the most loving, compassionate, humorous ways about his loving kindness. I laughed, I cried. It was so deep that I began to change. I began to speak kindly and act kindly towards others. I started to plan acts of kindness. i prepared kind words to speak deliberately into the lives of people. I developed a reservoir of kindness in word and deed. I gave kindness away at every opportunity. I became kindness.
Today, I’m still receiving daily experiences of the father’s loving-kindness. We live in this space together. He is kind, and so am I.
Of course, he has taught me other aspects of his nature. I am relentlessly loved. His unbroken love has broken my heart. His loving pursuit of me has washed away every bitter, humiliating experience of treachery and betrayal that I’ve been exposed to in human relationships. When the father rebuilt my heart, it was bigger. That is still a mystery to me.
I had not realized how our lives are defined by negative experiences. Throughout the experience of God’s relentless love, I kept expecting it to end. It was for a time and a season. Some things are for times and seasons, except for the nature of God. That is timeless, eternal, and persistent. He is relentless in the most beautiful way.
I thought that my behavior would lesson love. However, when I acted badly, love would intensify – Romans 5: 20. I thought that God was human and discovered he was divine. I was trying to make him into my image; and when he broke my heart, he began the process of making me to be like him.
On top of relentless kindness, he taught me about love in the most persistent manner. A few years later he began also to teach me about rest. When God teaches, he talks, acts, and moves in us consistently, until our experiences shape our thinking, perception, and behavior.
His relentless pursuit of rest and peace in me has brought me to a place of tranquility that astonishes me. I can bring myself to peace in around 15 seconds. Rest is a way of life for me now, a normal fixture and feature of who I am in Jesus. Currently I’m learning about relentless joy. I can feel my heart turning, softening, yielding to the persistent quality of the father’s joyful disposition.
Joy is eternal, everlasting. It does not depend on anything happening to cause God’s happiness. He does not need a reason to be happy. His nature is persistent. Whatever God is, he is in fullness and abundance. When he talks to us, it is for the express purpose that his joy would rub off on us. These things I’ve spoken to you, so that my joy might be in you and that your joy may be made full – John 15; 11
Imagine what it is like to hear the voice of God who is incredibly happy. Imagine the effect that the sound of consistent happiness can have on a human heart. Then we are getting closer to what we can live within constantly. With God every experience is intensified.
Revelation is not just about disclosure – John 16; 13.it is not just primarily concerned about communicating a truth. The truth must become real in our experience. Truth is incarnational. God always works from the whole to the particular. He applies all of his truth to specific areas of our life that require development. It is not enough for him to change our behavior. He is not concerned to modify our conduct. He wishes to make us exactly like him in each area of our life.
Truth sets us free when we become the living embodiment of it – when our thoughts, words, and actions are so synchronized that we have effectively become the living word. As he is, so are we, in this world.
When we fail to preach truth as an incarnational experience, then we are merely communicating information about God. We are acquainting people with God; we are not immersing them into his nature. Proclamation is the art of declaring who the Lord is and that we have full permission to enter in and become that in him. All teaching leads to encounter. Without personal engagement, we cannot be changed.
Informational teaching gives people pointers. It gives them things to do; follow these steps, you can change yourself. This is nothing more than a glorified self-help program. People do not apply truth to themselves. The Holy Spirit relates truth to us. He brings us to a place of connection with Jesus where his relationship with us empowers us to be made in his image. Truth is a person. I am the way, the truth, and the life. The truth is the word made flesh.
The truth is a person made real in our experience. Truth is relational and therefore incarnational. When we teach or preach incarnationally, then we are deliberately working with the Holy Spirit relationally, to draw people into an environment where they can experience the presence of God in the spoken word.
Such teaching creates hunger, desire, and yearning. It opens people’s hearts to all the possibilities of the nature of God. Blessed are those who hunger, for they shall be filled.
Imagine talking about food with people. Then imagine talking about food that is prepared, cooked, and available. In the first, we can share a recipe and invite people to picture the meal. In the second, we can share the recipe and invite people to taste and see. It’s an intensified experience!
The Holy Spirit magnifies the Lord. He adores Jesus and loves to enlarge his appearance in our eyes. As he intensifies the presence of Jesus to us, we find ourselves going beyond appropriating principles to actually encountering the one who is present.
We can become what the Holy Spirit is magnifying to us concerning God’s nature. It drives us into a deeper relationship with him. We are shaped by his presence, chiseled and sculpted into his likeness.
Whatever the Holy Spirit magnifies to us will intensify our experience of the Lord. The weight of Revelation will tell us the power of our experience. That is, it also denotes the volume of our permission.
When the Holy Spirit magnifies Jesus, the permission increases for us to become as he is. We get to discover the measures of God that make up his fullness. All truth about God’s nature has four applications which are; length, breadth, height, and depth – Ephesians 3; 16 – 21.
Oh, the lengths that God has gone to and will go to in our lives to empower us with love! The breadth of the scope of his love is astonishing. The heights to which love will take us give us a vision of the overall splendor of his nature. The depth at which he moves in our lives is incredible. We feel overwhelmed by the majesty of his abundance. It is beyond even our imagination. It is too big for our mind to get to grips with that kind of reality.
Intensified experience leaves us breathless with anticipation. What next? Majesty provokes a different level of encounter.
Assignment – what is the Lord working on in your life at this time? What does he want to be for you in this area that will open you up to majesty? What encounter is the Holy Spirit seeking to provide in your heart? Ask, and it shall be given. Keep on joyfully asking. It will surely come.
Commission – what aspect of his own nature is the father teaching you at this time? Define the attitude and approach of the Holy Spirit as your life coach, tutor, and facilitator. What encounter must you have with that specific aspect of God’s character and personality? Listen to the Holy Spirit as he magnifies Jesus. Allow yourself to be drawn into that place of majesty.