Despite my literary failures of late, I am going to try one more time to reach out and see who I can help with my blog. I’ve had so many things thrown at me the past few days that I scramble now to put into words what I’ve been given. I spent a lot of time on the road the past week, going to services with my friends and birthday dinners. It’s been a long week and when I’m on the road I give myself to prayer. I think God has talked to me more in my car than he has at home the past year. I’ll talk about altar building in another blog.
You, who know me best, know that my burden and passion is for families. Any of you who have lived through a situation like Ezekiel 34 and had someone not care for your bruising, wounding, hurting, loss and pain, know that there are agonizing nights upon agonizing nights that you lie awake staring at the ceiling, weeping and wishing that someone, anyone would call and speak a word of comfort or better yet, give you a Word from the Lord.
But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies' sake. Psalms 31:14-16
I’m amazed that I give the same advice on a blog to a friend and they rip me apart and tell me that I’m too aggressive, pushy, a manipulator, or trying to tell God what to do…and yet the same message posted in a blog has people emailing me and IMing me nightly or at work, thanking me for speaking something that ministered to them from God’s word and personal experience.
I came to a conclusion the other night, driving home late in the evening, that it is not the messenger or the message, for the message source I know well from nights on my face in my place of prayer, and the messenger was the same also in both instances. The only difference was the hearer for the word and the condition of their heart.
I heard a well-known evangelist and conference speaker talk about his childhood once and how his mother and grandmother would throw together a meal that would be considered fit for a king in the old country…but for American boys who wanted a hotdog or hamburger, it was less than palatable. Their mother’s response, “You get hungry enough, you’ll eat it!”
So many times I’ve choked on a Word from God, something I did not want to hear, but I knew it was for my best. Whether it was about cutting lose from a friend or loved one who was dragging me down spiritually, or losing a relationship with someone I dearly loved, I learned that Job’s statement was fitting to many situations in life.
But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Job 23:10
Many of my friends have contacted me, asking for advice, asking me to pray for their marital situations, backslidden wives and husbands, problems with parents and family members who are lost or backslidden. I pray for each of them, give advice when I feel impressed to do so, but in the long run, God can do more in 5 seconds than I can in a lifetime. I want to give answers. I know how I felt in similar situations in life. Now I can only give what God gave me.
There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD. Proverbs 21:30
Whatever your situation, circumstance, problem, trial, storm or tragedy, know this, that God is Sovereign. He is the God of your storm. He is the ONE who laid the foundations of the earth and stood the mountains on end, created the seas and all that is in it. He brought your storm. He’s with you through your storm, in your storm and after your storm. If God appointed you to your storm, stop trying to bail out. Stop trying to run. Stop trying to fight God. Stop trying to modify your storm. Stop trying to change logistics in your storm. Stop trying to dictate to your storm. Stop trying to challenge your storm. Stop fighting your storm!
[1] Then Job answered and said,
[2] Even to day is my complaint bitter: my stroke is heavier than my groaning.
[3] Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat!
[4] I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments.
[5] I would know the words which he would answer me, and understand what he would say unto me.
[6] Will he plead against me with his great power? No; but he would put strength in me.
[7] There the righteous might dispute with him; so should I be delivered for ever from my judge.
[8] Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:
[9] On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:
[10] But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
[11] My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.
[12] Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.
[13] But he is in one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doeth.
[14] For he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him.
[15] Therefore am I troubled at his presence: when I consider, I am afraid of him.
[16] For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:
[17] Because I was not cut off before the darkness, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face. Job 23
Don't fight the things that God has appointed you to! Sometimes when you are in your storm and you have prayed and fasted and listened for the voice of God and no voice comes, you have to do like Paul and the company of the ship did in Acts 27…lighten your load, get rid of the weights and fetters and let the ship drive! I find it odd how people will get so much clutter in their lives, bills, credit card expenses, entertainment, busy about business! Yet when faced with a storm, trial or test, they can’t shut the door, toss the keys on the table and find a place of intercessory prayer and talk with the only one who can help in their situation.
Understand that many of you who contact me, I can’t tell you exactly what I feel about you. I know that like with some, I feel a strong call of God on your lives. God has saved the last hour to pour out His Spirit on all flesh in such a way that he is opening up ministries we have never heard or seen before. He is not blind to your suffering. He is making something of you. He has chosen you. He has selected you from the finest that He has, and He is anointing you, not with the oil of your fathers, but fresh oil, oil from the fresh open wounds of your crushing, breaking, wounding, bruising and shredding. You are being crushed, pulverized, chastened, pressed and shaken, so that he can turn up the heat of the flames and purify you as gold tried in the fire.
Don’t leave the fires or your situation prematurely or you will hinder the working of the Almighty in your life!
God has appointed you to your storm. He is not trying to destroy you. He is not trying to make the people closest to you hate you, misunderstand you, mistreat you or destroy you. He’s making you completely rely on Him. He is testing you, proving you, breaking you, removing your dross and your tin, purifying you of harmful elements in your spirit that even you don’t know about. He is burning out of you all
God is going to create in you strength from your adversity, power from your pain, wisdom from your wounding and mercy from you misunderstanding. He’s going to heat you, hammer you, shape you and then quench the fire…and if necessary, repeat the process until he has shaped you into a fine tool for his workings on this earth. That’s the danger of jumping ship…If you aren’t shaped the way he wants you when he finishes he turns up the heat in the furnace, places you in again and starts the pounding and shaping all over again until you take on the shape he has in mind. If you fail the test, you have to keep repeating it until you pass! There is only one other option and I don’t want to talk about that.
I don’t want to resist His will. I’ve done it all too often in life, but that’s a story for another time.
And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? Daniel 4:35
Ultimately, you cannot run, and you cannot hide from God. He has a plan for your life and it is for the good. He wants to use you to minister to others. I’ll be blunt. God is raising up a generation of ministers that will minister and not just preach! We have too many show-boats out there, building their own kingdoms and grandstanding in the pulpit behind God’s sacred desk that are some of the best preachers in the world…but the LOUSIEST MINISTERS to SOULS that ever walked the earth.
We have men (and women) who add to their repertoire of sermons every week, preach conferences, cast out devils, parade before the cameras as they learn to operate their gift for their own benefits as they heal blind eyes and deaf ears…but when faced with a soul who is broken, destitute, lonely, hurting, and hungry, they have lost the plan of the Good Shepherd.
The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. He leaves the 99 and seeks the one…but they can’t grandstand before thousands and reach the one lost sheep. They can’t wear suits from SAKS, and Stacy Adams shoes and reach into the gutter and save the drunk and the prostitute. They can’t drive to a home that is in turmoil and speak to a couple whose marriage is on the rocks and bring justice and judgment to a home and restore a family while they are busy flying across country to preach to great stadiums of sheep ready to be fleeced and get picked up in a limousine and collect the pay they so richly feel they deserve. They don’t have time for the lost. They are too busy grandstanding.
That’s why God is creating you. He’s taking you into the ghettoes, the abortion clinics, the homeless shelters, the half-way houses, the projects, the domestic violence shelters, the broken homes, the alcoholic homes, to reach the broken, destitute, wounded, busted up, burned, bruised, battered, hungry and homeless. God will not do anything through a man or woman, until he has done it to that man or woman.
I asked God once why I had to go through all the stuff he took me through in my life, when I’ve got friends driving nice cars, preaching at large churches and traveling all over the movement. Calling is not the answer. My pastor knew my calling the first time I met him. God answered me before I even got it out of my mouth as the thought was forming. He told me one thing, “I did it because I’m going to use you in ways I will never use them!”
I shut my mouth real quick. I’ve lived long enough to see it come to pass.
[5] For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.
[6] For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
[7] But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
[8] We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
[9] Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
[10] Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. 2Cor.4
God is raising you up to minister. Whether I pulpit ministry, men’s ministry, family ministry, youth ministry, women’s ministry, jail ministry, street evangelism, hospital ministry, AIDS ministry, homeless ministry….no matter what he is heating you up for right now, for the love of God, don’t fight the furnace of affliction! God is performing a miracle in your life! Don’t run from God! Let him use you. Let him purge you. Let him be formed in you!
[7] But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.
[8] Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
[9] And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:
[10] That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;
[11] If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.
[12] Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
[13] Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
[14] I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
[15] Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.
[16] Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.
[17] Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample.
[18] (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
[19] Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) Phil. 3:7-19
DON’T FIGHT THE FIRE!!!!
"1": But now thus saith the LORD that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.
"2": When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.
"3": For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
"4": Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee: therefore will I give men for thee, and people for thy life.
"5": Fear not: for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west;
"6": I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth;
"7": Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him. Isaiah 43:1-7
When God speaks to your situation, IT WILL turn around. Trust Him until he does it and do not walk out of the refiner's fire! Too many want to jump ship in this hour because we live in a self-indulged society that is "All About ME." God deliver us from that mess! Let Him be Lord and Master of your life. Don't fight the FIRE!
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