Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Doctor of Love Degree in YHVH’s “Love School”

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Certifications and degrees from top schools are prized, especially graduate degrees. In keeping with such attainments, may we welcome our Potter-Father’s diagnostic tests as He tests us to show us where we are in our yieldedness to His Son, our Head who is Love Incarnate. We are in the highest school of all as His offspring, sons and daughters being raised to be just like His Pattern Son. In acknowledgement of Yeshua, I quote: “And he alone is the leader and source of everything needed in the church. God has put everything beneath the authority of Jesus Christ and has given him the highest rank above all others.” (Eph. 1:22 TPT) One day we will face a final assessment re: our fruit production branch to the Vine. (See John 15.) And 1 Corinthians 13:2 gives us a heads up about what our Maker most wants to see in us: “And if I have prophetic powers (the gift of interpreting the divine will and purpose), and understand all the secret truths and mysteries and possess all knowledge, and if I have [sufficient] faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love (God’s love in me) I am nothing (a useless nobody).” (AMPC) The passage 1 John 4:7-8 concurs: “Those who are loved by God, let His love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of Him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love.” (TPT)

As we are slated to be Yeshua’s sister-spouse, the Holy Spirit is ever working with us to perfect us in love or get us to the place where we love like He loves i.e. we let Him love THROUGH us unhindered. The bride will be equally yoked to Yeshua as His conjugal in the spirit partner in ministry. 1 John 2:3-5 gives us the Apostle of Love’s admonition: “Here’s how we can be sure that we’ve truly come to know God: if we keep His commands. (f) If someone claims ‘I have come to know God by experience,’ yet doesn’t keep God’s commands, he is a phony and the truth finds no place in him. But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, not just by saying, ‘I am intimate with God,’ but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus.”

[Note f 2:3 Keeping God’s commands is the proof and evidence of coming to know God, not the means of knowing God.]

[And this doing of the Word IS all by grace. Paul told of superabundant grace given him by Christ as the ability he operated in as he wrote 1 Corinthians 13, our plumbline of maturity.]

We do get an “A” in YHVH’s New Covenant school of love when we function as “little Christ’s.” Thankful we can be to be among the emerging Bride/Son company who believe this 1 John level of likeness with the Godhead is possible. Thank you, Liz Wright, Virginia Killingsworth, and other mentors—disciple-makers unto our full maturity. That there is going to be a like-souled John 17 company in the earth is our good faith position. Jesus did pray in John 17: “Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life that You conferred as a gift through Me, so they can be one heart and mind as We are one heart and mind.” (MSG) Do hasten to read Loved A 90 day journey into the heart of God by Liz Wright and co-author Gretchen Rodriguez with its keys to full possession by our Great Lover and Lord and Miracles Are Normal —Co-Creating Through Oneness with God by Virginia containing a map to the soul restoration necessary to flow as ONE with the Creator Himself. Both writers point us to overcoming self-imposed limits in the way of much greater change into YHVH’s image.

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Bondslave Freedom

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The reality that becoming a slave to Jesus

resulted in ultimate freedom was birthed in the days 

of the Apostle Paul and company.

Romans 1:1 “From Paul, a bondslave of Jesus Christ…”

1 Corinthians 7:23 You were bought with a price [purchased with a

preciousness and paid for by Christ]; then do not yield yourselves up 

to become [in your estimation] slaves to men [but consider

yourselves slaves to Christ].

This ultimate freedom is a freedom from the rule of self

and freedom from the rule of the sin nature 

by way of co-crucifixion with Yeshua Hammaschiach on the cross of Calvary.

Romans 6:22 “However, now, freed from sin and enslaved to God,

you do get the benefit—it consists in being made holy, 

set apart for God, and its end result is eternal life.”

Bondslave Freedom: The way whose time has come again.

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Love Profits

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“I am bankrupt without love,” The Message translation states in 1 Corinthians 13. “If I do not have love, I gain nothing,” the ESV says. But what will love profit me if I obey God’s directive to “follow after charity” (KJV) or “eagerly pursue and seek to acquire [this] love [make it (my) aim, (my) great quest]?” (AMPC)

Today I inquired of THE textbook on love, the Holy Bible, seeking increase to my life in God in the way of walking out agape love, the fruit that comes from remaining vitally united to the Vine, the Lord. As I have been drawing closer to Yeshua’s heart, I am ever experiencing a deeper connection to Him and revelatory insights into Holy Writ.

Let me share some verses on love in Matthew 5 from the JB Phillips translation. First, though, let’s read from 1 Corinthians 13:1-3:

If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels, but have no love, I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal. If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God, and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains, but have no love, I amount to nothing at all. If I dispose of all that I possess, yes, even if I give my own body to be burned, but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing. 

Clearly, allowing God’s agape love to flow from within our hearts out to others is of paramount importance to God. Clearly, love is the sine qua non for us.

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A Great Revival of Obedience

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In your faithful love, O Lord, hear my cry;  let me be revived by following your regulations.

(Ps. 119:149 NLT)

Sweeter also than honey are His living words—sweet words dripping from the honeycomb! For they warn us, Your servants, and keep us from following the wicked way, giving a lifetime guarantee: great success to every obedient soul! (Psalm 19:10-11 TPT)

We’ve missed something when we pull away from Joshua 1:8 and Psalm 1:1-3-level prescriptions for the victorious life in the Lord. 

Joshua 1:8 directs: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall read [and meditate on] it day and night, so that you may be careful to do [everything] in accordance with all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will be successful.” (AMP)

And Psalm 1:1-3 augments this same call to be in the Word night and day: “Blessed [fortunate, prosperous, and favored by God] is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked [following their advice and example], nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit [down to rest] in the seat of scoffers (ridiculers). But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on His law [His precepts and teachings] he [habitually] meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted [and fed] by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season;
Its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers [and comes to maturity].” (AMP)

We haven’t perceived rightly the whole aim of God in bestowing His gift of salvation when we stall out at His requirement that we respond with wholehearted submission to Him and “tremble at His Word.” The Lord states upfront: “I have made everything; that’s how it all came to be. I, the Lord, have spoken. The people I treasure most are the humble— they depend only on me and tremble when I speak.” (Isaiah 66:2 CEV) The Father’s entire buying back of us from the slavery to sin and bondage entails His giving us the choice to be fully yielded bondslaves to God so He can bring us to glory. This glory is what we long for and are designed for but often seek by way of selfish ambition, self-exhaltation and/or the independent exertion of ego or self apart from the Holy Spirit. But self at the center doesn’t taste of the risen Lord’s delicious glory and freedom.

Let’s first face the cost to have the pure walk and not just mere talk. Then let’s examine the deep and rich fulfillment of gaining Christ. And finally, let’s look into the eternal rewards of complete obedience to the Almighty and the losses we will incur if we say “no” and hold back on our Maker. When we do obey the Father, we come to find that He very much does know what He is doing with every one of us. [See Romans 8:28-29 TPT.]

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The Yielded Will: 

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How Walking before the Father as Surrendered as Jesus 

Results in God’s Design of Glory for Man

David speaking: “I hear the Lord saying, ‘I will stay close to you, instructing you and guiding you along the pathway for your life. I will advise you along the way and lead you forth with My eyes as your guide. So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn when I take you where you’ve not been before. Don’t make Me tug you and pull you along. Just come with Me!’” 

(Psalms 32:8-9 TPT)

…God raised up David to be king, for God said of him, ‘I have found in David, son of Jesse, a man who always pursues my heart and will accomplish all that I have destined him to do.’ 

(Acts 13:22 TPT)

As we recognize that God desires to direct every aspect of the course of our lives, let’s first consider to what end this is that we may wholeheartedly follow Him. We note that Paul, James, and the others positioned themselves as bondslaves of the Lord. Did they perceive something about Jesus Christ that we need to recover as they willingly gave the Lord the full ownership of their lives that He requested? Paul firmly stated to the early followers of Christ: “You should [L Don’t you…?] know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you and was given to you by God. So you do not belong to yourselves, because you were ·bought by God [bought] for a price.” (1 Cor. 6:19-20 EXB) What these bondslaves of Jesus knew was that Jesus had made the way to know delicious freedom from sin and its fruit, death. These followers also came into the ultimate fulfillment of being welcomed into the embrace of the Father, the Creator, who had revealed His nature as perfect love. No longer were they prodigals. They were reinstated sons of God. [Luke 15:17-22 TPT recounts the story of the prodigal who really didn’t know the Father until Abba “raced out to meet him, swept him up in his arms, hugged him dearly, and kissed him over and over with tender love.” The son admitted his waywardness—his sins against the Father. Further, the wayward son started to declare his unworthiness. Right then, the Father stopped the son from speaking of himself as unworthy by putting the best robe on his newfound son’s shoulders, a ring as a seal of sonship, and the very best shoes. Finally, the Father inaugurated a great celebration of the son’s redemption.]  The early church knew Jesus had inaugurated “the restoration and fulfillment of all things” by His work on the cross. (Eph. 4:10 TPT) Nothing the world had to offer could compare to the new life—indeed, a new creation that the Savior had delivered to humankind, and it still doesn’t. Once born again and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, these men and women of the early church were flowing in rivers of the supernatural zoe life of God. They were literally experiencing resurrection life from inside their bodies.

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Union of Wills

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Overcoming Hidden Pockets of Pride and Rebellion so as to Gain Christ;

Experience a Passionate Love Relationship with God;

Know Fruitfulness and Prayer that Prevails;

And Find Favor, Protection, and Soul Prosperity

Part One

The Father reveals the great dream in His heart for our inner life on earth in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. He desires us to walk in an Edenic reality on the inside even as we exist in “the midst of a brutal and perverse culture.” (Phil. 2:15 TPT) Paul writes of this Eden within in his heavenly Epistle using these words: “that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!” (Eph. 3:19 AMPC) We look back to the Psalms to capture how pleasureful this fullness is. King David, who gave himself to hours and hours in the Old Testament version of a house of prayer, talked of drinking from “a river of thy delights,” “a wonderful river,” and “a refreshing stream.” (Psalm 36:8 KJV, ERV, HCSB). One more translation says of knowing God and imbibing His zoe life: “You give them water from your river, that makes them happy when they drink it.” (Psalm 36:8 EASY) 

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“A Body Wholly Filled and Flooded”—All This by way of Receiving

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For months now, Pastor Bryan Wright at Boomerang Church in the humble, little city of Albemarle, NC has labored to impart the absolute necessity of receiving God’s love first and foremost before ever stepping out in any effort to obey God. This emphasis is because it is only as the God who is love becomes our source that we are at all able to love Him back by keeping His commandments. And all of His injunctions are summed up in John 13:34-35, “ I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves]. The Lord, the Vine, must be our source as obeying God is all by grace, God’s power and ability, and impossible by self-effort. We are lifeless corpses, fleshy souls, apart from Him. John 15:5 puts our state bluntly:  “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.“

But oh, what we, the very Body of Christ, can know, for the price of positioning ourselves to receive and letting Him pour His love into us. We are meant to experience the fire within of His unconditional love. We are meant to receive and receive and receive and only after that respond to Him. “We love Him, because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19 explicitly says. And how we show we love Him is by obedience. John 14:15 is the acid test: “If you [really] love Me, you will keep (obey) My commands.” John 15:10 adds the word that to obey Him is to remain in His love: “If you keep My commandments [if you continue to obey My instructions], you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love.”

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Hierarchy has No Place

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One of the most precious pictures of the meek and lowly Lamb of God, Jesus the Christ, the One with all power and authority in the universe, is found in John 13:1-17. Here, Jesus, who was willingly continuing on the Father’s path for Him of giving His very lifeblood to purchase eternal life for those who would surrender to Him and follow Him, demonstrates the radical, sacrificial love that marks His reign over the hearts of men. He was not reluctant as He took a towel and put it around His waist to position Himself for the most humble and servile of tasks—that of washing His disciples’ feet the night before His death on the cross. In fact, in this task He, “longed to show them the full measure of His love,” The Passion Translation records.[1] He knew He was breaking through the sense of hierarchy that in the world’s  social, political and religious thinking determined greatness. The culture was marked by a pecking order—the enemy’s hierarchy on earth, a hierarchy that came into being as the curse fell in the Garden of Eden and man was subject to satan’s order. This demonic hierarchy is in the way of the rule of God’s kingdom of love. 

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Formula for Love

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The Bible talks about a couple of bonds between brothers and sisters in the church: the bond of peace and the bond of perfectness. What are these bonds? And how does one walk in them such that the high and beautiful fruit of love results?

First, to have bonds in place is to have no divisions. And the cross we are called to subject ourselves to—the dying to the life of self—is the answer to all the divisions in the Body. We will all say we are of Christ our Head when we are following Him according to Luke 9:23. The verse reads: “And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself (deny letting his soul have dominance over the Indwelling Lord), and take up his cross daily and follow Me.”Embracing the cross comes before experiencing intimate union with the Lord or flowing together with Him in the life of the spirit. We are one spirit with the Lord 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, but there is a veil of flesh which must be rent for more in terms of interior experience to open up. [See http://artkatzministries.org/articles/the-veil-of-self/.]

It’s in Ephesians 4:1-6 that Paul writes about the bond of peace:

“I beseech you therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, to walk worthily of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, bearing one another in love, being diligent to keep the oneness of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace: one Body and one Spirit, even as you were also called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and one Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

The prescription for keeping the bond of peace in place involves love. The call to walk in lowliness and meekness involves walking in such a way that we put others before ourselves. We must keep the fleshy self-life under the cross. Thus, we are to practice the moment-by-moment crucifixion of the flesh. The prescription does call for suffering and endurance at times. Our reaction patterns must be governed by the Indwelling Christ and the Word stored in our hearts such that we don’t sin. So we’re to let Psalm 119 realities prevail.

“Peace is the issue of the working of the cross,” Witness Lee says in his Recovery Bible notes. When we stay in the flow of the spirit, we stay in oneness. We are for others’ well-being. Our lives together are marked by harmony, concord, and blessedness. The parts of the Body function rightly.

Colossians 3:12-15 discusses the peace of the spirit as umpire and arbitrator among us. This passage tells how peacekeeping keeps love, which is the bond of perfectness, in place.

“Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, inward parts of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, long-suffering; bearing one another and forgiving one another, if anyone should have a complaint against anyone; even as the Lord forgave you, so also you should forgive. And over all these things put on love, which is the uniting bond of perfectness. And let the peace of Christ arbitrate in your hearts, to which also you were called in one Body; and be thankful.”

There is a certain mature saint I know who so lets peace rule in her heart that she walks at a very high level of selfless love. In fact, she has reached such levels of loving your neighbor as you love yourself that she is qualified to teach. Her name is Dottie Bell.

Dottie grew up in an era and a part of the country where Christian principles in general informed the society around her. Love existed among family and friends. She encourages learning the social graces because they so help in seeing how to be kind and considerate. As we are the true royalty in the earth, why not learn the good manners that go along with the royal law of love?

Dottie, who happens to be my mom, didn’t find peace and love to be so easy in a marriage to an unsaved husband and around the true church. She recalls, “Growing bonds with others took a long time. The people in spirit-filled circles often came from lives of trouble and pain. The backgrounds were so different, and I had to work to overcome the differences. And many people faced real warfare. At first, I knew not how to defeat the devil.”

[Note: Dottie’s husband, Ed, turned to the Lord and received Jesus as Savior in the last days before his passing. His decision for Christ followed upon decades of concerted intercession for him.]

Dottie learned to get her love needs met at the deepest levels from Christ. She learned to look to the Lord as her great source of fulfillment and found that the Lord was her nourishment—her “All in All” as 1 Corinthians 15:28 terms God. She invested in her life in the Word. Dottie studied what it meant to be one spirit with the Lord. In time, as she found the way of the cross, her experience was one of union with the Lord. And it was from Christ Jesus she was able to draw as she encountered all kinds of human need. Today she still lives Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”“You have to be prepared for people who do not know how to love and can’t love you back,” Dottie states.

“God is perfect at everything. He knows what He is doing when He puts you in situations where you need more patience or grace or love. Right in the test, ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with His good fruit. He will do so and enable you to walk through any interaction. You have to be quick to forgive to stay free of offense. Forgive right at the threshold of thought,” my mom explains.

“I wanted to stay in peace inside. I did not like the way negative thoughts disturbed peace. So I began to pro-actively send love to others by way of thought prayers. I also wanted to see God work. I desired others to know the Lord as the great God He is—the Answer for everything. So instead of letting negative, fiery darts in, I began to pray for those before me. I released love and good will from the wells of salvation within. I asked God to bless them and teach them how to be victorious. And, I asked God to show me ever better ways to relate to others. I grew in all this. The flow of love increased as I maintained peace and turned my thoughts first Godward (necessitating they be turned away from self), then to others,” Dottie relays. These disciplines of grace are ongoing.

Mom continues, “If we’ll keep practicing pouring out God’s love, He’ll continue to flow through us. We’ll be conduits. Go about doing good like Jesus. Do a kindness whenever and wherever. The Lord loves to answer prayer and bless through us. Also, bind and loose to get people free. Study Matthew 16:19 and books on these keys. I like Liberty Savard’s books. Know that all through these actions God will grow you in many things. Die to any resentment as you stay under or subject to the cross.”

“You must exercise yourself in love. Ephesians 4:31 says, ‘. . . dislikeof others should have no place in your lives.’ Ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with a sincere liking for this one or that one. Ask for ideas for good words and good deeds. Beseech God for a right heart. Over time you will grow to truly like all types of people,” Dottie adds. “The command is to like as well as love.”

“Stay in peace within. Know God accepts you when He corrects you. He is love,” she finishes.

[Note: Praying for other souls is a way of loving them. You can love people (care for them) through prayer even when you do not feel the emotion of love. And the act of praying will enlarge your capacity for love. Through Spirit-led intercession, you enter into God’s heart for others.]

The Recovery New Testament, available free through www.biblesforamerica.org, has excellent notes for those who desire to walk according to the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The notes so help in the way of the cross and the release of the spirit from within. A key tool for overcomers.

1 Corinthians 6:17Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)

17But the person who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him.

Luke 9:23Living Bible (TLB)

23 Then he said to all, “Anyone who wants to follow me must put aside his own desires and conveniences and carry his cross with him every day and keep close to me!

Luke 9:23New American Standard Bible (NASB)

23 And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

Matthew 22:36-40Living Bible (TLB)

36 “Sir, which is the most important command in the laws of Moses?”  37 Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.’ 38-39 This is the first and greatest commandment. The second most important is similar: ‘Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.’ 40All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets stem from these two laws and are fulfilled if you obey them. Keep only these and you will find that you are obeying all the others.”

James 2:8 AMPC If, however, you are [really] fulfilling the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself [that is, if you have an unselfish concern for others and do things for their benefit]” you are doing well.

Acts 10:38 says, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.”

Ephesians 6:16Living Bible (TLB)

16In every battle you will need faith as your shield to stop the fiery arrows (darts) aimed at you by Satan.

Isaiah 12:3King James Version (KJV)

3Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.

Matthew 16:19Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)

19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind (declare to be improper and unlawful) on earth must be what is already bound in heaven; and whatever you loose (declare lawful) on earth must be what is already loosed in heaven.

Breaking The Power-Revised and Updated: Of Unmet Needs, Unhealed Hurts And Unresolved Issues In Your Life by Liberty Savard 2012

Binding & Loosing: Exercising Authority Over the Dark Powers (1999) by K. Neill Foster and H. Robert Cowles

If this blog blessed you, and you’d like to support my writing labors, please consider donating via PayPal or Venmo (@Katherine-Bell-micro.)

Blessings in return—

Patience Makes Perfect

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(Re-posted from my former blog The Narrow Road September 20, 2010.)

Reading the first few verses in James 1 we see that patience is more  than just a basic fruit of the Spirit. In fact, patience is key to our perfection and completion as men and women indwelt by Jesus Christ Himself.

Why is it that our Lord so highlights the virtue of patience as a significant key to our perfection? And can we actually walk in this supernatural patience in a culture that aids and abets being driven by continual time pressures? How can we walk in sync with the Godhead and heaven above and experience the higher or mystical plane noted in Romans 6? [J.B. Phillips’ translation speaks of “rising to life on a new plane altogether.”]

First, let’s define patience. Merriam-Webster puts it this way: to be patient is to bear pains or trials calmly or without complaint. It is to manifest forbearance under provocation or strain. A patient man is not hasty or impetuous. He is steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity. And he is very willing to bear things.

James 1:2-4 elucidates just where operating in the fullness of patience will take us. From the King James: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” J.B. Phillips rightly notes that the trials and temptations are God’s tests designed to school us in patience: “When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives, my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will become men of mature character with the right sort of independence.” By independence I believe Phillips means freedom in the inner man. Finally, let’s include the conversational Living Bible with its helpful imagery: “Dear brothers, is your life full of difficulties and temptations? Then be happy, for when the way is rough, your patience has a chance to grow. So let it grow, and don’t try to squirm out of your problems. For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete.”

Second, let’s take a look at our need for patience. I quote Deanna Deering’s prophetic piece from Masterpiece of the Wilderness published in 2003. The Lord is speaking:

“You must not allow yourself to be in a rush. There is no way to be led by the Spirit when you are in a hurry. Walk, don’t run, in the Spirit. You say, ‘There is much that needs to be done, and these are real responsibilities.’ But there is only one thing that matters. By doing this ‘one thing,’ you will accomplish more than you ever could have done by doing the ‘many things’ first. But not to the visible eye, of course; the results are first received in the spiritual realm, then revealed in the natural.”

“Without Me and My Spirit, you cannot possibly carry out my commands. I have many plans for you, but you can only walk in them through your spirit. Taking time to seek Me brings your flesh into obedience, for it inherently desires quick results. Your outer man has taken many years to be formed. When you set out to seek Me, your outer man will be pressed into submission to My Spirit. Such a process takes time, and it can be very excruciating.”

“That is why many will opt for busyness and allow the visible results to deceive them. My loved one, do not allow yourself to be deceived! Wide is the door through which many will travel. I’m coaxing you. Allow Me to have all of you, so I can take you through the narrow door.”

God ultimately wants us to trust Him. Thus, He purposefully sets up situations in our lives to force us to wait and to train us when the timing of things is not going the way we think it should according to our natural understanding and soulish perceptions. The Lord is always working to establish what is in fact the case–that He is Sovereign over our histories. And that He is an All-wise Father of love.

In His love He is beckoning us to come into His rest–something we can experience when we let Him have full control. In such abandonment, we will experience Him as the Shepherd of Psalm 23 Who leads us beside waters of rest. In other words, by staying within His leading we will be drinking of the Spirit. How delicious this is! The Recovery Bible notes say regarding 1 Corinthians 12:13, “we were all given to drink one Spirit,” that to drink the Spirit is to take the Spirit in and allow Him to saturate our very beings.

In Hebrews, the theology of God’s great gift of rest is developed. When we are positioned in His rest–and functioning in patience is necessary for this–we co-labor with Him, but we do not work in the sense of sweaty, independent self-effort. We enter in to what He Who is outside of time has already accomplished through the cross.

Another picture of a restful walk with Jesus that again necessitates the relinquishing of control is found in Matthew 11:28-30. God created us to function yoked with the Lord. When we let Him steer our lives, we find the peace promised in Him. (See John 14:27.) The passage voices His words, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.] Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls. For my yoke is wholesome (useful, good–not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant) and My burden is light and easy to be borne.” In other words, “stay in My timing, die to impatience, and you will experience Me charting the course, you flowing in My Spirit, Me sharing My thoughts with you.”

Patience is crucial to experiencing John 15 realities, too. John 15 is about abiding in or maintaining connection with Jesus, the True Vine. Verse 4 and verse 5 sum up the chapter well: “Dwell in Me, and I will dwell in you. [Live in Me, and I will live in you.] Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in (being vitally united to) the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing.” The flesh nature, wanting its own way, tends to pull apart from dependence on the Lord. In the giving up of hastiness and impatience, we can lean on (into) our Savior, acknowledging our need for Him and the coursing life of the Holy Spirit. In fact, to abide actually means to wait for, to await, to bear patiently, to remain stable or fixed in a particular state, to continue, and to stay.

Supernatural patience enables us, by virtue of keeping us in God’s timing, to learn to walk as Jesus walked. The Lord said of Himself in John 5, “The Son can do nothing by Himself. He does only what He sees the Father doing, and in the same way. For the Father loves the Son, and tells Him everything He is doing.” Jesus walked by waiting on the Father. In so doing, He remained in the life-flow of the Father’s love. And He walked in what we call the revelatory realm experiencing the Father’s continual communications. In such relating, He was comforted as He walked among men. Succored. Jesus was never alone. The Lord Jesus is the Pattern Son, the first born of those of us He calls brothers. In staying in His timing, we will experience the same rich state of encounter with the Godhead.

Now that we see the promise inherent in becoming men and women of great patience, how do we practically overcome natures given to just the opposite? I invite you to post any helpful comments re: overcoming carnal impatience. What I have learned follows.

2 Peter 1:4 tells us that it is through His precious and exceedingly great promises that we escape moral decay which comes from covetousness (lust and greed) and actually become sharers (partakers) of the Divine Nature. And James 1:21 instructs us to “lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted Word, which is able to save your souls.” I knew that to conquer impatience, being very prone that way, I would have to graft into my being the promises and continually eat of them. I wrote out the verses on patience; and whenever, in my early years as a follower of Jesus, I found myself failing the Creator’s tests on patience, I fed on these life-giving passages. I developed an arsenal in my inner man to deal with my flesh, the worldlings around me, and the buffetings of enemy spirits. By having promises stored in my heart such as Hebrews 12:1, “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us,” and Luke 21:19, “In your patience, possess ye your souls,” and others; I was able to tap the nature of God consistently though not altogether perfectly when situations called for the fruit of patience. Right at the threshold of thought, I found that I could choose to think and act according to these stored promises. [As I have grown in walking out union with the Lord, a more and ever more perfect or mature walk of patience has unfolded.]

Also, I have cooperated with His circumcision of my heart–the cutting away of my flesh nature. [See Romans 2:29.] When impatience surfaces from time to time, I beseech the Lord to uproot this bad fruit including its roots. I literally ask Him to cut out these outgrowths from my flesh nature. Over time, I have found this method effectual in eradicating the traits that are foreign to His likeness.

As I have grown up, the concept of union with the Lord and being centered in the Christ Who indwells me has become a powerful spiritual reality enabling me to drink more continually of the living water within. Thus, I have learned to tap patience from the Spirit within as well as the Word engrafted into my heart. Studying those saints who pursued the inward way has helped me navigate my steps as I “dwell with the Lord as I walk among men.” I allow myself to be directed by the Lord from within rather than be unduly moved by the circumstances without. Thus, I find the higher realm–the walk in the Spirit. [See Romans 8.]

In Galatians 5:25, Paul writes, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step withthe Spirit.” This admonishment we find in the very chapter comparing the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. It is patience that positions us to live by the Spirit and also to pace ourselves or keep in step with Him. And thereby we experience both His life and His leading. It is patience that keeps us in sync with the Godhead. In sync with our Maker, we realize Divine appointments, kairos occurrences, even destiny itself.

Yielding in patience to His control and His timing brings us out of a natural or carnal existence into the spiritual–the mystical plane we are meant to know.

Postscript: If you would like a copy of my doc, “Ammo in the War Against Drivenness,” email me at katherinefbell@me.com.

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Blessings in return—