If you did not read yesterday’s post entitled “As A Result Of Relationship,” there are a couple of nuggets you might benefit from by reading that post first. It speaks of something from my personal path in which we all have in common, and that is a beginning. We all started out at our beginning, and then we all went forward up the path that has each of us where we are today. And as I stated in yesterday’s post, I began my Christian walk growing up in the Baptist denomination, and I will be forever grateful for the great foundation of Christian principles laid out in a manner for me to understand as I built a great relationship with my Lord and savior Jesus Christ. Now, for the rest of the nuggets from yesterday’s post if you missed it, if the Lord wants you to have those other nuggets, he will give your faith life to lead you to that post. If you sense that your faith is pulling you forward to the post from yesterday, then go take a few minutes to get your nuggets; however, if you sense that your faith is not pulling you forward to the post from yesterday, then continue forward with this post.

I now know that my strong relationship with Jesus allowed him to give me the opportunity to come to the Father to have relationship with him. And as you all know, you can only come to the Father by way of the Son: John 14:6, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” I now know more of what that verse is saying, but back at the place I was before the Father began to teach and train me of how to work with him, like many others, I believed that I had come to the Father since I had already given my life to Jesus. And similarly to how there are two sides to a coin head, the head and the tail; well there are two sides to the Godhead, the truth and the proof. Now the head Godhead member, the Father, well his truth is Jesus; and Jesus flipped over that truth to become the proof to back up the truth from the flip side. You know how the saying goes, talk is cheap, but when it comes to Jesus, you can bank on it. Now this relationship of truth and proof had been developing between the Father, and his Word long before the world was; and it continued to develop and to complete itself long before Jesus, the truth, dwelled amongst us as to bring the proof: John 17:5, “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” So it became my desire to have this great relationship with the Father as well as with Jesus, so I made my request known unto the Father because I wanted to also be proof that he could bank on. We hear it said all the time, be careful what you wish for, you might surely get it; as to mean it could not be all that you thought it to be. However, I would like to think of it in the manner in which the Father did actually think of it. When Elisha, who may or may not have been careful to ask the Prophet Elijah for a double portion of his anointing, the Prophet responded to Elisha not with a handshake: 2 Kings 2:9-10, “And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. ¹⁰ And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so.” I am certain that if you desire to have a certain relationship with the Father, you do indeed need to be careful for what you ask for, because he will surely bring it to you. And we know that the Father will not bring upon us that in which we are not able to bear, but we do have scripture supporting that he will not hesitate to bring upon us a hard thing of our own request. So request carefully, especially if it’s your soul roaring uncarefully; for we want to make sure that it’s not those emotions trying to step out on the town for a joy ride.

So I had put my request in to the Father letting him know that I wanted to have that next level relationship with him, and I did do it carefully, but still without the understanding of what carefully actually means in God. The one thing that I didn’t know back then, and I do understand it better now, is that to have a relationship with the Father, it must be intimate, and it must be chosen. You do know that once you come to Jesus, you have the fulness of the Godhead in bodily form, and you have everything you need in Christ: Colossians 2:9-10, “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.¹⁰ And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power:” So why would it be necessary for us to step outside of the Body of Christ fulness to deal with the Father? And why would you want to choose to have more difficult things to deal with as if there were not enough of them already. I can see why you have to have a relationship with Jesus first, and then it needs to be a choice to have an intimate relationship with God as our Father. And that was the question that I wanted to know the answer to back at that time, and the Father did not hesitate to begin the process for me as I began to grow in my relationship with the Father in order to find out the answer.

The truth be known, as I mentioned in the post yesterday, things were really going great at that time for me, at least that is what most people would say. And when things are going really good, you are not thinking that you have yet to begin the real journey to the Father. Anyway, I also mentioned in yesterday’s post of a first time meeting with a Pastor of a Pentecostal Church, as he had stopped me in the park during my run. And my later visit to his Church one Sunday became the seed that led to my next step toward building a relationship with the Father. It is something when you are going about your life, and all seems to be well; but out of no where the Father shows up to expand your life in him because of the relationship you have with Jesus. And why did this visit to his Church become a seed toward building my relationship with the Father? Well I heard and saw some things in which I hadn’t heard and seen before that were also in the Bible. So that visit became a seed because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God; and now I wanted to know more about the things that I had heard from my visit to his Church. It was like building a house to me: my Baptist training from my childhood up to a young adult had given me such a strong foundation of faith to stand on, that God found me in the park running, and minding my own business to begin the framework to a relationship with the Father. We all have our own story of how we came to the place we are in the Lord, and how the Lord had allowed each of us to come on up unto the Father. It is a great opportunity to work with the Father if you have the skill, maturity, and ability to trust beyond your comfort level on a regular basis. I do hear that the Father is seeking such: John 4:23, “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.” Anyway, I begin to visit the new Church on a regular basis. I could see and feel that the members loved Jesus very much, and they were willing to trust the Lord in all things; but not quite able in many instances to see things through to the end. In my previous training, we would pray to the Father, and then make plans to bring it to pass with what was available. The training here at the new Church was to also pray to the Father, but use faith to believe that the Father would make it happen, even if there was no way available at the time. Although both ways had limits, my earlier training produced more dependable results. I had been at the new Church almost a year with the same results happening over and over: there would be much faith placed in the Lord to bring things to pass, but there was still limited results. I can clearly remember going to the Father and saying this to him: Father these people really love you, and they believe in you, but they do not know how to move in faith. I also told him that I was not leaving the new training, and teachings, but that he was going to have to teach me how to move in him if I was going to learn. And that is where the beginning of the Father became real in my life. I didn’t know this years back at that time because it was all so new to me, but I came to realize that it is Father who must reveal what He is doing in the Church: Ephesians 1:17, ^“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:” I was happy to receive the knowledge that the Father would help me to know him, but there would be much more for me to learn first, before I would deal directly in training with the Father. I probably felt like the karate kid in my training: “sanding the floor” over and over, then “wax on, wax off ” over and over; but boy was I feeling wrong, just as was the Karate kid.

I will pick up with, “what more was next in my training with Father,” in tomorrow’s post: As A Result Of Relationship III.

The Father Still Does Love To Do The Body Good.

Adopted son,