We are not grasshoppers

Have you ever faced a situation in life where things just seemed out of your reach, and believed it to be in an impossible situation?

If so, I found some encouragement from the book of Numbers where Moses sends out 12 men to spy out the land of Canaan with specific instructions.  

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Num 13:18  and see what the land is like: whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, few or many; 19  whether the land they dwell in is good or bad; whether the cities they inhabit are like camps or strongholds; 20  whether the land is rich or poor; and whether there are forests there or not. Be of good courage. And bring some of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes.

Verse 20 stood out to me. Moses wanted the first fruits of the land. It was the season of the first ripe grapes.  To me, this says quite a bit. The Lord was giving them a harvest of firstfruits.

When the 12 spies returned they submitted their report. A land flowing with milk and honey, and the evidence, the fruit of the land.

The report also said stong people, fortified cities, descendants of Anak, in other words, giants lived in the land.

Num 13:33 There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.

Joshua and Caleb were the only two out of the 12 that saw an opportunity and were ready to take possession.

Friends, we are not grasshoppers. We are not small, we are not insignificant. We cannot see ourselves as a bug that can be stepped on, we are much better than that.

While you are scouting your land, there will always be those around you that do not see or ask what God has for you. The won´t pray for you nor offer prayer but will be quick to show you their ¨concern¨ when you are dreaming big.  

Many times we need to see beyond our natural ability and tap into what God´s future is before us.  Yes, there will always be giants in our land, they will never go away. We each have our own giants to deal with, but God is bigger.

If the Lord is sending you into a new land, it is for you to conquer, not to fail. God does not set us up for failure.

God loves to answer in extraordinary ways.

He loves to surprise us.

I would like to encourage you to scout or spy out your land if you do not already have one.  Maybe your land is a new move, a change in work, ministry, or something else.

Don´t see yourself as a grasshopper, but see this as an opportunity for God to slay those giants that stand before you.

The Lion Roars at his enemy

During my journaling time with the Lord, I began thanking Him for our blessings, our plans, and thanking Him that our desires and prayer request are at the door.  

I was actually encouraging myself in the Lord with music and gratitude when I was surprised by the following statement.

Image by Ian Lindsay from Pixabay

Roar your promises.

What?

Roar your promises. So I began to list the promises and prayer request we are believing for, keeping silent.

I paused and meditated on what I heard.

I was not to pray them in, I was to roar them in. 

“The LORD roars from Zion… and the heavens and the earth tremble.” (Joel 3:16)

I really did not know or understand what this meant, so I did a search and came across this teaching here.

We watched the teaching, read the handout and hubby and I roared together.

In one particular exercise, we both had the exact same communication from the Lord, the others were very similar.

In the end, we felt our list of prayer petitions was moved forward. This is new to me, to us and it is from God because I could not make this up.

Many times we may not understand everything, but with the guidance of the Holy Spirit we can be assured that God has our best interest at heart.

I am excited to see how things will move in our favor and will be sure to let you know.

 

 

Powerful keys to unlock your destiny

Sometime back I received a prophetic word which stated the many things I have prayed for will come to pass, but in order to receive them, I would need to use my keys.

The word was specific as to the things I had been praying for, and it was not a generic God knows the desires of your heart word.

Image by Mabel Amber, still incognito… from Pixabay

This encouraged me greatly, and I thanked the Lord in my prayers that what I was sensing in the spirit was right.

I tucked the word away and forgot about it.  A few days ago I kept hearing the still small voice of the Lord saying, use your keys, and I was reminded of this word. 

I dug it up, re-read it and understood.  In this particular word, I needed to use my keys which represent authority,  to obtain my promise.

What are those keys, anyway?  I had to do some serious meditation to get my answers.

I have found these following keys that I or anyone can work with:

• Praise and worship
• Prayer. Not praying out of fear, but out of faith
• Using the name of Jesus in my prayer time. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
• Fasting. There are many books and teachings on fasting, but to give you the short answer, your flesh comes under the submission of the Lord. Isa 58:6  “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?
• Obedience. Obey those in leadership, your pastor and obey the word of the Lord for your life.
• Serve. Jesus came to serve, and we should do the same
• Rest. Rest in the Lord and believe.
• Right heart attitude, make sure your heart is right in each action you take.

What can cause your keys to not work?

• Ignore you have keys, which is what I did until I was reminded
• Unbelief and doubt, not believing the word of God, or that He even cares about you.
• Laziness. Not using your time wisely in meditation of the scripture and prayer
• No placing the Lord first in your life

Have I received my desires?  Not all of them. I am still waiting, and even while I wait, I know God is at work in me and through me and for me. 

Waiting increases faith, and to be honest, can be difficult, but as the song goes, I trust and obey.

What other keys have you discovered? Share them in the comments below.

How to see in the Spirit

Do you ever find yourself desiring to learn something new, and when you find it you delve right into it?  Recently I have been reading books as to how to see in the spirit.

These are:

• How to See in the Spirit by Michael Van Vlymen
• Powerful Keys to Spiritual Sight by the same author
• Seeing in the Spirit made Simple by Praying Medic

You could say the Lord has placed it upon my heart to study this.     As a young child before Christ, I had the ability to see in the spiritual realm, but what I would see were not always nice or pretty. 

Once I became a believer in Christ, my seeing in the spirit was not as active, and I was relieved.   Instead, I became aware of my surroundings,  but not always. 

There were times where I knew if something was off, or if someone was of the Lord.  Some people would call these types of people feelers.   I understand now it is the gift of discerning of spirits the Lord has given me.

Recently, my interest has peaked to be able to see in the spirit more accurately and frequently. I can sense, discern, and when I pray visions are common, but I wanted more.  

These books have helped me, and I would like to share a few nuggets with you that may help you see in the spiritual realm.  If you are truly interested, these books and others  are available at Amazon. 

Repent of any sins.  Yes, we all sin. Confession and repentance is a good thing.  Admiting something you did wrong does a lot for you. 

Intimacy with Christ is important and staying close to Him. Read the Bible, journal and pray.  I have journaled for years, so this was very easy for me.  It is in my journal where I can truly be myself and share my heart with Him in my notebook. I also have times of gratitude, praise, petitions, joy and sadness. Here I am real. 

Pray for others.  I purposely joined my church´s prayer chain years ago when I noticed that all my prayer request were for myself and my own family needs.  I realized that I was becoming selfish, and this is not right. I joined the prayer chain to move my focus from me to others.  I have always enjoyed prayer and praying for others, but I went out of my way to see whom I could pray for.  We receive our prayer chain in the mornings, and often times there are certain prayer request that I pray for throughout the day. 

Listen to praise music, as often as you can.   I am the type of person when reading or working, I need complete silence.  My husband, on the other hand, works best with music on.  To make matters worse, the spare bedroom in the house functions as our shared office.   So what we now do,  is having praise music on our Smart T.V. as soon as we wake up, and this has helped with the spiritual atmosphere in the home.

Fast and pray in the spirit.  We have a habit of fasting the beginning of the year, but this is an area where the Lord is telling me that I need to fast more, not just at the start of the year.  This type of fasting could be a meal, or one day a week.  Instead of cooking, eating and cleaning the kitchen I would use that time to pray and read the Bible.

On my next post, I will be sharing an exercise listed in these books and how it went for me.

5 ways to increase your prayer life

Have you ever been at a loss for words when in a prayer group or ministry time and felt intimidated by those around you, especially the way they prayed and spoke over someone?    My idea was, they prayed everything and so well and so eloquently, I possibly could not add to it.  So therefore, I would not pray.

The Bible says some of the  Apostles were unlearned men.  But, they were with Jesus and spent time with him and learned to speak like Jesus.

Acts 4:13 The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus.

Imagine speaking like Jesus!  Do you think this is available for us today?  I do.

So how did I learn to pray and not feel ashamed about saying what was on my heart?

Here are five steps that I learned along the way that can be of some benefit to you.

a)  I listened to the way others prayed. I paid attention to their prayers and the words they used.  I was especially impressed with how they were able to incorporate scripture when praying over someone.

b) Learn to hear the voice of God.  There are many wonderful books on how to hear the voice of God.  Just to mention a few authors:  Shawn Bolz, Mark Virkler. Don´t just read the books, apply the principles taught in them.  When you do, you will be pleasantly surprised.

c) Spend time in prayer and meditation of the word.  God invented meditation, and it is something we are to do. It is simply repeating the scripture over and over.  Writing down the verse will help you memorize it, and chew on each word.

d) Journal.  Where would I be without my journal, I write everything down.  In my prayer times, I express my gratitude, my love, my frustrations and prayer request.  While journaling, don´t forget to listen and write down what you hear God saying back to you.  Develop two-way communication.  It is available to you and within reach.

e) Practice, step out in faith. There comes a time where you have to take the plunge and step out in faith.  You will be surprised as you yield to the Holy Spirit, He will guide and lead you.  Don´t worry if you make a few mistakes, we all have to start somewhere.  The idea is to get going, and before you know it, your will have a flavored prayer life.

Start praying those awesome prayers inside of you.  As you do, the receiver is blessed, and so are you.

What other ways have you learned about developing a prayer life?  I would love to hear about in the comments.

 

Getting to the root of the problem

I don´t  always  have the opportunity  of doing yard work, but when I do I thoroughly enjoy it.

For some time I had my eye on a wild vine growing out of control in our yard. My mind was fixed  to chop it down. (Remember, I live in the foothills of a cloud forest, and plants tend to grow quite rapidly.)

With machete in hand, I began chopping away. What surprised me were the many roots this vine had, embedded into the soil.  I could not seem to find the main stem of this vine.  It was a real mess.

I started at the base, but the roots were many, so I began chopping away at the end of the vine.  Some time later, progress was visible.

I was cutting away removing the leaves when I finally arrived at the base of the vine.

Spiritually speaking, we desire to eliminate a problem, but the roots are so many we cannot find out where this ¨thing¨ that is hindering us was birthed.

To get to the root of the problem, many times we need to peel the layers to get to where it started growing.

It would be easier  if we could just hack it away with one swipe, but many times God does not work that way. He deals with us carefully.

If we allow Him to work, He will begin very gingerly removing external influences that hinder our calling and relationship with Him  upon our life. He wants us to trust, mature and grow in Him.

With  trust, maturity begins to flourish.

It can be painful to our pride, but it is well worth it.

We may find ourselves in a situation  we did not know how we ended up in.

If that is you, a time of reflection is needed and here are a few helpful questions you could ask yourself.

• When did the problem start?
• When did my spouse and I begin having this problem?
• How did I end up with such a bad attitude?
• When did everything begin going crazy at home, at work, in my relationship?

You don´t know the answers to these questions, but the Lord does.  If you ask, He will tell you.

Once we get to the root of our problem, a number of things may need to happen to ensure that it does not sprout up again.

First, we need to be honest with ourselves.   God can and will work with that.

Was it sin, rebellion, an attitude problem?  Perhaps  your heart was not right.   Confess it and quickly, and forgive yourself for the sin.

You may need to forgive someone, and do so.  It is not for their benefit, but for yours. Forgiveness removes the bondage you have towards the other person and allows God to work in your heart and on the other´s person life.

Allow God to do a deep work inside of  you.

When you allow your heavenly Father to remove things that are causing you trouble, He will also do  a healing work in your heart.

Your emotions begin to heal and line up and soon you will find yourself walking in a new level of freedom.

Living in joy, freedom and growing closer to the Father should be the goal.  With those hindrances removed, you are set to walk out in your gifts and calling, where there is true happiness.

 

Was it God speaking?

A few years ago we attended a small all Spanish speaking church with a very gifted pastor.  Just like any human being, we all have our flaws. There are some flaws that we can overlook, but something this pastor  would often say just never sat right with me or my husband.

He would brag about receiving phone calls, and how the Lord trained him in his prophetic gifting and word of knowledge this way.

He said God would tell him who was calling, and God was always correct.  He got so good at it, that when the phone rang, if it was someone he did not want to speak to he would not answer. (This was before caller ID was around.)

He would brag about this to the congregation, and there would always be oohs and aahs, but at the same time his message was- I know what is going on.

When one receives a prophetic word or word of knowledge, it should always point to Jesus, and it is to bring edification and exhortation to the church.

These “words of knowledge”  this pastor was receiving every time the phone rang did neither.  Its only purpose was to boost his pride and ego.

So was it God speaking to him?  The obvious answer is no.   In case you did not know, there is such a thing as a false prophet spirit.

1 John 4:1  Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world

A  way to test any word from God is to ask the following questions. Does it point to Jesus?  Does it bring edification?  What is the purpose of the Lord telling me this information?

It was sad to see how this pastor could not grasp that it was the enemy speaking to him, and not God.

We need to keep ourselves safe from falling into deception and having our pride grow. Our goal should be for edification of the Body of Christ, as the word says 1 Corinthians 14:12

What a true prophet will do

• A prophet will never expose your sin.  If the Lord reveals your sin to the prophet, it is to steer you on the right path and to draw you to repentance unto the Lord, but the sin should never be mentioned.
• The prophet will be spending time in prayer and have an intimacy with the Lord, that will include love for His people.
• A true prophet will give you direction and guidance, and that will always include God’s plan for you and His love for you.
• The gift is to build and exhort the church, hint: you and me.
• A  prophet will not call out your faults, embarrass you or cause you shame or bring condemnation.  Jesus loves us too much to hurt us.
• The prophetic word will bring hope.
• When prophetic  words or words of knowledge are received, it should always bring Glory to the One that gave us the revelation.

Knowing these guidelines will keep you safe from those claiming to be God’s spokesman/woman.

Have you ever received an incorrect word from a prophet?  If so, how did you handle it, what did you do about it?

Leave your comments below, I would love to hear from  you.