By Nancy Moelk

The Four Faces of God as demonstrated in the four living creatures shows four areas of development for us. These areas are actually reflections of four aspects of God’s character. He has shown us Himself as the Lion, the Kingly function of God where He takes charge and wins territory and brings forth life and tears down evil.  The Ox function is illustrated by the Lamb of God who serves us all and cares for us as a Shepherd.  The Eagle part of God is displayed throughout the Bible through His many supernatural manifestations and the glimpse we have into the heavenly dimensions. And the Man was epitomized by the Incarnation of Christ, fully God but fully Man. He had a mind, will and emotions.

Some groups are very versed in Ox-living. They are willing to do service, missions, and understand they must deny themselves and follow Christ. These groups are often the best at serving the poor, recognizing needs in the community and even members who have suffered life losses or challenges. They expect to turn the other cheek and rarely see themselves as being the “conquerors”.

Others are heavy on the Lion-side of God. They believe in naming and claiming the will of God to come on earth as it is in heaven. They believe they should be able to prevail against difficulty and overcome the resistance of the enemy. They do well in developing the confidence of believers in the active power of God for today. They take over territory for God and have higher expectations of what they can accomplish than most Christians.

Some groups are most focused on the Eagle. They pursue connecting to the heavenly dimensions and manifestations of the Holy Spirit. They may use the gifts of prophecy, healing and tongues. They may see angels and other supernatural things. They have a high expectation of the miraculous and of hearing God’s voice.

Others are mostly involved in the Man type activities. They emphasize the soul qualities of thinking and feeling and choosing. They may spend much time studying the Bible or doing inner healing and trying to understand the relationships between man and God and others. They can relate to Jesus as a human more than the Supernatural God who took on flesh.

Every one of these areas are vital to having a full and balanced Christian life. Over my years of Christian experience, I have been involved in every one of these types of groups (admitting there is sometimes overlap and these categories are for most teaching purposes.) Being raised Catholic, I had a reverence for God and the mystical that I didn’t see in many of my Protestant friends. Mostly I started my Christian life my freshman year of college, being mostly involved in evangelism, discipleship and missions. I had briefly been involved with a charismatic group who I rejected after several months for fear their lack of love was indicative of theology problems. At that point I joined Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship (1975).

The focus of Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship is threefold: evangelism, discipleship and missions. I was trained in how to have a Quiet Time every day, how to share my faith, how to help a young believer grow in theirs and made aware of the need for the gospel to go to the ends of the earth. There wasn’t much discussion about what I needed but mostly about what I could do for God as He equipped me to participate in the call to make disciples. My husband, Gary, and I responded to this teaching and training by signing up to be missionaries with then North Africa Mission (Now Arab World Ministries).

We lived in France and North Africa for seven years and had no awareness of all the ways we needed counseling; nor of all the demonic influences afflicting us; nor of how to do spiritual warfare or protect ourselves from the well-armed enemy. In fact, we rather despised people who tried to bring up such “ridiculous” topics as Christians needing deliverance or counseling. We were into “sacrifice and suffering” and had nothing much to offer the North African believers we worked with other than Bible studies, evangelism tools and our love and support.

When we returned home on furlough we were broken and discouraged but ready to return. By God’s grace we couldn’t because of not being able to raise the needed support. At that point I began to pursue more of the “Man” aspects of God mostly because I needed counseling so badly that I could barely function.

It was at that point I began receiving help from an inner healing ministry and for the first time ever began to be aware of what was inside of my mind, will and emotions. For the first four years I mostly received help for myself but then I began to help others and finally the last 8 years I taught and trained inner healing.

In the late 1990’s I have been helping myself and others for around 10 years with what I knew to do. But I still saw areas of my life and those I closely worked with that weren’t being addressed by my skills. I felt the next area I needed to look into was the Prophetic and the Supernatural aspects of God. Many years before I had walked away from this because of seeing these things misused by a small group of people on my college campus.  I realized I had thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

In the spring of 1999, I began praying earnestly for God to send someone to mentor me in the prophetic and the supernatural things of God. Six months later I met my present co-working, Richard Kinney. God had directed him to attend a seminar I was teaching. For the first time ever, I began to see supernatural things happen. The first that got my attention was several weeks after the seminar where I met Richard and had mostly forgotten about him, I had a terrible dream where I was being painfully held by a big black clamp around my neck. When I awoke I began to fast and pray since I didn’t know what else to do. That afternoon the phone rang and I had to try and remember who this Richard guy was on the phone from Atlanta. When I asked him why he had called, he said, “God told me to call you up and pray to get rid of that things around your neck.” I almost dropped the phone! I had never seen people who claimed to be prophetic demonstrate much more than vague “words” and signs of low self-esteem as indicated by their need to draw attention to themselves and their “gifting.”

I realized this was the person God had sent to answer my prayer. I was wanting to incorporate these aspects of God into what I was doing in inner healing but that was not acceptable to my boss so by June of 2000 I parted ways with this inner healing group. I began studying the different people over the past few centuries who saw the miraculous on a regular basis in their lives and meetings. William Branham was in particular dear to me. I was aghast I had been a Christian for over 20 years and had never heard of someone who had many, many documented instances of seeing Christ heal cancer, tuberculosis, paralysis, etc. How was that possible? Shouldn’t that be common knowledge? But once again, the fractured nature of the Body of Christ left vital information omitted and ignored because people like to only do what they feel comfortable with and leadership warns them from anything and anyone who would offer more than they do.

At that time of my life I found myself rejected by “prophetic” groups because of their wariness of “counseling” and rejected by “inner healing” groups because of their distasted for “just pray it away” types more interested in prophetic words than the root of people’s fears! What I saw were two groups of people desperately needing what the other group did well. I felt the same about my early formation of the disciplines of Inter Varsity and sacrificing our comforts for the sake of others. I wished we could all share in what others did best to bring us into balance and effectiveness and to know the whole Person of God and not just one part of Him. We all seemed like the blind men feeling different parts of the elephant and believing themselves to have the whole picture.

After a few years of studying and pursuing the supernatural side of God I began to wonder about the saints through the ages and how they lived out their faith and what they thought about the Lord. So I began on a ten year study of the desert fathers and other mystics such as St. Theresa of Avila, St. Seraphim (a Russian mystic) and other various saints. For my person bible study I studied “The Song of Solomon” for these ten years because I heard it was the favorite of so many mystics.

I found a wealth of understanding about God from these dear saints now in the cloud of witnesses. I could see the most powerful among them were those who seemed to have a balance in the four dimensions of God as described earlier. I could see the contributions of the Catholic saints, the Orthodox saints, those from the Eastern Christian Church and all the various desert fathers before them. It also gave me many landscapes for viewing the lack of balances in different groups.

Over the last ten years, God has gradually unfolded this teaching about the Four Living Creatures. In 2005 I was in Brazil on a Global Awakening mission trip. The worship band prayed for impartation for us at the end of trip. They prayed that we would receive the spirit of the “Four Living Creatures.” I had no idea what that meant or how it would affect me. About four months later I had an open vision of the Eagle which stayed with me for days. Over the next several years I saw all of them but wasn’t sure why. I kept researching what others had to say about them. Some say they represent the gospels, others that they refer to kingdoms and I am sure there are other interpretations of their significance of which I am not aware.

I am not trying to discount anybody else’s ideas. At this point, I realize there may be multiple things that are true about them—which I learned from studying Song of Solomon and how so many different interpretations can all seem to apply and be helpful.

But when God began to show me how they reflected different aspects of His character and how He longed for His people to grow in both knowing Him in all these ways and allowing Him to develop them like this, I knew it was something needed by the Body of Christ to bring the sorely needed balance so obvious almost everywhere.

So that is why I am presenting this teaching after many years of having it age and develop in the wine cellar of my soul. I believe it is a teaching and word for this hour. May the Holy Spirit release it to bring a fruit which will please God and promote His desires in our midst.

Seriously consider listening to the audio on this topic and doing the class. Position yourself for God to lead you into a whole new level of transformation and excitement in your connections with Him. Wouldn’t you like to get to know Him in as many ways as possible? Wouldn’t you love to see Him develop you from the inside into His likeness? Go to the All courses page and begin the journey.