Eph 1:12, 6/20/85; Eph 82, 203, 1193 5/3/90

DOCTRINE OF NICHE

A. Definition.

1. Niche is derived from the Latin NIDUS, which means a nest.

2. A niche is a place, condition, or status suitable to a person, i.e., to your individual personality. It is a position suitable to the capabilities and merits of God the Father and His provision of the portfolio of invisible assets for the execution of the protocol plan.

a. The purpose of learning the Word of God is not the destruction of your individuality, but the refinement of your personality without destroying individuality.

b. The sin nature is a part of your personality, and must be kept under control. In refinement of your personality from doctrine, you express your individuality without being arrogant, bitter, vindictive, implacable, or a slander, maligner, or judgmental.

c. There is no such thing as the stereotype Christian personality.

3. A nest is built of many different materials. So it is with our personality. Every strand of the believer’s personality is interwoven and express themselves as an individual. The believer’s niche is many things interwoven into a life characterized by the filling of the Spirit, perception of doctrine, capacity for life, and contentment. Finding your niche is meaningless until you attain spiritual self-esteem.

4. There are many strands of contentment as a part of your niche identification in life: social life, marital life, professional life, academic life, job or position, spiritual life, and Christian service.

5. Basic niche conceptualism requires two categories of decisions.

a. The decision to believe in Christ. True niche orientation comes out of salvation. There is no niche orientation without salvation.

b. The daily decisions related to your attitude toward doctrine and whether or not you are logging time filled with the Spirit and metabolizing doctrine. God designed your niche in eternity past to fit you and no one else. Unless you attain spiritual self-esteem, you will never understand or experience your niche orientation.

6. 1 Tim 2:3-4, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires that all persons be saved and come to know the metabolized doctrine [EPIGNOSIS] of the truth.”

7. 1 Jn 3:23, “This is His mandate, that we believe in the person of His Son and then love one another, just as He gave us a mandate.”

8. There are a number of niches in life which refine your personality.

a. The niche of being filled with the Spirit. This is the utilization of divine power. To the extent you are consistent in living inside the divine dynasphere under the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, you have fulfilled that strand in the nest.

b. The niche of using the problem solving devices.

c. The niche of true humility. Humility will be expressed through your own individual personality under the filling of the Spirit.

d. The niche of spiritual growth and attainment of spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity.

e. The niche of impersonal love for all mankind.

f. The niche of contentment and individuality. You are not threatened by others and refuse to be manipulated by other believers.

9. Nothing in your niche provided by God is ever demeaning.

B. Spiritual Self-Esteem and Personality Identity.

1. Competition for affection is often a sign of insecurity and ingrained weakness. Such people are arrogant and without spiritual self- esteem. When you start to compete with others, you develop a manufacturing device that means unhappiness for life.

2. Too many people become possessive of someone or something, and they seek to isolate the object of their affection through some form of strange behavior, nagging, complaining, or through trying to instill in their opposite number a guilt complex.

3. Disagreement can be normal or abnormal in life. It becomes abnormal as a technique related to an insecure person who seeks to control those in their periphery. People who are power hungry with power lust are always trying to control others in their periphery. In doing so, they develop arrogance and guarantee their own misery all their lives.

4. With spiritual self-esteem, you are never insecure in your love and affection, never feel threatened by arrogance and jealousy, and never have the problems related to self-pity.

5. Spiritual self-esteem combines with impersonal love to destroy inordinate ambition and competition for someone’s love, affection, or for some greatness in life.

6. Spiritual self-esteem is motivated by personal love for God, which eliminates both inordinate ambition and competition.

7. Spiritual self-esteem has capacity for love for God and for a few people. This eliminates personality flaws. You cannot find self and personality identity until you find God as a believer (which means to reach gate 5 of the divine dynasphere). You cannot find yourself until you find God. You will never discover the real you until you first discover God. This important principle sets up right priorities in your life.

8. Lack of spiritual self-esteem is seen in the mother who competes with the father for the affection of her son, or in the divorced couple who competes for the affection of their children.

9. Lack of spiritual self-esteem means personality flaws, abnormalities, and sometimes borderline schizoid personality.

10. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem means personality identification and living a normal happy life.

11. Another personality distraction is admiration that results in personality imitation. The believer must learn to admire people without trying to imitate or mimic their personality. Imitation will keep you from finding the real you, which is far better than what you want to imitate.

12. Spiritual self-esteem provides the capacity to admire and appreciate people without trying to imitate their personality. Many believers have destroyed their potential in life by trying to imitate others. The only legitimate imitation is the lifestyle of wisdom. Many a believer has destroyed his capacity for life, love, happiness, or his potential in the Christian life by trying to imitate someone he admires.

13. Finding self is based on normal advance to spiritual self-esteem based on personal love for God from maximum metabolized doctrine. Your personality must relate to your own portfolio of invisible assets and the protocol plan of God. You will never discover yourself until you discover the one who gave you life at birth and the one who gave you salvation at the point of faith in Christ.

14. There is no such thing as a standardized personality for spirituality. Spirituality manifests itself in multifarious personalities. God uses and blesses all types of personalities. God did not intend to put us all through cookie cutters. There’s no such thing as a standardized personality for the function of the ministry.

15. All personality flaws are resolved by the attainment of spiritual self-esteem, in which the utilization of your portfolio of invisible assets results in contentment and personality identification.

16. Therefore, spiritual self-esteem overcomes the various personality flaws to which we are subject and replaces them with contentment and a personal sense of destiny, personality identification, and niche attainment.

17. Your individual personality also means an individual niche in life. This is the only place you will ever know contentment or happiness. Christianity does not destroy your basic personality; it only makes refinements on your personality. The purpose of Christianity is not to make you over into a “holy” or “pious” person.

C. Spiritual Self-Esteem and Niche Orientation.

1. We live in a time when young people do not know what they want to do in life. It all stems from the fact that people are not aware of themselves and their limitations, and the secret to true success in life. As a result, they spend their lives in misery and frustration, even committing suicide from simply giving up.

2. So spiritual self-esteem will cause you to attain this one important achievement in life; first, you’ll learn to know who God is and to love Him, and then you’ll discover your own personality. With spiritual self-esteem, you take your own personality through every circumstance of prosperity, pressure, adversity, and do it all to the glory of God. So personality identification relates to niche orientation.

3. Niche is defined as a place, condition or status suitable to the capabilities, happiness, and merits of an individual believer.

4. A niche is not a slot in life, but a nest which is built from many materials (doctrines). The believer’s niche is composed of many strands from his portfolio prepared for him by God in eternity past.

5. When the nest is finished it includes spiritual self-esteem, capacity for life, and contentment in every circumstance in life.

6. Niche orientation doesn’t just mean finding your right job, right church, or your desires in life. God has a personal plan for you that fits your personality. Niche orientation is a combination of finding a series of right things.

a. Right social life. So many people are ruined by the wrong social life where their friends are a bad influence on them, or where they change their standards to conform to some social experience. Finding the right social life is extremely important. The best way is to start out is with no social life at all, because what you really are is what you are when you are alone. Being alone for a while will help you to understand what your needs are and in what areas your capacity is missing.

b. Marital experience. It’s very difficult for anyone to find their real personality and niche orientation in marital status. It’s better to discover this first while still single.

c. Business and professional life. What are you going to do in life? How will you make a living? Where do your interests lie? What are you best fitted for? What are your limitations? If you start by recognizing your limitations, you generally have a better chance because you’re approaching the problem from humility rather than from arrogance.

d. Academic life, as a student or as a teacher.

e. Job or position in life.

There is a job or position that goes with your personality which means tranquility in your life. Your success is not measured by what you do for a living, but, in God’s eyes, your success is measured by your advance to spiritual maturity. We live in the dispensation of invisible impact.

f. Spiritual life and eventually Christian service.

g. Doctrinal teaching from your right pastor. Actually, this list should be reversed, because you must start with doctrine. You must be faithful under your right pastor who communicates doctrine so that you can understand the issues in privacy.

7. Niche conceptualism. While everyone is seeking his niche, very few seem to find it.

a. Basic niche conceptualism requires two categories of decisions: the one-time decision of faith in Christ, and the many decisions related to the fulfillment of the protocol plan of God.

b. We must make daily decisions after salvation and be consistent. Inconsistency comes from our priorities being in a constant state of flux; this is because people are so emotional.

c. 1 Tim 2:3-4 distinguishes between the one decision we make for salvation, and the many decisions we make thereafter. “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved, and to come to an epignosis knowledge of doctrine.”

d. 1 Jn 3:23, “And this is His mandate, that we believe in the person of His Son, and love one another.”

D. Doctrine gives you the opportunity of seeing what God provided for you in four niche categories.

1. Niche Orientation.

a. Niche orientation looks back to your portfolio in eternity past. Niche orientation relates to the grace provision and work of God the Father in eternity past. You realize your personality has significance in the eyes of God, because knowing all about you in eternity past as a believer, God provided you with a portfolio of success. Since you are still alive, God’s purpose for you on earth still exists. Therefore, you cannot dwell on your failures or be disturbed by the difficulties in your life.

b. Niche orientation also looks forward to the protocol plan of God. The very fact that you’re alive after some colossal failure means you must pick yourself up and move on to even greater blessing than you ever had before. You must look forward and move to spiritual self-esteem.

c. Niche orientation relates to your own palace, the divine dynasphere. Niche orientation means you must be filled with the Spirit, rebounding when necessary.

d. You cannot be niche oriented while you are having an authority problem.

e. Niche orientation demands daily perception of doctrine. This provides the motivation for spiritual self-esteem.

2. Niche Identification.

a. A personal sense of destiny from spiritual self-esteem results in knowing the will of God for your life and your personality identity. Niche identification means each strand of the nest you build from Bible doctrine will result in a permanent contentment in every category of your life. Happiness is not an overt experience or stimulation, but a state of mind in the soul best described by contentment or tranquility.

b. Niche identification in social life means picking the right friends; in married life, it means the selection of the right mate from spiritual self-esteem; in business, it means being led to choose the right profession, recognizing your limitations, and finding something compatible with your tranquility gained from doctrine; in academic life, it means the selection of the right school, the right major; in labor, it means learning the right trade. Many times, ambition has distracted people from the protocol plan of God simply because they spent so much time in self- improvement that they lost track of who and what they really were. Then when disaster comes, they fall apart.

c. Niche identification means understanding your portfolio of invisible assets and executing the protocol plan of God. Niche identification demands that you live constantly in the divine dynasphere. You live within your limitations but under the principle of godliness or great happiness. So find out who and what you are before you go off on the many tangents offered today.

3. Niche capacity is contentment or “godliness.”

a. Godliness means reaching spiritual self-esteem through daily residence, function, and momentum inside your palace, the operational divine dynasphere. The key to your life is not your great resume, but godliness, which is momentum in the protocol plan of God. Godliness is the filling of the Spirit, the daily perception of doctrine, and advancing to gates 5 and 6 of the divine dynasphere.

b. 1 Tim 6:6-8, “But godliness is a means of great profit when accompanied by contentment; for we have brought nothing into this world, so that we cannot take anything out of it either. Consequently, if we have food and clothing [minimum logistical grace], with these we shall be content.”

(1) Godliness is life inside the divine dynasphere. It is being filled with the Spirit. Note what is real profit in this passage: godliness. Because godliness gives you the ability and capacity to love God and, at the same time, the ability to know yourself, your own personality, your limitations, and to understand yourself in the light of enforced and genuine humility rather than to overestimate yourself in the light of arrogance. Before you die, be sure your life has been profitable, as defined by this verse. The greatest thing you can do for yourself, your country, and your God is to develop godliness.

(2) What is profitable to you? Being filled with the Spirit and being consistent in your perception of Bible doctrine because Bible doctrine is the most important value of your personality.

(3) Contentment is your orientation to life, to who and what you are. It is the recognition of your own individuality, and upon reaching spiritual self-esteem, it is the refinement of your individuality. So if you have everything or nothing you have exactly the same happiness. Contentment is spiritual self-esteem, personality identification, knowing your limitations and your abilities, and relating them all to the Word of God. Contentment is advancing under the protocol plan of God as a member of the royal family of God, rather than having inordinate ambition.

c. Heb 13:5, “Let your lifestyle be free from monetary priority. Be content with what you have. For He Himself has said, `I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.’”

(1) If you are only living to make money, and you measure success in terms of making money, then you are a slave to money. Anything to which you make a priority above doctrine you are a slave. The key to our happiness is our relationship with the Lord, and our eternal and temporal security.

(2) When money becomes a part of your lust pattern from the old sin nature—greed, you have no niche. But if your lifestyle is free from greed, you are moving into your niche.

d. Phil 4:11-13, “I am not saying these things because I am in need; for I have learned to be content in whatever the circumstances. In fact, I have come to know how to be in need [suffering for blessing]; also, I have come to know how to live in prosperity. In every circumstance, I have learned the secret of being filled [prosperous] and of being hungry [failure]. I have the endowed power [omnipotence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] to attain all things [spiritual growth and escrow blessings] by means of the One who keeps on pouring the power into Me.” Spiritual self-esteem never begs, but functions under the true motivation of personal love for God.

4. Niche Attainment. Niche capacity occurs when the believer reaches the point of spiritual self-esteem. Niche attainment occurs when the believer reaches spiritual maturity. If your niche does not find you, you will never find your niche. Your niche finds you by your consistent spiritual advance.

R. B. Thieme, Jr. Bible Ministries 5139 West Alabama, Houston, Texas 77056 (713) 621-3740

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