Back in the day, the men would leave home and their families to go out and fight for their country. Now they are absent from their families but they are no longer fighting for anything either.
There seems to be generations of men who have not been drafted for any fight and neither are they at home building a safe place for their children. They are AWOL.
Men- the fight is still on- it is just different. There is a continual fight always coming against family, against marriage, against integrity, against Truth… It may not be a fight against flesh and blood, but the fight against powers of darkness and evil spirits is always on. You have been drafted.
You have been built for war. Be courageous and fight.
Stay at home. Build your family. Be faithful. Fight for your wife. Fight for your children’s future. Fight for men. Fight for women. Fight for Truth.
And remember, men fight alongside each other, not alone. Find your comrades and brothers in arms.
This week I’ve been praying about our current situation of the virus, as with most of the rest of the world. As I was praying, I was also praying against the pandemic of the fear virus too that has also come swarming amongst people. Then, as I was praying about the vaccine, I started to declare that we can actually use this time itself to be our vaccine against fear!
So the good news- if you’ve caught ‘fear’ recently (or anytime), you can now declare yourself being vaccinated from it!! You can declare over yourself that you’ve had your time of it being injected into your system and now you are immune. Now, it can’t touch you! Now, you are ready to go to the places of fear and be ‘safe’ and ‘protected’! You can now look fear in the face and be undisturbed.
Fear is a mental state of mind. It is real. But so is Good News. So is Life, and Love, and purpose. There is SO much more beyond fear. Don’t walk away when you’re so close. Don’t be intimidated by fear. Loud is not strong. It is mainly an echo that makes it so loud. It is in the void and emptiness that gives it the resounding voice.
Get up! Speak to the fear (or just ignore it!) and move into what lies beyond! You will break new ground which has been too long protected by the dogs and demons of fear barking and scaring people away. You were born for so much more. Rise up and fight for what is destined for you to win. This is more than about you and your life. It is for your legacy. For the generations to come. For your community and nation…
You were born for such a time as this đ Fearless, fierce, and free!
Being made in the image of God- Jehovah Rapha- the God who heals, we have amazing bodies that know how to fight against viruses and illness, and that can heal themselves. It is so amazing to see the in-built healing process of a cut on our skin, or how we can build our immune through contracting a bug..
When we feel down and like our systems are being attacked with a bug or virus, we need to remember that this is the time when our bodies are working the hardest to fight everything that does not belong. It reminds me that when we are weak, then we are strong. This doesn’t make sense to our brains. But our bodies are a witness to this.
When a “virus” in the form of fear or depression or a physical condition, this is when we come into attack mode. Where we need to enhance our focus of fight. Just as our bodies come against a bug in our system- it can make us feel weak, but this is making sure that we can rest while our bodies are given full focus to attack the bug/virus. Sometimes, when we feel under spiritual attack, we must bring our spirits into fight mode but from a place of rest..
Kingdom principles will always seem the opposite of what we would do by default or human understanding, but if we submit ourselves under the Highest Authority of Life, then we can be sure that we are on the best pathway for our lives.
Recently me and a friend were praying for the restoration of all that the enemy has stolen- the lost years of darkness in lives, health issues, etc. That whatever the enemy has taken needs to be reimbursed back with added interest- like God restoring to Job all that had been taken from him, or Zacchaeus who promised to give interest on anything he had taken in excess when he came into contact with the kindness of Jesus. That we go into battle to take back the “wives and children” and everything else that was taken like David. It was like I could feel the sword being drawn with absolute no messing. Furious anger at the theft- whether it’s blatant or subtle.
Anyway, the following morning from that prayer-time I woke to find I had 12 emails from Netflix with repayments from the last year. A few weeks before, my netflix account had been taken over and when I’d tried to sort it out, had then had dollars taken from my account! I’d emailed paypal but they said it was authorised, even though it was totally dodgy! So I hit a dead end there feeling powerless. So when I got all these emails of refund I was surprised! I’d only unauthorised the dollar payment but had all of last year repaid back to me too! Obviously these payments weren’t what I was praying for or had any space in my mind during praying for restoration and reimbursement, but it was a great and gorgeous blessing from God to show that He is the God who pays back, not only the dodgy blagging of theft, but actually more than we go in for đ
So may I encourage you to go to war for what has been taken from you, or your neighbourhood, family, health, mind, whatever.. and all the lives that have been shrouded in darkness and pain and for us to declare the war-cry of NO MORE!! We go to war to retrieve all the enemy has taken. All the laughter, hope, talents, childhoods.. We declare that God is able to restore and that everything lost will be paid back fully and then some..
A word that I have been praying over a friend in deep darkness is the testimony of Peter being in prison and being jolted awake by an angel to escape.. At church this evening this word was brought up, with so many testimonies of “suddenly’s”. Last week was a deep weeping that people don’t even realise the darkness that they are in. But God is able to send angels to jolt them awake and bring them out of their prison. I love that. That after 53 years of darkness, we can have a “sudden” jolt of awakening to release prisoners to Freedom. I heard a preacher say that God takes His time to rush to us. So my prayer is so much that we would have “jolts” and “sudden” awakenings in the ones we are praying for and in the neighbourhood. May God give us a major gift of faith to speak of His promises and future, and then wrap up our excess faith to gift on to others, and for us to keep the warfare of Hope and Freedom alive within us.
Another lesson from the refund from netflix is also that it didn’t reach my bank account straight away. There was a time of “transfer” and so may we hold onto our hope during a possible “transfer time”. It is DONE but we must pray against hindrance and delay for the transfer from Heaven to earth. May we be ready as God answers our prayer-cries.
As I am free from my last season of crippled joy, I have
spent some time thinking and reflecting over how the season was so full of
joylessness and dying within.
When I was still working as a support worker, I felt a drop into my spirit to remind me the position as administrator at church becoming available, and also a seed of thought of living by faith. This wasnât about money the living by faith, but I didnât really know what either of it meant (or didnât want to know!) and so I responded to God that I would pop it on the shelf and He can grow what He wants, but I wouldnât be pursuing this as I loved my support job.
Then a couple of months later I went to Hillsongâs Colour Conference in which the word I felt God gave me from there was âprepare a way for God in the wildernessâ. Encouraging eh?! And then a couple of months later I met an old friend and ended up compromising my witness and personal integrity as well as confusing my heart with a totally unacceptable and off the road lot of decisions. From this I decided that my life needed a new challenge as support working was too much in my comfort zone and perhaps the reason for my bad decision making of friendship gone mad. So I applied for the administrator and got appointed.
As my body struggles with being inside all day and working with people who I never get beyond the surface with, and as I am not moving from my desk all day, the crazy lack of blood flow was causing a sense of lowness, frustration and screaming inside of my being.
One morning God reminds me that David fought a different way to his brothers who had been trained soldiers and that God is not needing us to fight the same as what is expected. This was nice, and I appreciated the message. However, I didnât realise that this was my armour for the season coming up.. It was like a word that I hung on my wall rather than over my mind. Little did I know that after the word had been given for my encouragement (and armour), I would be in war. People felt they were helpful in telling me how the previous administrator was better at the job etc and my mind also turned against me and I allowed lies to be planted and grew them into a whole twisted garden of mental craziness, lowness, and a dying inside.
Some time later my pastor told me that I was needing passion for my job. I had been praying for this the whole time of being there but felt God was totally ignoring me. It was only during a big brother âcounselling sessionâ that God showed me that He had given me a crazy load of passion but rather than it being for admin, it was for the community- and the job was the vehicle to get me into the area. This totally revitalised my spirit! God showed me that He had answered my prayer but just not in the way I had expected. I love Him for this! When I got to work, I told pastor this and was so chuffed, but all he said was that this isnât what he wanted to hear! As soon as I heard this, I felt like my whole system slip right back down on a mudslide into the pit again. After this I could hardly lift the head of my spirit. (Just to mention, I love my pastor and he only wanted the best for me.)
After that the year, and pretty much the rest of my time
there, my spirit felt in zombie mode. My
body moved but there was no life within.
I felt like the walking dead, or walking âgoneâ as I did not feel
present. I was gone.
Since leaving this job (on good terms and in God’s timing) and looked back and thought about my time there, God has shown me what I was too blind and dead to see while I was still there- that what He had told me for my âencouragementâ was actually for my warfare. That it is what He says that counts and has authority, not anyone else, as well meaning as they may be (or not). That this is what it means to fear God over man. To value what He says over what man says. To respect and believe and rest in His Truth, rather than anything else spoken, felt, or heard.
I realise now that had I worn the armour that God had given me in my placement there, and used His authority as my weapon for warfare, then I would have been in alignment with Peace. I always knew I was supposed to be there, but as I wasnât fighting the lies, or wearing my armour, I was easy meat for the enemy to take and keep me down.
Listening to a preach, Bill Johnson describes totally my
situation of this misalignment:
âThe fear of man separates us from our nature of courage in
Christ. It is inferior and has us
operate outside of God. If we operate
outside of the Lordship of Jesus then a sensitive heart towards God and His
will, and the people around, will- being outside of the Lordship of Jesus-
become cowardly, easily intimidated, someone who withdraws from the grace that
God has given them. The same gift of a
sensitive spirit under the Lordship of Christ, will become something totally
twisted outside of the Lordship of Christ, and will cause a withdrawal.â
After three âgoneâ years, I felt God finally bring release (yay!) and say âeveryone into positionâ. He has called me into the unknown (to me, but not Him) and is teaching me of His faithfulness and, I believe, positioning all of us as His Church to be ready.
In closing, I pray that you would know your position, not only in Christ and His Kingdom, but also in your assignment here. And that you would use every word of God to establish and declare Truth over your life and the world you live in. May you arm yourself better than how I did, and so thrive in your current position. And may you honour God and hold His Word higher than your boss, doctor, friend, or enemy.
Ecclesiastes
8:12– But even though a person sins a hundred times and still
lives a long time, I know that those who fear God will
be better off.
If we donât know what battle we are supposed to be fighting
then we will most likely exhaust ourselves of energy from fighting
unnecessarily, and miss our part in where God does want us to fight.
As people, we can be taken off course by our own, and
others, expectations of ourselves and feel like we need to fight where and how
that it is expected. However, we need to
know the battle that God has for us, and also how to fight it. How God calls and trains one is not how He
calls and trains another. David couldnât
fight with the weapons or wear the armour that his soldier brothers had.
We need to release ourselves, and others, to âwearâ God and
fight in the way that God has trained us (and each other). Each training different from the other; from
lions and bears, to army training.
ponderments 