God gave me another word today - "Come Up Higher"

written July 9, 2010

San Diego had a jolt and some shake yesterday - 5.9.  Peter and I ran downstairs and out to the front yard, just in case. I wrote in my diary that even as the earth is shaking, so are God's people being shaken in their lives. Yesterday I received at least three news of "troubles" or obstacles coming to His people which caused them to be troubled, angry and worried, a natural human response. I looked up to the Lord and asked, " Is the All is well word timely? (see my July 7 blog, God's net of blessing) If it is, what more do you want to show us?"

All I know at this point is that God is going to show us new things. The word I got today is Revelation 4:1, Come up higher and I will show you...  Every challenge or trouble only presses me to go higher -  to see, to hear, to know what our Father God/Commander-in-Chief/Comforter-Friend is preparing for us all.  He is training His bride in the art of "coming up higher" so we can have clarity.

This is the clarity that I sense is from Him: that indeed all is well and that God is preparing us to take dominion or authority over the earth for Him. He had asked Adam to do that, but Adam forfeited his call. I don't see us like Adam losing our inheritance, or getting victimized. Instead,  I sense that He is calling us to take a bold step forward, come up higher to seize hold of our inheritance.

I see God taking us into greater glory as in Isaiah 60:1-3, Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you.  Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

I see Him showing us how to leap across chasm and accomplish unusual feats.  Or I see Him taking us on unexpected twist and turn and suddenly our vision expands before us.  But most of all, I see us coming into what we are made for. That is just about the most powerful thing to happen to us - when we know who we are in Christ with all our talents and gifting, and then we present ourselves to Him as living sacrifices. That's when the kaboom! takes place in our being and we become fully passionate towards God.

This is the year of breakthrough, and many are coming into their breakthroughs in so many ways. God is all about such breakthroughs. The Bible is full of stories of God in partnership with humans to bring us into unbelievable success stories - Joseph, David, Moses, Abraham, Ruth, Peter, Paul, John all reaching their full potentials.  When I use the word "success" I mean "bearing much fruit." I have been experiencing the sense of success and favor as my gifting and talent come into fuller use by Him. He wants to do that for every single child of His - musicians, surfers, jewelry maker, inventors, investors, bankers, businessman, postman, cook, wife, mother, doctors, scientists, all. He so wants to be the wings that carry us higher. He has brilliant ideas to share with us, no, to put in us, to give to us. He wants to help us to implement these ideas. He wants to open doors for us, get us connected to the right people, bring us the loan we need, because He is in all these endeavors.  He created us so we can be creative like He is. We are like Him when we are being passionate with our talents and gifting.  He rejoices over us with singing and it gives Him such joy when we succeed in all our enterprises. By doing what we are gifted to do we are fulfilling the Lord's prayer, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven because we are His sole agents to take dominion over the earth.

But first He must train us to know Him, recognize His voice and not the voice of the enemy who poses as angel of light, which produces the religious spirit, a counterfeit spirit.  He needs us to be so in love with Him that we are one with Him. That's how He can take us higher - when we are so in Him and for Him that we would move as one with Him in all our endeavors on earth.  No longer will we be split up inside us - swayed by the system of the world, and driven by selfish ambition, tormented by fears and doubt. We will be so still in Him, gazing into His eyes, all our being in sync with His Spirit. When He moves up into the air, flying high, we will be in Him, enjoying every move and every nuance of joy and exuberance that He feels. We will see what He sees. We will hear Him telling us things we have never known before.

Jesus said, I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!  I have overcome the world.  (John 16:33)

God's net of blessing

written July 7, 2010

I last wrote about the enemy's net of troubles (see my June 21st blog) which he has put over many, especially leaders;  today I am writing about God's net of blessing.

Five years ago I fought cancer with the weapons God sent me and not with medical treatments (refer to my book, Out of the Wilderness) Last year the doctor said mammogram test showed that possibly cancer had come back to the lymph node. Thus started the enemy's attempt to wear down my faith in God's miraculous healing. He was hounding me with "Did you hear Him right when He said you will never be ravaged by cancer again?"  That's it! - Did you hear Him right?

The enemy knows that it is all about hearing His voice right so we can function right in this dark and confusing world.  So it helps the cause of the enemy greatly for the bride of Christ to doubt her ability to hear His voice or to doubt whether she hears Him right. Instead of being the warrior bride, we become the hesitant bride. You see, a lot of the weapons He gives us - declaring, proclaiming, taking authority - all require that we be bold and daring and confident, which can only come from our ears being trained to hear His voice accurately, our eyes to "see" into the spirit realm and not the natural realm, and our hearts to KNOW the Bridegroom so well we just know what He would do and what He would not do.

All this comes from being in the School of the Overcomer.  Even as the enemy seeks to confuse and demoralize us, in reality we are in His classroom and being trained in the art of fighting against the principalities and power of the air.  Some of these classroom projects can be of long standing (repetition helps us to "get it"), but humanly we may get weary and lose strength. But wait, what is the Holy Spirit saying to us? Do I hear right? Is He actually saying "All's well!"

How can it be all's well when evil is rampant and we seem to be losing the war? Yet it is possible because we actually live on two planes - we live in the world, but we are not of the world. We do not fight the humans that we see with our eyes of the flesh. We fight the enemy that is in the air, or behind humans and behind circumstances.See  2 Corinthians 10:3-5.  The school of the overcomer trains us to discern the enemy, and to take our eyes off the world (including people and circumstances and what the media tells us). He is training us to see not with our physical eyes or hear with our physical ears, or understand with our human understanding and wisdom, but to see through our spirit eyes and ears and heart.  I tell you, it is absolutely amazing who we are and who He is for us. If only the people of the world - the governmental leaders, the religious leaders, the power movers know what we have with God and the power and authority we have in Christ - they would beg us to show them how to live the way we live. Our bodies may be under attack and we may be going through hardship, yet our spirit ears can hear Him saying, "All is well." 


I experienced this dichotomy in a clear,sharp way about two months ago. One morning I was pacing at the bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, my heart greatly troubled, waiting for guidance, when out of the blue I began to sing the song "How Great Thou art" and then I found myself singing the old hymn "It is well with my soul".My spirit knew that I had hit just the right song. Boy! I sang and sang "It is well with my soul, it is well with my soul, it is well with my soul, with my soul" until my whole being was filled with KNOWING that all is well. From that day on, every time I was going under, I would sing this song.  Not only me, but Peter began to get it too.  When we discuss problems or worries, Peter would bellow out, "All's well!" and that would be the end of our worries.  Over and over this Holy Spirit's antidote to the net of troubles would come to us until our spirits own it. We would whip out our swords and declare to the enemy "All's well!"

For indeed as the Psalmist says, "You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemy, my cup runs over, and surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house forever." (Psalm 23)  We are declaring the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  We are also fighting with the enemy by declaring that all is well.  That is faith in action.  Not seeing, not hearing, not experiencing changes in circumstances, yet knowing that all is well.  It is a done deal, so to say. All's well became a canopy over us. 

Circumstances and people in my life began to come under the canopy of All is well   Relationships that have troubled my heart for so long began to transform into His Garden relationship.  Life's many complex troubled situations began to change.The best news to me was that on our wedding anniversary June 28th Peter declared that indeed we must celebrate because for the first time ever he is experiencing the peace and faith in God no matter what the circumstances are. Jeremiah 29:11 is now a life transforming verse to him, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

 
In other words, All's Well!

The enemy has set a net of troubles

written June 21, 2010

It's become clear that there is a dastardly net of the wiles and schemes of the enemy over the bride, especially over leaders who carry an anointing for healing or new man-new marriage, or creativity and joy. The net has been thrown over these ones for long duration, in terms of years, bringing troubles of all sorts to their families, including serious health issues, financial issues, relational issues. Troubles upon troubles to their loved ones and themselves, until all their time and attention are spent trying to solve these problems, with seemingly no end in sight. And when they sleep there is no real rest.

These leaders know how to go deep into the cavern of God's heart in their hearts and they know how to fight with the right weapons, having experienced many wars and won many wars, but these troubles are such that they wrench the roots of their hearts, and hit the fiber of their lives.They exhaust all the avenues of prayer help and all the weapons of war, such as standing on scriptures, praying, praising, declaring, repenting and forgiving. Yet the attack is so insidious that the very fiber of their lives begin to fray at the seam and they begin to change. The way they change no one can blame them. When it's their sons and daughters and grandchildren, and husbands or wives, whose troubles and pain would not go away,and there is no break, no solutions in sight, and the pain is not only physical, but mental, emotional - they begin to change in such a way they are not aware of.

They can still carry on their ministries, and their prayer still is powerful and anointed, but inside their heart of hearts, they begin to lose their joy. They begin to carry worries, day and night, it seems, and from worries they slip into tinge of anger and tinge of bitterness, tinge of being sour, which they quickly push down deeper because it won't do for leaders to be worriers and hostile people. They guard their tongues, or try to. To people they minister, they are still so right on and strong. But their exchanges with their families may carry barbs and suspicion and put-downs and defensiveness. Most of all, they are tired, so very, very tired. And the passion for Jesus seems so hard to sustain.

Oh but they are leaders! Much depend on their faithfully standing on the wall and praying for their region, their city, their nation, their church, their loved ones. So they continue to minister. When they are leading a prayer meeting, the anointing is still there, and they are still seeing and hearing, so doing ministry is a respite from worries and other negative thoughts. But once they are alone, the weight of their tiredness is over them like a blanket. Where is the peace and joy and lightness and freedom that are their rightful inheritance? What is going on? Where have they gone off? They search their hearts and guilt and condemnation snake in and out of their thought and emotional life.

Some who were healed of cancer and other major diseases supernaturally are told that these diseases seem to have come back. This round they are not up to contending for their healing. Still believe in it, and still praying for themselves and others who ask their help, but somehow they are not the same "wild horses" anymore. The fire seems to have gone out of them. So they do what everyone does - they set appointments and get tests and scans and prescription and their schedule is filled up with doctors' appointments. However, the problem is the doctors seem to dig up more possible health problems. The prescribed medicines pile up, plus side effects. And that wonderful thing called intimacy with God seems to fade into the background, put on the back burner for better days when they will have time, lots of time, to spend with the Lord. But not right now because there's so much distractions.

There is a film, a black film, a fog, a mosquito net, whatever it is called, over the bride, so subtle, so insidious, so dastardly. The enemy knows that just by stealing our joy in the Lord, and what God calls "rest" (Hebrews 4), he can render the bride to be ineffective. How? By putting in the place of joy and rest his offerings - guilt and condemnation and sadness and works, lots and lots of human efforts (striving) and good intentions and figuring things out. He knows his time is short, and the bride is rising up to be the trained partner of the Lord who knows how to exercise the power and authority He has given to us. This is so key to the bride's well-being. So the enemy's plot is to sabotage us all by wearing us out, zapping our passion, our focus, our hope and joy.

I have more to write, as He has been speaking of marvelous antidotes. Some leader friends and I are exchanging information and wising up to the net that is over so many. Some are getting the breakthroughs now or some are seeing some breakthroughs. This one is not so easy to break free from because it involves the fiber of our lives - the who-we-are-in-Him and the Who-He-is-for-us. Praise God He is exposing it. Your prayer is very important for the bride, especially for those in leadership to be set free from the "snare" the enemy has set for us and our loved ones.