Dependency on our God

This is the 3rd post and the 3rd letter in the acronym the Lord gave us for our Further in Faith Fellowship retreat last week. The Spirit called a few of us into the peace and quiet of our backyard forest where my home is located to have a meeting with Him. This is the Study He gave on the subject of Prayer.

"A" stands for acknowledge our dependency.

We have been through the praise of preparation to enter into the Holy Place of meeting with our God. We have seen a different side of repentance and taken our humble place before His Throne on our knees...Today we will consider and acknowledge our dependency upon our Sovereign and Almighty God.

When we got saved, we received the Holy Spirit. When we were "born again" the process was completed in an instant. Christianity is not just a mental or emotional exercise. Jesus did not come to introduce us to a new set of laws and rules for sin management. Yet many think that this is what Christianity is all about.

Christianity is the full blown possession by another. We always think of "possession" as being demonic because Satan has stolen and counterfeited God's plan for our unity with Himself.

It was God's plan and when Jesus said, in John 14:18, "I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you", this is what He meant. He was leaving physically but was going to send another counselor. He said we would "know" Him for He lives with us and will be in us; this is the unity (potential) that a believer lives in. Jesus said, "I am in the Father, and you are in Me and I am in you". He goes on to say that the Holy Spirit will lead us into all Truth and will teach us all things.

We were never meant to be independent. It was always God's plan and His Will that we be dependent on Him. The idea that we get saved and then float around here on earth aimlessly looking for good deeds to do without a dependent relationship on our God is a lie.

Jesus likened Himself to a vine and us to the branches. We must remain in vital connection and dependency on the "vine" He even said, "apart from Me you can do nothing". Over and over the reality of our "designed " dependency is spoken.

Remember the call is to "pray without ceasing". There are struggles we all face most of the time and we need God's wisdom to deal with them all of the time. The closer we move to the heart of God in our love relationship, the more we will delight in Him and the more we will learn to say, "Thy Kindgom come Thy Will be done" on this earth, here and now, as it is in Heaven.

The Holy Spirit within is the 3rd person of the Majestic Trinity. He is God and yet dwells within us. His presence assures us that whatever God's Will for us happens to be, we are able to accomplish it, not by our own strength or power or might, but by the Holy Spirit's power and even His righteousness as He dwells within out hearts.

When we finally get to the end of ourselves, and say "I can't",the Holy Spirit says, "I Will". But the reverse is also true. When we say, "I will" (as from pride or self-reliance), He says, "OK, give it your best shot, but if you will, I won't". The point is when we try to power through our way, who's glory are we seeking?

This is not an excuse for inaction, but rather the necessary posture for unity. It is continuous dependency. Just like God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit work in harmony with each other, we join them in privilege as part of the "team" in the execution of the Father's Will.

In our acknowledged dependency, God is glorified. God is revealed and by the successful execution of His Will, He is glorified and we are blessed. I have a dear friend who mentored me in this acknowledged dependency on the Holy Spirit.

In her life of ministry she recently went to a 3rd world country. When she arrived, she got a "Word" from the Holy Spirit that the mission had changed and she was called to use her primary gifting of "deliverance'. There were so many people in bondage and "demon" possessed that she ended up teaching and instructing in Biblical deliverance and spiritual warfare.

During the deliverance of one woman who had a small baby, the Lord spoke to her and told her the woman was going to throw her baby. She was told to get ready, so she passed the word to a fellow worker who got in position to catch the child. The woman did, the worker did and what would have been a horrible tragedy was averted because she was listening to the Holy Spirit.

When dealing with the enemy and God's will or the life decisions we must make each day, we must understand that the Lord knows all things. He knows the enemy's strategy, and the end from the beginning and just as Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, the Holy One within will teach us how to do the same and show us the pathway of His Will.

We are going to stop here, for you to look within for the Holy One. If you are saved He is there. This may be your time to get aquainted with His voice. Invite Him to reveal and manifest Himself, then look for him and listen for His voice.

If you already know Him, Praise Him for His powerful Presence. Celebrate that you are His servant and that He is always within to guide you, comfort you, heal you and help you no matter what life brings. You are safe and secure because He will never leave you nor forsake you.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

What is Repentance?

This is a continuation of the study on prayer the Lord gave for our "Further in Faith Fellowship" retreat. Further in Faith Fellowship has been formed to facilitate a deeper Faith walk for all who desire to grow and want to be challenged by like-minded people.

The Lord gave me an acronym to follow for this study on prayer. This is the 2nd letter in the word,PRAYER.... "R"

"R" stands for repentance.

We all know that the overall definition of repentance is "to be sorry". Guilt and condemnation will bring us to a place of repentance. Sin is a human condition and we all experience the weight of it. As the saved, our first encounter with our Holy God is in repentance.

Acknowledging our sinful state, we come to the cross where our Savior died in our place and paid the price for our sin as an individual.

Being sorry for our sin is only half of what true repentance is all about. True repentance is "to feel such regret over an action or intention so as to change one's mind."

This is a critical part of repentance and I truly believe that our ignorance of this side of repentance is why we live such defeated lives and with a breech in our intimate love relationship with our Lord.

Once we have been saved, it has been said that our sins are forgiven, past present and future. So is repentance just a onetime action or state of mind to lead us to God's forgiveness and once saved, it's all over?

The Lord showed me something very interesting a little while ago. I was studying the book of Amos. I am relating to a lot of the warnings that God has given throughout His Word through the Prophets of old.

As I was reading in the book of Amos, there was a judgment about to be executed against not only Israel's enemies but upon Israel herself. God was at the end of His patience with the rebellion and disobedience of His people. He had warned them and called to them, but they were willful and chose to ignore the ones He had sent to teach them and even those He sent to warn them.

Amos was a shepherd, not a professional prophet. He was sent by God. As he was getting the message from God about what Holiness was about to do, in the form of visions, Amos was in extreme distress at what he "saw". He cried out to God, almost in protest, and he begged God to stop what He was about to do as seen through those visions of the future. And then, scripture, in the King James Version says, "God repented" for what He was about to do.

This blew my circuits. God is not nor would He ever be "guilty" of anything. His is the standard of all Holiness and Righteousness, so why would the Holy Scriptures say "God repented" except that the word repentance has another side to it than the one we most often think about as it relates to us.

To repent is to change one's course of intended action

It is important in our love relationship to get past the limited definition of repentance that stops at being sorry. To be sorry with no intention or plan for changing direction is very dangerous. We can see from scripture that God ran out of patience with the nations of Israel who would repent when the heat was on but then return to the same violations over and over again.

I think of the people who go to "confession" only because this is a visual we can relate to. Confession is not repentance. And repentance is a lot more than saying a few "Hail Mary's", doing some pertinence, making promises to "never do that again".

Not only do we lack the power in and of ourselves to change but this is, to me, a sad example of "cheap grace" which is a whole other study.

The importance of this side of repentance is this:

There may be things we are doing, thinking, pursuing that do not produce guilt. We may be moving in a direction that is at "cross purpose" with God's plan and purpose in our lives. We may think that if we are not in "sin" as we define "sin" then we are OK and there is no need to change course.

In this place of repentance, we bow in humble confession of our known guilt and sin, but now, we should also, cry out that the Lord show us where we are at cross purpose with His Will. Many are trying to serve God their own way..not His way. Here is where we need to get lined up with God's plan and His purpose. "For not everyone who says to Me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only he who does the Will of My Father." ****while this refers to people who would try to access God through a way other than through Jesus Christ, who is the ONLY way to the Father, still the point is to turn away from that which is at cross purpose with God's Will in any situation.

God will speak to us. If we put ourselves in His Presence and at His feet, He will speak. I have found that God has an opinion about everything.

In this place of repentance, we become open to His thoughts, His directive, His Will because this is where surrender begins.

Practicing the lesson is part of the training in Righteousness, so we will stop here and find a place to transact our business with God. Confess what needs confession, express regrets for what conviction the Holy One brings and receive His forgiveness. But then, ask the Lord to show you where you might need to change your direction to line up with His Will. Write down what God tells you, what you might be hearing Him say to you.

In the Lord's prayer, we were taught to pray, "Thy Kingdom come Thy Will be done on earth as it is (being done )in Heaven.

My flesh is stubborn which is why I pray, "Oh Abba, rule the mule". God is merciful and gracious and gentle with His child. I personally prefer to be in bent knee position, but sometime I sprawl out face down like King David who fell prostrate before the Lord. Find your own "position" that seems right to you...but do what He is asking of you.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

Prepare to Pray

The Spirit is calling each one of us to go further in faith. Prayer is our end of the Sacred Romance between us and our Creator God. Prayer is the unbroken communication and fellowship with the One who calls us unto Himself. We are to pray without ceasing; to stay in constant contact and endless conversation with our Beloved.

This is the beginning letter in the acronym God gave us for our women's day retreat outside my home in the forest. PRAYER is the acronym and...

"P" is for preparation

How do we prepare to pray? As we are to pray without ceasing what is our constant frame of mind to be? First and foremost to prepare is to remember who God is.

God is Creator of the Universe and all things in it. We have to get outside ourselves and our little world in order to truly see God.

God is absolute authority...He is Sovereign. There is no one greater, no one more powerful, no one beyond or beside our amazing and Sovereign God. He knows the end from the beginning and is all wisdom.

God is almighty, all powerful, all knowing, ever present.

God is perfect, above reproach, beyond our judgment, flawless and never makes mistakes.

God is eternal, always has been, always will be throughout all the generations of men and beyond.

God is Majestic, high above the common place. He is grand, stately and glorious. Words simply cannot describe His Being.

God is protector and provider. No circumstance is beyond His resolution. No enemy is more terrifying than our fierce protector.

God is Holy. One definition of Holy that I really like is: sound (as in of sound mind), happy, whole.

God is our "Abba" meaning "daddy". He is personal, loving, kind, and the One who knows every cell in our body and every hair on our head.

God is our Savior, having paid the ultimate price for our sin to insure our eternity with Himself.

God is the Holy Spirit of all Truth.

As we "prepare" to pray, let's all just stand in awe of Him and call out to the God of the Universe in our own way, declaring who you see that He is. Prayer is personal and the words that describe Him are personal to each one of us.

Prepare to enter into His presence by declaring your praises to Him for who He is. Forget about who is around you...or what they might think...We are here (in the forest) to meet up with our Glorious God. So stand, reach out to Him, look up, past the trees and just let your voice call out to Him in praise for who He is. Our Abba hears our cry amid the cries of all His children. He knows our individual voices...

Remember that our God is 3 in One....The Trinity...Praise all three...God, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit.

Honor Him with your praise and worship. Let all the cares of the world grow dim, take your time....you are on Holy ground.


Now that we have cried out to our Sovereign and almighty yet personal God, in continuing preparation, we must remember and declare who we are. For this we will kneel before our Maker in humble confession of our desperate need. We are the created, we are the weak, we are the needy, we are desperate. We are "Eve"in the garden who was deceived and we are the one who Christ died to save.

This is not time for repentance but rather to acknowledge our position with respect to our relationship with our Holy God. God gives grace to the humble and here is where there can be no pretense because our Abba father knows every cell, every hair, every thought we have. Here we kneel in humble reality that we are dependent on our Creator God for our next heartbeat and our next breath.

There is nothing wrong with being dependent, in actuality we are designed to be this way. To be proud and independent is to be tweaked out of our original shape. On our knees before our King and our God is how we are designed to be. We come into His presence with gratitude and a thankful heart. If your knees cannot handle this position, put your mind to work and use your imagination...bow your head and mentally kneel before your King.

Let's spend some time at the feet of our Lord in preparation. Talk to Him and declare who you know yourself to be.

The Spirit is calling. can you hear Him?

Is This The End of Days?

It has been a long time since my last blog. The Spirit has not been silent but rather, on the contrary, He has been giving me the information I needed in order to fulfill an assignment in service to my Lord Jesus Christ.

Together with one of my daughters, I was given a vision of a woman's day retreat to be held outside in the forest where I live. The preparation has been intense and typically whenever I have been given a lesson to teach or share, first I must live the lesson. It must become a reality to me or I cannot export it. I must live it or I cannot lead it.

The last weeks have been just that. The Spirit has called me to receive, glean, and apply what I have been given. I am now able to blog what I have been taught and what was shared at the "Further in Faith Fellowship", a ministry that I am now a part of. The next days of this blog will follow the teaching I was given by the Spirit to share with the women and you.

Further in Faith Fellowship Women's Retreat 10-23-2010

As we look around us there is no denying that this is end times, end of days, last curtain call, shop about to close. However you look at it, the end of all things is drawing near. One of the most telling fact of end times is that man has no answers for what is happening. We hear of wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and floods in various places.

I come from California and I have felt earthquakes. I don't know about you but earthquakes are pretty scary to me. We lose our footing, the bottom drops out from under us, the earth and everything shakes down during an earthquake. I never lived through a flood but I can only imagine the helplessness one must feel. The one good thing about living through an earthquake or a flood is that it helps us to decide what is important. We grab our family and head for a safe place.

Forget trying to save the sofa,all the stuff that seems so important the minute before an earthquake or flood is forgotten as we huddle together and cling onto each other.

There are different kinds of earthquakes or floods that shake us down. Some are physical, some are emotional, some are financial, some are relational. One thing they all have in common is, once they hit us, we figure out what is most important.

Jesus spoke about the end of days in Matt 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21.

In Matt 24, Jesus says, "No one knows the day or the hour not even the angels in Heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. He went on to say that, just like the days of Noah before the flood, people would be going about the business of living: eating, drinking, marrying."

Back then no one knew what was about to happen, except one man named Noah. Noah was listening to God. Noah was in lifestyle obedience and was saved during the flood that wiped out every living person except him and his family.

Gen 6:9-22 is the account of Noah. Notice that in 6:13, God SAID to Noah....and then He proceeded to give Noah important directives that Noah heard and obeyed. In the end Noah was saved from the destruction that God ordered due to the corruption of people on earth. If Noah had not been listening, or if Noah had not taken God's directives to heart or ignored them, he would have been swept away like everyone else. But Gen 6:22 says, "and Noah did as God commanded". Noah was in a relationship with God.

The study I have been given by the Lord to share with you is on the subject of prayer. Prayer is so much more than just asking for things. Prayer is God's call to relationship.

When Paul says that we are to pray without ceasing, it's hard to imagine how to do that unless you understand that prayer is our end of the love relationship with our Creator God who we call our Heavenly Father.

To pray without ceasing is to remain in constant contact with the One who created us for fellowship with Himself. To pray without ceasing is to communicate in endless conversation with our Beloved. On earth we stay in constant contact with those we love. When they are gone from our sight, we text, we call, we e-mail, we figure out ways to keep in constant relationship. This is what prayer should be.

The Lord has given us an acronym to follow with each letter representing an important facet of prayer, made easier to remember. He wants us to focus on the bullet points.

"P" stands for preparation

"R" stands for repentance

"A" stands for acknowledge our dependency

"Y" stands for yield His Will AND His Ways

"E" stands for expect answers

"R" stands for ready to serve

Over the next week I will post to this blog the details of what the Spirit has shown me in each of these categories that is in His heart for His people. I was amazed to hear from Him and realize how much more depth of relationship and victorious living is available for all of us through what He has shown. I pray you will read this and then take the time to just get away with Him and let Him speak to you heart.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?