To His Majesty

Overcoming means to see a circumstance or situation the way God sees it.  Often that means getting yourself into a mindset that helps you to see it his way.  Thanksgiving and then  praise are the main way to do that, but also we need to constantly make faith statements to unload the bad self-talk that we often have going on in our heads.   I got the following off of an mp3 from larry randolph called words of intent……..repeat the following statements:

I will stop maximizing the negative circumstances in my life.
I will stop worrying about yesterday and tomorrow
I will stop blaming myself when something bad happens
I will stop anticipating the worst
I will stop thinking my life is a disaster
I will stop living as though I am a total failure
I will stop stressing out about my health and well being
I will stop dwelling on my failures and shortcomings
I will stop scrutinizing my performance
I will stop believing my life is limited to negative circumstances
I will stop self-sabotaging my potential in Christ.
I will stop undermining my identity with unbelief

I will start declaring  I am a unique reflection of God
I will start confessing that I am a one of a kind creation
I will start believing I am extraordinarily gifted
I will begin to announce I am strong in God
I will start to proclaim I am the righteousness of Christ
I will start acting like I am loved by God
I will start pronouncing that I have favor with God
I will start expressing that I will overcome all negativity in my life
I will start saying that I will lead a triumphant life
I will start confessing that I am prosperous and successful
I will start emphasizing that I am more than capable
I will start speaking out that I am created for greatness
I will start professing that I will fulfill my ultimate destiny

Rom 8:37;Phil 4:13, 2 Cor 5:21, Gal 4:22, 2 cor 2:14, Jn 1:12, 3rd jn 1:12, heb 1:19, Neh 8:2

Our destiny and work is to abide in Christ, and we do that by bringing our lives into agreement with the heart, the will and the mind of the Father for us. But the enemy tries to subvert our lives onto secondary aims through three areas of false agreement. If the enemy can succeed, we will become like Samson–blind, with no hair(no covenant or anointing) and going around in circles in the machinery of the enemy. These areas are identified in the Temptation of Jesus Christ: In each of these areas, Satan is offering Jesus a shortcut to fulfill the Father’s purpose in his own way. But in so doing it is at the cost of His relationship and service to His Father.

1. Usefulness(My value through my body). “If you are the son of God command these stones to become bread.” The enemy attempts to get us to value ourselves by how useful we are to others. A person who is trapped by this snare is one that is constantly busy and has no time for rest. There is a sense that if you just sit there you are wasting time and your life because your value system is based what you have that other people might want or need or might help them. The Lord never wants your value to be there because you rule out a lot of the things that the Lord does that seem Useless on the surface but in reality are more useful and beneficial because God’s viewpoint is better than ours(Noah for example)…..who are we to decide what is useful and what isn’t given our limited viewpoint. Jesus response is that “man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.” Meaning…..only God knows what is truly useful……if a man gains the whole world and loses his soul, what has it profited him?

2. Significance(My value through my mind). Satan then takes him up high on top of the temple. He tells him to throw himself down in front of all of the pharisees, saducees and priests and demonstrate his power in front of them to prove who he is. Why? To prove that he is significant and that he is somebody(Saul is an example of this). Once again he is trying to turn Jesus’ value to being significant in the eyes of the people. The lure of significance has people doing all sorts of good things, but for the wrong motivation…..to prove that you are valuable in their eyes you will try to make yourself something that you are not and you put up a false front and a false reality and are not genuine being who God says you are in HIS sight. Jesus says, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” That means to twist God’s justice, or to twist the process of God’s order in your life. In other words…..Jesus is in a process of discovery and relationship with his father in this life. If he uses his gifting to shortcut the process, he loses more in taking the shortcut then in going through the trial and being faithful and growing deeper in love of the Father and of other people. When I try to prove my self to people, I am trying to get out of the process of grace that God has me in. God wants my value to be from him so that the outflow of my life is a representation of Heaven to people. When I focus on people, I mis-represent me and I mis-represent him and I cost people the love of the Father through my life in order to gain a position or attention prematurely.

3. Success(My value through my will). Satan then shows him all the kingdoms of the world. He says if you will worship me……that means judiciously compromise with my order and with the kingdoms way of doing things and you will get your aims through working the system. The Lure of temporal success causes us to compromise our message from the Father and pollute it with the message of the world for the purpose of a temporary position among men. The only thing that changes men is the incoming of the life of the Father in Heaven into their lives…….but I mortgage that for an earthly position. Jesus responds by saying that you will worship and serve the Lord your God alone. The only true success is obeying the Father……and such things are the only things that have lasting value. This does not mean that God does not place people IN the system…..but while they are IN the system their aims and goals are to be to worship God and serve God’s aims in the system and place they are in(Joseph is a good example of this).

ONLY the incoming of the life of Christ into their lives changes men……my gifting, my skills, my ability to work the system profits nothing. Many of God’s most effective enterprises at the time look neither useful, nor significant, nor successful and that is why God chooses them, because it is who they exhibit that matters. Success, significance and usefulness are not bad things…….but when they become the center or the driving force instead of the word of the Lord, the process of the Lord and the Worship of the Lord, then we have moved into an area where we are going to be more in agreement with the enemy than the Lord. The Will of God is often murdered at the hands of a noble pursuit. Our noble ideas of ourselves and what we must do as Christians often Gets in the way of What Christ is really after, because Jesus plans often look neither noble, nor sensible…..and He does that to find out where our value is……in HIM or in other things? Thank God he loves me so much to put me in that place.

So on tuesday I walked over to my sister’s house to visit and when I got into the door she had quilt squares laid out on the floor to make a quilt………I knew what was expected of me.  We had been doing this for a while now.  She would lay out the quilt squares and I would try to arrange them in some sort of way to make a pattern out of it.  I was quite good at it, given both my analytical and creative abilities.  But this particular situation would be different.

This particular quilt was different.  Some of the squares were full squares, like 8 inches by 8 inches.  Others were 4 inches by 8 inches….a half square.  Still others were 2 inches by 8 inches………….

They were all different colors…….various shades of yellow, various shades of red, various shades of blue………..no one color dominating.  She had arranged the squares so that they alternated between full squares and short squares, in no particularly consistent order……only so that the blanked made a perfect square as a whole.

There’s nothing wrong in this……in fact I love it when people take risks and try anything new……after all, how are you going to learn anything if you don’t try anything?  This was the heart of the matter.  So I thought to myself “this is going to be a challenge….” and got to work.

An hour and a half later I finally gave up……..beaten by a quilt.

There just was no discernible pattern.  There were either not enough of one color to go around, or the alternating of the short and long squares kept getting in the way of any good pattern I could come up with.  Now I am stubborn…….and I’ll keep trying to do something long after I should be working at it……even to my  own hurt………and I pride my ability to analyze a situation and to know what is going on just by looking at it from a distance.  In school it was life or death on my ability to recognize what was going on a long way off so I could stay out of trouble.

But I just couldn’t figure this one out………it got the better of me…..so my sister suggested I should go out with her to Denny’s.  So I agreed.  When we got there I was talking about a Graham Cooke tape where he said that I should ask the Lord what He wants to give me and then ask Him for it.  When I asked the Lord what He wanted to give me, He said “I want you to be at peace with who you are.”  And we talked about that.

Suddenly, about half way through the conversation, I had a revelation:  That quilt was me.  I have always been bothered by my inability to define myself.  The fact that I am not quite one thing, nor quite another…….some of one thing, but not enough………some of another thing………but not too much.  I am like a patchwork quilt that God made me into……..and He made me that way on purpose……..for something.

I feel like Noah, who was made to do something nobody had ever done before…..so his mindset, his abilities and his ways were not like the other people of his generation.  In the civilization that he was a part of I often wonder if He felt what he was doing was a waste of time or useless…….I am sure it looked pretty useless and his family probably thought at times that he should apply himself to a real job and a real destiny…….after all, what good can come of this stupid structure he was building.

Noah was an odd man out and a strange personality, doing something totally useless in the society he was in.  He was not understood and laughed at, and even those he loved didn’t get him.  He was like that patchwork quilt………he probably didn’t understand what he was made for…….but he knew what God had put in front of him and he did that, no matter how strange and useless it seemed.

And it all seemed useless……until the day the rains came.  Then the structure that seemed the most useless became the most vital structure in the world.  The ark was a thing not built for the season and culture he was in, but for the season and culture that was about to come.  IT WAS USELESS IN THE TIME HE WAS IN……………because it was not built for that time, that era, that culture……but for something else.

That is the heart of the matter with ME………I have to see that the shape of my life is not designed for the expected, but for the unexpected.  I am not being prepared for something somebody is already doing…….but for some things that have never been done or seen before………….Ever feel like that?  Maybe if you are the odd man out, a strange personality…….maybe you’re that way on purpose, because the shape that you are being made for is like the ark for Noah………you are a structure, a design made for a different dimension and the key in seeing what it is is at the feet of the Father.

That is where I am headed.

9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

I have just had a revelation of what this verse means.  This is something that God has been dealing with me for many years. But the idea comes from a story a well know speaker related about receiving illumination from the Lord.  He talked about going into a restaurant and it was a fancy restaurants with very low lighting.  He said that at first he couldn’t see a thing in the restaurant, but after a time his eyes got used to the darkness.  God spoke to Me and said that when His light comes in, it is to awaken us to how much light we ACTUALLY have in that place and time…..to awaken us to our condition and to help us to make adjustments.

God wants to set some guidelines, a structure and a atmosphere for Him going with us and entering into our situation.  But that requires a mindset change and an attitude change.  We so often do the politically or religiously correct thing in many situations and the Lord avoids us because we are not trying to create an atmosphere and environment around connecting with Him, but accommodating the comfort zones of men.

So God first brings a revelation of His Light(His understanding) into My Light(My understanding) and He shows me the vast difference between who I think I am and who He says I am.  As long as I believe more in who I think I am than in who He says I am, I will always be looking elsewhere to fulfill my identity need.  But when I begin to see, through His Revelation, who I really am in Him THEN I come to REST because I realize that I Am more than a conqueror IN CHRIST JESUS.  From THAT place of Identity in God I can do more and be more for God and people because I am not doing it to feed a need, but in response to who I already am in Him………I become a fountain of life to those around me, a fountain fed by the heart of the Most High God in Heaven.  I am a river being poured out, a conduit through which His Love flows through  Me.

So first God brings a Torch……that is revelation coming down through heaven to enlighten my life and my understanding of who I am and liberate me FROM IT into who HE IS and who He says I am.  Then as I move into that place of identity, He extends a scepter which is FAVOR that allows me to experience and enter into the things of heaven and the mandates of heaven to be expressed ON EARTH.   As I begin to see the plans of Heaven for Me and His Body, He begins to transmit the SWORD which is heavenly authority to implement these strategies in the earth.

But as long as I believe in a lesser version of Me, I will settle for a 12th best solution that only accomplish 1 percent of the purpose, when I could have God’s very best, seeing more done and accomplishing more in Him.  Not because I have the ability to do it, but that IN HIM I can do more than I could envision because its not me doing in but Him in ME.  I am a fountain of life that carries the water of My God through My life……its not me……It’s Him flowing through Me…….but for this to happen I must come to the end of My wrong-headed, low-ball identity that is like a blockage to the flow of the Spirit.

The Church today is having an identity crisis.  She has gotten her identity and value from the wrong places and this has caused her to listen to and come into agreement with the wrong voices and to have a wrong focus.  Like Samson we have come into agreement with Delilah out of a false need in our lives and it has rendered us Blind with No vision, Bald with No Covenant or Anointing, and In a Machinery that has us going around in circles but never getting anywhere…..working for No Fruit.

But NOW the Lord is coming suddenly into His temple and the Light of His Glory is revealing the nature of our condition.  In HIS light we are seeing light and coming to a realization of our condition, but also our worth before the king.  Instead of this being a terrible thing, it is a gloriously freeing thing as we realize how truly valuable we are to Him and we become freed from our pain, our shame and our depression over our failing life to realize that we are not failing at all!  For the Lord has allowed these things that we might have humility and we might have compassion over those who are wounded and prisoners of the enemy.  Even in our embarrassments and weakness is the plans of the Lord for our certain good.

It is from this Light that we begin to move into the kingdom purposes.  First God Reveals an OPEN DOOR in the heavens where He shows us the plans and Favor of the King for US.  We are going to have revelations and visions and dreams of the things of the Kingdom and His Plans for Us.  As he reveals these things He will give us an opportunity to embrace these divinely ordained plans and ideas.  If we are willing to pay the cost to embrace His plans for us, He will grant authority to accomplish His mandate on the earth.

At the end of all of this we will find ourselves satisfied, walking in our purpose and flowing in the power of the Holy Spirit.  We will be a bride walking across the face of the earth, treading on serpents and scorpions and freeing the prisoners of the enemy from the strongholds of darkness.  We will provide hope to the hopeless and a bridge into the presence of their Father.   We will become a light of Revelation that will awaken a generation to their condition and  provide a solution to how to get out of the place they are in.  That is our mandate and our calling.

God is bringing creative ideas and dreams.  God will release gifts and revelation to accomplish this purpose, to invade the fortified mountains of the culture and redeem them from the hands of the enemy and his false priesthood.  He will give us divinely ordained strategies for taking these mountains without coming into agreement with the enemy again.  We will learn the lesson of Samson and Embrace True Relationship with the king………We will become a generation of Samuels who will walk in the full authority of God, preparing the way for the Son of David.  Truly in this generation we are going to see the Tabernacle of David raised up……….which is a place for the Father to meet His sons and His sons to embrace their Father…….A place where we can enter into and see His Light Revealed to us and be changed into His image.  This is our mandate and This is our destiny.

 over the weekend I was studying psalms 36….and one scripture caused a long comment by God.

9. For with you is the fountain of Life; in your light we see light.

“Living a true life starts with being with God.  You are being grafted into the vine that you might be more than just a minister, but that you might be a river of Life.  I have taught you how to stand that I might teach you how to Listen and to Trust and to Be Still–It is the God of Peace that you are after.  I have also taught you to converse and Shift–I have led you to the River of My Creativity and life that I might give you a mantle of Creative Life.  I want to pour through you a vital essence of My River that reaches deep into the spirit of a man and unlocks something for My Kingdom Life in a Believer

Your writing is more than just writing–it is pregnant with the waters of the fountain of life…..that is what makes it so powerful.  Its not YOU Adam….Its ME in you and ME in your Expression.  Remember Isaiah 54:  Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your curtains wide.  For who?  Your sons and daughters……those gifts of life from My Heart THROUGH you.

I want to draw you into My presence to bring you a revelation of Me that changes your nature.  That is where you are going….You have been faithful and obedient to stay in this furnace and crucible and training/proving ground and I have laid the ground work for a divine encounter with Me.

In My light of Revelation through you you have awakened and awakened a company of Brothers…But now come close to Me and I  will redeem the years you have lost and I will set you NOW on the path to your destiny, for as you come into My light, the light in YOU will go on and everything will become clear and those things which defeated you will become the bread by which you will win victories in ME and those things which discouraged you will become a platfom of encouragement and this place of greatest loss will become your greatest victory as the reward for staying in it and not giving up will rep a reward that is far beyond your wildest expectations.

Yet in that victory you will see the wisdom and Justice of God that SETS the foundat9ion for a long, prosperous and happy life of adventure, accomplishment and True relationship with your Heavenly Father that Greatly exceeds what you would have settled for….you underestimate your value to Me, to My Body……your family is much too valuable to waste on lesser things…….

You are right in this one thing….YOU are MINE says the Lord and Your Family is MINE.  They Belong to Me and I have apportioned you for great things in this hour says the Lord.”

The following is God speaking to me about Isaiah 54, which happens to be my inheritance scripture:
Believe NOW that your life is good….that breakthrough is going to occur.  Start thanking and praising God in an expectation of Good Things.  Put away the negative, fearful dreams and  start believing in an awakening of monumental proportions.  Open your mind to the possibilities of phenomenal breakthrough in the Spirit and an Overwhelming response in the heart of the people.

Stop believing that you will be shamed and humiliated.  Stop believing that this will be a struggle.  God IS, in fact, Redeeming you right now.  God IS your Redeemer.  This process is about redemption and a purification and a preparation for a meeting with the Savior….STOP doubting His love for you and START believing in His Breakthrough into your midst.  These fearful, doubtful things you are seeing in your mind are not true.

God has put you through a process whereby He is purifying your INTENTIONS.  He is freeing us from preconceived notions, secondary motivations and personal ambitions into a passionate pursuit of the heart of Christ on earth.  He is weeding out of our lives those things which stand AGAINST His Heart being revealed on the earth.  His heart CANNOT come until all of the OTHER PLANS and OTHER AIMS are off the table.

Once God takes us through this furnace, this time……he will not bring us back here again.  This ordeal was for the purpose of laying a foundation for the future, the foundation does NOT have to be laid again.  God gives us a covenant of peace between Him and us as a guarantee of His Love.  We will still have trials and tribulations, but not the SAME trials and tribulations.  God is having compassion on us right now……that is why there is so much PRESSURE…..He wants us to be free, because HE loves us and wants us to be delivered from the things we have put our hope in.

God will NOW build a vision…..He will begin to release the manifest presence, dreams, visions, ideas born of the divine, giftings both spiritual and natural….for He is preparing to build His Tabernacle in this place.  It will be built on everything and everyone that produces quality character under enormous pressure.  The gems and jewels, the gold and silver of our lives is His building material for this Tabernacle Ministry that is coming upon us now.

We will be free from tyranny…..of allowing anything to get in the way of the Holy Spirit being Lord of the Body of Christ.  We must all submit to His leading, and learn to understand His ways:  When He wants us to listen and respond and when He wants us to act upon what He has already told us.  He wants us to recognize how He uses others and to see them as the vocabulary of the Spirit where His words flow through different vessels as He sees fit.  He wants us to allow our ideas to be shaped by the touch of His hand through other vessels.  He wants us to flow with the moving of the Spirit, being willing to change agenda and form to fit the expression of the Heart of the Spirit in the Body.

Destruction will not come near us…..this is the lie of the Spirit of Fear.  God has ordained us to become champions and overcomers.  He is calling us to revival,  renewal and reformation.  He is calling us to an open heavens.  He is calling us to Himself.  There will be NO STRUGGLE…..the only struggle you will suffer is your need to surrender yourself without measure to Christ.  You must not hold back the cost of following Jesus…….You must lay everything, including your dreams at the feet of Jesus and allow Him to become the all in all.  Then He will sanctify your dreams, adjust them to His Purposes and give them back to you.  The question is:  Do you Trust Him?

God will vindicate you and your journey.  He will overcome the pain, the sorrow, the bitter hearts, the wounded hearts.  He will expose the lies and the selfish ambition of everyone.  He will lay bare our hearts before everyone that He might become our All, our beloved, our savior, our One True Love.  Then in that place we can go forward as overcomers and victors without the victories impairing our progress…..because we will see Him who is invisible and HE will be our reward.

Psalms 36:11,12

May the foot of the proud not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.

11> Your Pride is in your own natural ability to “get there”. Your training has been designed to break your trust in your ability to do it on your own—Which is your chief mistake.

Your fear is one of missing out…..Of being so foolish, so lazy or wicked that you miss your day of visitation. This process is designed to deliver you of this fear. Your work is to be done on the basis of a relationship to Me, never a reaction to a negative outcome.

My Grace is sufficient for YOU. I know your frame. I designed you and I know how your brain works. All I need is a willing heart and a desire to come to Me and stand in My Presence-My Grace, My Glory will transform you and cause you to become who you are meant to be. I will not permit your destiny to fall from My hands, for your heart is steadfastly set on My Throne. Such a Heart I will not deny.

Be still, like a trusting child. And in the end you will see that My Heart is True to you and you cannot fail bad enough to miss your purpose. Give me what you have, what you have the COURAGE to give and I will do the rest. Heaven answers your cry.

See how the evildoers lie fallen-Thrown down not able to rise!

12>At the end of all this you will see a broad and spacious plain….a new land to discover and you will be freed from the pain of the past and given a new life and courage to discover this new place.

I will place in your heart a heart of adventure and a desire to pursue the King of Kings and His Kingdom. You will be a Kingdom Man, Righteous and Holy and True. You will awaken as one from a dark slumber and you will come to yourself and you will see the hope to which you are called and the destiny, a wild destiny, far beyond your ability to imagine it. And it will come in spite of yourself! Just stand there and you will see that your GOD is an overcomer!

Today I was doing something that I have learned to do from listening to Graham Cooke. I will take a passage of Scripture(in this case Is 43:1-13) and I will take each scripture and write what I think God is saying in that passage of scripture to me. When I got to the 11^th and 12^th verse, His comments to me leaped out:

^11 I, even I, am the Lord,

and apart from me there is no savior.

The Holy Bible : New International Version. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Is 43:11-12

11>You cannot do this by performance. That is why I make you stand there(see My Journey:Standing and Shifting). As long as you are doing it as a response to SAVE yourself, your actions will produce no fruit. The goal of the work is to bring yourself and others into a relationship with Me-not to save them or yourself and not to make a difference or be somebody.

It is through knowing Me that you become Holy and True, Real and Effective. The world system is like Cain or the Tower of Babel–”Work, Work, Work until you get there!” But My Kingdom is different–”Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” It is like Abel-You come to Rest and Relationship in ME, THEN from that standpoint, God’s standpoint, you work out what God has put into you.

As long as your work and efforts are a reaction to something you think you are “missing” or “missing out on” You are not in the Kingdom. You cannot save the world or the Lost, I HAVE already saved them. Your job is to come to me and to learn to stand and to learn to rest, then from that vantage point I will show you what you must do. So come and find your rest—And stop worrying so much!

^12 I have revealed and saved and proclaimed-

I, and not some foreign god among you.

You are my witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God.

12> Once I get the heart in the right place, THEN I will reveal what you must do. You will be called up here and given instructions on how to proceed. Don’t be given to pressure, frustration, or pain and fear of loss in your steps-they are simply to destroy your peace and rest so that you cannot receive. That is the point of these vain imaginations of the enemy that constantly replay in your head. Take authority over them!

As the Lord once told me: “You can have a heart in many things Adam, but your need is to be in only one thing: ME.”