Honor

It honors God if we act like He means what He says. We dishonor God when we knowingly disobey Him. What’s more, we put Him on the spot of looking foolish for not following up with our disobedience. The heathen watch God’s people . . . and sometimes we make God look bad. He looks foolish if He doesn’t punish the disobedient. And He looks mean if He does.

As a child with a father, so is the beginning of our relationship with God. We learn to obey. We learn what He says and then how to do it. Many children like to imitate their fathers. When God’s children imitate Him we learn more than how to do what He says; we learn His heart.

The next part of our relationship begins with learning God’s heart. This is depicted as a bride with her new husband. The bride learns how to please her husband, and in the same way we learn how to please the Lord. He has entrusted His heart to those who honor Him and He calls us His own.

So how does a bride honor her husband? She can do what he tells her, but this is a childish relationship and would build resentment in the heart of an adult. Though a wife would do what her husband tells her, she also would take care of all that is his, for he gives her authority to do so. She will honor him with her mouth, causing him to be respected and doing him “no harm” (see Proverbs 31). She will honor him by treating him well in his presence, and by representing him in a good light when out of his presence.

So with the Lord, we should not grumble and make Him seem like an unfair God when speaking of Him to others. He has given us much authority on this earth; let us use it to glorify Him and bring Him honor. And let us take good care of the things God cares about. This goes beyond the obedience we learned in the beginning of our relationship with God. Caring about what God cares about will cause us to intervene in people’s lives and intercede for those going astray. God would rather that we “helped” Him in this way than that He had to punish someone who wouldn’t listen (see Isaiah 59:16-20; 63:5). Seeing other people’s lives as important honors God.
We don’t want to be treated like children continually, being made to obey God’s word by various reminders and punishments. Let us grow up into Him who is our Head and our Husband. He will honor us as we honor Him.

the new age

As Christians we try our best to have faith for God’s awesome works. And we encourage one another when answers to our prayers seem delayed. It is an awful thing, though, when we lose a saint to cancer, or a loved one turns away from the Lord. These defeats seem unreasonable and, at times, we may wonder if God has taken His eyes off the world. Last night the Lord directed me to a period of time written about by Daniel and John, in Revelation. The times are hard, but their end is glorious. Here is what He said;
“There’s an exciting time coming up for Christians. Daniel saw this. It’s when the court is open and in session, and ruling is made in favor of the saints of God (Dan 7:21,22). Before this time satan was oppressing the saints (see also Rev 13:7). But this new time is coming when saints will have victory over things that once overcame them. Saints are dying of cancer, but then they will be healed. Even the dead will be raised, and the Kingdom will be delivered into their hands.”
I asked the Lord how we are to get ready for such a time, as I couldn’t recall any scriptures instructing the saints of our times on walking in the Kingdom. Right away He brought the 7 letters to the churches in Revelation to my mind. He said, “The overcomers will obtain the Kingdom. Look at what I give them. This is how they will rule.”

In those 7 letters we read the following, which I listed

Eat of the tree of life, and wear the crown of life (Rev 2:7-10)
Have Hidden Manna, and a white stone with a new name on it (Rev 2:17)
Be given authority over nations, and the Morning Star (Rev 2:26-28)
Be dressed in white, and acknowledged before the Father and His angels
Rev (3:5)
Be a Pillar in the Temple, and have the new name of God, His City, and Jesus
Rev (3:12)
Dine with Jesus, and sit in His throne (3:20-21)

I expect that the Lord will have more to say to us on this subject. May I encourage you to read Revelation? Let us as a body obtain that rich inheritance, God’s Kingdom, together. Amen.

testing

Below is a Word from the past which I was drawn to this morning. God bless you.

"I have truly accepted a man’s sacrifice when I send My fire on it on the altar of his life. The fire doesn’t just burn out the dross; it makes the metal stronger. The acceptable sacrifice has eternal qualities. It will stand against satan’s onslaughts. Like a rock, his life will stand. Other men can build on him, as in the first church men built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. All the powers of hell won’t advance into this man’s kingdom, for it is secure in the Lord. In Me he will do exploits. Every bad report will be turned to good news.

There is an adoption and there is an inheritance. The adoption brings the children into the family, and the inheritance is given to the mature who have served the family. They do not die and receive their inheritance then, as many think. No, I glorify My sons on the earth while they live.

I am building something big. I need men and women with big faith, just as in the first church. Others will build on your works. Others will stand on your words. Do not pity a man for the trials he is going through. See what I am building. You are all salted with fire; purified through suffering. I wait for the harvest of righteousness in a man so that I can call him into My works. Until he has endured through the many testings to become trained by his right choices he cannot be entrusted with the souls of men.

In trials men seek encouragement from the world, the comforts of the flesh, or My Word. Those who nurture their flesh do not become strengthened but are lame, and turned out of the way. They become a comforter of the flesh of others and are not able to lead any in wisdom and discernment. Truth and understanding are the true healing balms for those in trials.

Trials will teach a man where value lies. If he is wise, he allows My hand to prune away the dead branches so that he will bear more fruit."

the economic times: a warning

The Lord has given my husband David and I dreams about our country’s economic downturn. In 2007 David dreamed about the housing market going down so far, and for so long, that he could not see the end of it. In other words, it was not predictable; only God knew when it would end. 12/5/07 I was given a dream about funds drying up and an angry bear (Bear Stearns) lashing out. We have seen many banks, stocks, and businesses fail, along with everyday people losing their jobs and homes. Through these hardships the Lord has not failed to lead us successfully. He is faithful to guide us all, if we will set our own understanding aside. But when we do not understand the present or future circumstances there is a temptation to walk in the light of our own understanding. This is depicted in Isaiah 50:10-11, and I will quote it here;

“Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: you will lie down in torment.”

During this economic crisis the Lord has given me two other significant dreams. On 10/16/07 I was shown that there would be a run on the banks because an “escaped thief” was in our area. In other words, a lawless activity that had been contained would once again be free to cause damage and great loss. On 5/8/09 I was shown that those who “played” in the recession did not see the danger, and fierce waves were going to carry them out to sea. They were children, trying to benefit from the times.

In view of these and other warnings from God I feel it necessary to caution anyone who would make an investment at this time. Do not “light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches”. Seek the Lord for wisdom concerning financial matters, for He alone knows what is up ahead for us all.

Thank you for your time today, and may God bless and prosper us all. Amen.

loving

I am beginning to notice that whenever I’m upset with my husband, the Lord talks to me about love. Just such a thing happened this morning, as I spent the last part of yesterday upset with Dave. “Do you want to get to know him?” came the first thought in this morning’s quiet time. I remember that earlier in the summer the Lord had challenged me to get to know Dave better . . . really know him. Hmmm. There’s that thought again. It’s easier to want to know him when I like him. Yes, as it turns out, liking my husband is a prerequisite to loving him. Here is the lesson from my quiet time;

When we love someone, we want to get to know them better. This helps us in learning how to love them and express that love in ways meaningful to them. An example might be when a wife learns how her husband likes his eggs cooked so that she can please him or the husband begins taking the garbage out so as to be helpful to his wife. As husbands and wives get to know each other they learn how to make each other happy, or unhappy.

Learning about the one we love is a life-long experience, driven by the desire to love. There are other desires in our hearts also, some of which may dampen our desire to love. Desire for our own way can change the object our love from the other person to ourselves. Offense at the other person can cause us to withdraw our love, forgetting what we know to be good and lovely, replacing it with anger or contempt.

In John’s first epistle he posed a good question; “ . . . for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn 4:19b). Well, we might like the way the other person makes us feel, but that doesn’t make us want to get to know them in a deeper way than any other person in our lives. Liking is not loving. Building a relationship based on liking how another person makes us feel without loving in return is selfish and serves our fleshly nature. Without love, the good feelings we get with this person will not help us endure future offenses or disappointments that may come into the relationship.
When love first knocks on the doors of our hearts we need to make a decision to nurture it and let it grow deep in us. We do this by getting to know the person we love. You might say, we get to know what makes them “tick”. Perhaps at first we thought we made them tick and so our focus shifted to ourselves. But this will make for a very lop-sided and unfulfilling relationship.

Our earthly relationships are a reflection of our relationship with God. We “see” the one we love; we don’t “see” God. We can think it easier to love God because we imagine He would never do the disappointing or unacceptable things our earthly mate does. However, when we walk with God for a while we find out that things do not always turn out the way we expected or wanted. If we become self-focused or offended, our desire for knowing about God’s ways will eventually die, being replaced with a desire for a relationship in which God pampers and serves us . . . or one in which we are just left to our own ways.

Our rituals of loving God, just like loving a person, can become empty. We look on the things we do and question why we do them. These acts do not preserve our love nor protect our hearts against hurt. The acts of pleasing our mate, therefore, may be preserved because we feel obligated to do them. Or we may gradually stop doing them, forgetting what they once meant to the other person. In our relationship with God, we may slowly eliminate time spent with Him alone, filling our time with other things.

But there is a better way. It is to let love take us deeper into knowing the one we love, and into knowing God. With this desire comes a choosing to leave past hurts and disappointments behind. For in the heart of the other person are deep secrets waiting to be found out. And in the heart of God is a vast crystalline sea of knowledge and wisdom about His ways, waiting for us to dip into. With this kind of love in our hearts it is easier to set ourselves aside and seek to make the one we love happy.

So we find that we cannot truly love if our heart desires only to be loved, and not to give love. Therefore if we cannot love our husband, wife, or others we cannot love God. When we choose loving another, we will also learn how to love God.

A word for Santa Rosa, California

Today when driving I had the very distinct feeling of being in a holy city. Here is what the Lord said;

“There is a special grace on Santa Rosa. This is not a grace that is brought about by the prayers or efforts of My people, but it comes to perform My purposes. When I give a special grace, it is called a ‘dispensation’. It is sent to do a work and to enable men and women to work with Me. All who are prepared will partake in My glory. But there is such a scarce time left to prepare. Those believers who are left out of this work will grieve. They will see in retrospect that the small little trials they failed at were sent to prepare them to walk in glory. They were not looking at the little things, but at the big. There is much damage done to the harvest of righteousness by the little foxes.

There was a great move in Santa Rosa in the past, and a visit from an evangelist before that. But the destiny of those who planted greatness here was not sealed by faithfulness of those who followed them. I am looking for a harvest of faithfulness. I am looking for the harvest of righteousness amongst My own. Again I will send a great dispensation to do the work that Man could not finish. I have My own, called and justified, sanctified and anointed, and I will not let them wither on the vine. They will bear the fruit no one before them has born; the fruit of destiny fulfilled for Santa Rosa.

My Word was planted in this soil and is sprouting above the ground. I will not have a harvest of no return. I, God, watch over My words to see that they are fulfilled. And that is why I am sending this dispensation; to fulfill the greatness I prophesied to this city. Man cannot do what I will do. Man cannot conceive of what My thoughts are towards this city. But they are recorded, My words, and shall not fail. I will fulfill each and every one of them. Those who are called and watching, having trimmed their lamps, will abide with Me in the kingdom work. Those who have not given My promises a thought will be without. I come, and My reward is with Me, saith the Lord.”

a mighty storm is coming to ministries

The Lord has shown me that a mighty storm is coming against ministries. It will test the ministries in the area of prophecy, for the prophecies have become polluted by the desires of men for praise, and by the mixing in of the prophet’s spirit with the Words from God. Here is a Word of prophecy concerning this matter:

“In regard to dreams; dreams are a form of vision and if the Lord gives a man a vision, its interpretation is from God. He is against men employing methods for interpretation and is grieved with men for polluting His message by adding their own thoughts.

In regard to signs; signs are a picture form of the spirit of revelation and their interpretation belongs to God. He is against men making the signs what they want it to be according to the desires of their hearts. He is against men seeking to guide the Holy Spirit instead of being trained by the Holy Spirit to listen to what God is saying for His purposes alone.

In regard to prophecy; prophecy is pure and is God’s word. It comes from the unseen, into the seen. It is the unknown, and becomes known through the prophet God entrusts His Word to. He is against the prophets who use their vain imaginations to comb the scriptures for appropriate words, even smooth and flattering words to make themselves acceptable in the eyes of their brethren. Because of these men is prophecy polluted in the eyes of all, and distrusted even amongst the unbelievers. Because man would dare to imagine in his heart what I would say, and then say that thing, I am going to allow a great wind of testing to strike at ministries.

What will those who speak out of the known say when I remove what they know and are familiar with? When a prophet realizes he has been speaking his own words, he will be deeply shaken in his faith, and his gift will suffer. But the Word of the Lord is pure, and full of My purposes. What do the prophets know of My purposes, who prophesy out of their own spirits? If they have not learned how to stand in my counsel, why do they speak their own words?

The great wind that takes away that which is known and familiar will clearly leave behind the light of knowing; knowing who it is that has served me and who it is that has served themselves by prophecy. For those who lose faith, having seen that I am not going to fulfill their own words, but only Words from Myself, their visions will grow dim and fail. But for those who have served Me they shall be given strong words of power from My throne, and many will come to My Word. For it is by My Word that I create, and is a grief to Me that it is held in contempt.” Amen.

integrity

Today the Lord gave me a refresher course on integrity. I’m sure that He does this with all of us, as we tend to become sloppy and “forget” the right way to do things, at times. Today I forgot my watch. Because I take vital signs frequently at work, I need my watch. One of the staff at work was just clocking out from working the night shift and said “Here, take my watch. When you are finished, just put it in my locker. I leave it unlocked because there is nothing in there to steal,” she said with a laugh. Her locker was decorated with cherubic pictures of her two young nephews so I knew I could tell it from the other lockers. What a nice lady! I thought, and thanked her. “Lord, remind me to put her watch back,” I prayed, and began my busy day of being a medical provider.

It was a good day, and passed by quickly. I remembered to put my keys back (it’s a huge “no no” to take them home!) and drove home. Only 6 or 7 minutes drive, and I was in my door. It was a nice time to relax . . . and then I saw the watch on my wrist! “Oh no!” I forgot to put the watch back. I called to verify the nice lady was working that night, and after hearing a “yes”, I got in the car and began the trip back.

Then I heard, “He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not” (Ps 15:4) in my spirit. The Lord was pointing out a scripture that described what I was going through; I had promised (sweareth) to return the watch; it was an inconvenience (own hurt) to keep my word; and I had decided not to change (changeth not) what I said I would do. The Lord then pointed out that this is how we build integrity in the inner man. The sloppy way would be to apologize for forgetting, without making an attempt to perform my word. How easy it would have been to say “I forgot!” and leave it at that.

“Care more about others than you care about yourself.” This was the second prompting of the Lord, and I thought of “Look not every man on his own things, but also on the things of others.” (Phil 2:4). God wants us to care so much that we would be inconvenienced rather than inconvenience another.

I walked down the long hall to put the watch in the nurse’s lounge. It wasn’t as embarrassing as I anticipated. On the way back I passed the nice lady, who was coming in to work. She must not have had much sleep! I thought. I was happy to see her . . . and happy I had left her the watch she would need for her shift!

I believe God uses the little things of this life to teach us how to train our hearts and our minds to follow His righteousness. He knows our nature is weak and that we would prefer to take the “easy” way. But what the Lord led me to do also will teach me not to be so forgetful. As children we are taught by our parents to do what we say we will do. Sometimes there is a punishment hanging over our heads if it turns out we have no intention of performing our word, because that is lying. As adults we “parent” ourselves to follow through with our actions, matching them up with our words. Or, sometimes we “forget”, and do nothing to correct ourselves.

“Love to forget . . . “ came the next prompt of the Holy Spirit. I’ll have to look this one up in the Bible, I told myself. Finding it closely stated in 2 Peter 3:5, it reads, “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water.” This is a passage where Peter is talking about scoffers who say that things continue the same as they used to be, and “Where is the ‘coming’ He promised?” (vs 4). These scoffers didn’t see the correlation between God’s Word and the recompense of not keeping it, so they did evil (vs 3) and “deliberately” forgot His word. This kind of forgetting is one of denial . . . when we deny that there is a consequence to disobeying God’s word. People who love to forget cannot be trained by their obedience to God’s word, and so they fail to develop integrity in the inner man.

The scriptures the Lord shared with me show that there is a forgetfulness of my own word, which will lead me to unrighteousness, and there is a forgetfulness of God’s word, which will do the same. God was doing me a favor to allow things to come into my life to test the performance of my word, and of His Word. If I hadn’t kept my word to the lady who trusted me with her watch, neither would I have obeyed the scriptures He later quoted to me. Though God is patient, forgetfulness interferes with the forming of integrity in the inner man.

I wonder if I can live tomorrow keeping my word, and not loving to “forget” what I have promised to God, or to Man? With God, all things are possible because He faithfully reminds us. Amen.