EXPERIENCING INTIMACY IN FELLOWSHIP

[The Transparency of Seeking the Giver and His Gift]

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TRANSPARENTLY EXPERIENCING HIM

Mark 12:30-31 NKJV

And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart , with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

Having tasted the experiences of intimacy with the Lord, some feel guilty when they seek Him for more of the experiences. The taste awakens a passion inside to pursue Him and they develop an appetite and hunger which needs to be filled. He uses these experiences to draw us to Him and continues to use them that we pursue experiencing life with Him.

The truth is that when we pour out our love for the Lord with all our strength, heart, will, soul, body, spirit... He returns the same love. When we love Him with our whole being, with nothing held back, it is impossible to NOT experience Him as He returns that love and communion. It becomes a 2 way street where experience with Him becomes and IS our intimacy with Him.

We were lied to all these years to put love in a box and say it is just a choice. Man is a living soul, and part of his soul is his volition and choice. But that is only part of the picture of what it means to love Him and love others. Yes, love IS a choice, but it is so much deeper than that once you get into intimacy, it is an experience. And yes, we do become addicted to Him and we also become addicted to having fellowship with others. Because having tasted the real, we discover there is nothing else that can take its place within the world. God created man for fellowship, with Him and with others.

The key to experiencing genuine fellowship with the Lord is transparency. Transparency is allowing His light to shine on every area of our life and coming into agreement with that light. Dark places within our soul, body and spirit must leave as we yield to the truth of what His light makes manifest. We release those things that do not line up with Him and ask Him to cleanse them, consecrate them, and re-establish new holy and God-given habits… in our decisions and emotions, through temperance over our fleshly appetites, and purity in our spirits through abiding in Him. When we face Him we want to be a pure reflection of Who He is. This only happens as we remove the veils from our own lives and no longer hide.

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EXPERIENCING OTHERS

John 17:11-12 NKJV

Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.

As we love Him like that, He also draws us to want to connect with others to share the same love with them. It is true that our level of intimacy and love for others is directly related to our level of intimacy with Him. It is impossible to separate the two. It is His passion over us to experience not only heaven, but heaven on earth. There is coming a day, when flocks of God's people will be experiencing His love and oneness as He meant real fellowship to be on earth and in heaven. He is planting this seed in a few brave souls even now and that is the deep yearnings of His Spirit. It is the kind of love where we think nothing of laying our lives down for one another. It is the same oneness of communion and transparency in fellowship that they experience in heaven.

Right now the body of Christ is threatened and runs away from such love and oneness/unity. It is overpowering and becomes perverted without intimacy with Him Who is the continual fountain to sustain such. He is the Source of all intimacy, it is impossible to experience it without Him. The deeper our intimacy with Him, the deeper our intimacy will be with kindred hearts. The depth of our maturity to sustain and stay connected with Him, will be our depth of ability to stay connected with one another.

Genuine fellowship is His gift for those few who know Him. The closer one becomes to Him, the more rare it becomes to find others of the same level of intimacy. It will not always be like that. God has planted the seed of yearnings for greater depths of fellowship and this is going to produce wonderful fruit in the next generation. For those brave souls who have tasted of transparent fellowship of true kindred heart spirit and agape love, it has become a flaming torch deep inside and will spread like wildfire when intimacy with Him is birthed and sustained on earth as it was meant to be. We have some radical years ahead of us!

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CONCLUSION

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{Words to Ponder are summaries of His quickened Words of prophetic revelation, punched with the word of wisdom and written under inspiration.}

POEM TO PONDER: TO FIND KINDRED HEARTS

To find the fellowship that I so desire

Has become my passion, my earnest fire.

Walking by myself these many years

Has put away most of my belittling fears.

Yet when I stand without kindred hearts

Places me at risk, and sets me apart.

Yes, the call of God is strong upon my life.

As He grants me Words written in penknife.

Yet without some friends both near and far

I wonder at my life, it seems ajar.

Is it so bad to long for relationship?

Will He grant me kindred-heart fellowship?

Where are the ones whose hearts are on fire

With passion and yearnings and earnest desire -

For gifts of His Spirit and to sit at His feet,

That love just His Presence for a reason to meet?

Dear ones, be gathered and come to feast.

Find one another and share with the least.

It's time to discover the joys of one another.

It's time to embrace the heart of your brother.

Hold each other and listen so well

And call upon Him about the stories you tell.

Within each story is a life and a heart

Broken and frayed from lives torn apart.

It's time to heal, it's time to mend.

Come my beloveds, come follow His wind.

He's stirring the yearnings to gather in Him

All that remains not torn from the limb.

Just as Job was restored from such a great loss

As he prayed for his friends, who brought such cost

Bringing pain and shame of no small amount;

His prayers for his friends, they settled the account.

So tell your stories and be tender to hear

As you bare a burden, as you dry a tear.

The bowels of mercy are groaning to heal

What comes to the surface of all that you feel.

Run not away from a heart that is frayed,

From hope that is lost, from prayers delayed.

You will find as you hold the heart of another

That your turn is coming to be held by your brother.

It is true that He made us both joint and marrow

To bear the load and to carry the sorrows.

Together we stand united as one

Healthy and happy let the burdens be gone.

That's His will you see, that we stand not alone.

Yet unique and special, not ever a clone.

The cover of our story is so different by itself.

Yet so similar in pages along life's bookshelf.

We all have hearts that yearn deep and shallow

From broken lives and dreams laid fallow.

So search far and wide for kindred heart friends

As we start new beginnings waiting to mend.

We call forth our friends as though they are

We declare our joining even though afar.

United we stand, as one yearning man

To bond together and say that we can.

Eph 4:16 NLT

Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.