One, Two, Three... GO!

Just look at those verses!

This morning for my Scripture reading for the day these verses jumped off the page at me and made me stop and look up and think, 'Okay Father, You have my full attention.' 

God has said it and He will do it so I am claiming it and preparing to run full tilt to the edge of that cliff and jump. He's there ready to catch me.

One.

Two.

Three...

GO!

New here and have no idea what I am talking about? Read Obedience, then Hitting The Wall and then A Puddle of Tears. That should catch you up to speed and have an idea of what this whole post means. :)

Blessings,

<><

I'm linking this post with Barbie, The Weekend Brew

 

A Puddle of Tears

Philippians 4:13 ESV

I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

I tell you, when you ask Father to give you a push He surly does!

Thank you to those of you who are praying for me in this area of obedience. I truly feel your prayers! Let me explain a bit.

Since I have been asked to run this House of Prayer and our churches prayer chain Father has really laid a load on me, something I am not use to at all. I love to pray and am very honoured to pray for anyone anytime and all of the time. What I am not comfortable with is a large group of people interactions. I am an one on one person and even then that can be really stretching me. I get emotionally and spiritually exhausted and need time alone in order to recuperate. If I can pull away from the group and just hover on the outside I usually do well but if I am the center of attention I get totally woozy and icky feeling. This was definitely a woozy and icky feeling! 

This past Friday I held a meeting for those on the prayer chain and from those who were there, they said I did a good job and we were able to get a bit of organization done. What I didn’t expect was the spiritual attack on me. After everyone left I felt so very drained. I turned up the worship music and fell in a heap on the floor and just wept. I needed to be in my Father’s presence and I needed Him to love me and fill me up. Soon, my husband came into where I was, rubbed my back gave me a gentle kiss on the head and prayed for me.

I am being stretched and it hurts!

I am so thankful for your prayers; if I wasn’t covered I would never have been able to hold that meeting. My insides were full of springs and my stomach was in a tumble yet when I prayed and spoke the words came out clearly and coherently. Even now, as I type, I am just weeping at the faithfulness of Father. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe I could do what I just did. I do admit, though, I needed the whole weekend to gain back strength and even yesterday after church when we meet with the youth and young adults, I had to sneak away to a spot by myself and just soak in Father’s presence.

Obedience is hard yet when we take that step of faith He is there to meet us.

I encourage you to take that step of obedience, whatever that may be, and trust Father will meet you and uphold you. 

He is Faithful!

Revelation 2:10 ESV

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Blessings,

<>< 

Reach Out

I am not familiar with Lacey Strum but her testimony is powerful, moving and put a check in my spirit that we need to be reaching out to those who are hurting.

Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Blessings,
<><

Hitting The Wall

James 1:12 ESV

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

It occurred to me this morning while running on the treadmill that hitting the physical wall in training can be compared to hitting the spiritual wall in following Jesus.  

The natural reflects the supernatural.

While my heart rate was rising and the sweat was pouring down my face, my legs started to scream, “Slow down!” I was coming to the wall of my endurance and the temptation of slowing down my run won. 

Yesterday I failed.

Once more Father led me into temptation and instead of obeying Him I slipped into my fleshy way and failed the test. Guilt overpowered me and oppression set in. I hit the spiritual wall of endurance. I didn’t realize that yesterday but today, while running, I saw and understood.

As we physically train our bodies for endurance we do so slowly and steadily increase our distance and speed, in the case of running, biking or walking, or weights and repetition, in the case of weight lifting. Sooner or later we will hit the wall, where we cannot go past it. No matter how hard we try it seems we cannot go any faster, longer or lift anymore.

What Father showed me was this spiritual walk of ours is like endurance training and sooner or later we will hit the spiritual wall. In my case it was obedience. I learned the more I obey Him the better I will be at it and when the testing comes I will pass.

When training to increase say speed, you do it slowly adding in speed drills to increase endurance. As you continue to train eventually your body and mind become conditioned and soon that wall you were hitting before comes crashing down and you find you are steadily increasing in speed and endurance until you hit the next wall.

I see that I was wrong in being frustrated with myself for failing and I now see that these tests are Father increasing my endurance. Focusing on Scripture, praying and obeying Him are the training tools I need to run past the wall in my spiritual walk.

As I was running and coming up to my physical wall it all came together and I saw the training process.

Romans 5:3-4 ESV

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

Yesterday’s trial was very painful and I hit the wall and couldn’t do it anymore, yet I picked myself up, repented of my sin and continue to obey Father knowing that the more I practice this obedience the sooner this wall will come down and I will move ahead full tilt until I hit the next spiritual wall.

Blessings,

<><

 

Linking up with Barbie for The Weekend Brew

Update on Lisa & Sam

Psalm 119:116 ESV
Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope!

We have a praise report on Lisa from Never Forsaken.

We met with the oncologist today. He said my cancer is not a bad case at all, in fact the chemo regimen I will be on is milder than many breast cancer regimens...no radiation or hormone therapy is needed...and no cancer spread!

I will need 6 treatments of chemo...one every 3 weeks for 18 weeks (4.5 months) and one year of an immune therapy drug (Herceptin).

This is less than the standard of 6 months of chemo!

Doc said that my chance for this cancer coming back is less than 5%...If I did no chemo it would be 20-30%.

This is so amazing! I am so thankful to Father, this, at first, sounded so bad and now it looks like this treatment will be so much easier for Lisa. Let's continue to pray for her, that she will walk through this treatment with no ill side effects from the chemo treatment and for 100% health with 100% healing. 

Here is the latest update on Sam from Sam's Fans/Facebook

Ok. So. DON'T freak out when you read these next few words. This is not a bad update. That said.. It was malignant. Renal cell carcinoma. Possibly caused by his neuroblastoma treatment, but they're sending it off for some specific testing to try confirm that, which can take a couple of weeks to get back. Either way, Dr. Foley got it all with clear margins, but they may need one more scan that he hasn't had in a while just to check that is hadn't spread to other areas of the body, which his oncologist said is unlikely. (But still... Scary.) If the spot they removed was the only one and it hasn't spread, we're looking at further treatment, just monitoring with scans and labs like we've been doing all along. Not quite what anyone wanted to hear, but we're glad it's out. And we're praying and very hopeful that this little bump in the road is just that, a small bump, and we'll be over it soon.
Sam is feeling okay today. He's sore of course, but he's awake more and watching a ton of Batman. We even got some smiles out of him during our bazillionth game of candy land. Pray that he's ready to start getting out of bed tomorrow without us having to strong arm him and that he will take oral pain medicine so we can work toward busting out of here.

Considering Sam has never been NED but always been stable this is a good report. The doctors have always been watching this spot and now it is removed from his little body. Please keep praying for Sam that this spot was contained and has not spread and that the treatments he needs to have are easy on him and his parents.

Thank you for praying for these dear people who need our intercession for these days are dark and diseases are manifesting, it seems, out of thin air. 

Praying and praying,

<><

Pray For Sam

Do you guys remember Sam? Well, Sam had neuroblastoma as a baby and has been stable for the past 2 years. He is now somewhere around 4 years old and in his recent scans they noticed the stable spot has grown. He is scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning with a recovery of 2-3 days. Please pray the surgery goes smoothly and what they remove is NOT cancerous.

Here is what Casie his mom put up on their Facebook page Sams' Fans...

Sam is having surgery tomorrow to remove the spot on his kidney. Surgery is scheduled for 9:30 and he will be admitted for 2-3 days after. Please pray for a smooth and uneventful surgery and recovery, and that the biopsy will come back totally, unequivocally, definitively clean.

1 Samuel 12:16 ESV
Now therefore stand still and see this great thing that the Lord will do before your eyes.

Thank you for your prayers!
<><

Obedience

John 14:31 ESV

,“but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.”

Worship

Prayer

Intercession

Spiritual Warfare

Obedience

I didn’t think I would have a word focus for 2014 as it seems Father is continuing to lead me deeper into spiritual warfare. He is truly expanding this ministry of intercession in marvelous ways and I had no idea the path I would be taking when I began this journey.

I started off in worship which led to prayer and then intercession. Last year He told me spiritual warfare and with that He gave me the honour of running a House of Prayer out of my home church. This fall I have been asked to run my church's prayer chain and with this new task formed the House of Prayer into a ministry all of its own with so many opportunities for worship services and hopefully more prayer services. Father is just blowing the doors open here with an ad in the regional church paper with an open invitation for all of the churches to come together to corporately pray, and in the near future plans a sign out front of the church inviting my home town to come on it and pray.

I asked Father if He had a word focus for me this year and He told me ‘obedience’ and my heart shriveled, because I know what He wants and I am very scared to do it, yet I am trusting in Him to provide the courage I will need when I face this fear.

Isaiah 41:10 ESV

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

I am snared by the fear of man.

Proverbs 29:25 ESV

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

You see, with the House of Prayer being a ministry all of its own under the covering of my church, opportunities for expansion are already surfacing. One of these opportunities is for the House of Prayer to take over the prayer time during the church service and that means a big ol microphone and me. Ahhhhh, just typing that out made my tummy turn to jello. :( Folks, I am a behind the scenes type of person, the one who lays on her face in the dark praying for others in the lime light. Yet Father is calling me to do this and I know without a doubt that He will meet me when the occasion arises but it is that first step that is hard. I envision myself running to the edge of the cliff and just jumping off and in most situations I do this flying leap very well but in this one I see myself coming to an abrupt halt bound by fear and feeling myself shrink into the ground.

If you remember please pray I have courage to take a running leap when I am asked to do what I fear. God is faithful and I do trust Him therefore I know I am safe in Him. 

Thanks!

Do you have a word for this new year?  I would love for you to share it in the comments below or write a post on it. 

Blessings,

<><

Welcome 2014!

Happy New Year!!

Hoping and praying this will be an amazing year for all of you.

In Jesus Christ,

<><