Day 77 – Calling, Ministry and Assignments

I cannot believe it, but my internship is almost over. I only have 3 more days left after today. Craziness! Dale has decided to take the last three days of class to talk about our calling, how God views work and how we can stand strong when we go home. Today, we discussed calling, ministry and assignments.

Calling:

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. Deuteronomy 6:4-6

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. Mark 12:30

Dale presented the idea that this is our primary calling: to love God wholeheartedly. This really resonates with me. As much as I enjoy counseling, it doesn't satisfy me the way that intimacy with God does. My time here at IHOP-KC has deepened my certainty that I was made to love God and to be loved by God. When I sit in this room, I sing to God, I talk to Him and tell Him what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling, I study the Bible and ask God questions, and I ask Him to move in my life with provision, to bring healing, to share with me what He is thinking and feeling and to move in the lives and hearts of those that I love. My life is very simple and I am confident that this has been one of the richest seasons of my entire life. I am not literally rich, but I feel rich in my heart. God's love toward me is everlasting. It is driving out every single one of my fears. His peace passes my understanding and guards my heart and mind. Jesus is making His joy full in me. God is teaching me how to rest in Him and He is showing me that He restores my soul.

So, yes, I want to accept this life calling. This is nothing else that I would rather do FOREVER than to love my God with all of my time, all of my money, and all of myself.

Ministry: This is the context or physical place in which I live out my calling.

For me, at least in this next season of life, my ministry is in building the Rock River House of Prayer and counseling at The Glenwood Center. I am already wondering if I can block my clients in the afternoons and evenings to try and do an early night watch shift at our HOP. I have grown to love ministering before God in the night and would like to help develop more of a night watch in Rockford. I continue to ask God to equip me to do private practice counseling and to bring me the clients that He wants me to work with. Truly, the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. I am very excited about this next season of my life and all of the ministry that God has for me in Rockford, IL!

Assignments: The specific individual tasks, jobs God gives you to do that are simple acts of love and obedience.

I continue to ask God for an anointing to partner with Him in His ministry of restoring hearts and for opportunities to minister to orphans. I hope that He will provide assignments for me to work with orphans in a greater way. I also think that He wants me to continue to partner with Exodus Cry in praying for the ending of Human Trafficking on a weekly basis. So, these are some of my assignments.

Day 74 – The Perseverance of Jesus

Wow, the Encountering God service was great tonight! I strongly encourage you to check it out through the archives. Mike Bickle preached on the Perseverance of Jesus as seen in Isaiah 49:1-7. He explained how perseverance is a characteristic that Jesus needed in His humanity, at His first coming. God does not have any obstacles and nothing troubles Him. But Jesus, as a man, experienced the same difficulties and troubles that we do. He needed perseverance to endure to the end and continue in obedience to God. I really enjoyed how Mike operationalized perseverance in our context and I want to share it here:

"Perseverance includes continuing to faithfully press into God and to serve in small things in the face of frustrating circumstances, lack of cooperation, and many other annoying issues which may include lack of finances, lack of appreciation, poor health, disappointing relationships, etc. It is a form of "hiding" when God's favor is seemingly withheld and things do not work right."

Isn't that encouraging?! I felt so affirmed when I read this statement on the notes. Mike went on to talk more specifically about how Jesus was hidden by God and how He persevered through seasons of hiddenness in His life. He also talked about how we see two different perspectives on Jesus' life and we have a similar choice to make with regards to how we will view our life in God.

He (God) has made My (Jesus) mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of His hand He has concealed Me; and He has also made Me a select (or sharpened) arrow, He has hidden Me in His quiver. He said to Me, "You are My Servant, Israel, In Whom I will show My glory." But I said, "I have toiled in vain, I have spent My strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely the justice due to Me is with the Lord, and My reward with My God." Isaiah 49:2-4

From man's perspective, Jesus' life and ministry was unimpressive. He spent the first 30 years of His life in complete hiddenness, presumably living an extremely normal life as a carpenter and loving and obeying God through His faithfulness in small things. Jesus has 3 ½ years of ministry at the end of His life which are impressive, but this ends with Him being killed and only a group of about 120 people who remain His faithful followers. From an earthly point of view, it looks like Jesus "toiled in vain and spent His strength for nothing." But, God's perspective is completely opposite. Before Jesus even entered into ministry, God said that Jesus was His beloved son and that He was well-pleased with Him. (Matt 3:17) God saw how Jesus loved and served Him well and faithfully cared for the small things that God had given Him to do during His season of hiddenness. And, God was well-pleased! His heart was moved by Jesus' obedience and the way that Jesus' heart responded and yielded to His leadership. Jesus, for His part, recognized that His reward was with God and He had confidence that His Father was pleased with His life. He decided to live for God's approval alone and endured the difficulties that He must have faced in knowing who He really was, but having to live life as a normal man. He allowed God to raise Him up at the appointed time and did nothing that He did not see His Father doing.

This really challenges and encourages me because I get frustrated when I encounter difficult circumstances and the other annoying issues like lack of finances, lack of power and lack noticeable results. I pray for people and they aren't healed. I ask God to break through in my life or in someone else's and nothing seems to happen. I want to live a life that is significant to God, but my love and my faith seem so incredibly weak and feeble. I experience my daily struggle with sin and think my offering to God is so small. But, I don't want to quit. I want to love God forever. So, I commit again to be a faithful servant, no matter how small or insignificant the things that He has given me seem to be. And I pray 2 Thes 3:5, "May the Lord direct MY heart into the love of God and into the patience of Christ." I need the patience of Christ to be faithful to the end, as He was, and I need the love of God to fuel my heart along the journey. So, even if the things that God has entrusted to you seem small, be encouraged. God's eyes are on you and He is watching the secret movements of Your heart. If we persevere until the end, then we will also have our moment to hear:

Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. (Remember, we still have the millennium to really rule and reign with Jesus!) Enter into the joy of your Lord. Matthew 25:21

Day 70 – Proximity to Jesus

Dale is teaching us about the Millennial Kingdom this week. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this, it is the 1,000-year period in which Jesus will rule the earth in righteousness. He will literally be King of the entire earth and will rule from a throne in Jerusalem. And, we will rule and reign with Him! (Revelation 5:10 and 20:4, 6) According to Mike Bickle's notes, "At this time the Kingdom of God will be openly manifest worldwide affecting every sphere of life (political, social, agricultural, economic, spiritual, educational, law enforcement, family, media, arts, technology, athletics, environment, social institutions, etc." During this 1,000-year period, we are going to partner with Jesus to restore the earth so that God can come and dwell with people on earth once more. Resurrected saints will serve in all of these spheres to bring Jesus' leadership and restoration to the entire earth.

I'm still studying all of the Scriptures that accompany these notes, but the Millennium and ruling and reigning with Jesus sounds pretty great to me. I have already been praying a lot more about what it looks like to partner with Him in my work as a counselor. I am just a few weeks away from going back to work. One of the things that I have learned that I really, really want to hold on to is that God loves me and I love Him. This is my primary life calling. I really enjoy the work of counseling, but I know that helping people is my secondary calling. I can only do it well out of the overflow of my primary calling: being a lover of God. And, I have been asking God to anoint me to partner with Him even more in His work of restoration. I want to be able to work with those who have been the most broken and crushed and see them encounter Jesus and be restored to wholeness. I believe that this kind of healing can only come through Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and I am asking Him to let me partner with Him and to teach me how to do this kind of work. I know that will not be possible outside of a lifestyle of prayer and fasting.

But today, we listened to a teaching about eternal rewards. Mike said that there will probably be a few billion believers in God's eternal family. It will be impossible for Jesus to be in close proximity to everyone. We will all have the Holy Spirit, so we will always have access to God. But, we will not always have access to Jesus. I felt slightly shocked at this realization! When I imagine Heaven, my favorite part is seeing Jesus face to face, hearing His voice and actually doing things with Him. I never thought about the fact that I would have to share Him with a few billion other people. I want to have as much proximity to Jesus as I can possibly have in Heaven. How can I start pursuing this now?

But Jesus called them to Himself and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It is not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you shall be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave; just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Matt 20:25-28

If I want to be near to Jesus forever, then I need to be great in His kingdom. I need to become like Jesus, as a servant, to become great in His kingdom. I want to cultivate intimacy with God this side of Heaven so that I can enjoy more face time with Jesus in Heaven. So, I commit myself to loving and obeying Him daily. I want to learn how to submit to Jesus' leadership in the small details of my life now so that He can entrust me with greater responsibilities during the Millennium. I want to agree to God's discipleship plan for me, even when it involves difficult circumstances and confronting the ugliness of my heart, because I want to be great in the kingdom of God. I would love to be given a position in the Millennium that would allow me to work with orphans or people rescued from human trafficking during Jesus' 2^nd coming. I think that it would be incredible if my life and training now was preparing me for a much greater ministry later. Plus, I know how God feels about widows and orphans. I'm hoping that this kind of work will also give me more face time with Jesus in the Millennium. I just want to be as close to Him as I can possibly be forever and I am realizing that how I live now impacts how I will live then.

Day 67 – Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me

Now when John, while imprisoned, heard of the works of Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to Him, "Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?" Jesus answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me." Matthew 11:2-6

Jesus was referencing messianic prophecies found in the book of Isaiah. He knew that John and his disciples would recognize these references and understand that He was the Messiah by fulfilling them.

Then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will be unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer… Isaiah 35:5-6a

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Jesus finished His explanation to Johns' disciples by saying, "And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me". Isaiah 61 clearly states that the Messiah will "proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners". John was in prison. Jesus knew that John would not be released from prison and that he would shortly be put to death. This would be a great opportunity for Johns' disciples to feel offended at Jesus. I can imagine a list of reasons why they would have thought that Jesus, as the Messiah, would set John free from his captivity. Jesus, John is your cousin, he prepared the way for your ministry, he has lived his entire life as a faithful Nazirite and setting prisoners free is one of your most important responsibilities as the Messiah. Johns' disciples must have been shocked and hurt when the news came that King Herod had put John to death. Hopefully they remembered what Jesus had said about "he who does not take offense at Me."

This has really impacted me this week because Jesus has been revealing some areas of deep offense in my heart. I have discovered that my offense is also related to things that God has not done in His leadership of my life. Let me give you a few examples:

• I have been offended that God has not always healed me physically, despite LOTS of prayer for healing. More specifically, I REALLY didn't want to have surgery in July and I felt deeply offended at God that I had to have the surgery and pay for it when He could have healed me supernaturally.
  
• I have been offended that God has not let me get married yet. I have wanted to get married and have kids since I was a little girl. I'm 30 now and God is increasingly stirring my heart to care for and adopt orphans, but God has not given me a husband yet.
  
• I have been offended that God has not brought my brothers back to pursuing relationship with Him despite the fact that lots of us have been praying for them for years and God has spoken all kinds of prophetic promises over them for years.
  
• I have been offended that God has not been growing the House of Prayer in the Rockford region faster, even though a faithful group of us have been contending.
  

I could go on and on, but I hope that you get the point. In summary, I have discovered that my heart is easily offended by Jesus' leadership and I feel extremely unblessed or unhappy when my heart is offended at Him. So, I am confessing and repenting every time I discover offended feelings. I remind myself that it is written, "Just as the Father has loved Me [Jesus], I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full." (John 15:9-11) I remind myself that Jesus wants His joy to be in me and for my joy to be made full. He knows that this will only come through obedience and an unoffended heart. I set my heart to love and obey Him again and I ask Him to help me keep my heart unoffended. I confess and pray until my feelings change, "Jesus, I love your leadership in my life. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. (Psalm 16:6a)."

Day 64 – Courage in the face of accusation

Once again, I love our Life of David class taught by Clay Edwards. It blesses me every week! We studied 1 Samuel 17 yesterday and talked about how David responded to accusation. Clay presented three types of accusation that David faced in this situation that can be compared to the accusation that we experience.

1. From within: Eliab, David's brother accused him. "Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your insolence and the wickedness of your heart; for you have come down in order to see the battle." 1 Sam 17:28 Eliab accused David of being just a shepherd with a "few sheep". He accused David of having wrong motives and being proud.
   
2. From without: Goliath accused David. "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
   1 Sam 17:43 Goliath accused David of being inadequate. He also attacked David verbally by cursing him and threatening his life in verse 44.
   
3. With reason: Saul accused David with reason. "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth." 1 Sam 17:33 Saul accused David by offering the natural perspective. He tried to explain to David that he didn't have the skill set necessary and that he was just too small and too young to be successful.
   

How did David respond to all this accusation?

1. To Eliab:
   And David said, "What have I done now? Is there not a cause?" 1 Sam 17:29 (NKJV) I like the NKJV question: Is there not a cause? David did not respond to Eliab's provocation, but focused on the legitimate cause.
   
2. To Goliath: "I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. This day the LORD will deliver you up into my hands" 1 Sam 17:45b-46a David understood who God is and He had confidence in God's ability to defeat His enemies.
   
3. To Saul:
   "When a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I went out after him and attacked him, and rescued it from his mouth; and when he rose up against me, I seized him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has taunted the armies of the living God." 1 Sam 17:34-36 David understood how God had been training him through his experiences as a shepherd. He explained to Saul that he did have the experience and skills necessary. But more than that, David understood that God was on His side because Goliath had insulted Him. David knew that God would give him the courage and the ability to defeat Goliath.
   

What does this mean for us? Well unfortunately, we have an accuser who accuses us day and night (Rev 12:10). As he did with David, Satan accuses us of having wrong motives and being inadequate because of our past or current struggle with sin. He constantly offers us a natural perspective on our identity and our abilities. He attacks our beliefs about God's provision and tries to make us afraid of failure. Depending on the hopelessness of our situation, we can become extremely fearful and choose to accept this accusation. But, truth flies in the face of these accusations!

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Rom 8:1

The Holy Spirit gives me the courage to face all of my giants. He helps me define reality by the word of God whereas my flesh defines reality according to what is natural, as I experience it through my 5 senses. The flesh tells me, "I feel …, therefore I am …" For example, "I feel ashamed that I gossiped again and even though I repented, I don't really think that God likes me." But, it is written, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9)." It is also written, "He delivered me because He delighted in me (Psalm 18:19)." I choose to believe what the Bible says instead of how I feel. If I keep reminding myself of the truth long enough, then my feelings usually change too. I want to agree with God and receive courage instead of agreeing with accusation and cowering in fear. I want to run to defeat my enemies the way that David ran to fight Goliath.

Day 63 - Holy Imagination

I love my imagination. I can remember using it to play make-believe when I was little or to daydream when I was bored in school. As I have gotten older, I have discovered that there are other things that I can do with my imagination. Some like creative problem solving and writing can be used in God-honoring ways. But others like fantasizing as a way of dealing with uncomfortable feelings or imagining what I would like to do to people who bother me don't honor God. I am also realizing that they are not healthy for me. Over the past 2 months I have been learning a lot about how to take unhealthy thoughts captive and I think that this has been very helpful. It has been even more helpful to learn about how I can use my imagination to actually encounter God and grow my faith.

We spend a lot of time praying and it's easy to become distracted or bored after a while. We studied Revelation 4 in my Tools for the Prayer Room class. The teacher had us close our eyes and imagine this scene in heaven while we were praying. I discovered that it was much easier to stay engaged in prayer when I was imagining my prayers coming before a real throne that I could see in my imagination. I have also been studying Ezekiel 1, Revelation 1 and Revelation 19 to get additional ideas about what Jesus looks like. I try to picture Him in my mind when I close my eyes and begin praying. There are lots of descriptions that I don't understand, but this leads me into prayer too. I start asking Jesus what certain things mean and for more revelation. I consecrate my imagination to Him and ask Him to use it to help me know Him more.

In another class, we learned a technique to use when reading through the Gospels. This technique reveals what God is like by helping us understand how Jesus interacted with people. First, pick a scene or a passage from the Bible to meditate on. Read it several times and then start breaking it into chunks. Ponder what this was actually like when it happened and ask Jesus to reveal what He was thinking and feeling in that moment. Use your imagination to picture the weather, the time of day, the natural smells and sounds of the scene, and what the expression on Jesus' face would have been. Ask God what this reveals about your heart and how you need to respond to what He is showing you. Imagine that you are one of the people that Jesus is addressing and how you would have felt in that experience.

I've also been attending a class on Fridays called Holy Fascination through the Kansas City Healing Community. They are primarily an inner-healing group, but they also teach classes to help people imagine scenes from the Bible and use their imaginations to meet with Jesus. This has been interesting too because I'm reading a lot about inner healing right now. I really want to be able to do serious restoration work (Isaiah 61 level) and most profound inner healing techniques involve asking Jesus to come and visit people in their traumatic memories. I'm practicing using these techniques on myself to see how they might work for others and I have been really encouraged by the results.

The combination of all of these things is that I am using my imagination much differently. Whenever I start to use it, I am training myself to imagine that Jesus is there with me. If I am trying to use my imagination to escape something, then Jesus is there with me and we can have a dialogue about what is bothering me. I find it much harder to fantasize when Jesus is standing next to me in my imagination and I find it much easier to choose to love and obey Him when I can imagine Him as a real man. This has also been helping me to grow in my belief that God enjoys me even in my weakness. I know that God is mostly glad, but that doesn't feel true when I am struggling with sin and having to talk with Him about it. If I take a minute to first imagine that God is giving me a great big smile and telling me that He is happy that I want to connect with Him, then that difficult conversation becomes much easier. I feel much more natural grief over hurting His heart with my sin and a much greater desire to turn and walk in obedience when I picture Jesus as a real person that I want to be in relationship with. I am discovering that this, like everything else, is a process, but I am excited that God is redeeming my imagination and teaching me how to use it for His glory and my pleasure. J

Day 57 – Peace; a byproduct of Truth

Dale is teaching us this week and we are talking about the 2^nd coming of Christ and what His return to earth will be like. He was talking about how there will be a lot of delusion and people will be saying, "Peace and safety!" and then destruction will come (1 Thes 5:3). Dale said that peace, as we pursue it through compromise, is not true peace. True peace is found when we agree with Jesus Christ, who is truth (John 14:6). At His 2^nd coming, Jesus is actually going to bring war to the earth. He will fight against everyone who does not agree with Him and His right to rule and reign upon the earth. He will bring judgment to everyone who has not repented for their sins and come into agreement with His view of sin. Ultimately, there will be peace on earth, under Jesus' perfect leadership. But, this peace will not come through compromise. Every person will be given a choice: submit to Jesus' leadership of your life and your city and your nation or die. This will be a hostile takeover for everyone who has not surrendered to Jesus already.

This is SO intense! It challenges me to examine my life and look for places that are not surrendered to Jesus. He will be king over all of me and this whole world. I want to start living according to this reality now so that I don't experience His 2^nd coming as a hostile takeover. I would prefer to give up my carnal pursuits rather than have them wrenched away from me.

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing." Revelation 5:11-12

Jesus is worthy of all of this today. He is worthy of all of my power or my physical strength. Jesus is worthy of all of my finances and directing how I use them. He is worthy of my wisdom or my thoughts and intellect. Jesus is worthy of all of my might or the skills and gifts that He has given to me. He is worth all of my honor, my glory and my blessing. Any time that someone compliments me and recognizes me for something, I can point them back to Jesus and say He is the one who is really worthy of your admiration and praise. He is the one who makes me who I am and offers you help, comfort and salvation.

I think that this would be a good habit for me to start developing now. It will help me be ready for the day when Jesus is actually king over the whole earth, with a throne in Jerusalem. I will be ready to pay homage to my King from years of practicing.

I also think that this is important in order to protect me from pride. As the Holy Spirit is poured out on all flesh in the last days (Acts 2, Joel 2), I believe that God will use me to prophecy and perform many signs and wonders. I hope and pray that I will be anointed, as Jesus was, to "bind up the brokenhearted and proclaim liberty to captives" (Isa 61:1). I am beginning to imagine myself working with abused orphans and rescued victims of human trafficking. These precious ones can only be restored by the blood and power of Jesus. I am asking Him to equip and release me into this type of counseling work and I hope that He will use me powerfully. I realize that this may tempt the people who receive help from me to worship me, as they did with Paul and Barnabas (Acts 14). I may even be tempted to accept their worship for myself. But, this would be a terrible form of idolatry. I don't want to put myself or anyone that I minister to in this position. I would rather preach the gospel and point everyone to Jesus, as the true Savior of the world. I want to proclaim that I am the servant of an incredible King who is worthy of all of their adoration.