Freedom

Mark 5:1-20

Imagine putting yourself in the place of this demon-possessed man. You’re an outcast of society who is feared and hated. You are so tormented by the voices of demons that you are suicidal and the only way to find any measure of relief from their sadistic oppression is to mutilate your body and try to mask the mental, emotional and spiritual pain with physical pain. You are so overcome with sorrow and rage and every manner of wicked and depressing emotion and thought that night and day, unable to find rest or escape, all you can do is weep, wail and cry out. How long have you been suffering? Has it been weeks, months, or even years? You are in such great spiritual bondage, that the people’s attempts to bind you with shackles and chains is laughable – those chains are nothing compared to what locks down your heart.

Now imagine that you see a man in the distance, and due to your heightened awareness of the spiritual realm and the sudden chaos amongst the thousands of demons who inhabit your body, you see something about this man that not many others have been able to recognize. The demonic legion rages frantically in fear about the Son of the Most High God and you have a brief moment of sanity and clarity amongst all the confusion to realize that you MUST see this man and that He is your only hope! You run like you have never run before and fall at His feet in worship. In that moment, all you see is that He is beautiful and worthy of adoration and through this amazing gift of revelation of who He is, you even forget to ask for help, but simply whisper words of love.

Now imagine your surprise when control of your voice is suddenly seized from your power and the demons begin to engage with this man in pleas for mercy. Then with a simple command He instructs them to leave your body and with a jolt of power, you feel every single unclean, filthy, vile and evil thing wretch itself out of your being and you see the black cloud cast themselves into a herd of swine.

You now find yourself sitting at the feet of the man you now know is Jesus. Your nakedness has been covered and the most incredible peace has filled your heart and soul and mind. The look of compassion and love on His face floods your heart and you are consumed with love for this man. You are oblivious to the others who have come and who are pleading with Him to leave until He suddenly turns to go. Now you are the one pleading, but you are begging to go with Him. You have just encountered the love of the very Son of God and your life has been altered is a way so dramatic that it has caused an uproar in your community. You have been freed from demonic slavery and now all you want is to become a bondslave to Jesus and go with Him wherever He goes. When he denies your request, for a moment you are crushed, but then by His grace, you trust Him, for you know the depth of His love for you and you willingly accept His commission to go tell everyone about what He has done for you. In your heart, you still long for His presence and to simply be with Him, but you treasure the experience in your heart, holding onto it, believing that one day you will be with Him again for eternity.

Brain Dump #1

Sometimes I just need to dump out the various things swirling around in my mind and heart, so I now give you my first “Brain Dump” and perhaps it will become the first of many – we’ll see.

His mercies are new every morning
Rayah’s had a lot of gas issues lately and cries A LOT.  This can really wear a person down.  I had my first meltdown of tears yesterday since I became a mommy of two.  I was frustrated by my circumstances, but also feeling like a failure as a mom for all the anger and terrible thoughts I had inside.  Thank God that His mercies are new every morning and that He sees the sincere desires of my heart to be a lover of God and a better mom to my children.  I’m also glad that all the expectations I put on myself to be a “supermom” are not ones that God places on me – His yoke is easy and His burden is light!

Hosting the Holy Spirit
In light of the spiritual awakening happening at the International House of Prayer (check it out here), I have begun to read the book “Hosting the Holy Spirit”, written by twelve different authors including Ché Ahn, Lou Engle, John Arnott, Cindy Jacobs and several other ministers who have been blessed with visitations of the Spirit in their churches.  I really enjoyed the first chapter by John Arnott about valuing the anointing.  I must confess that since I had participated in a spiritual renewal when I was a teenager, that I somehow reached a place where I was taking the anointing and touches of the Spirit for granted and I would sometimes hold back from really entering in because I thought I had moved beyond that stuff.  I thought I would just sit back and observe and let others experience His anointing who perhaps hadn’t experienced it before.  Perhaps I thought I was too mature or didn’t really need it or made other excuses for not entering in.  But I want to value and honor the moving of the Spirit in our midst and have a hunger and desperation and realization of my need for more of Him.  I want to be open to receiving His touch any time, all the time, every time!

More of His Love
Along similar lines, I was watching the webstream of the IHOPU Student Awakening when one of their leaders David Sliker shared his testimony of what the Lord had done in him.  He shared about how he had made peace with his barrenness and become content with not having God’s touch on his heart.  He also shared about how in his attempt to put aside childishness, he had also put aside childlikeness and lost that innocent joy, but how God had restored to him the joy of his salvation.  As I was identifying with his testimony and praying about this, the worship team began to sing a prophetic song about receiving the love of God.  The Lord then began to speak to me about this, since I seem to struggle with asking Him for more of His love.  I’ve had really amazing experiences in the past where I’ve felt the love of my Bridegroom Jesus and my Father God, but I think I was believing a lie that I needed to live off of those experiences and that I should just be grateful for them and not ask for more.  But then I thought about my relationship with my earthly husband and how I need to know and feel his love for me on a daily basis, whether it’s through a word or action or touch, and he does not begrudge me those things and gladly shows me his love every day.  So why would Jesus be any different?  Does He not long to show me His love and want me to ask Him for more?  It’s simply doesn’t seem right for me to not feel the love of my eternal Bridegroom every day.  Not once a week, not once a month, not once a year – I cannot live on yesterday’s experience!  It would seem ridiculous for Joe to say to me that him telling me he loved me once a year was good enough, yet that’s the lie I was believing about God!  The same goes for the love of the Father – it would be terrible if Joe said to our kids that they should be content with feeling his love only every once and a while!  It’s the exact opposite – Joe really loves to show our kids how much he loves them and I believe it to be the same with our Heavenly Father.  So, while I may have known this to some extent already, it was still a new revelation for me and touched my heart in a way that I needed, which was awesome!

The Father’s Love
Along the lines of the Father’s love – lately our son Justice has become very affectionate, always asking for hugs, which is terribly sweet and cute!  But he has also started asking for hugs during mealtime when he is inevitably covered with food.  Of course, our instinct is to say to him that he needs to be cleaned up first before he can have a hug, but doesn’t that sound horrible?  What if God said to us that we needed to get cleaned up before He would show us His love?  What if the prodigal son’s father had made his son have a bath first before he was willing to embrace him?  I’m so glad the Father is not like that!!  Joe was a great father and let Justice give him a hug, getting food all over his own clothing as Justice patted his back.   I was a little more reluctant and cleaned him up first – lol.

Freedom From Self-Hatred
And one more testimony from what God has been doing in me as I’ve been watching the IHOPU Student Awakening webstream.  Last night, a girl was giving her testimony about how God set her free from self-hatred and rage that had come as a result of being molested as a little girl.  Now, they’ve had several ministry times regarding self-hatred in the last couple weeks, but I’ve been reluctant to engage my heart and have had walls up.  But finally, something broke and what she was sharing caused my defenses to fall as I recalled wounds from my own past.  Then Wes Hall, the person who was facilitating the meeting, had a word of knowledge about a wife who had never told her husband about what she was going through and I knew I needed to tell Joe some things and have him pray for me.  So, I shared with Joe about some things that happened when I was a pre-teen and early teen, where I felt violated by a man and objectified by my male peers.  These were things I had never told him and I don’t even know why I had kept them hidden, but it felt really good to get them out in the open.  We then prayed together and I felt the Lord touch my heart with revelation about how He feels about me and I broke off the the bondage of self-hatred and my agreement with the lies of the enemy regarding my appearance and my body.  One of the things the girl sharing her testimony had said that really touched me was when she said that she realized that her body had not been made for man, but for God.  This was totally freeing for me and I felt life in the revelation that my body had been made by God to be a bearer of His image and a vessel for His Spirit and that it doesn’t matter what people might think!  So, I feel like there was a breakthrough and that I received freedom and healing in this area – praise Jesus!

Weep Between the Porch and the Altar – Part 3

Welcome to the third and final part of this series! I would encourage you to read Part 1 and Part 2 to get the background and setup for this concluding piece. However, to briefly recap…

In Parts 1 & 2, we are introduced to the verse in Matthew 23 where Jesus says to the Pharisees, “upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” I then go on to explain the differences in opinion on which Zechariah Jesus is referring to and my reasoning behind choosing the Zechariah found in 2 Chronicles 24 who we find was stoned in the temple court. We then linked this with the verse in Joel 2 where the prophet sends forth a call to the priests to “weep between the temple porch and the altar” – the exact same location as Zechariah’s brutal murder. We see the strong connection between the sins of our forefathers and the need of the present generation to acknowledge, repent for, and turn from these sins.

For the Pharisees that Jesus was talking to, they honored the prophets of old whom their forefathers had killed, believing they would have acted differently had they lived in those times, not recognizing the darkness of their own hearts and the spirit of murder within them which would lead them to crucify Jesus. Yet Jesus promised them that they would be proven guilty and that the state of their hearts would be exposed as he sent them prophets and teachers whom they would persecute and kill, thus filling up the measure of the sin of their forefathers. This would seal their judgment for eternity and would occur in response to the cries coming from the blood of every righteous person slain. So how does this apply to us today?

I have found it quite significant that recently a billboard advertising campaign has been launched across Canada that is bringing attention to the issue of abortion in our nation, asking the question, “Have we gone too far?” AbortionInCanada.ca is putting this issue in front of our eyes, reminding us that we cannot ignore this injustice in our land, for currently the unborn have no protection from being aborted right up into the 9th month of gestation! According to AbortionInCanada.ca, “more than three million unborn babies have died from abortion since 1969, when abortion was first decriminalized in Canada”with the annual average being somewhere around 100,000 abortions. On Wikipedia’s article for Abortion in the United States, they quote the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as saying “there were 854,122 legal induced abortions in the US in 2003″. The Bound4Life website says that in the USA “an estimated 48 million babies have been aborted since 1973. Approximately 24% of all U.S. pregnancies end in abortion”.

Is it possible that the same thing Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees for is occurring today in North America? How many prophets, teachers, evangelists, worship leaders (or to sum it all up – prophetic messengers of all types) have been sent to us by the Lord to preach the message of Joel 2, “Return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning”? And how many of these messengers have been killed before they even saw the light of the sun or said one word? How many millions of aborted babies and aborted destinies are crying out for justice, even as Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, and are testifying against us in our perceived innocence? How can our generation think we are any different than our forefathers who condoned slavery and persecuted and killed out of racist hatred, when at our core we are just the same – maybe even worse – for on our hands is the blood of countless babies?

But if their blood is crying out for God’s just judgment to come to our land, what is our hope? Can we escape or lessen the judgment that is surely coming? Can we appeal to the heart of Jesus that longs to gather us under his wings, if only we were willing? As he said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37) Can we touch the heart of God who declares Himself to be “gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and [who] relents from sending calamity”? (Joel 2:13) I believe we can.

The message of Joel is for us today – both the church and unbelievers are being called to return to the Lord with all our hearts, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, to rend our hearts, to gather in solemn assemblies, consecrating and purifying our hearts (Joel 2:12-16). Yet we as the church are called specifically, as priests (for we are a “royal priesthood” – 1 Peter 2:9), to weep and mourn in the place of identifying with the sins of the shedding of innocent blood. Between the temple porch and the altar, where a prophetic messenger was slain, the priests were to cry out to God, “Spare your people!” (Joel 2:17) In the same way that Nehemiah wept, mourned and fasted on behalf of Israel, confessing the sins of his forefathers, his own generation and himself personally, appealing to God for mercy, we can stand in the breach between our nation and God’s wrath (Psalm 106:23).

While we may or may not be able to go directly to the location of the abortion clinics, we can go there in the spirit and operate in this priestly function, interceding for our nation and taking a stand for life. We can ask the Lord to give us the spirit of travail and to impact our hearts with this burden, that we would be able to weep and mourn with the heart of Jesus over these lost lives and destinies. For “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Romans 8:26). Even as Nehemiah was praying before the Lord day and night, this is the kind of response Jesus is looking for to the injustice in our land, for he said in Luke 18:7, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night?”

Some of you may have a feeling or know that this is something you are called to do full-time, to be a priest that ministers before the Lord in the temple – or in more modern-day terms, to function as an intercessory missionary in a house of prayer. This is just one of the ways God is raising up the prayer movement across the globe, but regardless of whether you are being called to this kind of role in a full-time capacity, we all have a responsibility to pray and be willing to be a voice on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. A simple way to start is to make the Bound4Life Covenant to Pray, Vote, and Obey.

1. PRAY – There is a simple 22-word prayer you can pray whenever the Lord brings this topic to your remembrance, or whenever you see the LIFE bracelet, should you choose to get one. The prayer goes like this: “Jesus, I plead Your blood over my sins and the sins of my nation. God, end abortion and send revival to [your nation]“.
2. VOTE – Covenant to vote for candidates that are actively pro-life. We cannot pray for abortion to end and promote those who support it.
3. OBEY – Covenant to obey God as He leads you into works of compassion and justice. We must always be willing to be the answer to our own prayers.

For me, this has become very personal lately, being pregnant with my first child, whom we have chosen to name Justice (you can read the story of how we chose this name here). It feels so real and there is such a conviction in my heart that this little one could be one of these prophetic messengers that the Lord is sending to my nation to call the people to return to Him. This has put such a resolve and a fight within my spirit to pray for the protection of the unborn from the spirit of this age that would seek to “kill, steal and destroy” (John 10:10) these precious lives. So will you join with me? Will you weep between the porch and the altar?

(For more resources on the issue of LIFE and ideas on how you can get involved through prayer in the courts of heaven or through action in the courts of the earth, check out some of the sites in the LIFE category on my Links page.

Relentless

For the last year, a small group of us have been studying the book of Song of Songs as part of our devotional lives, but also as a part of our worship team as we have been singing and praying the passages at our house of prayer. Believe it or not, it’s taken us a year just to make it to the end of chapter 2!! But we were never in any rush and have been quite content to linger on certain verses for several weeks, seeking to discover the depths of what they contain. Recently, we’ve been looking at Song of Songs 2:15 which says,

“Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.”

Essentially, this verse is describing the cry of the young woman, who represents the bride of Christ, for her bridegroom (Jesus) to come and help her rid her life of the “little” sins and compromises that are ruining the garden of her heart. Last week, I found myself being convicted on a couple areas in my own life and the Lord began to speak to me about this topic and I thought I’d share a glimpse with you into my journey.

It all started after getting the IHOP Immersed CD and Misty’s Relentless CD, starting with David Brymer’s song “You Will Not Relent”…

You will not relent
Until my righteousness shines forth like the dawn
You will not relent
Until you have a bride pure and white

I wanna know the yearnings of your heart
I wanna feel you burn for me
I wanna know the yearnings of your heart
And feel your jealous jealousy

And then Misty’s “You Won’t Relent”…

You won’t relent until you have it all
My heart is yours

I’ll set you as a seal upon my heart
As a seal upon my arm
For there is love that is a strong as death
Jealousy demanding as the grave
Many waters cannot quench this love

Then today I was reading an exerpt from Dana Candler’s book “Entirety” that one of my team members sent to us, and it totally coincided with what I was experiencing…

“It is the point on love’s journey where sincerity must meet severity and be converted into entirety…Jesus wants all of us and not just a part. He is jealous that we would not remain in the place of immaturity, though our hearts are sincere, but move into the fullness of love, where our love is entire.”

In Song of Songs 2:15, the young Shulammite woman is sincere in her cry to her Bridegroom to “catch the little foxes”, yet she is not to the place where she is willing to completely let go of her sin and compromise and accept his earlier invitation (Song of Songs 2:10) to follow him on the mountains (in Song of Songs 2:17 she tells him to go without her). I sometimes find myself in a similar situation where I am crying out for deliverance, yet at the same time, struggling to actually deal aggressively with the darkness in my heart, either because I am reluctant to let go of the pleasure of that sin or because I feel incapable of knowing how to rid my heart of it. The other deception is that they aren’t really that big of a deal – it’s tempting to make excuses that they’re not hurting anyone or to look to the world’s standards which would justify our actions, instead of looking to his holiness as the standard. There’s a verse that often convicts me in Hebrews 12:4…

“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

But as I listened to these two songs, I felt encouraged that even while I desire to be set free of these foxes, that His desire to set me free is even stronger. He is jealous to have my entire heart and will not relent or hold back until he has fully consumed me. He is the most persistent man and will not give up in his pursuit of my heart and his quest to form me into his perfect image. He is committed to my growth and maturity and is dedicated to completing the work he has begun in me.

Yet, I was struggling to find this comforting when I was in the midst of feeling him put his finger on certain areas! It felt like he was purposefully pushing my buttons in order to expose something within me that I really didn’t want to see. I was annoyed, frustrated and angry – it was painful and difficult! This was not how I imagined him answering my cry for rescuing! I desperately wanted to focus my anger on someone or something and blame them for the cause of my pain, yet I was being forced to recognize that my circumstances where not the source – it was him! Like it says in Hosea 6:1…

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”

He was both the cause and the solution. And yet I felt in the midst of it that I didn’t need to be ashamed, because he wasn’t exposing the little foxes in my heart out of anger with me or disappointment in me, it was because of his incredible, burning love for me that he was doing it. It’s his kindness and severity mixed together perfectly in order to produce the desired result in my heart, that my “sincerity…be converted to entirety”.

In the moment, I felt a little overwhelmed and discouraged by what I was seeing in me, and I wanted to try and cover it up again and pretend it wasn’t there. Yet I could feel his gentle and persistent encouragement to say, “Yes” to what he was doing and not turn him away. I also felt that even if I said “No” like the Shulammite and told him to turn and go on without me, that he would not give up on me. He is merciful and full of compassion for us in our weakness and struggle to rid our hearts of the little foxes and he will set us free, no matter how long it takes. He is patient and relentless. He is not discouraged by my weakness. In fact, when he does turn and leave to leap upon the mountains without me, he’s not abandoning me or leaving me to be ruined by the little foxes – it’s actually all part of his plan to capture my heart, for in his absence, I see how much I need and desire him (see Song of Songs 3:1-4).

I hope you will find this encouraging and challenge you to pray this same prayer – ask the Lord to set you free of the areas of sin and compromise that still remain in your heart and take courage that He will not give up until He has made your “righteousness shine forth like the dawn”.

The Great Canadian Wish List

The Great Canadian Wish List
CBC News has started a group on Facebook called “The Great Canadian Wish List” where anybody can make a wish for Canada, invite their friends to support it & then on July 1st, the top results will be reported about on CBC TV, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld and online at cbc.ca/wish.

Their hope is to provoke discussion and the free expression of ideas and they have certainly succeeded, as the debates and arguments abound regarding several issues such as abortion, gay marriage, our nation’s spiritual condition and saving the environment. It has also evolved into a sort of competition for the top 2 spots on the list – pro-life vs. pro-choice.

We Are Not Our Own
As I browsed the pro-choice group, I think I was most bothered by their main image which portrays a female icon with the phrases, “My Mind, My Body, My Choice“, for herein lies the greatest deception of them all. I happen to be reading the book “Body By God” by Dr. Ben Lerner, which is a book designed to help you improve your body and health by applying principles found in both science and the Bible. The very title itself is a clear statement about our body – it’s by God – designed, created, and shaped by Him (see Genesis 1 and Psalm 139). As Dr. Lerner puts it, “No person can make another. The body is not by man; the body is by God”. Yet he continues to go even further by saying, “Your body is not your own! Your body is not only by God, it is for God, and it is God’s.” In other words, “Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his…” (Psalm 100:3) or as Paul states it, “You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

This deception that our bodies are our own, when truly they are God’s, is a terrible and destructive line of thinking that has invaded our society’s paradigm, yet not only with our bodies – we think this way about everything. We think our possessions are ours, our money is ours, our time is ours, our mind is ours – yet the Bible also says that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” (Psalm 24:1) Yet we are primarily selfish creatures looking out for #1 – ourselves – with little regard to how our decisions affect others or how they line up with God’s ways. David Sliker, an author and intercessory missionary at the International House of Prayer recently wrote a post on this very topic of humanism on his blog where he quoted Psalm 2:1-3, which says “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. ‘Let us break their chains,’ they say, ‘and throw off their fetters.‘” David goes on to expound this text and what that will look like in the coming days…

The result of this concerted effort to reject God and His Son will be the apex of humanism itself, or the exalting of man and his capacities and capabilities in a manner that is seemingly able to effect his own salvation without the interference of biblical morality or the “restraint” of the law of God. In the minds of the sinful man, “salvation” means the achievement of Utopian ideals related to perfection in society and perfection in man himself.

In the world’s eyes, legalizing abortion and gay marriage are a signpost to our progressive thinking, open-mindedness, tolerance and our rise to perfection as mankind, while holding to the moral values and guidelines as laid out for us in scripture is to actually regress. Considering how God feels about these subjects is simply not a part of their rationale, for it is primarily about what they want and what they feel they have the “right” to do. Somewhere along the line we came up with this twisted idea that we have the “right” to choose what to do with the lives that were never ours to begin with. The very breath in our lungs comes from God and it is He who has every right to ask us to live our lives according to His ways. And His ways are not bondage, as the world perceives them to be! His commands are not chains to be broken off! His commands were given to bring us abundant life, freedom and joy beyond anything we could imagine for all of eternity! He is not an angry God trying to take away our “fun” or force us into slavery to Him – He is a loving God who put rules in place as boundaries to protect us and keep us in a close relationship with Himself, since sin is what separates us from Him.

What We Truly Need
But I digress, for I have still yet to reach my main point. I’ll have you know that I did join “The Great Canadian Wish List” group and I supported the wishes of “Abolish Abortion in Canada”, “Spiritual Revival in our Nation”, and “Restore the Traditional Definition of Marriage”. I would probably also support many other noble wishes to end poverty and disease or save the environment, but the problem with most of these is that we are looking to ourselves for the solution instead of looking to God. I will always stand for protecting unborn children, but the fact is, that even if abortion was made illegal in Canada, it might change the behavior of men and women and save the lives of many babies, yet their hearts would remain the same. I am all for the changing of legislation in our country, but more than this, I long for a change in the hearts in our country. What good is behavioral alteration if the hearts of people still scream in rebellion against God and His ways? If they still have no regard for God, then we have gained nothing, for their souls are still lost. So taking that into consideration, the greatest wish for Canada needs to be for spiritual revival and for the hearts of people to return to the Lord God with weeping and repentance, for He truly longs to show them compassion and loving-kindness instead of judgment. (Joel 2:12-13) God is also the only one capable of bringing eternal restoration to the earth and He is the only one who is capable of ruling the people of the earth with justice.

What is our Response?
Consequently, the response that is most needed by the body of Christ today is to call out for the return of Jesus to the earth and for Him to bring speedy justice in answer to our unceasing prayers. (Luke 18:7-8) Let us fast and weep and mourn and call solemn assemblies (Joel 2:12-17) to cry out on behalf of our nation and our world and fill the bowls of prayer in heaven. (Rev. 5:8) Let us see His kingdom come and His will done by interceding for revival, appealing to the courts of heaven to affect change in the courts of the earth. I know it seems weak and it feels weak to simply pray when it feels like we should be signing petitions and making phone calls to politicians and marching down the street with signs, but I am becoming more and more convinced that in the “weakness” of prayer there is greater strength than we could ever imagine. For what would take us decades to try and change in our own strength, God could come and do in a moment!

Turning & Resisting

Return to Me
There is a key portion of scripture in Joel 2 in which the Lord says, “…return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” The prophet continues on to say, “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity…Blow the trumpet in Zion, declare a holy fast, call a sacred assembly…” (vs. 12-17) There is far too much going on in this text to expound fully, but the basic message is that when there is sin in the land and coming judgment, the Lord calls His people to respond by fasting and praying in repentance and turning back to Him with their whole hearts. Only then is there hope that He may relent from His anger and perhaps release blessing instead.

Little Foxes
Yesterday I was listening to the webstream of the prayer room at IHOP where they are in the midst of a 40-day fast and Mike Bickle was leading the people there in a time of personal repentance and turning. It was very reminiscent of 2 Chronicles 7:14 which says, “…if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Mike encouraged each person to fix their thoughts on the Holy Spirit and submit to His leadership over their lives, asking Him to reveal any areas of sin that needed to be repented of and dealt with. He referenced Song of Songs 2:15, “Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards…” which is the bride crying out to Jesus, asking Him to help her remove the little sins that sneak in and ruin the garden of her heart. It’s not necessarily the obvious sins of murder, adultery, or theft that God is going after, but He wants to rid our hearts of the “little foxes”, the inconspicuous sins that we pass off as not being that bad – things like complaining, gossip, or pride. Then, once Holy Spirit had highlighted these things in our hearts, we were challenged to determine to not do those things again and turn from our sins, recognizing that we may very possibly fall into them again, but still making a firm decision to resist to the best of our ability.

Resisting Sin
So, as I listened, I was meditating on the passage in Joel 2 and speaking to the Lord & asking Him to show me what I needed to repent of and turn from in my life. I began to write down the things that He was showing me, yet none of them were really new to me – He has tried to confront me on these issues before, but I realized that instead of resisting the devil (James 4:7-10), I had been resisting the leadership of the Holy Spirit, not wanting to submit to His correction. I have knowingly been facing the same temptations over and over again, but usually giving into them instead of really fighting them, making excuses that I was too weak to resist them. And then, I was suddenly reminded of a verse that I had heard preached about – Hebrews 12:4 which says, “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Basically saying that I was not yet resisting to the point of allowing myself to feel the pain of turning from sin and putting to death the desires of my flesh. I don’t know why we think that killing our flesh won’t be painful or a struggle! In Joel 2:13 it also says to “Rend your heart” which means “to tear violently” – that definitely sounds painful! Yet I have definitely not yet resisted temptation to that point of pain or really fighting and saying “NO!” I’ve been more like a passive dog that rolls over onto it’s back as soon as another dog attacks it, completely surrendering to its opponent without a fight.

Jesus our Example
Yet, earlier in Hebrews 12 it is giving us the example of Jesus as inspiration for us, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus…who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame…Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” I need to fix my gaze on Jesus and how He truly resisted sin to the point of shedding His own blood for me so that I would not grow weary in my battle to do the same. His life and death are my example so that I will be able to “…throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…” (vs. 1-3)

Turn To God, Turn From Sin, Turn Away His Anger
Then, this morning I was reading Daniel 9, a great example of someone who was embracing the weakness of fasting and prayer and confession on behalf of himself and his nation, and again I saw the pattern of turning. In verse 3 Daniel says that he turned to the Lord God, which was then followed by the recognition for their need to turn from their sins in verse 13, culminating with the desired result that God would turn away His anger and wrath (vs. 16) and instead restore them in His great mercy (vs. 18). For us to turn individually is just the beginning – we need to cry out for a widespread turning so that He will have mercy on our nation of Canada, bring a revival of souls coming into His kingdom and a restoration of righteousness and holiness in our land.

He Deserves Better

The other day, I had been reading about how Jesus was our scapegoat and how He carried the weight of our sin for us. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but then later that night I rented a movie…

Now, I’m pretty sure that Holy Spirit prompted me to walk away and I think I knew that I shouldn’t have watched it – but I ignored His small voice and watched it anyway, naively hoping it would get better. Afterwards, I felt defiled and began to ask myself what the movie made me feel and why. There were several things in the movie that made me angry – the infidelity, the drug use, the condoning of sin – but when it came down to it, what angered me the most was the disregard of God. As I tried to express this, the thing that seemed to sum it up best was simply that “Jesus deserves better”.

As I confessed this, tears began to flow as I began to think again of how Jesus had become our scapegoat and how He had taken upon Himself all the sin that I had seen in that movie, and He had taken on all of my sin (including my disobedience that night). And love for Him began to well up in my heart as I had a revelation of how beautiful and amazing He was for doing that for me and for all of sinful mankind. It pained me to see the blatant disregard and rebellion against God in that movie because it was being done towards this God-man that I loved! Jesus, who I was beginning to know better and fall more in love with had been despised and scorned and it was like a sword piercing my heart.

Now if only I could feel this way all the time – if only I could remember the strength of emotion I felt when I said, “He deserves better” – how much would that change the way I live? Sadly, we are very forgetful creatures, and I continuously don’t live my life according to what He truly deserves for what He did for me on the cross. But I want to – and the more I read about Him, the more I discover who He is and how He feels about me, the more I believe that it is going to radically transform me.