Read, Hear And Take To Heart These Words

February 17, 2009 by echoinghim
Filed under End-Times, Prayer, Prophetic Messengers

Revelation 1:1-3 (NIV)
1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place…2 that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

Jesus, I ask that You would give to me a desire for Your Word and a hunger in my spirit to eat the scroll and partake of these words that are the revelation of who You are. Where my spirit is dull and where I am complacent and apathetic towards this book, I ask that You would deliver me and that You would sharpen me and cause a zeal and a tenacity to rise up within me. Jesus, I want to eat the scroll. Jesus, I desire Your words and I want to honor the prophetic word that You declared to Your church in order to reveal Yourself to us and to prepare Your Bride for Your return. Stir up longing and hunger to read, hear, and take to heart this testimony of You.

Jesus, I ask that You would bless my mind to read the words of Your prophecy and anoint me with wisdom and revelation to understand them. I ask that You would bless and open my eyes to see what You are desiring to show me and that my vision would be opened to enter into what John was seeing. Jesus, as I read, may the words come to life and be branded upon my mind. I ask for the grace and strength needed to read these difficult words and the discipline and perseverance to meditate upon them continually. May I enter into the blessing that You promised for those who would read this book, by Your grace.

Jesus, I ask that You would bless my ears to hear the words of Your prophecy. I pray that I would not be one who just hears these words and then immediately after forgets them, but that I would be one who hears and does! I ask that I would be one who heeds Your Word and intently inclines my ear to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Open my ears to hear what You are saying and remove anything that is hindering my hearing. If there be any lies of the enemy that I have listened to and believed, I ask that You would dismantle them and destroy them. If there be any compromise or sin in my heart that prevents me from being able to hear Your words, would You set me free and cause a turning to occur within me.

And may I not only be one who hears, but also one who speaks the words of this prophecy. Jesus, would You bless my mouth and anoint my speech to be a messenger in these last days. I ask that as I hear these words, that faith would be produced in my heart, leading to a boldness to proclaim the words that I am hearing You speak. I ask that even as I speak these words in my own prayer life, that the whispering of the truths found in this book would impact me. I ask for courage to declare Your heart as You have revealed it in this prophecy and that I would proclaim it accurately, in grace and truth. Would You give me wisdom and grace upon my lips to speak with clarity and authority and power!

Lastly, Jesus, I ask that You would bless and anoint me to take these words to heart. I ask for You to soften my heart and tenderize it so that the soil of my heart would be open and ready to receive the seed of Your Word. Would You till the soil and break up the areas of my heart that are hardened by sin and compromise. I ask that You would enable me to take Your words to heart, allowing them to impact me and transform me. I ask that this book would begin to pierce me, strike me, and wound me with the urgency of the hour and the reality that the time is indeed near. I ask that I would not be able to simply glaze over the words without them entering into my heart and changing the way I think, feel, and live my life. I ask that my heart would be ruined by the corrections You give Your church, by the promises You offer to those who overcome, by the images and events I see portrayed in Your judgments, by the glory of the coming age and the unimaginable beauty and rapture of the fellowship with God that is ours to enjoy in that day. I ask that it would absolutely wreck me for an average, ordinary life and that I would have these words so burned and seared upon my soul that I could do nothing less than agree with them fully and enter into partnership with You in seeing them fulfilled.

So be it. Amen.

Tags: desire, hunger, Jesus, prophecy, Revelation, Word

Financial Miracles

February 12, 2009 by echoinghim
Filed under Finances, Travel

4 Comments

Well, we have had several financial miracles and blessings from God recently, that I simply must share!

First, in October of last year, Joe and I were really desiring to go on a family vacation down to the International House of Prayer, but we didn’t have the money. We figured we would need about $1000 to drive down and stay for a week, so Joe started praying and asking God about it. We really wanted to go the week of Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day in the States) because Joe only had 4 vacation days left and it would work best to be able to go on a week with a holiday in it. Time was running short and we had basically resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn’t be going. Now, at Joe’s work they have an incentive program where the employees can submit ideas to improve their work stations or procedures in order to help them work more efficiently. If your idea is approved and implemented, your idea goes into a draw for prizes that are drawn each quarter. If multiple people came up with the idea, the prize money is split up between them all. There are 3 prizes and Joe had his name on 4 different ballots in the coming draw, but only one of them was his idea alone. As you may be guessing already, when it came time for the draw, Joe’s idea was picked out for the first prize of….you guessed it – $1000! And it was $1000 AFTER taxes! God had totally heard our prayer and knew what we needed and answered it exactly, with just enough time for us to make all our travel plans! As you may have read when I blogged about our trip, we had an awesome time and it was a total blessing and gift from the Lord.

Now, for the second story, we were still a little strapped for cash and Joe began asking the Lord for another $1000, since we found out he’d be missing a bunch of work around Christmas, because his place of work was shutting down the factory for several days. As Joe prayed, he thought about our financial situation and then altered his request slightly, asking the Lord for $1000 plus some. I, however, did not know that Joe was praying for this, so when one day I received a totally random phone call from someone we barely knew at all and this person asked if we had been praying about any sort of need, I was at a loss! I figured this person wanted to bless us financially and a number of things went through my head that I could say, but I knew I had to be honest, because I hadn’t been specifically praying for anything. After that phone call, I figured I had blown it - lol. I told Joe about it when he came home from work & that’s when he told me that he had been praying for the $1000 plus some. Not long after that we received another phone call from the same person telling us to go check our mail box. When Joe opened the envelope, there was a cheque written for $1000 plus $400 in cash!!!! Ha! It was totally like the Lord to answer Joe’s request so specifically that He caused the person to separate the $1000 from the rest – it was very cool!

Third story. A couple weeks ago, there was another draw at Joe’s work where everybody’s names were in for a prize and you guessed it again…Joe won! So, this time we weren’t asking for anything, but God decided to bless us with a trip to Phoenix, Arizona! Joe’s company is paying for 2 flight tickets and 2 nights accommodations at a hotel with the option for us to choose to extend our stay and pay for the extra nights. All that Joe has to do is take a tour of one of their plants there. So, this just felt like another kiss from the Lord to tell us that He likes us.

Last story. Joe has tried to sell his truck multiple times in the past with no luck. He recently asked my dad if he could maybe try to sell it for him, since he didn’t have the time to do it himself. Also, the truck has a few minor things wrong with it, that we were concerned may need to be fixed on the front end before we’d be able to sell it. However, completely unexpectedly, when Joe’s parents came to visit us from Alberta a couple weeks ago, Joe mentioned his truck and they said that they’d be interested in buying it! But even better than that, they are going to take care of the repairs and the cost of transporting the truck back to Alberta! It couldn’t have been any easier or stress-free for us and was another incredible blessing from God.

So, this has just been really encouraging for us and a testimony that God will take care of our needs and even our desires when we trust Him completely with our finances. It is our desire to continue to grow in our ability to trust Him and to surrender our finances to Him to be used as He desires, to learn to sow more generously that we may also reap generously. We want to give out of love and then be “wooed and wowed” (as Mike Bickle says it) when God in turn blesses us beyond what we could imagine. More and more we are discovering the joy and excitement of partnering with God with our money!

Tags:

Love Boxes

February 12, 2009 by echoinghim
Filed under Humor, Marriage

Happy 11 Months Justice!

February 12, 2009 by echoinghim
Filed under Family, Parenting

2 Comments

Okay, so this post is over a week late, but on February 4th, Justice turned 11 months old! Only one more month until his first birthday – it’s so hard to believe the time has gone by so quickly! This last month was a big one for hitting milestones… (**Note: If you are reading this via RSS Feed, the videos may not show up & you may need to visit the blog directly to view them)

1. He learned to get up into a kneeling-standing position. As a result of learning to get up on his knees, he fell out of his crib one night! We promptly lowered the mattress after that and now all is well.

2. He learned how to pull himself up to standing and now he does it ALL the time. As a result of learning to stand, he has also both fallen out of and into the bathtub – lol. His favorite thing to do is stand at the tub and knock everything on the ledges either into or out of the tub, depending on which side he’s on.

3. He’s learning to walk on his own while holding onto something. Again, he does this a lot at the tub, starting at one end and walking along the side to the other end, knocking things down as he goes. He can manuveur quite well between objects that are close together and at a good height for him to hold onto while standing, but he doesn’t seem to like to try walking as much if you hold his hands – then he just hangs like dead weight or tries to jump up and down.

4. He’s getting better at the conventional crawl. He will still resort to the belly-crawl-drag when he wants to get somewhere quickly, but he’s improving a lot at crawling up on his knees, mostly only going short distances using this method.

5. He’s getting better at playing with his toys and he especially loves his hockey stick, which he is actually quite good at using to hit around a ball. Joe is praying Justice does not become a hockey player and is vowing to retrain him to shoot hoops as soon as possible!

6. As for talking, there haven’t really been any advancements. He seems to be pretty content with his favorite words, “da”, “mama”, and “gah” combined with many assortments of grunts, growls, groans, and gurgles. At the same time, he has definitely become more vocal and loud, as the folks who come to the prayer meeting on Monday mornings can attest to. He can be rather distracting when he starts to chatter and make all his noises.

7. Right on his 11-month birthday, his top teeth next to the middle two FINALLY broke through. It feels like those have been coming in forever, but they are now actually showing. There was some blood and tears, but the worst appears to be over. It seems like he is constantly teething though & he’s ALWAYS trying to bite me and always has his fingers in his mouth. His latest favorite thing is to chew on a wet cloth or pull his shirts up into his mouth to chew on.

8. Justice’s Grandma and Grandpa Engbrecht came for a visit and he totally loved them in no time at all! It’s been kind of hard being so far from all of Joe’s family, so it was really great that they came out and go in some good bonding time with Justice. He totally had a wonderful time with them, which was awesome.

9. Justice has started to eat some big-people food – in other words, at supper time, I’ve started putting what I’ve made for Joe and I into the food-processor and feeding that to Justice. So far he has liked most things we’ve given him, as long as they’re not too spicy or too chunky.

10. Justice was officially weaned this last month! This was a wonderful celebration and came just in time for Joe and I to have a whole day and night to ourselves to celebrate our anniversary while Justice hung out with Grandma and Grandpa Thiessen. Weaning went really smoothly and he is loving his bottle!

11. He is developing a strong will – oh dear! Since becoming more mobile, Justice has developed a mind of his own and definitely knows what he wants and when he wants it! Diaper change time has become quite challenging, as he is determined to try to roll over and crawl away as fast as he can. Diaper change time used to be the “happiest place in the world” but now it has become a battle of wills and usually involves many tears. He also has started to throw little “tantrums” when you take him away from something he wants or take away an object that he was playing with. For example, he LOVES the mop and will totally freak out if you take it away from him. *Sigh* Not exactly sure how to deal with this new stage in life, as he still seems too young to understand discipline or even what “No” means!

12. Sleeping habits have been so-so this month. He goes to sleep pretty good, as long as you are there with him. We’ve still been getting up multiple times in the night to give him his soother back, so hopefully we can figure out a better system soon, since this is not allowing us to get very good sleeps at night. He also was waking up at 5am for several mornings in a row, so we moved his bed-time a little later to try and get him to at least sleep until 6am, which is when Joe gets up anyways. So far this has been working pretty good, but Justice is quite reliable and prompt to wake up at exactly 6am – no sleeping in around here! Thankfully Joe gets up with him and lets me sleep until 7am when he leaves for work. However, Justice is so adorable when he’s sleeping that I took many pictures of him this month – you can see that he has a favorite corner in his crib.

13. With his new ability to kneel and stand up and get around, Justice has definitely become a bit of a trouble-maker. He LOVES to get into stuff that he shouldn’t be getting into and is quite curious and adventurous. This caused us to finally do some baby-proofing in the kitchen and bathroom, as well as get outlet protectors. But there are still several things he likes to get into, like the pans & pot lids drawer, the tupperware drawer, my art supplies box, etc.

14. He got a really bad yeast infection/diaper rash on his bum this month that STILL hasn’t gone away. (Hence all the naked pictures above, since it’s supposed to help dry out the infection) I feel so bad for him, as it obviously causes him pain and discomfort, but so far all the many things I’ve been trying haven’t seemed to help. If you think of him, you can pray for a quick healing!

15. Justice learned to point this month and is now often pointing at things or holding his arms up like an orchestra conductor. It seems like he’s trying to communicate something to me at times, but I usually can’t tell what he’s pointing at or what he might mean by his gestures? It’s quite cute though.

16. Justice learned how to clap by himself!