Month: April 2018

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“…for I am the LORD that healeth thee…” Exodus 15:26

BUT WILL HE?

It was a Tuesday morning. I had taken my children to school; I was back home cleaning the kitchen.  As I was wiping down the kitchen counter, suddenly,  I lost all my peace. I stood there trying to grasp what was going on; it came to my mind that I had a mammogram scheduled for that Thursday. An ominous weight of fear washed over me. “LORD, what is wrong? LORD, is something wrong?” Wave after wave of nauseating fear gripped my heart.

I had recently heard a sermon by Derek Prince where he was teaching about healing. Derek had said that the first thing a Christain should do if he or she were faced with a health issue would be to exercise James 5:14-15.

“Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.”

The word of GOD was very clear, if we did out part, the LORD would do His  It was a New Testament promise from GOD.

As the day went on the heaviness got worse. Something was wrong. I decided to reach out to my Pastor. When he answered the phone I told him what was going on. I was not prepared for what followed. After I had shared everything with him asking him if he and the elders would anoint me and pray for me, there was a measured pause. My Pastor spoke, “Well, if you have committed some really bad sin the elders and I will listen to your confession. But the elders and I have better things to do than to go around anointing sick folk.”

“But isn’t that what the Bible says we are to do?” I was staring at the scripture passage as I spoke to him. “That is what the Bible says.” My pastor repeated what he had said before. Devastated and confused I thanked him as I hung up the phone. “What now, LORD? What now? You heard that, LORD. What now?” I fell down to the floor on my knees sobbing.

I called my prayer partner. I poured out my heart to her. She told me that our former pastor was going to be in the United States that week. “I will ask him to pray for you. We are having a get-together Thursday night. We will pray for you then.”

“But the mammogram is Thursday morning” I replied. ” I don’t know what to do.”

Thursday morning I headed over to the hospital for the test. After the exam, the technician told me to get dressed and released me to leave. I had been told if your mammogram was clear that they would let you go. I felt relieved but the truth was that the gnawing uneasiness was still there. I still had not regained my peace.

The next morning while packing the school lunches the phone rang. It was the Radiologist. “We need you to come back in because we have found something in your left breast. It looks like it might be malignant.” I could hardly breathe. I finished getting the kids in the car, dropped them off at school, and then headed back to the hospital.

This time the technician explained that the exam would have to be more thorough. Two times she came back into the exam room; two times she took X-rays. As I sat on a tiny stool in the darkened room I began to think about all of the women that had passed through that place. My heart was aching. I began praying for us all. The third time the tech opened the door she told me to get dressed. “We have called your husband.  He is with the Radiologist. They are waiting for you.”

“Have mercy, LORD. Please have mercy.” I whispered as I dressed and walked down the hallway to the room where they were waiting.

The room was large; one entire wall was a lighted screen adorned with pictures of X-rays. When I walked into the room the Radiologist called my name. She pointed to an X-ray. “Do you see that? Do you see that circle with the white star?” I nodded yes.

She stepped across the floor to another screen. “Do you see this? Do you?” I turned my gaze to where she was pointing. “It’s gone! Do you see that? It was right there! But now it’s gone! Do you see that?” The Radiologist was pacing back and forth searching the X-rays intently, now and then shaking her head.

A deep warm sense of relief and thankfulness flooded my heart, mind, and soul.  “It is the LORD,” I said. “The LORD has healed me.” Everyone in the room turned to hear what I was saying. I repeated it again, “It is the LORD. He has healed me.”

The Bible says in Psalm 107:2: “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;”

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever. He has not lost His power. You need to know that

He is not only able, He is willing.

Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; Psalm 103: 2-3

God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?  Numbers 23:19

WILL HE?

YES, HE WILL!

 

 

 

 

 

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“These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;” Revelation 3:7

 

THE MAN WITH THE KEY

It was 1989; I was desperate. I began in the wee hours of the mornings to take my Bible, clutch it to my heart in tears and sit before the LORD.  I was at my wit’s end. I had no idea what to do. On this particular morning, my Bible opened up to the prayer in Joel 2 about the priests, the ministers of the LORD praying between the porch and the altar.  It struck me very hard that in the prayer the priests said that their enemies were saying to them “Where is your God?” I was stunned when I saw this because someone had recently been saying that very thing to me.

It was my custom in those dark days to drive twice a day to my local church after dropping the children at school, park outside on the high ridge and talk to God. I did this every day, twice a day for a year. I had to get hold of God. His word said if we would draw near to Him that He would draw near to us. I felt like Zaccheus who climbed up in the Sycamore tree to see Jesus. Every time I drove up on the high ridge to the church it became a cry of desperation. By doing this, I was saying, “LORD, see me! LORD,  hear me! LORD,  help me!”

March 1990 I had to have surgery and was not allowed to drive. My prayer partner offered to drive me to the church so I could pray. The scripture in Joel continued to come to my mind. “I need to pray between the porch and the altar,” I said that day. When we got to the church, my prayer partner said, “I will check the doors; perhaps someone has left one unlocked. But please know that I don’t think you are going to get in. Don’t be disappointed.” She checked the doors returning shaking her head saying that everything was locked up tight. “Sorry, but everything is locked. You can’t get in.”

“But I know that the LORD has given me this prayer to pray and I am desperate. God can do anything. Will you agree together with me that He will have mercy and open the door?” Reluctantly, out of pity, she agreed  bowing her head while I petitioned heaven.

Suddenly, there was a tapping on the Driver’s window. A kind-faced man was leaning down motioning that he needed to speak to us. The man said,  “I was driving by and saw your car. The LORD told me you might need to get inside the church. I don’t go to this church but I sing with a quartet at this church and I have a key. Do you need to get in?” It was incredulous to me because in the year I had been praying there daily no one had ever stopped before, not once.

The man handed us the key, nodded his head and drove away. We sat there for a few minutes awestruck staring at the key. We took the key to the front door, and let ourselves in. There was no doubt in our minds that it was the LORD HIMSELF that had opened that door.  I was able not only to get inside the church but I was able to pray between the porch and the altar just like the priests in the book of Joel were instructed to do.

God saw.

God heard.

God honored his Word (Matthew 18:19).

Do you need a man with a key?

Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. Jeremiah 33:3

 

 

 

 

 

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And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray…Luke 11:1

The Most Powerful Prayer

Luke 11 tells us about an encounter between Jesus and one of his disciples.  The encounter occurred in a certain place right after the LORD had finished praying. The disciples had been with Jesus every day witnessing first hand the manifest miracles and power of GOD.  They knew it was the Lord’s custom to rise up early, go to a solitary place and pray. They must have reasoned that the Lord’s time alone with God the Father was connected to His great anointing and power.  This particular morning when Jesus finished praying one of His disciples approached the Lord saying, “Lord, teach us to pray…”

In 1997 during a time of research, I came across an old book which stated that the prayer most feared by the occult was The Lord’s Prayer. It seemed incredulous to me at the time. My response was, “But Lord, there are so many really powerful warfare prayers. How could this be true?”

During a time of prayer in 2017, the Lord brought this incident back to my mind.  I began pondering it again. The LORD spoke to me and said, “When My disciples asked Me to teach them to pray, why would you think that I would give them anything less than the most powerful prayer they would ever need?”

The LORD’s words pierced my heart.

The  Lord’s Prayer does not begin, “My Father”; the prayer begins, “Our Father”.  Immediately, we are reminded that we are part of something greater than ourselves; we are part of a family, both in heaven and in the earth. The first part of the prayer connects us not only to God the Father in heaven but to the entire Body of Christ in the earth. When we pray this prayer we are agreeing with our Father for His kingdom to come and His will to be done in earth as it is in heaven in every area of our lives. When we pray this prayer we are not only praying for our needs and protection but for the needs and protection of every other believer in the earth; those that we know and those we have never met. When we pray this prayer we are agreeing to be one; with God and one another.

How important is being one with God and one another? Of all the prayers He could have chosen, why would the Lord choose to teach this prayer to His disciples?

In Genesis 11 we are told that the enemies of God built a tower. The Bible tells us that the whole earth was of one language, and one speech. These enemies of God had become united; they had become one in purpose against God. The power of their unity and agreement must have been lethal because in verse 6 The Lord Himself said::

“And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

The enemies of God understand the power of agreement and being in one accord. While the enemies of God have for ages utilized and understood the power of one accord, it is also the very thing that they fear the most. Why? God’s enemies know that when the Lord’s people become one with God, His Word, His Heart, His Mind, His Will and with one another; they know that they will be doomed. They will not be able to stand. They will be scattered. Surely, swiftly, they will fall.

Since the morning the Lord spoke to me in 2017, The Lord’s Prayer for me has become what I call  The Prayer of  Holy Reset. Every time I pray this prayer I feel a very real and certain spiritual recalibration, a realignment with the Lord, His Kingdom and every other believer in the earth.  Each time I kneel to pray this prayer I am saying LORD, I am ONE with YOU, YOUR WORD, YOUR KINGDOM, YOUR HEART, YOUR MIND, YOUR PURPOSES, YOUR WILL and YOUR people, the family of GOD both in heaven and in the earth in JESUS NAME.

Therefore, holy brethren, should we not daily, in obedience to the written Word and Admonition of Our Lord Jesus Christ pray this prayer?

Matthew 6, the Lord Jesus speaking to His disciples:

After this manner, therefore, pray ye:

Our Father which art in heaven,

Hallowed be thy name.

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

 Give us this day our daily bread.

 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil:

For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever.

Amen.