heaven's tree book club

September 15, 2012
A Royal Flush
It is Saturday and for the second time I visited Teen Harbor, a disability ministry to teenagers. There is a childlikeness to individuals with disabilities and in particular people with developmental disabilities. One individual in particular in his upper teens was drawing and telling me a story about the drawing. I marvel at the simplicity of their joy. One staff was bouncing a ball to another individual and they played this for a good ten minutes. I think about how often I think too much about the depressing things in my life and that gets me into a worse mental state.

"WHENEVER we review the events of our lives apart from the blood of Jesus, we subject ourselves to the influence of the spirit of deception. In reality, my sinful past no longer exists. The Lamb of God purchased it with a payment in blood, forever removing my sins from the records of Heaven. The atoning blood of Jesus covers my sin, never to be uncovered again. Sin's power to destroy us is itself destroyed by a superior reality: forgiveness.
The devil keeps records of our past.Yet those records are powerless without our agreement. He is the accuser of the brethren, but Jesus is our defender. We make an agreement with the accuser whenever we look at our past apart from the blood. When we agree with the devil, we empower him. When he is empowered, he devours.
On the other hand, agreeing with God empowers us. It frees us from the power of a lie and enables us to live according to the will of God. This empowerment is not independent of God; it is empowerment because of God. When we agree with God we step into the power of truth, the momentum of the Cross. The truth is already in our favor because King Jesus died in our place. He not only died for us, He died «s us. Our agreement with God, which is always the focus and activity of faith, enables us to reap the fruit of truth. And that fruit is freedom! Faith grows by agreeing with God from the heart."
I love simple phrases that are easy to remember but really capture truth. When we empower the devil, he devours. This is so true in my own life. I agree with the devil about my worthlessness and this leads to discouragement and a cannot attitude. I see all the things I cannot do. I don't take risks because I think I am going to fail. New York was a huge risk but what happened is that I came back with mobility challenges and physical pain. I look now to New York with regret. When we agree with God we step into the power of truth. All of a sudden I question the Bible more than I have ever done. When God seems far, His truth seems relative. I have lost my respect for the truth of God when life gets difficult. The very interesting thing for me today is that I completed financial check in for seminary. I am officially registored now for my first semester of seminary. I feel more far from God than I have ever in my life and yet I just paid an enormous amount of money to take classes in Christian doctrine. It will probably not solve my different physical and spiritual challenges, but it will help in having a community of spiritual accountability.
"Living in forgiveness does not mean we are to forget our past. Rather, seeing my past through the blood of Jesus brings praise to my lips and frees me from the burden of a guilty heart. Jesus will be known throughout eternity7 as the Lamb of God; so we will always remember that it was the provision of the spotless Lamb that obtained eternal redemption for us.
I struggled for so many years with this truth. Shame and discouragement were close friends of mine. I would counter such feelings with more prayer, study, and reading about the lives of great men and women of God from the past.Yet my problem wasn't solved, even though I was doing what most would counsel me to do. I found that when our perspective is wrong, more study and prayer can actually add to our discouragement and shame, as it did for me. Every biography impressed me, but also made me feel hopeless.They were all too perfect. I couldn't relate to any of their God-encounters. It seemed that they were God's favorites, and I just existed. One day I heard a tape from David Wilkerson called, "Facing Your Failures." In it he talked about how the "great ones" all had failures and weaknesses, too. He shared some of his struggles and failures."
I too enjoy looking at the men and women of faith in the past. Their lives and faith impress me and at times I pray for my life to have that kind of faith and impact in my community. I fall short to these great giants of faith and it is very discouraging. Since May or so I prayed to have the faith of this author. I enjoy his books, the impact of his ministry, and the relationship he has with God. He has experienced the power and presence of God in ways I can only dream. All this is discouraging to me cause I begin to think that God only chooses some and not others to give the power to heal.
"When God's royalty touches our lives, we discover we are designed to live in God's glory. We no longer live in the bondages of our past- performance and comparison in our daily lives, but we know our worth in simply loving Him. For out of that springs living water and revelation for those who have not found the truth in the nations of the earth!"

"The Hebrew word for laughter in this verse tells us that she didn't give a sheepish chuckle. She actually mocked God and what He had said, and then made matters worse by lying to the Lord about doing so. But Hebrews 11:11 (NKJV) says, "By faith, Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed and she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged Him faithful who had promised."
This is the same woman! What happened? Apparently she repented, turning her heart to what God had declared to be her destiny. In doing so God rewrote her history, excluding the sin that is recorded in Scripture.What's written in Hebrews 11 shows us how God records our life's events in His Book of Remembrance. God wrote her story in such a way as to emphasize what pleases Him the most—her faith. It seems as if He is boasting all over Heaven about Sarah, "Did you see that courage and that great faith? Here's a lady—she can't bear a child, but she knows that I'm faithful!" You can see Him talking to the Scribe angel, "Make sure you put it like this...'That's my girl! She believed me—others wouldn't have, but she did!'"
When God views a believer's history like that, who are we to do otherwise? The blood actually changes our history into His story. Some years ago I heard a prophetic word that really touched my heart. In it, God spoke saying, "I will not remove the scars from your life. Instead I will rearrange them in such a way that they have the appearance of carving on a fine piece of crystal." Such is the love of God. What was despised becomes a testimony of God's grace—a thing of beauty!"
I never saw the comparison of the Genesis passage compared to the Hebrews passage like this but it is true. In Genesis Sarah is seen in a negative light because she laughs or as the author calls it mocks God with unbelief but at one point she changed and really believed God for this miracle. At times I lose faith that God is still God and that God can heal me. I lack faith to believe God can do the impossible. I get really discouraged sometimes even thinking about how God appears to be absent today. This passage about Sarah really encourages me in several ways. First, that there is hope for us who doubt God. Sarah doubted God that He would give her a child from her own body but later was praised for her faith. Second, this passage encourages me that not only our faith can change, but God really can do the impossible. I continue to pray for breakthrough. It is the half way point of September, and no breakthrough yet, but I trust God can still do the impossible.
The author says that what got him into trouble was introspection. He no longer does that but he prays that God will work in him. What follows is his prayer. I don't know if I am ready to pray his prayer or one like it, but I have it here for reading.
"It took a while, but I finally realized that my best moments (mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) were when I just did my best, and stayed away from introspection. This was a scary thing for me, because in my mind introspection was almost a rite of passage to my biggest dream— to be a revivalist. After years of struggling with the conflict of personal holiness, I prayed something like this:
Father,
You know that I don't do so well when I look inward, so I'm going to stop. I am relying on You to point out to me the things that I need to see. I promise to stay in Your Word. You said that Your Word was a sword— so please use it to cut me deeply. Expose those things in me that are not pleasing to You. But in doing so, please give me the grace to forsake them. I also promise to come before You daily. Your presence is like a fire. Please burn from me those things that are unpleasing to You. Melt my heart until it becomes like the heart of Jesus. Be merciful to me in these things. I also promise to stay in fellowship with Your people. You said that iron sharpens iron. I expect You to anoint the "wounds of a friend" to bring me to my senses when I'm being resistant toward You. Please use these tools to shape my life until Jesus alone is seen in me. I believe that You have given me Your heart and mind. By Your grace lama new creation. I want that reality to be seen that the name of Jesus would be held in highest honor."