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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Bill Johnson
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December 3, 2019 - March 11, 2020
Relationships are built on trust, communication, common interests, honesty, and time together.
Yet being known by God is the most important thing in life, and it won’t happen without my surrender and response to Him.
“You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” God intended the entire nation of Israel to be priests unto the Lord, giving each citizen unique access to His presence in order to fulfill the amazing honor of ministering to God Himself. This was the heart of God for His people—for everyone to have access to Him. He had brought them out of Egypt to practice this kind of worship.
The giving of the Law at Mount Sinai was intended to facilitate the process by which Israel would unlearn the thinking of Egypt and learn how to walk in their new identity as priests to the Lord.
They not only rejected a relational encounter with God; they chose to have a mediator. There can be no authentic relationship with God for people who prefer a mediator over and above personal encounters.
Rejecting His voice is rejecting His face, as it rejects the opportunity for an authentic relationship with Him.
The law consists of preset boundaries that don’t require a personal relationship with God.
Perhaps an oversimplification would be to say that under the law everyone is given the same requirements. Under grace some things change according to God’s unique plan for each individual.
The word fear occurs twice in this statement. Moses was pointing out that there was a wrong fear of God and a right fear. The wrong kind leads us to hide from God, while the right kind leads us to draw near to Him in purity and reverence.
Suddenly the LORD said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, “You three come out to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out. Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward, He said, “Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, shall make Myself known to him in a vision. I shall speak with him in a dream. Not so, with My servant Moses, he is faithful in all My household; with him I speak mouth to mouth, even openly, and not in dark sayings, and he beholds the form of
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The favor of God does not bless self-promotion.
When he turned aside from his agenda and stepped aside at the burning bush, God spoke.
As we have seen, it is a truism that God loves everyone the same, but not everyone has the same favor.
“Do not slander a slave to his master, or he will curse you and you will be found guilty” (Proverbs 30:10). We must not forsake our heavenly Father’s friends: Do not forsake your own friend or your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity; better is a neighbor who is near than a brother far away. —PROVERBS 27:10, EMPHASIS ADDED
Recognizing the favor of God on another believer plays a huge role in preparing us for the increase of God’s favor in our own lives.
If I see the favor of God on someone, I am responsible to give honor where it’s due. And whoever honors the one that God honors is positi...
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“You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live!” (Exodus 33:20).
Seeing God is costly. Something in us always dies.
But it’s only the part that is hindering us from becoming more like Jesus.
It’s like the sculptor who was once asked what he was going to carve from a particular piece of stone. His response was, “An elephant.” Fascinated with his abilities, the observer asked how it was that he could actually carve an elephant out of stone. The artist responded, “Oh, that’s ea...
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Insecurity is wrong security exposed.
In the past the church has often sought for a safety in doctrine at the expense of the profound safety that is only found in godly relationships.
Earth. I’ll say it again: we can only live in the kingdom, our promised land, if we are willing to embrace the adventure of experiencing God as He is.
We may all be able to change what we think about, but only God can give us a new perspective on reality.”
Hosea 6:3 says, “He will come to us like the rain; like the spring rains He will water the earth” (MEV).
Isaiah 44:3: “For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour out My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring” (MEV, emphasis added).
The outpouring of the Spirit really is the Bible’s cure-all.
The kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit. When He is poured out on us, the King’s domain becomes manifested in our lives.
Similarly, the fullness of the Spirit in our lives is measured by the overflow of the Spirit through us in order to touch the world around us.
A glass of water is not really full until it overflows. Similarly, the fullness of the Spirit in our lives is measured by the overflow of the Spirit through us in order to touch the world around us.
Notice that what goes on around us is according to what goes on inside of us.
“God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us—that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations” (Psalm 67:1–2,
the outpouring of the Spirit and the encounter with His face. As we will see, they are in essence one and the same. He put it this way, “‘I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 39:29).
God’s face is revealed in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Psalm 103:7 states that Moses knew the ways of God, and Israel knew His acts.
If our value system places more importance on what God does than who He is—if we are religiously motivated rather than relationally motivated—we will not be drawn to recognize the greater revelation behind God’s acts.
Moses preferred the wilderness with God to the Promised Land without God, a noble choice for sure.
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When a materialist encounters spiritual things, he has no box in which to put them. He either has to ignore them completely or explain them by natural means, like the bystanders who said God’s voice was simply thunder.
It’s possible to be right next to God and not know it! I often see this truth played out in life. It never ceases to amaze me that in the same meeting one person can be experiencing a powerful touch from the Lord, and at the same moment the person next to him is wondering when the meeting will be over so he can go to lunch.
And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
Please come upon me with a fresh baptism of Your love and power.
Let me pursue You for Your own sake and not merely for what You can do for me.
the baptism in the Holy Spirit and fire.
He not only lived differently from their common understanding of God; He lived in complete contradiction to their common understanding of God.
Today it is accepted for leaders to teach that God brings calamity because He knows it will draw us nearer to Him. If that line of thought were true, then mental hospitals and cancer wards would be glowing with God’s manifest presence as all their patients would have drawn near to God and been transformed into the likeness of Jesus.
Blaming God seems to be easier than it is to take responsibility and pursue an encounter with Him that changes our capabilities in ministry.
These gifts are the overflow of the face of God encounter.
It’s best to live from what you know to be true in spite of the mysteries that you can’t explain.
Jesus is the clearest manifestation of the face of God that mankind has ever seen.
