Publishing Miracle??

So wanted to share something I find amazing.  I have started working on a book about prayerwalking. It is called "Prayer Walking Your Community for Spiritual Breakthrough."  I did this because of several people asking me if I could send them teachings on prayer walking. As I was working on it I began to think about getting it pulished.  So I went online and googled Christian Book Publishing. Of course several of  things come up but a couple of them really caught my attention because I have read books by authors they have published.  I sent inquires to both and have heard back from one of them already.  They assigned me a submisions editor whose job is to read my manuscript and see if it is even worth thier time. So for the last two days we have been playing phone tag. Now look at this quote from their web site: (Name Removed)Publishing only accepts for publication about 3 percent of all manuscripts received. Our selectivity makes it possible for us to provide our authors with a level of market penetration that is second to none because of the quality of our product. We have the best reputation in the industry for quality and service and are looking forward to speaking with you about your work."
So I am talking with this editor about my manuscript which isnt even finished and which I haven'tsubmitted becasue their site also says they only accept finished manuscripts. But she says so I know what were talking about give me a synopis of your book so I begin to talk about what Iam writing and tell her "I will have the finished manuscript by the first of next week, but it will be very very rough.  As we continue talking about prayer walking she says "You need to send me what you have done today."  I said but it isnt finished. She replies I don't acctually have to have a finished manuscript to do what I do  and I need you to understand that I need what you have right now  because baised on our conversation I am sending you a contract for your book.  We don't normally do that but if it is half as good as the stuff your telling me on the phone We can sell this book.  So send me what you have now so I can justify why I am sending this contract.
God has sent me a contract for my book without the publisher ever seeing the book.    So soon you may be seeing my book in your local bookstore.  What a crazy week. Guess now why I God allowed me to be stuck in the house. I have plenty of time to write.

What Do you EXPECT???

Lately I have spent several hours talking with various different people all who have what seems on the surface like different issues but at the heart of it all is one little word expectation. OK so the word isn't that little and even bigger is the issue.  When people say how can a loving God allow such and such or why didn't God stop this or that or heal or do or say something, what they are really asking is why didn't God do what I expected him to do?  We all have this problem to a certain extinct. Let me show mine to help you think about yours.  Here I sit writing and talking about God on a regular basis, I have started a couple of ministries this year based on what I thought I heard God saying and just when things were starting to look like I actually would get to see the results of all this seed planting my physical condition worsens. I had a doctors appointment with my new specialist this week who dropped the proverbial bomb on me.  To manage my condition I am having my immune system completely repressed. Under his orders I need to stay away from the general public and not have people outside of my immediate family around me because I am now subsectable to every germ and illness there is.  So how can I prayer walk? How can I run a church? How can I see Habakkuk 1:5 come to pass.  And then God placed several people in my online life who are going through expectations of their own. Some simple like I thought ministry would be easier; to the very hard like, If God is real how could he let me be gang raped?   As I looked at all of them and even my own situation I realized that everyone of us had an expectation of Who God was or what he should do. 

Take a moment right now and examine your own life and you will realize that some where in your life and beliefs you have an expectation of who God is or what He does.  We all do, so what happens when God doesn't "live up" to our expectations?   One of three things happen 1. We get angry at God or ourselves.  I have seen it. This response shows itself in several ways  we blame God for the thing that didn't happen the way we thought it would.  An example the parents of a young lady who was raped have expressed to me the following statement " I ask God daily to protect my family so how come he didn't keep my daughter from getting hurt?"  The expectation is that protection is nothing bad will happen no matter what.  The reality of the situation is that the young lady could have been killed as well as raped so how can we say that God didn't protect her?  When I mentioned this to the mother her response was it isn't enough for her to be alive he let her be hurt.    See when it comes to blame nothing can overcome at that point.
2. God doesn't exist  This one is very common  the proof that God doesn't exist is that he didn't preform in the way we expect.  Another young lady who has been involved in ministries I have been part of  informed me that she didn't believe in God anymore because of two reasons  the following is an exact quote from her.  First in may I was raped by three different guys  if God really existed he knew that I was saving my virginity for marriage and he should have saved me from losing the one thing that i was saving.  Also if he exists and you work for him why doesn't he heal you?  How can he allow you to have such a life threatening illness. If he exists he would keep you well. This is how I know God doesn't exist.

So how do you answer this reaction no matter what you say in the face of this expectation you can't change the expectation that God cant exist if evil and pain exist.  Nothing one can say will ever change a closed and made up mind. 
3. This response is the one that is the least likely to happen. You change your expectation.  This is where I am at I am trying to realize that what I thought God was saying was my expectation not God's plan.  God's plan will fulfill itself  Jeremiah 29:11 says " For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."  Some how this illness which seems to harm the plan of my life is not going to bring harm it is going to bring hope and a future.  How can you be so sure  Because despite what I expected I know that God is true to his word.  He says in Isaiah 55:6-11 " Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. 8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. 9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

Gods word will not return without accomplishing the purpose he sent it to accomplish.  If we take these words of God to heart and apply them to our expectations then we realize when it seems that God is not living up to what we expect that our expectation of result is not his expectation of result.  Since God doesn't change we must.   That's where I sit right now trying to  change my expectations.   Take a look at yours and think about it.

George

Resistance to Revival

The more I spend time with those who claim they want to experience a move of God that is world shaking the more I realize that is not what they want. They want a move of God that changes those around them to be more like them not a move of God that changes everyone it touches to be more like God.   We desire a revival that will make Tom, Dick, Jane and Sue more like what we think they should be like but the minute God reveals to us that we need to Change as part of the revival then we are finished and decide "This is not for me anymore."  In the last few months as I have seen and directed those who claimed to want to see a move of God more and more of them have given me an excuse as to why they cant be part of what God is doing here. Deep down inside they know God is about to change their perceptions and challenge them to grow and become something they aren't yet.  Because we resist change we resist the Holy Spirit who is leading us into change. So once again I have sounded the shofar of revival and once again when it isn't about feeling the touchy feely goodness of God but the all consuming fire of God people run looking for something they want not what God is doing.  I sit at home and wonder and pray and cry out for a group of people who want God to move not just in their neighbors lives or their enemies lives or other peoples lives but in their own as well.  I ask God and I despair that I am the only one who wants God so bad I am willing to give up everything to get HIM even if it means giving up myself and my "identity"  I sit here and wonder am I the only one?  I can't be can I?   But experience tells me that it sure looks like it. And for that I cry.

Dark Night of the Soul

Tomorrow I will catch up on what has been happening in my prayerwalks but I felt lead to share last Sundays Sermon with everyone as I have been getting a lot of people who are going through this phenomenon and don't understand it for what it is.

So Lately I have been talking to a lot of committed Christians who for no apparent reason seem to think that God has stopped listening to them. They feel abandoned by HIM or like he is hiding from them. They say things like: "It feels like my prayers are just bouncing of the walls." or "I have been asking God for _____ for weeks and he doesn't answer me at all." This leads most of them start asking me what do I think is the problem with them that they can't hear or feel God in their life anymore. As a pastor this is one of the most frustrating questions to be asked. I mean if there is sin in their life then that is probably what is blocking God and usually he will tell me or the person I am talking to will let something slip that shows me what is between them and God but a lot of times they are living in right relationship and still aren't hearing the voice of God or feel his presence in their lives. When that happens I try to explain that besides unconfused sin there are two other reasons that we might not be hearing from God.

So the first reason besides a break in your relationship with God is that the enemy is delaying God's answer to you so that you will either accuse yourself of some unknown unresolved sin or so that you will accuse God of breaking his promise to never leave us. (Hebrews13:5, Deuteronomy 31:6 and Matthew 28:20) God is Truth and therefore cannot lie since he promised to never leave us, to be with us till the end of the earth then we know that he is hear. Since he promise "call on me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things you don't know" (Jeremiah 33:3) we know that he is keeping his word. But if we look at Daniel chapter 10 we see an example of the enemy delaying an answer to prayer. Daniel 10:12&13 say this:

12 Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.

for 21 days the answer to Daniels prayers were delayed by the prince of Persia this is not a physical prince but the demonic prince of the region of Persia. Why would Satan or his demons delay our answer from getting to us

Well scripture tells us that he is the accuser. The response of everyone I talked to about this recently proves it they all wanted to know what sin they were committing that was stopping God from having fellowship with him. Sometimes it is sin but if it is God will reveal it so that it can be dealt with. Satan also uses it to accuse God of breaking his promise. This is the oldest trick in his arsenal of tricks against mankind. it is the one he used on eve in the garden if you think about it boiled down to its most basic is God is a liar he is keeping stuff from you he didn’t keep his word to make you in his image. He made you less than him. And we buy into it almost every time at least until we learn that is what he is doing and then we are aware of this trick and it doesn’t work as well. There is one other reason for us not to hear God for a period and it was called by the Christian mystics of old the "Dark Night of the Soul.

2. The Dark Night of the Soul was a term created by Saint John of the Cross in 1587. It is a time of Stillness when God hides his presence from our perception to cause us to seek him harder. It happens only when God is trying to take us to a new level of relationship with Him. It leads to a deadening for a period of time of everything spiritual in our lives we have no desire to seek the things of God. By that I mean we don't "feel" like it we may want to in our spirit but our emotions seem to disconnect from our spirit. We are as several people have told me lately "Just going through the motions" This is held out in scripture look at most of the psalms of David they are either songs of praise to God or cries for God not to hide himself any longer. As an example look at Psalms13: 1-3 in those first three verses of this psalm David ask how long to God 4 times and ends verse three by saying if you don't reveal yourself to me soon I am going to die. And yet the Psalm ends with David standing in faith on what he knows to be true not what he is feeling is the truth. Read this whole psalm to see what I am talking about. Some people ask me how I know that the Dark night of the soul is not just sin in our lives that we don't know about. My answer is found in Isaiah 50:10 It says "Who among you fears the LORD? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness And has no light? Let him trust in the name of the LORD And rely upon his God." Notice that those who walk in darkness and have no light put their trust in God. This is a Biblical description of that Dark Night of the Soul.

If you happen to be finding yourself in a Dark Night of the Soul take heart they are not permanent they are to see if you are willing to press on and in doing so you enter into a deeper relationship with God that isn’t based on feelings or what you can see and hear and feel but on what you KNOW is True.

The tale of the Surprise Prayer walk

So this week I got a surprise from God. When I first started being lead to do this whole prayerwalking thing, I wanted to be able to get inside of the Local High School to prayerwalk.  Truthfully I have no contacts there I don't know anyone who could get me access but my youngest son does go to school there. And I was called Friday and asked to attend a meeting to discuss my sons academic career on Monday morning. So I arrived at the school with about 10 minutes to spare before my appointment and the Secretary gave me directions to my meeting. She told me that I was to meet in an office on the far side of the campus and gave me detailed directions so I left and began to follow her directions walking through the Halls of the school and I thought "I am not going to waste this opportunity. I will pray and declare the kingdom of God over this route at least." Little did I know that I had been set up again by God. The directions literally took me through every hallway in the school and lead me almost exactly to the office I started in.  I walked and prayed over the entire school before my meeting. How is that for a God surprise.  And that my friends is the tale of the surprise prayerwalk.

Preparing the Walker the final chapter

So I want to start by apologizing for not posting for the last week but after spending last Friday and Saturday with God and preaching on Sunday I came down with the worst case of Hay Fever I have ever had and have been in bed all week long. but I do want to share some of what God gave me those last couple of days and even this week in the bed I have been spending time with God.  I want to share some of what God has been saying to me during this time. 

God is looking for people who will just spend time with HIM.  No agenda just treat HIM like you would a close personal friend. One of the things that we talked about was that during my walking times though he would at times give me insights and messages about the church and about his people a lot of the time it was just HIM and I spending time together with no agenda. HE told me about doing that in the past with people HE talked about spending that kind of time with Enoch and Noah. He talked about there being people of every generation that just spent time with HIM.  He reminded me of the conversations that we had during our walk about the ducks and even brought to my mind the walk in which HE laughed at the inside joke HE was setting me up for.  Then HE told me that is what HE longs for from HIS people. HE told me that most of HIS children only come to HIM when they want something or need something. HE said they treat me like their own personal genie or Santa Claus while I want to be their love and friend.  I preached about this at our church this last week and had people asking me how do you do that How do you spend time with God and hear these things from HIM like you do.  I answered them the way I would answer anyone who asked me about that  YOU just do.  How do you spend time with your friends you make the time.  When was the last time you invited God to cook dinner with you? or to go to the movies with you or just take a ride to the store with you?  When is the last time you talked to HIM just to talk not to request something?  When is the last time you tried to listen to HIM talk to you without distraction?  This is what God is looking for, Longing for, HE is desperate for it.  I told someone on Sunday that I had spent to days listening to God cry.  HE wasn't crying over the sins of the world or the sins of the nation, He wasn't crying over deaths and loss of innocence. NO God was crying for someone to want to spend time  with HIM to love on HIM.  We say that we love HIM but would your spouse or significant other believe you loved them if the only time you ever spent time with them was when you wanted something from them? NOT for long they wouldn't. So take some time this week and just talk to God share your life with HIM, your dreams, your disappointments, your funny stories, Every thing and then listen as HE shares HIS with you who knows in some future generation they might just be talking about you and calling you "the friend of God"  Anyway that is my thoughts this week I got to go me and God are getting together to watch NCIS who knew that God liked TV?
Tomorrow my surprise prayer walk this week
I sure hope God doesn't hog the popcorn :)

Preparing the Walker Day3

Well today's walk was a lot quicker I only had to walk to the mall and spend some time there, Then walk home about 2 miles total not including the trip around each floor of the mall.  It was a good walk and I did get some things but not a lot of photo's I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures of people that I didn't know and the things I saw wouldn't show up in photos anyway.  So let just get right into what went on during this walk.  As I was walking there another signboard just jumped right out at me it was for the Fraternal Order of Eagles but they don't say that on the sign it says FOE.  God spoke and said the foe is everywhere and he is taking notice of what is happening in the area. But he reminded me that while we have to watch out for the foe he has already been defeated and that as Paul the apostle puts it "the weapons of our warfare are strong for the pulling down of strongholds."   So dear brothers and sisters who are reading and praying remember that we must be on our guard and put on HIS armour daily so that we can stand against the snares of the enemy.  With that we continued on to the Mall nothing really of any significance happened on the way after the foe thing but I did take this photo of some ducks on the river just because it looked cool.

I said hey God there are a bunch of ducks anything you want to word you want to give me about them.  He said yeah they look cool all lined up like that.   Not everything about these walks have to be about some deeper word they can just be about us being together. And believe it or not that is what most of this walk was about.  I got to the mall and walked around looking at people and God said look at how busy they are.  Even here they are on the go. It seemed like every other person was shopping and walking and talking on their cell phones all at the same time.  Then we passed this signboard on the second floor and God opened my eyes to something else. The sign was for being able to buy lottery tickets in the mall and He said see the prince is active here to and then my vision changed and I saw a lady with this creature on her back and the creature had a long chain attached to her. She came out of one store and started past the next when the creature hopped of went into the store and yanked on the chain. She stopped turned and went into the store and began to shop. I stood and watched until she came out with another bag full of purchases and watched her walk a couple of more stores when it happened again.  As she came out of that store I went up and said excuse me I know this is kind of a weird question by why are you here in the mall today?  She was very friendly and told me that she had a hard day at work and just felt like she needed some shopping therapy so she came to the mall.  I thanked her and watched as the demon pulled her into another store.   As I began to look around I saw lots of creatures on lots of peoples backs. some had several and one man had a chain from him to the woman he was with and several other chains that just seemed to go straight through the walls. When I asked God about him I was told he is addicted to something at the end of each chain.  Then I was led up to the food court where i got a drink and sat down to watch people. God spoke and said look how busy they are. This is so typical now days people say they can't hear me or see me now days but the truth is they are just to busy to sat down and listen to me or look for me. I could hear the sadness in HIS voice and the Longing. Then HE said "If they would just be still and know that I am God. that's what i want from my children. They are so busy doing for me or themselves that they rush through their time with me. I want people to spend time with me. Then He made it personal Thank you He said for the last few days You are hearing me because you are spending this time with me. You may have thought I was silent yesterday because you got discouraged but i was just walking with you. being with you enjoying having you to myself.  That is what these 14 days are about. Yes i will show you stuff. But mostly I want you to grow to enjoy being with me, talking with me, listening to me. Not just because you need something but because you enjoy my company.  Then He went quite for a while. He showed me something I can't talk about yet then said lets go home. which is what we did. On the way home he said I just want to spend time with you tomorrow no agenda no visions just you and me in communion together. Lets g someplace quite and spend time together .  So that's what we are doing. If there is anything to tell tomorrow I will tell it if not Talk with you Saturday.