IN DEBT to the Believer and the Unbeliever
"Both to Greeks and to barbarians
(to the cultured and the uncultured), both to the wise and to the foolish,
I have an obligation to discharge and a duty to perform and a debt to pay."
Romans 1:14 (Amp
)

30 March 2011

Uncovering His Flaming Heart

 "Is not My Word like fire?"
Jeremiah 23:29

This last weekend I had the privilege of attending a school of ministry by Morris Cerullo here in Dallas, Tx. where I live. It was an incredible weekend of revelation, and I will never be the same. I would like to share a particular experience that I had during the second morning before the actual ministry of the Word began. 
Before the worship started they showed us a film from several of Morris Cerullo's crusades down in Mexico with the thousands of people getting touched, saved, healed and delivered. It was testimonies of God's hand of protection and deliverance from the enemy for Brother Morris himself as well as Brother Cerullo sharing his heart towards the Hispanic people of Mexico. As I watched the sea of people in the crusades on this film my mind and heart when back 20 years before to the midnight hours of travail and intercession on the floor of my living room as the Lord placed a burden and heart of intercession and travail on me over the people of Mexico (as it was just 10 miles from my home town at that time). I was remembering the heavy pain and burden over the oppression and poverty of the people in this country and my desire to help them and see them free from the oppression of the enemy and the poverty of the land.

And as I watched the film the Holy Spirit began to say, "There is a well of wealth right underneath their feet. Begin to dig the well of wealth that is right underneath them". What the Holy Spirit was showing me was that rather the people were in Mexico or here in my own city, there was a well of wealth right underneath their feet. The Holy Spirit was saying that it belonged to them. It was theirs as a child of God, and it was theirs for the claiming, for the digging, for the reaching, uncovering and possessing. But then as I prayed in the Holy Ghost through all this, the Lord began to show me that the opening He wanted to go through to reach this well of wealth for them was through the heart of the person. This well of wealth was a kingdom wealth of riches of all sorts, including finances as well as other giftings, but it was only going to be reached through the heart. 
The Lord took me to the carotid artery as I prayed in the Holy Ghost and showed me the Holy Spirit going through the carotid artery of the Body of Christ, and like a rotta-rooter type machine, He was cleaning out all the callused stuff that had clogged up the arteries that have prevented the blood and life of the living God from flowing freely through us and to the heart. Through the power of the Holy Spirit God was cleaning and rotta-rooting out religion, doubt and unbelief, fear, disappointments, and the things of this world that had clogged it up.  In the Spirit He kept drilling and digging through it all until He reached the heart, and then He kept drilling some more, because He had to get past the hard shell of the hardened heart, the shell of protection that many of us put up to cover the hurts and pains and wounds of rejection and failures in our heart and the hard shells that form from our pride and self-sufficiency. This shell is so hard sometimes that the life of the heart of God is never felt or discovered. But the Holy Ghost was digging and drilling past it until He broke through, and the shell began to crumble and fall off and uncover a heart that was aflamed with the fire and love and passion of God. He was showing me that this flaming heart was the very core of each believer. 
In the very core of each of us He has placed His heart that is on fire and consumed in a passionate love for us, and that flaming heart when discovered would consume our flesh and all that would stand in the way of His kingdom coming forth from within us. Everything we needed was inside of us in this heart of fire, we just needed to dig it out by the power of the Holy Ghost. Then the Lord gave me the Word in Jer. 23:29 "Is not My Word like fire?" and then the Word from John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
He was showing me that our very core or beginning or essence is His Word, and His Word inside us is as a fire that will consume everything that doesn't line up with the Word if we will believe it, use it and release it. And as I meditated on this flaming heart that was within me, I could feel the kingdom within growing stronger and full of His power and anointing. My heart was on fire! I could actually feel the fire and heat. It was the fire of His passionate love. And as I looked at the people in the film again, and the people around me, I no longer saw their faces, but I saw a flaming heart on the inside of them that needed to be discovered and uncovered. It was the core and essence of who they were, and they needed to know that. We have to know that Jesus is alive, that He is living on the inside of us, in our hearts, aflamed with a fire and passion of love for us and for others. He wants us to discover and uncover that flaming heart so that the pure and passionate love can be released and the true essence of who we are can be released as well. He wants to come out of us with fire and passion, but many of us have covered Him up with a shell of protection that has made us callus to the things that move His heart. Our arteries are so clogged with worries, with the concerns of this world and with misplaced priorities that His life is unable to flow through us, much less through a heart that is passionate and on fire for souls and for the gifts and fruits of the Spirit to flow out of us.
The Holy Spirit was showing me that as we "seek first the kingdom of God", giving ourselves wholly to Him, that the wealth that we desire will spew forth as a hidden well that has been tapped into and uncovered because it's just part of the manifestation and biproduct of the kingdom within us. Seeking the true riches of His passionate heart towards us, letting the Holy Spirit clean out our arteries and break through the callused shell of our old heart, and letting Him give us a flaming heart that's on fire for Him and for the things that move His heart, namely souls, is where we will find fulfillment and where God will receive glory in our lives.

So, Lord, we just give You our hearts, our lives and all that we have, and we ask You to come and clean out anything and everything that is hindering the free flow of Your life giving power within us. We give You full access to our heart and our arteries, to clean out any residue of the world, any callused particles of resistance to Your perfect will in our lives, and anything that does not belong there. We thank You that You are doing a perfecting work in us, that You are molding and changing us into Your image, that we are Your workmanship created in Christ Jesus for a good work that You have prepared beforehand that we should walk in. We thank You that You are not finished with us yet, but as we yield to Your leading and Your shaping, we will surely bring glory to Your name and walk in the power and anointing that You have longed and desired for us, and those things that You did, we will surely do also and even greater things will we do because You have gone to the Father. 
So, Jesus, thank You for the fire of Your love that is in the very core of our hearts and our being. We reach in deep and partner with You as You uncover this flaming heart within us to release Your love and passion to a dying world. Amen and amen

24 March 2011

A New Heart and a New Spirit

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit
within you; and I will remove the heart of stone
from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
And I will put My Spirit within you and cause you
to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to
observe My ordinances."
Ezekiel 36: 26,27

I heard the Lord speak this to me yesterday and my spirit rejoiced and began to praise Him as my mind immediately went to prodigal sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, wives and husbands, prodigals that He was touching, giving a new heart and bringing home. I knew His Spirit was being poured out in this hour, and the first fruit of the Spirit is love, and "love never fails", so I was rejoicing as I knew the Lord was doing a love-work, and His Spirit of love was drawing the prodigals home, and now He was telling me that He was going to give them a new heart and put a new spirit in them, removing the old stoney heart and giving them a heart of flesh that's pliable and soft and tender to His Word and leading. It was a great word to hear and a real encouragement to me as I thought of one particular prodigal that I had been praying for.

Then it was like the Holy Spirit began to take me deeper into the heart of God and then back into mine, and when He did, I began to see and become painfully aware of my deficiency of love and compassion, the real God kind of love, the kind of love and compassion that loves unconditionally and unreservedly, the kind of love and compassion that loves lavishly and without reservation. I knew that God had given me a gift of faith, a faith that would believe for the miraculous and stand until I saw it in the natural, but I was now hearing in my spirit, "and if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have faith, so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing" (1 Cor:13:2).  And my heart began to sink as I become convicted in my heart and aware of my lack and deficiency and it made me desperate once again and in need of more of His love, more of God's pure love that He loves me and the world with. And I began to pray and ask for this love, for Him to do a new thing in me.

A little later I began to read another chapter of a wonderful book I had started reading by Heidi Baker called "Compelled by Love". It's about her life and ministry to the people and orphans of Mozambique in Africa. It's about living out the Beatitudes and being Jesus' hands and feet to reach a dying world, the pour and suffering in third world countries and even in our own back yards. This particular chapter "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn" went deep into my heart and spirit as the Lord had already tilled the soil of my heart with His life-breathed Word in preparation for this reading. This reading continued to convict me and reveal my deficiency and need for more of God's love, and it spurred me to cry out for more of His love and more yieldedness in my heart. And then I realized that the Word from Ezekiel 36 that the Lord was speaking earlier was not just for the prodigals but it was for me and for the bride of Christ. He was pouring out His Spirit in this hour and was going to give us, His church, new hearts, taking out our old stoney hearts and put in a heart of flesh that's soft, pliable and full of mercy and compassion as He was going to be sending us out into the world to touch and heal and be His heart and hands.

Let me share a segment of this chapter with you to help you see how God was speaking to my heart.
 
"The Lord is calling for servant lovers who will call in the outcasts, who will go into the dark corners of the world and compel them to come home. And they will come. Who will go and leave their life of comfort and call in the broken? Who will go and be a learner? Who will go among those who are mourning and lay their life down for Jesus? The Lord wants His house full. It is time for us to go to the poor, to the broken, to the homeless, to the dying, and to the lonely and call them in. Thousands and thousands of "sent-out ones" need to go out to the darkest places, to the poorest places, to the forgotten places, because the wedding feast is about to begin. So many still must be called. So many are mourning and need to be comforted by our Father's love.
"Many believers in the church are frustrated because they don't see a harvest. They're discouraged because they see so little fruit being produced; they wonder why. But they keep going to the same people.
In the parable of the great banquet in Luke 14:15-24, the rich didn't want to come. They were busy enjoying their money and possessions and made excuses. The poor can't do these things, and they are eager to come to the banquet when they are invited. God says there are no excuses, but believers keep going to the wealthy and well fed in the world, wondering why they don't respond. There are just as many lost in the first world nations, yet the church is often not equipped to reach them.
"Jesus awakens us to love, but the church itself must wake up! We are not yet ready to go to the banquet at the wedding feast. The Father's house is still not full. We must reach the lost, but first we need to learn how. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers who carry His heart are few. Our lives must be living incarnations of the love of Christ Jesus if we will ever have an effective ministry.
"What is our motivation for ministry? The Lord is looking for servant lovers--people who are passionate and filled with love for Him, people who desire and are longing for the Bridegroom's return, people who can already taste the feast and know it's about to begin. These people can no longer stand to stay in their comfort zones. They will literally run out and call in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. And if we will go out and call them--showing the love of God--they will come."

As I read this I felt the conviction of my heart as well as the heart of the Bride, the church, and I began to repent for our lack of love, compassion, sensitivity, and laborers in the field of the poor. I began to pray for more laborers, more hearts that were passionate for the Lord and passionate to be filled with His Spirit. I began to pray that we would come out of our comfort zones and step into the "super" of His natural, to go deeper into His love and let that love move us to say and do things that we would never have said or done before, to really let the Spirit of God that lives on the inside of us flow out of us freely to touch people bring healing to them, spirit, soul and body.

Brothers and sisters, it is time for us to look deep into our hearts, to recognize the hardness and complacency and lack of love that we carry there. We know a measure, but it is not the deep, agape love of the Father, the deep compassionate and sacrificial love of Jesus that would give up all to see the restoration and redemption of the world. God SO loved the world, that He gave His only Son. We need that kind of love, that we would give our very lives for the world, the lost, the poor and the suffering to be touched and healed and brought back to the loving arms of their heavenly Father.

Help us Lord. Do a work in our hearts. Help us to have Your heart like this. Help us to truly feel Your love for the world to the point that it compels us to make a change and be Your hands and feet and heart. Help us to step out of our comfort zone and do what we've never done before, to say what we've never said, go where we've never gone, and be who we've never been. This can only be done by Your Spirit so we ask You to pour out Your Spirit upon us in a greater way. We thank You that as we drink from You and Your Spirit that the river of life in Christ Jesus would begin to flow out of us and out of our bellies.  Let the rivers of living water flow and bring healing to all those that we come in contact with. Give us yielded hearts to go to the nations if that is where You are leading us. Anoint us and use us as the leaves on the trees that stand by the river of life flowing from the throne (Rev 22:1) that are for the healing to the nations. We say "Yes" Lord. We say "Yes".

08 March 2011

Calling the Intercessors


A Call For the Intercessors

God's calling. He's calling. God's rallying His people. He's rallying His intercessors. He's calling those that have been out in the world to come into the closet, and those that have been in the closet to go out into the world and touch souls. He's calling and drawing us into the closet, to seek His face, to hear His heart, to pray His heart, to release earth's invitation for heaven's intervention. God's eyes search to and fro across the earth to find a people who's heart is completely devoted to Him. He's looking for a people who's heart is completely His, that will do what He says and go where He leads. He's looking for a people that will surrender all for the cause. He said in Ezekial 22:30, "I looked for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap on behalf of the land so that I would not have to destroy it, but I found none." 
Will He find one in this hour? Will He find a people that believe He is that He is, that He IS the great I AM? He is looking and drawing people from the busyness of life to come into the closet, to stand in the gap, to make up the wall, to draw upon His power and anointing and see His hand of grace and mercy move upon the land. He is looking. He is calling. His Spirit is drawing. Will we answer? Will we be apart of the solution. Will we be a part of the remnant that calls upon the One that has the power to move mountains, that has the power to open the heavens and release vengeance upon our enemies and bring righteousness and justice into the earth and upon the land? 
His love is drawing us. His love is compelling us to come into the secret place and draw from the living waters of His heart and love. God is able, and He is desiring to use you and I to work through as we yield to His drawing and follow Him into the closet, into our secret place of prayer and worship. It's here that He will share His secrets with us, where He will lead us in our prayers through His Holy Spirit, where we will touch His heart as He touches ours.
Answer the call of intercession. Be the one that stands in the gap for your family, for your neighbor, for your city, for your nation, for this world. Be God's partner as He releases His Spirit and does miracles in this last hour. He is looking for vessels. He has the oil, but He needs vessels. We are the vessels, but we need the oil. Meet Him in the secret place and receive the oil of His anointing. Answer the call and stand in the gap so that His mercy and grace will be released. Hallelujiah

05 March 2011

Redigging the Wells


Taking dominion
Redigging the wells of my/our salvation    
(Gen 26:15-25)

I am a child of God, a joint heir with Christ, a descendant of Abraham.
I go back to the wells of promise and covenant with my forefather Abraham that my Father God made with him and his descendants.
I redig the wells of promise and covenant that the waters of its life and promise may flow again.

(Gen 17:2,3,6-8)
"I am God Almighty; walk before Me and be blameless. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you, And I will multiply you exceedingly." 
"And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generation for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your descendants after you.
And I will give to you and your descendants after you the land of your sojourning all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."


The blessings of Abraham flowed down through his son, Isaac.
"And it came about after the death of Abraham, that God blessed his son, Isaac." (Gen 25:11)

Then there was a famine in the land  (Gen 26:1)
God spoke to Isaac in this famine.
"Do not go down to Egypt; stay in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land and I will bless you, for to you and to your descendants I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath which I swore to your father Abraham. And I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws." (Gen 26:1-5)

This is the power of the blessing of obedience that is passed down to your children and your descendants. When you're obedient to God, your children and descendants reap the blessings.

(Gen 26:6-11)
While in this land Isaac fell into temptation fearing man more than God and told a lie about his wife, Rebekah, saying she was his sister. God exposed the lie, extended His mercy and released grace and favor upon Isaac because of His covenant and His promise with Isaac's father Abraham, and also because of the blessing of Abraham's obedience that flowed down through his son and descendant Isaac.
Isaac was therefore blessed and he began to honor the word of the Lord by sowing into the land of promise that the Lord had led him to.  And as a result God increased him.
(Gen 26:12-15,18)
"Now Isaac sowed into that land, and reaped in the same year a hundred fold. And the Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth."

"Then Isaac dug again the wells of water which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham, for the Philistines had stopped them up after the death of Abraham."

The devil has been jealous and envious of the blessing of God that is upon your life as a believer and descendant of Abraham. He does not want you to tap into that blessing so he has stopped up the wells and hindered the fresh flow of the waters of those blessings "by filling those wells with earth." (Gen 26:14) Earth signifies the flesh and things of the flesh. The devil has covered up those wells by tempting us to lean into the needs and desires of our flesh, into our fleshly desires, both materialistically and pridefully, into pleasures that satisfy our flesh and carnal nature, and into our own understanding. He's caused this leaning of the flesh and carnal nature to cover up the depths and richness of God's divine flow of power and blessing, and as a result it has been substituted with a religion that has an appearance of God but has no power.

It's time for us as a people of God, as the Church of the living God, to redig the wells of our salvation - to redig the wells of our promise and covenant as descendants of Abraham. It's time for us to recognize the fleshly things in our lives, this earth that has stopped up the wells of God's blessings and the inheritance that He wants to flow through our lives and to bless us with so that God is glorified. Our heavenly Father wants to be glorified through the manifestation of the covenant blessing He has made with us.

It's not going to be by might or by power, but it's going to be by the Spirit of God that lies within us. We're going to need to redig those wells in our own heart, repenting, praying and fasting, praying in the Holy Ghost, letting the power of His Spirit cut through the flesh and the things of the earth that have clogged up the fountain of life and blessing within us.

If you're tired of the way things are in your life and in this nation, if you're dry and thirsty for more, than Jesus said, "If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, 'From  his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water.' By this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive." (John 7:37-39)

Come to Jesus and begin to drink, begin to draw from the living waters that come from Him and that lie within you. Begin to put a demand on the anointing and tap into these waters that lie below the earth of your fleshly desires. Pray in the Spirit. Dig deep into the wells of your salvation and the fresh waters of life will begin to spring up. Blessings will begin to flow and manifest. An attitude of gratitude will come back alive, and this will cause the waters to flow even greater. God loves it when we are grateful for His life and blessings and we express it to Him and to others.

Let the River flow. Take dominion.  Redig the wells, and let the river of covenant promise and blessings flow. We have the victory in Christ.



Lord, we redig the wells of our salvation. We redig the wells of our covenant promise that is ours as children of God and joint heirs with Christ. We repent of our yielding to fleshly temptations and ask You to forgive us and give us Your heart and Your desires. We ask You, Lord, to help us to be strong and resist the enemy of our soul, to keep our eyes and heart set upon You. You are truly our life and our joy and all that we need and want.  We thank You, Father, that You are a covenant-keeping God, that when we are unfaithful You remain faithful. Thank You for loving us, Father, and giving Your Son Jesus that we might be redeemed back to You and into our covenant inheritance. And thank You, Father, for the fresh wells of Your covenant blessings that are flowing back into our lives again. Amen

01 March 2011

Deep In The River of His Love

The Spirit of God is calling us into the deep, into the deep things of God. Will you respond? Will you yield? Will you allow yourself to go deeper into the River of His love. He's calling. He's calling. He's calling. 
Take us, Lord! Sweep us off the bank of resistance. Take us out of our religious life jackets, and let us jump into the River of Your love that's free and rich and greater than any place we've ever experienced before. We jump in, Lord! We say, "Yes" to You. We're hungry. We're thirsty. We need You more today than ever before. We need You more than life itself. Take us into the deep places of Your love, Lord. Take us in. Take us in. Take us in!

Going deep into the River of His love.