In July, 2011, I went with six of my paintings to exhibit at the West Coast Aglow Conference in Ontario, California, not knowing that this was set up by the Lord for me to hear Graham Cooke speak. As soon as I heard him speak, I knew God wanted to tell me something critically important for my own walk with the Lord. On the second session, Graham was addressing "You have lost your first love," and that was when I knew I had lost my first love. Only, the way Graham Cooke used these words in Revelation 2:4, "You have lost your first love" concerning the church in Ephesus, it was different from how we normally hear it - a scolding that we no longer want to serve God as passionately as when we first become Christians.To illustrate what "first love" really meant, Graham had four people come on stage, one to be Father God, the second one to be Jesus. These two stand facing each other. The third person is a woman representing the bride of Christ and the fourth is the Holy Spirit. He placed her in the middle of Jesus and the Father. He had the Holy Spirit stand behind her.
The term "first love" is the love that exists between the Father and the Son from before time. When Jesus returned to Heaven He sent the Holy Spirit to be on earth to usher the bride into the space between the Father and the Son. When we stand in that space, we receive the first love that flows between the Father and the Son unceasingly going through us. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father. They are unceasingly speaking loving words with each other. We, standing between them, get to be the recipient of the flow of their love one for the other. We are privileged to hear their conversations with each other. The Holy Spirit's job is to stand there behind us to help us stay in that space of the flow of their first love. Anytime we believe the lie from the enemy that we are not worthy of being in that space between God the Father and God the Son, but we must work for it, we move out of that space of first love. (Revelation 12:10b, "For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night..." The enemy works day and night to rob us of our rightful place in the embrace of the Father and the Son through subtle religious lies, which unfortunately comes through many performance church teachings.The year that cancer was found on me was both the most difficult year of my life and yet the highest level of living as the beloved of God. In that one year of keeping a journal of every exchange of words between God and me, I went from a scared human being to being an overcomer daring to fight cancer with God's word and full of the joy of the Lord.
You see, the words I wrote down from Him to me in my journal during that cancer year which are now in my book Out of the Wilderness were amazingly loving and powerful. I always wondered how come He could love me into being healed of cancer. I never had treatments and the doctors said they were sure my lymph nodes were all infected and I did not have a minute to lose in getting chemo and radiation treatments. In fact, part of the strain of cancer was aggressive. Yet I am alive today because the Holy Spirit ushered me into that space between the Father and the Son and for a year I was bathed and washed in the first love of the Trinity. It is now seven years and I am alive and still testifying of His healing power.
A friend wrote me a few days ago that she is rereading my Out of the Wilderness book, only this time she is using it as a daily devotional. She shared that she is getting to know in her spirit the person of God as Jehovah Rapha and Jehovah Jireh (the God who heals and the God who provides) and that every word speaks to her spirit. I am glad she is doing that. I know now that every word I wrote during that one year was written from being sandwiched between God the Father and God the Son, with the Holy Spirit beaming at me.
The Lord brought me to hear Graham Cooke because He wanted me to know that I did experience and live in that first love for several years, but gradually through repeated attacks from the enemy to discredit my healing I began to grow weary. I fought back hard and continued to stand for my healing but it did take a toll on me. Read my blogs http://jeanshenart.blogspot.com/ or http://www.jbrushwork.com/html/journal.html to see several reports I wrote last year to alert people that the enemy was hitting leaders especially hard to bring them into sickness and weariness of spirit. When I wrote those reports I did not know I would also get hit.
I had suffered from chronic heart palpitations for many years, but got healed of it when I was healed of cancer. In the last two years as the wiles and schemes of the enemy raged strongly against my mind, emotion and body, I began to forget how it felt to live in His Garden of Rest, how to sit on the lap of Jesus, how to enjoy being in the position between God the Father and the Son where I was loved unconditionally. I had opened the door to receive packages from the enemy telling me how unworthy I was to be painting for the Lord. Subtle lies upon subtle lies snucked into the door of my mind. No more did I see myself as the beloved of Jesus with the beautiful gown of incredible lightness and the slippers I could dance in. I started to carry a sack full of urgent cares, fears and griefs of all sorts, and I was beginning to believe it was time to go be with the Lord. So tired. Heart palpitation came back to me with a vengeance. Last week I was put in the hospital to get an angiogram done as the doctors were quite sure that an artery must be getting narrower and I would need to have a stint put in. To their huge surprise, the surgeon exclaimed, "Her heart is as clean as a newborn!" Ha Ha!
Last night as I was in between consciousness and sleep, I heard the word "the supremacy of Christ." I knew that the Holy Spirit was alerting me to rise up and fight to stay, to abide, to remain in the position of first love. Just as His Garden is a state of mind and heart, and sitting on Jesus' lap is to return to childlike faith and trust, I must guard myself from giving in to lies of all sorts which he uses to rob and steal my inheritance and destiny, especially the lies that I am unworthy and third class citizen. I have learned that step first step toward losing the Garden in our hearts is to allow the cares of the world - worries, fear, stress to grow subtly over our hearts like weeds.We must declare the supremacy of Christ over all things in our lives and render null and void threats and intimidations he uses to undermine our position as His beloved. In taking authority over every single lie of the enemy (take time to identify the lies one by one) we will gain strength in knowing that we are the beloved, because indeed Christ lives in us, the hope of glory.
