Is Our Nation Suffering from a Spirit of Pride?

As my husband and I were doing a Bible Study, he flipped open his Bible to Daniel Chapter 4 which speaks about King Nebuchadnezzar and a dream that Daniel interpreted for him.  My husband and I wondered why we were reading this, but we continued.  Earlier in the morning, he and I had been talking about how we could discern pride in at least two generations in our family line.  Well it turns out that Daniel Chapter 4 and even Chapter 5, are about just that, pride.  The story goes that although King Nebuchadnezzar originally didn't listen to the warning God was giving him through Daniel's interpretation of his dream, and even though he went through seven years of suffering, at the end of the seven years he repented and God restored his kingdom and he came to acknowledge and extol the Lord (Vs. 37).   These scriptures were exactly where the Lord needed to take us.  Read and examine them for yourselves if this speaks truth to you.

As we finished reading this chapter and even read Chapter 5 which speaks of King Nebuchadnezzar's son, King Belshazzar who didn't take heed to God's warning and who died because of it, the Lord took us into prayer.  We repented for our own pride, broke generational curses in our family line associated with pride and received God's forgiveness.  Then the Lord took my husband into intercession for our Nation as we recognized that our Nation had taken credit for its greatness, believing that we had made ourselves great.  We then asked God to forgive us and restore us even as King Nebuchadnezzar had been forgiven and restored.

There are no coincidences, are there?  We were meant to turn to the Book of Daniel and it could only have been the Holy Spirit's direction as He then took us into repentance and into prayer.  And not only was it for us personally, but also for our beloved Nation!   How awesome is our God?  And how much is He attempting to speak to us?  And how much are we listening?  Only He knows!  By His grace, may we attune our ears to His voice that is many times, that small, still voice that only those who desire it are going to hear!  Be blessed in our Lord!

DO YOU HAVE A NEED FOR RECONCILIATION?

God had been taking me back over and over again to Isaiah 53 which speaks about what Jesus did on the Cross, about what He obtained for us through His sufferings.  I kept reading it out of different versions of the Bible, knowing that God was trying to tell me something.

One of the areas that kept attracting my attention was first Vs 4 where it states:

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”.  I heard a minister say that whatever trials we go through in life were the “griefs and sorrows” that Jesus had taken upon himself on the Cross.

The other verse that kept coming back to me was the end of Vs. 5 which states “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him.”  That same minister had said that Jesus was chastised in my place so that His peace was available to me as the fruit of the Spirit.

One early morning, wanting to check out yet another version of the Bible on Isaiah 53, I opened my Amplified Bible and a piece of paper fell out of it.  It was Proverbs 4:20-27 which reads as follows:

“My son, give attention to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.  Do not let them depart from your eyes; keep them in the midst of your heart; for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their flesh.  Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life.  Put away from you a deceitful mouth, and put perverse lips far from you. Let your eyes look straight ahead and your eyelids look right before you.  Ponder the path of your feet and let all your ways be established.  Do not turn to the right or the left, remove your foot from evil.”

 I then went on to read Isaiah 53 from yet another version of the Bible, The Chain-Reference Bible which comes with an amazing set of “study tools”.  As I read this Chapter once again, as I came to the part of where Jesus took the chastisement for my peace, this bible referred me to a scripture in Colossians 1:19-20 which states:   

“For it pleased the Father that in Him (in Jesus) all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

Then it hit me!  God was plainly telling me that the cross and the blood of Jesus provided the peace of reconciliation for me, regardless of the situation!  But He was also telling me that it was going to require something on my part, that I keep my ears inclined to His sayings, put away deceit from my mouth and keep perverse lips far from me.

WOW!  Does God speak, or what?  

I understood perfectly (by His Spirit) what He was saying to me.  I must admit that He was correcting me BIG TIME!  I knew exactly what He was correcting me about and I humbled myself before Him and asked Him to forgive me for my perverse lips and to forgive me for not having understood the preciousness of the cross in this area before.

The idea that through the blood of His cross, he had provided a means for the reconciliation of my peace in whatever area I did not have peace or reconciliation in,  just blew me away (in a good sense)!  

But now, the task begins!  Instead of worrying and fretting and grumbling whether in thought or word, I am asking Him to endow me with the grace to follow His truth.  I already know that unless He helps me, I will surely fail and fail miserably!  But I also already know from past experience and from the faithfulness of His Word, that whatever He tasks me to do, my God is quite able to equip me with the grace and strength that I need to fulfill His instructions!

I knew exactly what situation He was speaking to me about and I praise Him for His instruction!

But what about you?  Where do you need peace and reconciliation?  Is it a family matter, is it a monetary matter, is it a health matter, it is a matter with your children?  It does not matter what the matter is (no punt intended).  The only thing that matters is that “It is written:  Colossians 1:19-20 ““For it pleased the Father that in Him (in Jesus) all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.”

Our God is a Great, Big God and He has an answer for every trouble, every trial that we will ever come across!  Didn’t He say in 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”

Sometimes it takes us humans a while to “get it”, but God is always at work and God is always speaking!  I believe we are coming into the days where we will hear more quickly, where we will respond more eagerly, where obedience will be our natural response!

We are blessed in Christ beyond the curse!  The curse has been defeated because He became a curse for us on the Cross!  As it is written:  Galatians 3:13-14 “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

He didn’t deserve to die on the cross, we did, but He loved us so much that He took our place!

TRANSFORMING YOUR MIND LEADS TO A TRANSFORMED LIFE

Romans Chapter 12 verses one and two say:  Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. 

From the moment we are conceived (perhaps through the spirits that have ruled over past generations) the world and the spiritual enemies of God are bombarding us with thoughts that are contrary to the Word of God.  When we get saved we then have to change the way we think about everything that the world and those spirits have instilled in us.

When we renovate an old house, we tear out and throw away all the old and replace those things with new things, that’s what we are supposed to do with our “old mind set”.

This renovation is the picture of the Holy Spirit after we are born again!  He moves in and begins to renovate our soul with the Word of God.  He tears down strongholds of deception and lies and replaces them with His truth.

One of the first things He begins to show us is “who we are” according to God’s Word.

We’ve all head the expression “I’m trying to find myself”.  People especially use this phrase to excuse themselves for doing the most atrocious things, the most despicable things.

If we want to find out “who we are” we are to go to our Creator and to the Word of God that is our User’s Manual.

Romans Chapter 12 specifically tells us that God calls us to  be transformed by the renewing of our mind.  There is only one way that can take place and that is by replacing “the stinking thinking” that the world has instilled in us, with the “watering of the Word of God”.  The Word waters, it cleanses!  

We want to consider some of the avenues that God has given us out of His Word, to do just that! 

James 1:22-25 says “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the Word and does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.”

It stands to reason that if we don’t read and meditate on the Bible, then we do not have a mirror that we are looking into!   Then we do not have a plumb line, a base line to work with!

To begin with, we have the 10 Commandments that we are to follow – and they are not obsolete by any stretch of the imagination.

Now most of us are not going to go out and physically murder someone, but we cannot dismiss this commandment and think that we’re alright, if perhaps we are breaking the commandment outlined in 1John 3:15 which says “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.”

We all have been given a free will and that many times is the problem.  Say for instance there is some brother that we don’t care for, for whatever reason.  We, through that free will, can easily choose to justify our dislike (or at least what we call dislike, perhaps God calls it murder). 

Remembering that Hebrews 4:12-13 says “For the word of God is living and active.  Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.  Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight.  Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

We cannot hide anything from God and we cannot sugar coat it before the eyes of Him who can even judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

We can justify our sinful thoughts and nature until we’re blue in the face, and we can even THINK that God doesn’t see the condition of our heart – but we are deceiving ourselves and the devil is laughing in our faces!

I’ve heard say that the Bible is likened to a Will, that it is God’s inheritance to his saints, and it is.  We want the promises, we want the blessings which God gives us, but there is much more in this Will than just the promise of His goodness.  There is instruction and there is a requirement for obedience which He says is better than sacrifice.

We have inherited the kingdom of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ!  But unless we read the Will, unless we access the Bible, we won’t know what we have inherited!

I cannot tell you how many Christian people I have spoken to that God always seems to prompt me to ask this question:  “Do you know what the calling is in your life.  What has God called you do?”

Almost 100% of the time, the answer is “No, I don’t know.”

How is that possible?  Every child of God should know what their calling is.  Many times those callings are identified to us during times of prayer.  Other times they are identified to us through the anointings that we find in meetings and conferences we attend.  Those callings can be birthed in us through something we read in the Word that seems to just jump out at us and cause our spirit man to get excited and that causes us to desire to “see the manifestation of something that we just read in the word, like maybe healing”.

So if the majority of God’s people have no clue as to what their purpose is in the Lord, that speaks volumes – they don’t know because they have not meditated long enough or deep enough on the things of God.

Believe me when I tell you, God is more than willing to speak His purposes for your life, to you, more than willing. 

It’s amazing to me that God would use clay vessels like we are, but HE DOES!  He has a design, a purpose for each one of us.  No one is left out of his plan, no one!

I encourage you to search the Word of God that is “living and active”.  I encourage you to dare to believe that God has a plan for your life!  I encourage you to seek His face and find it.  I encourage you to let God use you!

 

How Can I forgive?

Just a few months ago God dealt with me ever so sternly when he revealed that there was unforgiveness in my heart.  Loving the Lord as I do, I never would have imagined that this could happen, but in fact, it had.  As I laid on my face sobbing my heart out because the magnitude of my sin (seeing it from God's perspective) was so great, I literally felt that "I would never recover my relationship with God" ever again. I saw the ugliness in my heart as clear as anything I've ever seen before.  I now know to some extent what it means when the scriptures say "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Lord."  I believe my pain was not from a human perspective because I probably would have found a way to justify my heart.  I believe that the Holy Spirit was shining God's light bright and clear on that area of my soul and what I saw, devastated me.  The reason it devastated me was one reason alone, my relationship with God is the one thing I treasure beyond anything else. To see my condition through His eyes, was more than I could bear.  I saw evil for what it is, evil!  I recognized deception for what it is, a lie! When I got up from that floor, I felt undone like the Prophet Isaiah!  The worst part was that I could not begin to imagine how I was "ever going to be able to forgive!"

But God's power is beyond anything we could ever imagine.  To this day I do not know how it happened, but I do know without a shadow of a doubt that "He alone caused me to forgive in a supernatural manner like only He can do."   Several situations arose where my heart was going to be tested and I found myself responding with a light heart.  At first I didn't know what was happening, but as time went on, I began to understand that God had cleansed my heart in all that remorse that I had experienced in His presence.  I did nothing to bring this cleansing about, except "be honest with myself and with God as to what I saw in my heart", and even that honesty came about only by the power of His Holy Spirit.  

What has transpired since that experience has been awesome!  I find myself loving the Word and searching His Word with a fire that I didn't have before.  He has been giving me revelation after revelation, insight after insight and thus, this Blog!

Prayer has always been a gift from God in my life and He never took that away from me, and although He had always been gracious to me, I can only express that "I feel light as a feather", I feel FREE!  I am now looking for more purging of my soul as revelation has come that we ALL have things in our soul that God needs to clean out in order that His glory can be revealed.  We cannot push down issues far enough or deep enough that they just go away.  I guess that's what I was doing prior to this experience.  I am deeply thankful "that he dealt with me".  His Word says that he chastens whom He loves.  Well I am certain more than ever before that He loves me.  He loved me enough not to let me keep on fooling myself and not to let the Devil keep deceiving me.  That's a lot of love if you ask me!  And do I love Him, you bet, more than ever before and He was already the love of my life before this purging.

Friends, our mind, our will and our emotions constitute our soul!  Imagine what might be found there when you consider we once walked this earth without the Spirit of God?  Imagine what might be found there when you consider what many of us, if not all of us, have gone through in this life!

I hope this stirs you up!  I pray that you would desire to let God take an "In Your Face" look at your soul!
This is not about condemnation, this is about "liberation".

Already God has had me share this very personal testimony with people from my church as well as people from the other church where we meet.  This is part of what the Lord is doing, He is preparing His Bride!  Praise God that He loves us so much that he corrects us.     

The Word of God is Alive and It Brings Life

Hi out there!  As of late the Lord has been giving me great insight on His Word and this insight is coming in leaps and bounds and my heart is excited for what the Lord is doing.  I know there are others out there that this is also happening to and it's time to share with one another what the Lord is saying.  We are living in exciting times in the Lord.  At the beginning of the year, the Lord told me that this year was going to be an exciting and exhilarating  year and it has been just that.  He also said that we, His body, would become "weapons of mass destruction" to the enemy through His Word which we were to release, to speak out.  I now understand that in order to be those weapons, we also needed to have more in depth understanding of His Word which would only come about by revelation of His Holy Spirit. We also need to allow the Lord to purge from us those things which have hindered us from stepping into the fullness of His promises.  I'm new at this Blog thing, but by the grace of God, I will learn the system because there is so much bubbling out of my spirit that He has placed there, that it must be shared.  We are the Body of Christ.  We are all in this together and we will be as "iron sharpening iron" in these last days.  Stay with me in the days ahead and let us learn and share together in Jesus' name.