Double up on the Discerner
Back in 1986, I felt as if I was being tackled by a dark cloud of oppression. Try as I might, I could not lift it. I was horribly confused by its intensity and had a critical decision to make—to go on an already-planned extended dream vacation with a friend or to stay home because of the heavy uneasiness I felt. A pastor I talked to told me to “double up on the discerner”, God’s Word, because it would discern between soul and spirit (see Hebrews 4:12) and shed light onto the right course for me to take. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 states, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” As I increased my Bible intake—not even on a particular topic—and sought God about the pressing decision I had to make, wisdom came.
I made the tough decision to cancel all plans, disappointing my friend, and obeyed what I believed to be the leading of the Holy Spirit. Days later, I knew why I had been “tackled”. My mother had been scheduled for a routine operation on the day I was to leave and was doing great just out of surgery. But within 24 hours, my dad called. “Your mother’s dying. Come home.” I found out that due to surgical error, her intestines had been punctured and she was dying from the release of toxins into her body.
Doubling up on the Word gave me the discernment to stay in town instead of camping out–for weeks–in the swamps of Georgia and the beaches of Florida like I had planned–before the days of cell phones. Had I ignored the pressure of the Holy Spirit or neglected to increase my Bible intake to receive the discernment I needed, I would have been unreachable when Mom was dying. On top of that, I would not have returned until long after she passed.
I will be forever grateful for the coordinated working of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God in my life at that crucial time. Thanks to the Holy Spirit’s tackle-like leading and the increased discernment I received from the Word of God, I was able to quickly make it to my mother’s side when her life unexpectedly drew to a close.
Thank You, Holy Spirit, for Your wonderful, intimate leading!
Read MoreThe power of dry times
We cry out for the grace of God to be able to seek Him, and He gladly endues us with His grace and power. We, in turn, are strengthened and sustained and get much accomplished in life and in prayer.
Then the rest of life happens, distractions or fatigue set in, and we feel like deadweight in regard to anything spiritual. And we think we have blown it—“how could I have fallen so far?”
Have you forgotten how you rose up in spiritual strength to begin with? It was never by your own power, holiness, or deeply spiritual ways. Remember when you cried out to the Lord for help to follow and obey Him? You acknowledged then that your own ability was insufficient. What makes you suppose that you should be able to sustain yourself now?
I propose that our dry times are every bit as powerful as those times we walk in the ease of spiritual strength. Here’s why: Our times of spiritual drought bring us to one conclusion–that He is Lord, we are not, and that we desperately need Him no matter how mature or equipped in the things of God we may become.
So when you hit a dry time, rejoice. You have the opportunity once again to acknowledge your humanness and to declare your utter dependence on the living God.
And as you draw near to Him, He will draw near to you as well.
- Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? Galatians 3:3, NET Bible
- And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. 2 Corinthians 12:9, NASB
- But we have this treasure in clay jars to show that its extraordinary power comes from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7, International Standard Version
When you experience drought, spend some time rejoicing in the fact that He is God and you aren’t; He is the Source and you never will be. Then any pressure to become a perfect spiritual specimen will roll right off of you as you relax in the blessed truth that you’re not Him—He is! Be comforted in this, and let Him overshadow you again, filling you with the knowledge of His presence and His merciful grace.
Dorothy
Read MorePraying for America on her birthday
I love being prayed for on my birthday. About a decade ago, however, I realized that I never really prayed for America on her birthday. So I started a new personal tradition—every 4th of July morning, I spend some quality time praying for my nation.
Each year is different. Some years I pray about issues. Other years, I pray for specific government leaders. One year, I gathered a group of praying people at my home for breakfast and we interceded primarily for the church in America.
With so many different national concerns to bring before the Father, you may wonder where to begin. You have a unique and specific piece to this puzzle about which to pray, so a good place to start is to ask God! I’ve noticed that as I spend time thanking, praising, or worshiping Him, a direction typically bubbles up from my spirit, and I pray over that in whatever way I sense the Lord is leading me.
Let me tell you what happened on the morning of July 4th, 2009. I began praising God and seeking Him about His specific prayer direction for the nation. I expected to pray for the president or for one of the many issues our nation was facing at the time.
Instead, I couldn’t get the portion of Scripture I had read earlier in the morning out of my mind. It was Luke 2:41-51, about twelve-year old Jesus’ adventure in Jerusalem. Verse 43 haunted me. “…the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. But His parents were unaware of it.” Panic began gripping my insides as evidently I was relating on a very deep level to what Mary and Joseph must have felt when it dawned on them that their Son had been missing for an entire day! (Things were a little different back then when communities traveled in a caravan. Back off of the lawsuits against Joseph and Mary, OK?)
I reread verses 44-46. “…[They] went a day’s journey; and they began looking for Him among their relatives and acquaintances. When they did not find Him, they returned to Jerusalem looking for Him. Then, after three days they found Him...” My attention was fixed upon the horror of having a missing child, not knowing whether he was dead or alive. Since I could not shake the sense of heaviness, I yielded to it and began praying for the children and teens of the nation.
In particular, that July 4th Saturday morning, I found myself praying for all children, ages 0-18, to be safe in their activities for the entire holiday weekend. I prayed against children getting separated from their parents and teens losing their friends in a crowd. I prayed in the name of Jesus against abduction attempts of all sorts—that they would be thwarted and for adults in charge of kids to be on high alert.
When I realized that I had prayed along this line most of the morning, I honestly felt a tad disappointed. I had wanted to pray for the nation, but I ran out of time and needed to leave for a holiday event. But on the inside of me, I sensed the correction of God. “You did pray for the nation.”
Monday evening, July 6th, I was in the kitchen listening to the teasers opening the local news from the TV in the other room. “Tonight we will take you to a local church where an alert volunteer stopped a child abduction Sunday morning.”
I dropped what I was doing and raced to the living room, waiting for the opening story. And this is what I learned.
A 10-year old girl was attending children’s church Sunday morning at the church I used to attend. A registered sex offender–a pedophile–had been skulking outside her class, unobserved. He motioned to her to step outside, and when she walked into the hall to see what he wanted, he put his arm around her and started walking her out of the building. However, an alert volunteer noticed what was going on just in time and abruptly demanded the offender to stop. The girl was led to safety by another volunteer and the pedophile was arrested.
I remembered my intense time of prayer two days before on the 4th, interceding to thwart child abductions. I realized that God’s desire is for each of us to yield to His leading, whatever that may be, and as we do, our prayers will hit the target. And as more and more of us make ourselves available to God to direct us in prayer on behalf of the nation, more and more bull’s-eyes will be hit, effectively producing the change we long for in America and around the world.
Have a happy and safe Fourth of July!
Dorothy
Read MoreLiving in interesting times
If I had been the one choosing, I would have lived my entire lifespan in far less interesting times. However, since I am not God and He is (and the world is much better off for it), God saw fit to plop me down in what began as a more quiet time in history. During my life, however, as I progressed from Mary Janes and saddle shoes to Go Go boots to dirty bare feet to waffle stompers to Nikes to sensible Clarks (I’ve always preferred comfort for my feet), the history I experienced raced from placidly boring to hyper-multi-dimensional to the point of violating all boundaries.
The Body of Christ is finding herself in an unusual time in history. I believe we are seated on the precipice of history and the return of Jesus Christ; but if not, we are certainly in interestingly extreme times, nonetheless.
And I believe two things. Both of them give me great hope.
1.) Acts 17:26-27 lets us in on an important secret about our lives. “…He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”
God Himself determined the time and nation of your birth. He chose this year, 2013, and the particular age you now are to intersect; He chose you for this time. Are you uncomfortable about what’s going on in the world in 2013? It was God’s decision to put you here now; could it be that He did so because He knew that by His grace you would be able to rise above the chaos and fulfill all His purposes? I know that He did not place you here to destroy you. Neither did He bring you forth at this time for you to live timidly, hoping to be bland enough to escape the disapproval of a godless culture. Could it be that God has a specific purpose for you to fulfill in this hour? According to the Bible, the answer to that question is YES.
2.) Bible scholars have referenced a “scarlet thread” running through prophecies, types, and shadows in the Old Testament, pointing to the Messiah to come. In a similar way, throughout the centuries since Jesus walked the earth, God has woven a strong cord of testimony to His faithfulness, power, and kind intervention.
- God spoke to His people in the first century and established Himself as their God and Father through signs, wonders, and bold preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Epistles, and the Book of Revelation were written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit and then entrusted to posterity.
- The spark of the gospel remained aglow through humble souls and martyrs who knew their Lord, illuminating the dim light of the dark ages.
- God met with His people and enlarged their tents during the Reformation when once again men started to understand that the just shall live by faith.
- Men and women, both in America and the British Isles, were gripped with fear over the state of their eternal souls and cried out to a Savior who alone could set them free during the First and Second Great Awakenings of the 1730s and 40s and 1800s.
- God watched over His people, sending His mighty Holy Spirit during the great revivals flaming out of Wales and Topeka and Azusa Street, setting men and women ablaze with Pentecostal signs and fervor at the turn of the twentieth century.
- The Healing Revivals of the teens and twenties and again in the forties and fifties of the twentieth century filled men and women with faith that with God all things are possible.
- God reminded the Vietnam era psychedelic scene of sixties and seventies that He was not dead but still alive on the throne during the Jesus Movement. This not so distant time in our past captured the hearts and minds of disenfranchised, counter-culture youth to the love and forgiveness of Christ. Many now in leadership in the body of Christ were swept up as young men and women in those confusing days to be set free by the power of God from sin, addictions, and despair.
- Occurring at the same time as the Jesus Movement was the Charismatic Renewal. This sovereign move of God started in 1967 when a group of students from Duquesne University went on a retreat to study the book of Acts and to investigate the claims of Pentecost found in two books, The Cross and the Switchblade and They Speak with Other Tongues. Many of them were baptized in the Holy Spirit, and from there, Charismatic hunger and zeal spread rapidly into both Catholic and mainline Protestant church memberships as well as into the ranks of the unchurched.
- Since the seventies, God has poured rich teaching ministries into the earth, training His people to walk by faith, not by sight, and to live as new creations and more than conquerors, using the full armor of God to resist in the evil day, and having done everything to stand, to keep standing.
- Churches that preach the uncompromised Word have grown in size and strength in their communities, equipping the body of Christ to walk in love and good works which God has ordained beforehand that they should walk in them.
It is that rich heritage we have received from those who have gone before us which makes me believe that surely God has prepared us for such a time as this, even now, even at this time in history. He has equipped us—through those who have gone before us, through His Word, and by His wonderful Holy Spirit—to face with bold integrity and resolute faith anything this world might throw our way.
My conviction is this. Just like the scarlet thread woven through the pages of the Old Testament pointed to fulfillment and salvation in Christ, so too does the strong cord of testimony to God’s faithfulness, power, and kind intervention running throughout Church history point to the summation—possibly during our very time—of all things in Christ. And if God poured out His wonders during those past dark times, I can’t help but believe that to prayerfully contend for anything less than the supernatural intervention and outpouring of God during our own dark time would be a slap in the face of the Author and Finisher of our faith.
He who has called you is faithful and He will also bring it to pass!
Dorothy
Read MoreFreedom of speaking
I want to introduce you to someone for the purposes of prayer. This individual, Marine Le Pen, is entirely secular in her political views and comes from a Catholic background. She is a member of the European Parliament, outspoken, brilliant, controversial, and stands in a large arena of influence. And her outspokenness has landed her in hot water, threatening her freedom in her native France.
She spoke to a crowd in France in December of 2010 about the growing population of immigrants illegally entering that nation. She warned against the surge of these masses into the nation and likened the current obstruction of public streets and squares all over France on a weekly basis for Muslim prayers to the WWII Nazi occupation of parts of French territory. At the time, the media and political class decried her comparison as racism, but she found increasing popularity among the French people.
In fact, her impact had grown to the extent that she was named on the 2011 TIME 100 list of the most influential people in the world, landing her somewhere on the list between President and Mrs. Obama.
And now, earlier this month, it was reported that her immunity from prosecution as a member of the European Parliament has been removed, opening the door for her to face criminal charges of inciting racism due to her December 2010 comments.
Why should we care about the fate of secular figures in France or anywhere else in the world, for that matter? One reason is that many of us on American soil have at least a portion of our roots in Europe, and our culture is linked by blood and history to all parts of Europe and the world. And central to our American civilization and that of the western Europe we’ve visited on business, vacation, and mission trips in our lifetime, is the right (purchased with both American and European blood) of men and women from every race, religion, and walk of life to live freely and to speak and debate openly. My thought is that the outcome of any decision concerning Ms. Le Pen’s freedom of speech will profoundly influence, one way or another, the longevity of the right to speak freely for the rest of western civilization.
I feel strongly about freedom of speech. I was raised in a family in which fundamental Christianity was scorned, but I watched as the lone voice on behalf of Christ—my grandma—refused to bow her knee to the prevailing viewpoint or back down in silence.
I also discovered something very enlightening in my personal Bible study a few years ago.
I was reading Hebrews 10:35-36, “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.”
As I dug into the various words in that verse, I stumbled upon something amazingly liberating about the word “confidence”. It is the Greek word parrēsia, and means primarily “freedom in speaking, unreservedness in speech” [Blue Letter Bible. “Dictionary and Word Search for parrēsia (Strong’s 3954)“. Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2013. 24 Jun 2013.]
In other words, believers are commanded not to throw away or discard as valueless their “freedom in speaking and unreservedness in speech”.
This is why freedom of speech is so important. It is bound intrinsically with our confidence level—especially in Christ!
Therefore, I urge you, when you think of it, to pray bold prayers for Ms. Le Pen, likely to face criminal charges for her right to speak freely in her native France. Pray for her focus to turn toward the God who can deliver her, and pray for others to rise up powerfully on her behalf—in the legal realm, in the arena of public opinion, and in prayer. And pray that God has His way in revealing once again to the nations the precious right He’s given us to boldly, confidently speak freely.
“Therefore, Culture, do not throw away your confident right to speak boldly and freely, discarding it as a worthless thing. Instead, endure in the face of twisted, trumped up charges against you or your faith and stand resolutely, doing the will of God with unshakable faith. And when you have done the will of God with endurance, you shall receive the promised reward—freedom preserved, not only for yourself, but also for generations to come” (my very loose paraphrase of Hebrews 10:35-36).
Hold fast your confidence!
Dorothy
Read MoreExamine everything
“…But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good…” 1 Thessalonians 5:21, NASB
“…On the other hand, don’t be gullible. Check out everything, and keep only what’s good. Throw out anything tainted with evil.” 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, Message Bible
“Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address, October 26, 1939
Here are a few snares that can blindside a believer due to the fast pace of our culture and the inordinate amount of information being thrown at us on a continual basis:
- It’s so much easier to go with the flow of popular opinion, because really trying to understand an issue takes too much time…
- And there is safety in popular opinion. If everyone else feels a certain way, then it’s a good bet that they are right. After all, isn’t the majority always right…usually…?
- And even if the majority isn’t right on something, it couldn’t hurt too much to go along with everyone else, could it? After all, I do have my reputation to consider…
One thing that will likely happen to you when you pray for the nation according to the Word of God is that you will find the need to examine some uncomfortable issues. You may discover as you read the Word, pray, and learn about issues that certain things are not as they appear to be. You will probably notice some falsehoods and twisted truths being reported and accepted as fact by a huge segment of society. Don’t be alarmed; the Bible warns us that this will happen and gives us the tools to discern between good and evil, lies and truth. Your job is to make sure that you always use God’s Word as your bottom line.
If you discover that you have stumbled upon a lie that is being embraced on a large scale as truth, then that is probably one of your prayer assignments. Seek God to bring truth to light in the hearts and minds of the people and ask Him to equip and protect those that He has chosen to step out on the world’s stage on behalf of this truth.
Don’t think that your prayer part is small potatoes. Your prayers for this nation are secret weapons, hidden from prying eyes, used to right wrongs and to turn lies on their heads. Your prayers are used by God to empower those He calls to confront lies on every level, granting them wisdom, timing, discernment, and effectiveness. Without your prayers and those of others, even the boldest of the bold and the brightest of the bright will be easy pickings for those of darker motives. But with your prayers, God can bring forth His champions.
And His champions in the natural realm cannot fully complete their tasks unless His champions in the prayer realm arise first and take their place. Arise, champion.
Dorothy
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