Counterfeit- Part I

What the enemy most often tries to do in our lives is mimic God. However, God intends for events, situations, encounters to grow us, prepare us. What the enemy of our souls intends to do is use events, situations, and encounters that are a twisted version of the real thing to wound us and eventually destroy us and the plan that God has for our life. At the very minimum, his goal would be to derail us from the Greater Plan and Purpose meant for our lives.

Abraham faced a situation in which this was incredibly apparent. God had told Abraham that he would be the father to a great nation. (See Genesis 12) Abraham was a man of faith, and took God at His word. However, after time had passed it didn’t seem possible for the Lord’s promise to come true. Abraham and Sarai still had no children. At this point, God specifically told him that his heir would be his very own flesh and blood (See Genesis 15:4).

Wow! A direct and specific word from God! You would think that this would be enough to propel Abraham forward and keep him focused on God’s promise. That’s an easy assumption looking in from the outside. But have you ever had what you thought was a promise from God on your heart? Then have you ever waited as it looked like that promise would never come to pass? Time stretched on and on…wonder started to play on your mind…Did you hear God? Were you supposed to do something to help it along? It’s a difficult place. It’s difficult not only for the person with the promise, but for the people around that person that all have opinions on what they think God’s plan should be….

Take a moment and examine your own life. Do you, like Abraham, have a specific promise? Or does someone you know feel that they have a certain Word or promise? What has been your response during the wait?

Waiting Here for You

Tonight I have so many things swirling through my head. So far I haven't been able to successfully get it all down on paper in a form that makes sense. There are just so many things that God is doing, and ways that He is broadening my faith. I am watching Him move; but I still wait for one very specific thing. I know it's almost here....I can feel it. We are on the 1 yard line getting ready to make it into the end zone. Will I do a dance when we make it--you'd better believe it! :)

In the meantime, here is a song that is speaking volumes to me right now. Enjoy the lyrics and the music. Time to turn up the speakers and get some praise on!

If faith can move the mountains
Let the mountains move
We come with expectation
Waiting here for you, I’m waiting here for you

You’re the Lord of all creation
And still you know my heart
The Author of Salvation
You’ve loved us from the start

Waiting here for You
With our hands lifted high in praise
And it's You we adore
Singing Alleluia

You are everything You’ve promised
Your faithfulness is true
And we're desperate for Your presence
All we need is You

Waiting here for You
With our hands lifted high in praise
And it's You we adore
Singing Alleluia

Singing Alleluia
Alleluia, singing alleluia, alleluia

Waiting here for you
With our hands lifted high in praise
And it's You we adore
We're singing Alleluia

I'm singing Alleluia
Waiting here for you
With our hands lifted high in praise
And it's You we adore
Singing Alleluia
Singing Alleluia

Lyrics courtesy of Christy Nockels, Waiting Here for You

Life Interrupted??

I sent this to a friend of mine yesterday, because I felt the need to share with her what I had read during part of my quiet time. This excerpt from Priscilla Shirer's Life Interrupted (all about lessons from the life of Jonah) speaks volumes to a situation of someone that we both love very much. However, I couldn't shake the nudging that I felt I needed to share it en masse--maybe you are like we were & needed the reminder to help encourage you and give you hope for someone you have on your heart, or maybe you need it for yourself. Regardless, I am certain that her words will move you and help give you hope--even if you feel like you are in the belly of the whale.

"But what seems like it’s been designed to kill us may actually be God’s way of preserving us, rescuing us from what could be a far more dire consequence. Maybe, just maybe, the more vast the consequences we face, the more vast the work He plans to perform through us after it eases up or passes. When we feel His correction particularly heavy upon us, it’s sometimes not so much in proportion to past or recent sin as in proportion to the great task awaiting us when He’s done, when we’ve endured it.

I love the way pastor John Piper says it: “Adversity is redemptive; it’s not merely punitive,” God isn’t out to hurt you; He’s out to redeem you. He’s out to get you back to your senses, back to where you realize you’ve been headed the wrong direction, back where you’re desperate to turn this misstep around if given the opportunity. Back to a place where you want His forgiveness as badly as you wanted your independence, where you crave accountability the way you used to crave your freedom, where the things you once cherished about your life with Him become the things you now desire more than life itself.

See, if you’re a child of God, then the frustration, impatience, anger, and all those other things your interruption has purged to the surface are not the only occupants living inside your heart. You also house the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, who continually seeks the things of God even when you’re not particularly wanting to. So just as trials and interruptions are capable of exposing the resistant tendencies and temperaments that still hang out in your life, they can also mark the moment when something else bubbles to the surface—your deep sense of need for God’s deliverance, your too long forgotten fondness for the Father. …………

………There’s always something about forgoing the privilege of prayer that almost always leads us into the fish’s belly. And yet being in the fish’s belly is bound to lead us back to it. In fact, I’m convinced that’s one of the main things it’s designed to do.

But if we aren’t careful, we can allow it to have the opposite effect. Whether from the extraordinary discomfort, the overwhelming shame, the hopeless frustration, or any combination of emotions, we face the cruel temptation to hole up in our hardship and consider ourselves abandoned. Forgotten. Unforgiven. Unforgivable.

Yet here we see Jonah—a spiritual leader of Israel who had hightailed it to Tarshish in front of God and everybody (as well as endless generations of Bible readers) –seizing on this opportunity to do business with God, to turn and look into His face from the thick darkness of his current condition, to cry out to Him in the midst of his despair, knowing that the Lord was his only hope of rescue. He could have resigned himself to this fate, and yet he didn’t. He chose to cry out to the Lord “from the stomach of the fish” (v.1).

No better place than here. No better time than now.

If you’ve been there—if you are there—hear God’s Word to you today:

The LORD longs to be gracious to you, and therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; how blessed are all those who long for Him. (Isa. 30:18)

While His tough-loving discipline may have been required to help you recognize the extent of your running or to spotlight the place where you blocked Him from working in your life, repentance and restoration are near. Christ has won the right to declare you approved and acceptable in the eyes of the Father—as usable as ever—now that you’ve acknowledged your fault, accepted your discipline, and asked forgiveness. A forgiven sinner is always welcome at the throne of God.

A place called Grace.

If you’ve been running from God and you know it, if you’ve brought some consequences on yourself that are painful to endure, if you’ve caused others to suffer for your failure to live in full surrender to God’s will and way, you can still call out to Him. You can seek a sure reconciliation with the One you’ve offended. ……..

…………God has brought you here to redeem you, my friend, not to destroy you. And your restoration and renewal need not wait another second.”

Excerpt from Life Interrupted, by Priscilla Shirer

If you would like to purchase Priscilla's book, here is a direct link to purchase straight from her website. There is also a companion workbook for Bible study.

Death of a Dream

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. ~John 12:24

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker-worm, and the caterpillar, and the palmer-worm, my great army which I sent among you. ~Joel 2:25

Have you ever experienced the death of a dream? Have you ever seen something that you had believed for die right in front of you? It is during times when we experience what feels like theft of a promise that our belief is really tried.

There are plenty of examples of experiencing the death of a promise or a dream in the Bible. Here are just a couple of them that speak so much to me:

Lazarus & his sisters- While Mary & Martha never had a specific promise from Jesus before Lazarus’ death, they knew that Jesus could heal him. Since Jesus could heal him and he loved Lazarus, it was an easy assumption for them to trust that Jesus would get there when they requested his presence to heal their sick loved one. However, Jesus didn’t come and heal Lazarus. In fact, he delayed himself purposefully. Mary and Martha watched their brother die, and they buried him. I’m sure their hearts were broken from Jesus’ seemingly insensitive absence.

Abraham & Isaac- Abraham had been promised that he would be the father of a great nation through his very own seed and Sarah’s womb. He had to wait 20 years for the fulfillment, but Isaac was his promise. Years later, Abraham had to have a hundred things rushing through his mind as God asked him to take his son to be sacrificed by his own hand. Did Abraham believe God would intervene….or did he simply pray and hope that he would?

There is one thing that we must remember above all else—God is always faithful and always true to His promises.

He remembers His covenant forever, the word He commanded for a thousand generations. ~Psalm 105:8

Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him." ~Lamentations 3:22-24

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. ~I Thessalonians 5:23-24

Jesus told the disciples that Lazarus was only “sleeping,” and he told Mary and Martha that he would be raised. They were unable to comprehend what he was saying to them, but nonetheless, Lazarus was raised from the dead after having been sealed in a tomb for four days. Just as Abraham raised the knife to slay his dearest promise, God himself stopped him, and Abraham received the ram to sacrifice instead.

We don’t always know how the promise will come to pass….we just know that IT WILL. But what we do know is that it will “bear much fruit.” When a dream (a promise) is resurrected & restored, God always uses it in a mightier way—it becomes more powerful than it ever would have been otherwise, brings Him more glory, and points others to the person of Jesus Christ.

Waging War- The Battle Plan

And that about wraps it up. God is strong, and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well-made weapons of the best materials. And put them to use so you will be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This is no afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps, a life-or-death fight to the finish against the Devil and all his angels.

Be prepared. You're up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it's all over but the shouting you'll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You'll need them throughout your life. God's Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out. ~Ephesians 6:10-18 (MSG)

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ~2 Corinthians 10:4

Even a little boy playing “army” in the backyard knows that you need a battle plan when you are waging a war. How much more true this is as we battle for the dear treasures we have been promised? The battle I choose to fight is not one where I will stomp my feet or demand to get my way. The treasure I seek is much too precious for manipulative game play of which our world is accustomed. The situations I battle against I have no power to change. I am not big enough, strong enough, or influential enough to cause a shift. In all reality—I don’t want to be. I know that if I am big enough to change something, then I am also big enough to mess it up. If I am incapable of changing something, then I know any change that occurs is because of my God intervening in the situation.

Write this letter to the angel of the church in Philadelphia. This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David. What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open. ~ Revelation 3:7

That’s the kind of battle strategy I am going for. I want the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords to fight for me. I want him to be the One that brings about change.

The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still. ~Exodus 14:14

This is a tough concept for us as humans. Our natural inclination is to “do something,” to “force the issue.” Does this mean that I am to sit idly by and just passively wait to see what happens? Absolutely not. My job is to seek, to fall on my face and humble myself before the One that makes all things possible. My job is to keep myself in right standing before Him, to ask Him to purify my motives with His fire. Seek more. Trust more. Sacrifice more.

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. ~Luke 11:9

Waging War- Taking Back What Is Already Mine…

When Abram heard that his nephew Lot had been captured, he mobilized the 318 trained men who had been born into his household. Then he pursued Kedorlaomer’s army until he caught up with them at Dan. There he divided his men and attacked during the night. Kedorlaomer’s army fled, but Abram chased them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. Abram recovered all the goods that had been taken, and he brought back his nephew Lot with his possessions and all the women and other captives. ~Genesis 14:14-16

Today I have reached a place of being ready to take back what has already been mine. When God grants something or ordains something, no man has the authority to take it or change it. However, just because no man has the right, it doesn’t mean that no one will ever try to unjustly take what is not theirs. The enemy of our souls is a thief.

The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life. ~John 10:10

A thief doesn’t play by the rules. When someone steals something from you, you must work to get it back. Abram had family kidnapped and possessions stolen. However, had he not gone on the pursuit to take back what had been stolen from him, he would have never seen his nephew or possessions again.

Abram didn’t just travel a short distance up the road. The distance he traveled was more than 130 miles. Think about that….many of us wouldn’t drive in our cars 130 miles just so we could go and battle it out for something that had been taken from us. It also said that he attacked during the night. How many of us would have said, “I’m really tired. I just drove all this way, & I think it would be better for me to have some rest & then go fight first thing in the morning.” But not Abram. They pursued their enemy, caught up with them, then waited up despite the discomfort to attack when the enemy was most vulnerable.

That brings to mind a statement from Steven Furtick’s book, Sun Stand Still. He says “if you’re going to pray for God to make the sun stand still, you’d better be ready to march all night.” Pastor Furtick made the statement in reference to Joshua’s prayer and battle. [If you want to read about God causing the sun to literally “stand still” so Joshua could win a battle, see Joshua 10:1-15]

So tonight, I am ready to march all night. I am ready to make the 130 mile trek to fight. I am ready for restoration. I am ready for resurrection. I am ready for recompense. I am ready to take back what is already mine. What God has put together, no man is allowed to separate.

You've Messed Up One Too Many Times.....

Do we really believe what we say we believe? We say:

- Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God." ~Luke 18:27

- Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ~2 Corinthians 5:17

- See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. ~Isaiah 43:19

Do we really believe what we say we believe? We believe that God can do anything, that nothing is impossible with God. Yet so often we only want to apply this to our own lives, and not to the lives of those that we disagree with, or that have hurt us. Church…do you really believe that God can make all things new? Then let’s believe for those that are trapped in the most unattractive sins to be set free and made whole.

What do we do when we are given a real live opportunity to love unconditionally? Do we point the finger, say that they are doing exactly what we knew they would do, and then turn our backs. Or do we try to lovingly point them to the only One that can truly change a heart? We can’t be a gracious lighthouse & an accusatory judge at the same time.

Want to see how God can transform even the most far-fetched candidate into a passionate follower? Check out Saul's conversion story. Think of your "least likely candidate" for change....and ask God to challenge your heart.

Everyone needs compassion

A love that's never failing

Let mercy fall on me

Everyone needs forgiveness

A kindness of a Savior

The hope of nations

Savior

He can move the mountains

My God is Mighty to save

He is Mighty to save

Forever

Author of salvation

He rose and conquered the grave

Jesus conquered the grave

So take me as You find me

All my fears and failures

Fill my life again

I give my life to follow

Everything I believe in

Now I surrender

Yes I surrender

Savior

He can move the mountains

My God is Mighty to save

He is Mighty to save

Forever

Author of salvation

He rose and conquered the grave

Jesus conquered the grave

Shine your light and let the whole world see

We're singing for the glory of the risen King...Jesus

Savior

He can move the mountains

My God is Mighty to save

He is Mighty to save

Forever

Author of salvation

He rose and conquered the grave

Jesus conquered the grave

You were mighty to save

Lyrics courtesy of Laura Story, Mighty to Save