HUMBLENESS...A HIGH PRICE

It saddens my spirit to observe how much time and effort that ministers of every kind take to try to prove their position in God by referring to their haters and to their being rejected because of their uniqueness.
So much of their persecution is just imaginary. It's self exaltation. I know this to be true because of how often I hear Holy Spirit make reference to God's rebuke to Elijah when he said, "I have been very zealous for the Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life"(1 King 19:14). Well, God's response to him was "Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him"
(1Kings 19:18).
The world is too big, and the Kingdom is too vast for any of us to think that we are "the cat's meow" in the things of God. Just serve the Lord well in what He has anointed and appointed you to do, and cheer on the rest of the team/body. Every part of the body is necessary! Regardless to how anointed or unique your ministry is you cannot carry the Kingdom on your back. That's Jesus' place!
Also, the other popular idiom that many are using is that they don't care what anybody thinks or says about them but God. I know that they think that this is a very noble statement and stance to take, but surely it is not because in order to take that stance you will have to negate most of Jesus' teachings which were how to relate to each other...your brother, your parents, your neighbor, your spiritual leaders, civic leaders and even sinners.
What class have you placed yourself in if no one is right but you...and if you can't be critiqued? Being misunderstood is one thing. That's par for the course, but becoming arrogant about it is something else.
These attitudes are just the opposite lessons that the Lord has taken a lifetime to craft in me, especially the last 35 years out of my 68 years. I was admonished to "crucify flesh and to die daily"...to decrease that He may increase in me"...to "draw nigh to Him that He may draw nigh to me"...to " love my neighbor as myself"...to"think on the things of others higher than myself"...
We all have opportunities in our lives where we must decide to "obey God rather than man," while at the same time modeling Christ to the world. You see His brand of Power equals Love. He humbled Himself in order to fulfill His mission (Study The Humiliation of Christ or Kenosis).
Philippians 2:6-8 says, "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7)But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8)And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death on the cross."
At every stage of elevation in Kingdom matters, Father has sent a message for me to "Stay humble." Recently, I was sent before a great assembly of God's people, leaders from various disciplines, through whom Holy Spirit spoke mightily concerning who I am to the Kingdom of God. My charge in the Kingdom might or might not ever be widely revealed in the earth, but Heaven and hell knows who I am, and that's how Father told me to live. For a couple of weeks before I left for that particular event, a couple of our team members (in their twenties) were assigned to pray for me and over me each day, and a few days before I left each of them called me separately with a message to "Stay humble."
Humbleness comes with a great price, but it can be attained through a constant awareness of "Christ in us."
Stay encouraged and be steadfast in your call but more importantly in your relationship with the Lord and His body, and He will "exalt you in due season" without the efforts of a PR team or any attention getting techniques.
Your times are in the Lord's hand!

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CHRIST IN US!!!

The move of God in our lives is escalating!  I am still doing what I have always done for the past thirty-five years as far as delivering people out of bondage, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, declaring the Gospel, decreeing God's will,  activating, demonstrating and imparting the things of the Kingdom into the lives of God's people...but the intensity and the frequency has increased because God is ready to reveal His Kingdom like never before.

Last weekend July 31 - August 2/Friday -  Sunday, I was in Albemarle, NC celebrating the First Anniversary of Pastor/Dr. Felicia Barringer and Great Is His Mercy Ministries.  As I shared, I moved in my anointings of demonstration, activation and impartation which the Lord assured me would be my portion thirty-five years ago when He spoke to me through Apostle Paul from I Corinthians 2:2-5...4)"And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: 5)That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." 

I am not privileged to preach the Gospel everywhere that I go, but I can certainly demonstrate the Spirit and power by simply being on the scene. God promised me as He brought me through great purging and pruning over the years that if I adhered to His process for my life and walked holy before Him that I would just show up and He would show out, and I have watched Him do it repeatedly over the years with many witnesses.

So, this Saturday after having such a grand time in North Carolina last Saturday, Father needed me to execute His will on the street for several people.  Therefore, after leaving a surprise private celebration for one of my sisters at the beautiful Hattiloo Theater here in Memphis my spiritual daughter, Talisha Coward, and I were taken on a deliverance mission through the prestigious business district of Union Ave.  We stopped at a fast food restaurant to get a quick snack before going shopping. When she went in to place our order a young man, mid 30's, came up and stood at the door of the restaurant smoking a cigarette. He wore a red cap and t-shirt with dark jeans, and he had a number of tattoos. He looked very hard and mean, but through that demeanor I saw someone who was very tired and .  Immediately, Holy Spirit began to overwhelm me with the hewornart of God concerning him...love, passion and care.  God wanted him then!  As I was contemplating how to approach the situation, he finished his cigarette and entered the restaurant. Well, it certainly wasn't over!

When my daughter came out with our order, I asked her to step back in and tell him that I needed to speak with him. He followed her outside to the car without hesitation ( I will explain this authority at some other writing.) As I greeted him, I immediately began to express the love of God to him and told him what God was saying to me about his call upon his life while he was standing at the door smoking his cigarette. While he was just staring at me, I asked him if he had had lunch. He said "No" so I handed him $26 at which he starred with great surprise.  He relaxed and began to share with me that lately people had been saying something to him about God, and he was wondering what was going on. He said that he used to believe in God until he had been shot so many times, stabbed, hit by cars; etc...but that after one terrible incident where he should have died he did start back believing.  I reassured him that it was satan who wanted him out of here and not God. That God had a heavy call upon his life that He was ready to redeem. I began to demonstrate with my hands as I addressed every bondage upon and around him, declaring liberty and freedom through Christ Jesus. He began to look like a new version of himself, smiling and looking surprised and thanking us repeatedly. I declared the things that would happen in his life from that hour forward, and I have no doubt.

Well, little did I know that Talisha had purchased an extra large drink for a man that she had seen lying on the ground as we drove to this location. So, we went back to find him.  He was actually occupying the entryway of a bank as if it were his dwelling place for the weekend. She called to him that she had a drink for him, and he came over to the car.  As we began to reassure him that God cared about him and his situation and that change had come to him that day, I also handed him $26 which set off  fireworks of  Heaven's deliverance. God has always instructed me to put my money where my faith was, and He follows faith.  Well, this man's countenance also changed immediately as he thanked us and began praising God.  I perceived that it was not so much for the few dollars, but for the concern shown him by two ladies.

He immediately began to point across the street to a woman that he said needed some help bad. He called to her and she came where we were as he explained that she had been raped the night before, beat up and burned with cigarettes over her arms and kicked in the ribs. It was just terrible! She had bruises and burns and knots and face messed up and everything, and she acted as if it was no big thing.  we were nearly in tears. She said that she couldn't go to the hospital because she had been blackballed by some criminal element (?), and that she had just gotten out of jail two days earlier. She admitted to having been a drug dealer and then an addict. 

We loved up on her, spoke healing to every bruise and pain on her body, declared that deliverance had come to her that day as she just held onto us.  When I gave her her money she began to laugh and cry and to hold it up toward Heaven as she asked God for a hundredfold for us. When we started praying they knelt on the ground beside the car because the man told her that they were in the presence of the Lord.  I spoke to the woman that her mother's prayers were being answered, and she just laughed and cried.  When I began praying in tongues so did she as if she were a seasoned prayer warrior.  Then she said the 91st Psalm in its entirety. She continued to hold the money toward Heaven as both of them asked God to bless us.  These two were Caucasian, and the first man was black.  Had we possibly entertained angels unaware!?!

When we drove off a distance, we just pulled over and wept for those souls.  If they were real people, their lives were changed forever in every aspect because this is the grace of God through me.

Surely, we practice what we preach...

A WORD OF WISDOM

 

I want to encourage many today to ask Holy Spirit what prophetic words are for you in your particular season and timing in your walk with the Lord.  It can become so disheartening for you to falsely anticipate a word to manifest in your life when you aren't at that stage yet in your growth and molding process.  

God can do what He wants, but He told us to get understanding above all else.

Don't allow others or yourself to boost you up for a let down.  Read God's Word and observe seasons and process.  Many give up and draw back because they were expecting something that they were not yet processed for.  

Try to keep in pace with God's plan for your life while being anxious for nothing.

Every word is not for everybody at the same time.

Always ask for an unction from Holy Spirit about your word because God is not the author of confusion.

Be at peace, be watchful, be fruitful and trust Father God Concerning your timing.

"I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he shall say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. 2) And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. 3) For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie:  though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry."  Habakkuk 2:1-3

Grace to you!

THE IMPORTANCE OF SIMPLE OBEDIENCE

Some answers and some blessings aren't always as hard to come by as it seems.  Yes, timing and preparation and warfare often have to be considered when there  seems to be a delay in a promise or a prophecy in our lives, but let's always rule out disobedience.  The way to do this is to always be very intentional about hearing and recording your prophecy or word of knowledge or word of wisdom in detail and as precisely as possible.

When God speaks by His Spirit through a sanctioned vessel, He says what He means, and He means what He says.  Often He reminds me of this understanding when I am questioning Him about the delay of a time-sensitive word that He has had me to release to someone.

There is a particular incident that God has used to answer me numerous times over the years.  An Evangelist of a very prestigious Church of a powerful Pentecostal denomination sought me out in my hometown to ask me to petition Heaven with her for a much desired promotion/transfer in her company from her state to another state.  I agreed and prayed for her while we were on that call.  She admitted that in all of her years of serving God that she could not say for sure that she had ever heard Him speak to her.  

Well, our good and loving Father told me to tell her to take herself out to dinner, and to take a notepad and pen and that He would speak to her.  He also said for her to take a yellow flower ( either a rose or a carnation) and that He would secure the promotion that she desired.  I didn't hear from her again until a year later, and she was in the same dilemma.  Holy Spirit told me to ask her if she had followed through with the instructions from a year earlier.  She said that she did, but Holy Spirit told me to ask her about the yellow flower.  She said that she couldn't find a yellow one, but Holy Spirit told me that she didn't look for one, and that she decided that it was an insignificant detail.  

Well, guess what?  Holy Spirit told me to give her the same instructions again.  When she followed through she called me back in two months, and she had received the promotion.  Everything was expedited for her.  Even her house sold right away.  Holy Spirit revealed to me His people's lack of obedience and follow-through with words from the Lord, but that we expect Him to deliver anyway.  He told her one other very unusual sign that would occur after she received her promotion, but that it would have nothing to do with her.  It all came to pass.  

If we aren't going to obey God, why pray because the answer could involve our participation?  And why approach a true Prophet to get in God's Face for you and then decide what you will and will not do with the answer?

It is important to understand that there is victory in hearing and obeying the Logos AND Rhema word of God.  We can confirm this through many stories in the Bible.  Somehow,  Jacob's story just came to mind when God revealed to him what to do to increase his wealth after being entrapped by His uncle, Laban, for fourteen years.  Joseph worked the plan and prospered.  "And the Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and thy kindred; and I will be with thee" Genesis 31:3.  Then Jacob was able to tell Leah and Rachel, "Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father, and given them to me" Genesis 31:9.  (Read Jacob's story in Genesis 27-33).

Lord, if we have missed something please bring it to us again that we may obey and prosper.  Thank You, Lord!

ENDURING THE TEST OF TIME

Yesterday, I received an email from one of my biological sisters which included this statement, "Thank you for your fearless/timeless faith!!!"  I was indeed honored and yet amazed at the statement because I (like so many) have simply been following the path that was set before me...even as this beautiful sister has done herself.

I have never bothered too much about who knows the work that I do because it has been a rather unorthodox commissioning after the Lord called me out of the pulpit to go forth and execute His will in numerous and various assignments.  I was taken out of man's spotlight in order to serve the Kingdom through unheralded works.  I have never sought the accolades of man because God offered me a greater PR system when He told me that Holy Spirit was my record keeper.  These unheralded works became my altar of "fire baptisms" thereby catapulting me into a realm of authority that was not ordained by man, but by God Himself.

Yes, I was raised in the Church and thought I knew God, Jesus, the Angels and all of the Disciples/Apostles personally.  Well, as time went on, life happened which included backsliding.  But when Holy Spirit reclaimed me for the Kingdom 35 years ago at the age of 33, I was brought into an all new journey of " following on to know Him."  Somewhere on the journey the Lord told me that He was going yo kill all of my "holy cows."  Yes, the fires and the floods that He designed for me took care of legalism, self-righteousness, self-reliance, impatience, stubbornness, hautiness and judgementalism.

Am I perfect?  NO!!!  But I am a vessel fit for the Master's use.  God empowered and enriched me with Himself.  He would always remind me that HE was my reward and my rereward.  He also challenged me to live so that Heaven and hell would know me.  A great cost had to be paid though so that when I show up God shows out without any shenanigans being performed.  So often, witnesses have informed me that as I leave their presence they realize that they were healed and delivered, that situations changed for them or that the miraculous manifested.  Of course, I have been allowed to see and experience many manifestations, but I never had to see them to believe that they had or would happen.  Father trained me that way...to simply believe what the Christ in me could and would do.  That was the reason for allowing Him to increase as I decreased.

My first assignment was to close down a cult led by one of satan's generals who seasoned saints had retreated in haste from her presence.  Love rescued the captives!  So, after that four year boot camp I was trained and molded year after year in the weapon  that I was to wield in the Kingdom...LOVE.  Pure love is cryptomite to the enemy!  He can't thrive in Its presence because God is LOVE.


Holy Spirit always told me that I had no business fearing anything because of how the Lord initiated my work.  So yesterday, my sister painted a clear and precise picture of my walk with the words "fearless/timeless faith."  I am still here, ready to finish strong.


Thank You, Father, for anointing me to stay the course.

THE UNDERGROUND CHURCH IN AMERICA !?!

I just listened to a radio broadcast today...May 4, 2015...by the pastor of one of the largest Churches in our city...Apostle A.R. Williams/World Overcomers Outreach Ministries/Memphis, TN.  He gave a very clear picture of the direction of the Church in a very few years, if not sooner, because of the laws that are being passed and because of the increasing hatred for the Church.

I was just remembering how over the years his church membership increased exponentially, and how he had to continue to purchase larger and larger edifices to house his ministry. Of course, this process appeared to be the trend of our times, especially in the 21st century.  Large screens, orchestras, gyms,  daycare centers, parking lot attendants, numerous outreach ministries, huge fellowship halls, book stores and coffee shops became the norm of the day. So, why was Apostle Williams painting a picture of house churches and cell groups today?  

He is simply sharing a soon approaching reality of the decline of the Church's place of prominence in our nation.  While still fellowshipping with our sister Churches, many of us have been modeling this style of Faith Community for years now...in our homes, in coffee shops around town, in restaurant meeting rooms, in parks, in neighborhood community centers and in numerous other unassuming locations. The Church has to be redefined in this day in order to maximize it's effectiveness to society at-large.  We have to be more readily accessible and presently available at all times for the single seeker or for the masses. 

This pastor spoke of the possibility of the loss of the 501(c)(3) non-profit status for the Church as well as being forced to comply with laws contrary to biblical teachings in order to remain open. He said that the government could decide to confiscate your Church buildings for its own use.  Yes, religious liberty as we have been accustomed to is changing daily as news stories are becoming constant reminders of this threat.  He said that he is ready to lose everything if it comes to that.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?  ARE YOU READY FOR THESE IMPENDING CHANGES?

Many of this current generation might have left the Church building, but they have been representing the Church/Kingdom in very viable and tangible ways. Holy Spirit has been training and preparing them for the day that they will have to contend with.

Now, many of you who have been believers for years...have you ever had a Bible study or a prayer meeting at your home?  In fact, have you ever observed the Lord's Table or led anyone to the Lord at your home?  Have you ever shared your faith at the supermarket, in the park, with a neighbor?  

Well, if a REAL revival of repentance and renewal doesn't come to America soon, we won't be able to "have church" the way that you know it to be much longer. Apostle Williams said that many leaders won't even recognize this threat until it's too late because that has been the Church's MO.  Yes, as long as things "look" okay, most people are undiscerning until it comes to their front door.  It is time for the people of God to look beyond status symbols and to discern the times.

Would your Faith Community know how to survive underground if it comes to that?

A WORTHY GOAL

Yes, the battle has been mighty...but God!

The road has been long...but God!

The tests and trials have seemed unending...but God!

Kingdom training was unusual...but God!

Seeking was day and night...but God!

Forgiving became daily routine...but Gôd!

Repenting became exercise for the soul...but God!

Peace had to be maintained...but God!

Prayer was the key...but God!

Holiness was the standard...but God!

Trust was the glue...but God!

Joy was the reward...but God!

Power became Evident...but God!

Authority manifested...but God!

Through it all the the goal was attained...friendship with God!

Marion Clark Ingram

           3/2015