Archive Page 17

Pray and Praise Unceasingly

Published May 21, 2013 Prayer 2 Comments
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As you may know, I’m a huge proponent of walking in the full authority of our rights as heirs to the kingdom of our Lord. A major component of fortifying that authority is to be in constant contact with the author of that authority – God. You’ve probably heard I Thessalonians 5:16-18 many times. It says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” The King James version says to “pray without ceasing.” I always wondered what that actually looks like – I mean, how do you drive or work if you’re praying without ceasing? For a long time, my mind had the “religious” definition of how one might pray without ceasing, and it didn’t look anything like life as we know it. In fact, to me, it looked a lot like living the life of a monk. Fortunately for me (and you), though, God gave me revelation.

Jesus taught us how to pray through the structure of the Lord’s Prayer. In my book, I go through the parts of that prayer and talk about how they manifest into all of my prayers. For example, the part that says, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” is my way, every day, of asking God to lead and help me through the supernatural realm. Most people think that praying is all about asking for something – petition, if you will – but that’s only one part of the Lord’s Prayer. The very beginning of the prayer is all about praise – “Our Father, in heaven, hallowed by your name.” Now, if you look up “hallowed” in the thesaurus, you’ll see that it’s not just a word that means “pretty good.” The first reference is to “godlike,” and includes words like “almighty,” “omnipotent,” “all-powerful,” “boundless,” “changeless,” and “supreme.” These aren’t words used to praise, say, a football team or anything. When is the last time anyone said, “Go Broncos, you are everlasting and supreme, omniscient and sacred?” These are the words only used to praise your Father in heaven, the creator of the universe. Therefore, every day, I start my prayers talking to God about how much I love Him using the kind of words that can only describe Him. Just calling God “Father” is pretty big praise, when you think about it. There’s no one else here on earth who I call “Father.”

But really, even though I begin my day with prayer that resembles the entire Lord’s prayer, and even though I might find the need to, say, ask for forgiveness during parts of the day, it’s petition and praise that allows me to pray without ceasing. Someone once wrote that when you pray without ceasing, your prayers will come out with every breath. Makes sense. We certainly breathe without ceasing, don’t we? So what would it be like if, with every breath, out came some small prayer or statement praising God? There would certainly be a bunch of small statements, like, “Thank you, Father,” or “Help me, God.” Just those two things can get you through most everything that comes your way in any given day.

To pray and praise without ceasing simply means to be in constant contact with our Lord – to keep Him in the forefront of our minds through every seemingly miniscule and insignificant part of our days. This can be as easy as just talking to God all the time, like you might talk to someone following along with you as you go through your day. Asking for help and thanking Him when he invariably gives it. When I ask God for help, I realize that there’s no question or request too small for Him. I’ll even ask Him what to wear each morning, and then I’ll just sit and listen. He always tells me, and then I’m quick to thank Him. I love it when I have a work problem that I can’t figure out or have misplaced my car keys. I just ask the Lord to help me out, and He always does. I love driving down the road and asking the Lord to help the family that just had an accident, and then driving on in faith that His hand is already on it. When I see one of His children, homeless, asking for money, I ask God what to do and He tells me (by the way, He keeps telling me to give to those folks). Literally everything that crosses my path is an opportunity to talk things over with God. And being in constant communication with God keeps the spiritual phone line open and keeps me pressed into Him so that I’m better able to see Him at work in my life and the world, and to be in the best alignment for blessings.

Now, I’m not saying that my prayers or petitions are always focused on my own needs. Most of my day is asking to what God wants from me, or for help on how to deal with His other children – what I should do to further His kingdom and to do His will. But by focusing on others, I’ve realized that often their needs have become my needs.  Believe me, there is so much going on out there in the world that when you pray and praise, even if you do it without ceasing, you’ll have plenty of time to focus on God, yourself, and others!

Can you pray and praise without ceasing without ever saying anything out loud? Yes, I believe you can, but don’t be afraid to look silly talking to Him out loud. There’s power in speaking into the supernatural realm out loud, both through talking to God and through rebuking Satan. And besides, I’ve seen plenty of people looking pretty crazy singing and talking out loud in public, and nobody gives them much thought at all. Just think about the last time you saw someone singing at the top of their lungs next to you in their car. These days, if you’re praying or praising God out loud, people will probably just think you’re on your Blue Tooth!

So, don’t be afraid to speak out loud. At meetings, I won’t scream it out, but I’ll definitely whisper, “Thank you, Father,” out loud every time I notice the things for which He deserves praise. In your car, invite Him to ride with you; in fact, let Him be the spiritual driver! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the car listening to my praise music and looked up to see a police officer running a speed trap. I must confess that I have a bit of a heavy foot on the gas pedal, but when I let God drive, He always slows me down.

So, start now! If you don’t know what to say, just start by saying, “Help me God” or  “Thank you, Father” with every breath. Keep God in the forefront of your mind. And realize that everything you come across in your day is an opportunity to talk to your Lord, the creator of the universe!

What is Stewardship?

Published April 28, 2013 Characteristics of Believers Leave a Comment
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According to Webster’s Dictionary, Stewardship means: the conducting, supervising or managing of something; especially: the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.

If you’re like me, you recognize that everything that you have in life is a gift from God. But it’s more than that, because a lot of time people will give you gifts and then forget about them – they simply don’t care what you do with them (as long as they don’t see them up for sale on eBay). God’s gifts are special, though, because He expects you to exercise responsible management over them for work in His Kingdom. In God’s eyes, we don’t own anything. Not our health, or money, or earthly resources, or spiritual gifts, or love. Nothing. But we’re stewards over all of those things.

Stewardship is important to God, and in the Bible it comes with a warning: be a good steward over everything that is given to you or don’t be surprised if it gets taken away. Just look at the parable of the talents in Matt 25:14-29, where the master gives each of three servants a specified value of talents and rewards the ones who showed earnings on the talents. Or look at the parable of the ten minas in Luke 19: 11-26, where a man of noble birth gives ten minas to ten servants, and does the same thing. In each case, the servant who did nothing with his gift loses that gift to the one who did more. Each parable ends by saying, essentially, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” So stewardship has at least two components: first, you have to recognize that everything you have is God’s, not yours. And second, you must do something with it to further God’s Kingdom.

It’s easy to think about stewarding tangible, worldly things, like money. After all, most of us were brought up in the world to faithfully drop our offering in the plate and give to the needy, etc. But I often try to think beyond money and how I might go about stewarding everything else in my life. I have a house that was given to me by God. Do I use it to further the Kingdom? I have a car, which some people don’t have. Do I use it to show God’s love or do I just use it to get back and forth to work? And what about my time? Do I offer up an hour here and there to others with no real expectation of return? And here’s a good one – spiritual gifts. I imagine that God is especially interested in how I manage those.

Managing God’s gifts often means doing a lot of things that the worldly you would rather not do. My husband, Tim, was given the gift of being able to write papers, books, letters, etc. Even though he’s worked hard at writing his whole life, he knows that his ability to write is a gift from God, and that he must use it to Glorify God. Recently, however, a person asked him to write a really difficult paper, for free, that was going to take about two or three weeks to complete. Needless to say, natural world Tim didn’t want to do it at all. So while we were talking about it one night, we asked ourselves, in the spirit of Charles Sheldon, “What would Jesus do?” The answer was clear. Jesus would write the paper and use it to glorify God. And as a steward of God’s gift of writing, Tim would do the same thing. It was hard, time consuming, and unprofitable, but it helped someone out and led to a pretty long discussion about God.

I believe that faithfully stewarding God’s gifts means abundance in this world. But I also know that someday I’m going to meet God. I’m going to bow down before Him with the hope that I tried to do everything during my life to please Him. I just don’t want to be saying, “Oh, that? You gave me that? I didn’t think that was anything.” Like the servant who invested his minas, I want to hear, “Well, done, Denise! Because you have been trustworthy with everything I gave you, including the little things, I’m giving you more!”

Think about what you have that you can steward better to make our world a better place and to display the love and grace of our Father.

Is Pope Francis the Final Pope?

Published April 22, 2013 Supernatural Leave a Comment
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Hi All;

It’s not often that I write about bible prophesy, but I’m constantly looking for things that will herald in the return of Jesus. “Thy Kingdom Come on Earth” is one of my mottos, after all.

I recently read about two authors who dissected what’s known as Saint Malachy’s Prophesy of the Popes, which predicts (and says a little something about) the 112 Popes coming after Celestine II in 1144. Now, I know that some people have argued over these prophesies, and some folks have even claimed they’re forgeries. But these two authors got my attention when they said that they used the Malachy Prophesies to predict that Pope Benedict XVI would resign from office – the first Pope to do so in 600 years. In fact, these two predicted that Benedict would resign in March 2012, and, when that didn’t happen, they felt that maybe they got it wrong. But when he actually resigned in 2013, the news got out that the 2013 resignation was just for the public – his official resignation before the Cardinals was in March of 2012! Now, that’s some pretty specific fulfilled prophesy.

I guess my point is that unfulfilled prophesy is prophesy, after all, and it’s going to be subject to some debate until it actually happens. But just think about how often it has happened in the Bible! I mean, before Jesus came, there were about 350 prophesies about the coming Messiah, and Jesus ended up fulfilling them all. Of these 350, there were over a hundred that were so specific that only Jesus (and no other arguable messiah) could have fulfilled them. I once read that a statistician had calculated the probability of Christ fulfilling just 8 of these specific prophesies (from being born in Bethlehem, to riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, to being crucified) and found that the odds were something like 1 x 10 to the 28th power, which is a 10 with 27 zeroes after it. By fulfilling 48 prophesies, it would be 1 x 10 to the 157th power (by the way, the odds of you becoming President of the United States are only 1 x 10 to the 7th power). So, unfulfilled prophesy is debatable, but proven prediction is worth paying attention to.

These same two authors have used the same Malachy document to now predict that the current Pope will be the last, ushering in the Tribulation.  That’s mostly because the list only goes up to 112, and we are now at that number. Of Pope number 112, the document reads: In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church, there will sit Peter the Roman, who will pasture his sheep in many tribulations, and when these things are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the dreadful judge will judge his people. The End.

Take a look at this article from Prophecy News Watch about the new Pope, Francis, and why the authors believe him to be “Peter the Roman.”

http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/   Scroll down to #8 “Pope Francis – History’s Final Pontiff?”

Also, you might want to take a peek at Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural programs below, which have the two authors discussing their predictions.

http://www.sidroth.org/site/News2?abbr=tv_&page=NewsArticle&id=12914    Select “Television Its Supernatural” and view parts 1 and @ of the April episodes for Tom Horn & Cris Putnam

Be Faithful and Be Blessed!

Heart Dis-ease

Published March 11, 2013 Inspiration , Purpose 7 Comments
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I had a dream last night. I dreamed that I was in one of those mega churches – you know, the kind that looks like it meets in a hockey arena. The regular pastor wasn’t going to speak, and somehow I knew this so I started walking from the middle of the congregation to the front. I was taking off my coat and I noticed I was carrying a bowl of cereal with me (I will come back to this later, but at least now you can really tell it’s a dream). As I started up the steps I saw my husband sitting on the stage smiling at me. As he did, I started to speak the following message (embellished a bit for you).

I said, “We all have things in our hearts, and some of those things are ugly, such as the virus of mean and hateful thoughts, the cancer of un-forgiveness, the brokenness of loss, the disorder of disobedience, the sickness of hope deferred. All of these illnesses are diseases of our heart and they cause dis-ease in our spiritual walk. Each and every one of these diseases are curable by our Father, who can take his precision scalpel and carve them out of our heart to make room for His desires for us such as peace, joy, health, hope, and purpose. Let your heavenly father perform surgery on your heart to remove the disease (dis-ease) so that He can fill it with His healing desires for you and you can have beautiful, healthy heart and hold onto the desires He has given to you.”

It was a dream about the so-called “desires of our hearts.” Lately I’ve heard a lot of speaking, encouraging, and teaching on these desires, which, when they line up with God’s will, are most definitely from Him. But I’ve also had many conversations with people lately about the specific desires placed on their hearts and the doubts that they feel as to whether they actually come from God.

Proverbs 13:12 states, “hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” I believe that this speaks to the hope of wanting a purpose, and of wanting to know that God has a plan for you. When you recognize that the very desire you have in your heart is from your loving Father, you have that hope. And, as the proverb says, you have life.

Think about your desires. Some of these desires are probably HUGE and take your breath away. These are the things that you want to do, but that you might feel you aren’t qualified for. These are your life-long dreams, but you might feel you aren’t prepared or equipped to even attempt them. Well, as the scripture so often says, “do not worry and do not be afraid.” Our Father never purchases anything that He can’t pay for. Because He has placed the desire within you, he has a plan to see it through, and he can already see you fulfilling your own dream. He knows the end way before you do.

The enemy places fear, frustration, impatience, and doubts in our mind to keep us from recognizing and pursuing our God-given desires. But if you let God take his scalpel and remove the dis-ease from our spiritual beings, these desires become brighter and supernaturally attainable. His plan is perfect, and it only requires your faith in Him to carry it out. Stop and pray to God to remove the diseases of your hearts so that you can know with certainty that your dreams and desires are from Him, and that, with His help, they will most certainly come true.

Now back to my dream – did you figure out what the bowl of cereal represented? Well, I decided that it represented a tasty morsel of encouragement from God. I was eating it in the dream, and now, by reading this, you just ate it, too. I hope you enjoyed it!

Why did God have me eating cereal in my dream? Why not cake? Well, I have a theory on that, too. I’ve been limiting dairy and grains in my earthly diet lately, but this week I broke down and had cereal with milk for dinner. Honestly, it was heavenly.

 

What does Obedience mean?

Published February 24, 2013 Characteristics of Believers 2 Comments
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I recently heard a pastor talk about other pastors who mostly speak about favor and abundance to people. I don’t think the pastor I heard had a problem with the message. What he didn’t like was that there was no mention of the obedience that precedes favor and abundance. This same observation has been on my heart for the past week, so I knew that I had to speak about obedience and what that means to us Christians.

I’ve always thought it was interesting that we Christians feel that we are called to strive for perfection like Christ, when clearly perfection is unattainable on this earth (as evidenced most directly by Jesus having to die for our sins on the cross). Knowing what we know about grace, we get up each morning and understand that Gods mercies are new each day. He knows we’re imperfect – He showed us perfection in His Son. But does that mean we should just give up? Doesn’t all this somehow let us all off the hook?

When writing to the Romans, Paul spoke about this very thing. He wrote: “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” Rom. 6:15.

To Paul, being a slave to righteousness was a supernatural step-up from being a slave to sin. Indeed, he said that we were set free from sin so that we could become obedient and thus slaves to righteousness, leading to holiness that, in turn, results in eternal life! Whenever I hear talk about trading one form of slavery for another, I always think of Bob Dylan, who sang that it didn’t matter who you were or how high up in the world you had climbed: “It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” We Americans don’t like to think about serving anyone. But, really, that’s just us thinking about life in the natural world with Kings and Presidents and what-not. In the supernatural war for your soul, however, there’s no sitting on the sidelines. If you don’t pick a side to serve, you’ve already picked the devil. Obedience to God opens up the supernatural doors to everything God has to offer, including favor and abundance in this world.

I prefer to serve God and to be a slave to obedience, and I believe that true obedience has several basic parts.

1. Obedience is about knowing who God is and His direction and promises for your life. Do you know God personally or just through someone else?

To really know God, I believe you have to really read His word. Don’t just depend on your Sunday service and Pastor’s teaching to tell you who He is. He speaks to us through His word and gives us insight that is special and personal to you. You simply can’t get this kind of personal insight in corporate teachings. Every day, spend some time (even 5 minutes) reading the Bible to see what treasure the Lord has to tell you.

2. Obedience is Giving of Yourself for others – How do you treat God’s people?

Even if you don’t have a call on your life for full-time or part-time ministry service, you are still called to be an ambassador for God. I saw a man with a walker trying to get up some steps and having just spent many weeks on a walker my heart broke that no one offered to help him. I asked if he would like some help, and he was so relieved and grateful. I didn’t have to mention God or Jesus, but God definitely touched that man through me!

Look for people to bless – get out of yourself and your own way and try to actually do something to help those around you! Really, it’s not enough to notice some acute societal need and then post a comment about it in your status box on Facebook. At the very least, smile at people and be prepared to give a kind, positive, and uplifting word to everyone. People are starving for the love we have – do not be stingy. And YES, be prepared to tell people about how great our God is and give them an example of something amazing that He has done for you. Plant the seeds of what we have and let God water them.  And, if you can, MEET THEIR NEEDS! Remember that Jesus said that whatever we do for the least of God’s children, we do to Him. Matt. 25:31-46. If we ignore the homeless, we ignore Jesus. If we say “good riddance” to those in jail . . . well, you get the point. Loving one another isn’t always easy. It’s all about obedience.

 

3. Obedience means doing what He tells you to do.

I think many times God withholds his favor and abundance simply because we don’t do what we’re told. I’m not just talking about the 10 Commandments, or the “greatest commandment” to love others. I’m talking about something maybe you were told to do personally. I was recently having a difficulty at work with one of my co-workers. He thought I had said something bad about him and he told others I was a hypocrite because here I was, a Christian, speaking badly about him. Honestly, I didn’t know what I had even said, but I prayed to God about what to do. God told me that I had talked about this person, and that whether or not he took it out of context, I was to go and apologize to him. Believe me, I didn’t want to apologize, but I did. And that person was surprised and grateful! I don’t know if it healed everything, but I know that God told me to do something and I did it. For that reason alone, I felt peace.

 

Here are a few questions that I periodically ask myself to check my obedience and to ask God to help me clean up my act.

a. Am I holding un-forgiveness towards someone for any reason? If so, I need to release it!

b. Do I know that I was told to do something and I haven’t done it yet?  If so, I need to DO IT!!

c. Have I sinned and not asked God for forgiveness? If so, then I need to get on my knees and ask. Then I need to forgive myself. I can’t continue beating myself up  — if the God of the universe forgives me, then surely I can forgive myself too!

d. Am I ungrateful? If so, I remind myself to be grateful and say “thank you” to God, who loves me more than I can imagine. I give praise and thanks in even the smallest things, so that He constantly hears how much I love him!

If being a “slave” to obedience leads to righteousness and holiness, then bind me up and tell me what to do! If it also leads to God’s favor and abundance, then tie those knots even tighter!

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