Let the Spirit flow!

     We were having a night of silent prayer, accompanied with beautiful worship music.  We are usually there for an hour or two, every other Sunday evening at the Church.  It's a time of quiet reflection, and praise to God for all that He is, has done, and will do in the future.  Our purposeful intent in this time in the Spirit, is for our hearts and minds to uplift Him in whatever situation we may currently find ourselves.
     At the close of the evening, we come together from the various areas of the sanctuary.  We take the last remaining moments to share as a group, and voice the feelings, burdens, and thoughts that we might have had on our hearts during this time.  We use it mostly as a time to vocally share our prayer requests with one another.  Doing as the Bible asks us to "bear one anothers' burdens", and "pray one for another".  In these moments, God's presence seems to seal our earlier offerings of deep heartfelt worship.
     Various members of the team spoke, each sharing a concern that they would like us all to agree with them in prayer for for victory.  Then, one woman spoke up in an assured voice.  She directed her statement to a believer, whom I will call Hannah.  She told her that," God was going to fill her with the Holy Spirit to the degree that she had wanted for a long time".
     Hannah was a little shocked, but then was overcome with excitement, sprinkled with a bit of trepidation.  You see, Hannah was a devout believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And she wanted the fullness of God more than anything.  She had sought the Baptism in the Holy Spirit for decades.  She had come to similar moments like this many times before in her journey in Christ.  Each time to only come away not obtaining that overflowing presence of the Father's promise that she so earnestly desired.

     At various times in her past, people had prayed for her to receive the promise.  Most having a specific form or model of " how" a person should receive this gift,then pressed her into their mold.  Instead of simply ushering her into His presence to simply receive Him.  Yet, with each "failure" so to speak, there was being built up inside her an invisible wall.  Doubt, the enemy of faith, was being created in her heart.  A feeling/thought pattern that she may never be able to receive what her spirit longed for, for so long.  Yet, through all of the trials, and years, she had never lost the desire of her heart to know God fully.  That someday she would receive the gift that she had so valiantly sought.  So, here she was once again, faced with the hope and the promise, yet still having a spiritual track record of not obtaining the prize.
     The group being led by the lady who spoke, were united in faith for Hannah.  Believing that tonight was her night!  Praises rang out to God.  We asked Him to grant our friend the desire to know Him more.  Hannah was simply asked to receive what the Lord had promised as a gift, by faith, and to speak any words that He might be sharing on her heart, whatever He would put in her mouth to speak.  As you might have guessed, after a few minutes, nothing happened.
     May I share with you some insight at this moment?   There are times when Christians operate not by faith, but rather out of hope.  Which can easily be sidetracked, or even derailed because we base it on our current condition, or our past experiences.  Faith is based on God's Word, and His character alone!  Sadly, for our sister, she had had past experiences that were very similar to this moment in time.  So, in her heart that invisible wall had to be torn down, before she could obtain her victory.  This is in no way an indictment of her condition, but is meant to help others, and shed light on somethings that sometimes hinder all of us in our Christian walk.
     So, back to our story.  As you remember, prayer and praise was going forth for our sister to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and her spiritual language.  Suddenly, I felt a prompting, which I shared aloud.  " Hannah*", I said "  I see that you have already received this gift in your spirit, but there seems to be a blockage in releasing it in you.  I see you like a bottle of champagne, and the cork just needs to Pop! So speak out the joy and words in your mouth!"  Within a moment of those words leaving my mouth, she literally exploded with joy!
     This middle-aged woman seemed to be filled with electricity and emotion that burst forth like light in the darkness.  She laughed, she cried, euphoria seized every ounce of her being.  And then out of her mouth came a language that she did not know, faster than the tongue seems to have the chance to form syllables.  Interspersed with the loudest, "Praise the Lord's" that I have heard in a long time.  She knew that she had received her personal gift from above.  Joy had seized her, and His name is the Holy Spirit.  As we all observed, and would later testify, this was one of the most exuberant cases of someone being filled with the Holy Ghost as we had ever seen in our lives.
     Hannah slowly melted to the floor; shedding tears of happiness, and laughter full of praise.  Her spiritual language melodiously pouring across her tongue.  I can truly say, that the only time that I have seen such a state of euphoria before, is seeing a child on Christmas morn.  I believe that it wasn't just Hannah that received a blessed gift that Sunday evening, but the group as a whole.  Even in a Spirit-filled Church, we can become stale to the things of God.  In pursuit of ever more of the wonders of His grace,and power; we become bored with what is presented so simply before us, this, awesome and treasured gift given for all who believe. 
     There was a great lesson that we learned by observing another of His children receive Him as a little child.  We must always, always, remember to both come to Him in joy of anticipation, and in that a child has for a parent.  No wonder Jesus taught in Matt 19:13, Mark 10:13, and Luke 18:15; that we needed to be like a little child to enter this majestic Kingdom of His, and His everlasting presence.

5/22/11 The spirit of Abandonment

     During Sunday morning worship, the Lord downloaded into my spirit some good insight and reassurance that I would like to share with you.  He brought this forth in a prophetic word  but the teaching He shared with my heart.  So, I meditated upon it, and searched the scriptures that he shared with me at that time.
     In John 14:18, it says that Jesus will not leave us, comfortless after he physically departs this world through His death and ressurection.  The word, comfortless here is more of an implied feeling atttached to the literal word in the text.  In the Greek, the word is orphaned or fatherless, so it is implied that the individual would be comfortless or bereaved.  Thus, it could be translated as, I will not leave you orphaned or fatherless, but I will send another of like kind as to myself. We know this person to be God Himself, the Holy Spirit.
     Hebrews 1:15 re-emphasizes God's feelings about leaving us alone when Paul shares that " He will never leave us or forsake us"  Paul wants to tell us that the Father doesn't want the ties between us to slacken or for us to feel that we have been deserted by Him.  Simply put, God our Heavenly Father really, really wants to be close to us!
     At the cross, Jesus's sacrifice built a bridge to re-establish our God's ability to get really close to us by overcoming the issue of sin. But, that is not the point of this message.  The word that was shared, was that He was breaking off of us the spirit of abandonment which hinders us from from true intimacy with a gracious, loving Heavenly Father.
     It has been God's intent from the beginning to re-establish the intimacy that he once shared with mankind, namely Adam and Eve.  They walked, talked, shared, enjoyed each other's company.   They had intimacy.  This was the truest,and purest from of parental relationship  between the Creator and mankind until Jesus Christ.  Both God and mankind have longed for that connectivity ever since the fall.  Or as scripture says it, He has put eternity in our hearts.  The longing is born in us, and Jesus is the one who gets us across the gap, back into the arms of a loving Father God.
     A spirit of abandonment falls over the believer when we bite into the lie that our Father is either too busy,uncaring,or unsympathetic enough to act or move on our behalf.  It is just that, a lie.  But, the power of any lie resides in us taking the bait, and then digesting it into our spirit.  It then begins to cause blindness, and deafness to the spiritual realm hindering our faith to trust in a loving God.
     Such actions alone are enough to block our recieving the Father's blessing, not because He intends it to be that way, but because we simply lose our way.  We become estranged.  We wander aimlessly, pawing for a way back, but all the while still tied to the anchor of abandonment.
     The enemy and our minds pester us like annoying flies buzzing in our ears words like: " He doesn't care","He is too busy helping another", You blew it, He doesn't want to hear from you!".  The saddest thing of all is they are simply more lies all designed to keep us in the mire of the orphanage of abandonment.
     We need to ask the Holy Spirit to break the spirit of abandonment and it's cycle of torments off of us by the blood of Jesus Christ.  We need to recognize that God is a father like no other.  And no pure,loving father would do this to his child.  We need to ask forgiveness for believing these lies about His character, and ask Him to restore us back into that beautiful son/daughter relationship.  The one that he had intended for us from eternity past.  Lastly, we need to ask that our spiritual eyes and ears be opened.  In Revelation 3:18, it talks about asking for salve to heal our eyes.  This is not physical healing,but spiritual healing for spiritual sight.  Because we need to be open once again to see that as believers we coexist in two realms of existence.
     We live in the Kingdom of God which attaches us to Heaven, but physically we are still here day to day on earth.  If our eyes, and ears are open and healed once again, we will be able to walk that out in a healthy way on a daily basis,just as Jesus did. You see without that, we have not " crossed the Rubicon" so to speak.
 We are still believers, but we tend to walk more in the realms of religion, faith in theory, and solid moral convictions, than Kingdom lifestyle.  We are called to progress in intimacy with the Father otherwise there will always be areas in Him that we relegate to the great By and By, instead of the here and now.
     I pray that this word of encouragement will help you move into an overcoming affirmation of  the Father's love and move out of  languishing in abandonment.  He has not abandoned you, no matter how you may feel.  Even Job, in his darkest hour had God himself come to reconcile relationship with him.  Jesus did not want us to ever doubt that that Father has ever abandoned us.  He emphasized this by empathetically saying that the Father's promised outpouring would immediately come after His departure.  Be assured God wants to be close to you, so let us cross over that bridge today!