Dear friends,
At the end of this week, our crew will
head to Washington, DC to pray for the United States of America. The
work we do in our Gathering of the Eagles conferences is some of the
most important intercessory work that we will ever do.
Our team usually begins preparations
months in advance. We do extensive research about the topics that arise
during our times of prayer. These topics almost invariably involve
crimes and injustices against others, many of whom are, or were,
incapable of defending themselves. We have prayed and repented over
crimes and injustices done against Chinese Americans, Native Americans,
African Americans, the unborn, and victims of human trafficking, among
many others. The research we do often leads us to remarkable discoveries
on those topics, and we present these discoveries to those attending
the Gathering of the Eagles. Our desire is to educate and inform the
intercessors so they can understand what we are praying over. Usually,
we cover one topic per session, but at times we find it necessary to
devote two or three sessions to a single subject. The information we
gather and convey to people allows us to pray over topics
in a way that shows understanding and concern for those who were
victimized.
The Washington, DC Gathering of the Eagles
will be five days, with two to three services per day. Each session
will be spent focusing on historical injustices committed by the United
States that require repentance and intercession. These are all issues
that move the intercessor to seek God on behalf of those who cannot
fight for themselves. There are many times that we have come together
to pray and within a year or two of each gathering, we see victories
that reflect our time together.
The spiritual warfare in the GOE is very
intense and it is always a demanding week for each person attending.
Therefore, if you are unable to join us, please commit to praying with-
and for us- from home.
Thank you for joining us!
In Him,
Nita
Following
is "Part A" in our next teaching, "Choose to Trust: Trials and Truth"
by Nita Johnson. I pray it encourages and strengthens you for the days
ahead.
Blessings in Him,
Ricci
Choose To Trust:
Trials and Truth
Part A
By
Nita Johnson
Seattle
The Lord just spoke to me. His words
pierced my heart. What He wants me to say to you, you know in your head,
but He wants you to hear it again anyway. Jesus is love, and Jesus is
love to you. Since you came to the Lord, you may have experienced some
great difficulties that caused you to pull back from Jesus a little bit.
You thought that maybe He was displeased with you, or maybe even that
He had forsaken you. Perhaps you even doubted His love for you. At the
time of your fiery trial you may have allowed yourself to believe that
Jesus did not care, and it changed your thoughts about Him.
I know that it is a very light thing for
me to say, “Oh, but He cared. Oh, but He loved.” After all, I did not go
through your trial. Nor did I experience your broken heart. I did not
experience the feelings of abandonment and even the sense of betrayal.
It is a very light thing for me to say it, but God is going to open the
wellspring of understanding to you. He is going to help you come to a
place of understanding His thoughts and His purposes concerning your
trial, and it is going to bring much healing, if you will move ahead
with Him so He can.
Even those things that seem to be by
accident are really planned of the Lord. What He allows, He allows in
His love. When He allows something of a seemingly grave nature to come
into the life of His people, He often does it because He is seeking to
prevent something worse from happening. As impossible as it is to
believe that Christ would allow such a thing, He does it out of love.
That thing that seemed so unreal, so dark, maybe even depraved, which
caused such brokenness and anguish of heart, was really a gift. Through
it, He prevented something else which would have carried a greater evil
and would have done much damage. That is not always the case, but for
those of you who have gone through this fiery trial that He is speaking
of, this is His reasoning. He spoke this word to me earlier tonight, and
this is the word of the Lord for your life. It really was out of His
love, His abundant mercy, and His great compassion
that He allowed it. His infinite wisdom is impeccable and far beyond
our understanding. We just do not always understand His ways.
I am thinking right now about Joni
Eareckson Tada, who became a quadriplegic following a diving accident. I
am thinking about how her accident happened, provoking her to the Lord.
Not wanting to be left in her condition the rest of her life, she
really sought Him for physical healing. But at this time in her life,
she is willing to say that had this accident not happened to her, she
would not have gotten saved, probably, because that is not where she was
headed. She sees what befell her as God's severe mercy. The fact that
she has stayed in a chair has opened her up to a worldwide ministry to a
very special class of people. So for her, she really believes that she
would not be saved today except by divine mercy through her accident.
That may or may not be true. Maybe God told her that; I do not know. All
I know is that there are those of you reading this that need to know
that God knows what He is doing in your life. He
wants you to pull on Him, draw close to Him, and praise Him for this
terrible trial He called you to walk through for the purpose of
something good. Are you willing?
2 Cor. 2:14-15 Amp. But thanks be to
God, Who in Christ always leads us in triumph [as trophies of Christ's
victory] and through us spreads and makes evident the fragrance of the
knowledge of God everywhere, for we are the sweet fragrance of Christ
[which exhales] unto God, [discernible alike] among those who are being
saved and among those who are perishing.
I think it is an amazing thing to be told
that we have been called to cycle in Christ's own victories. He is
telling us that He is leading us to triumph, not in our victories, but
in Christ's victories, which are of a totally different nature. If you
ever thought about running a marathon, and if you thought about running
it to win it, then if you train, prepare yourself, run the marathon, and
win, then that is your victory. It was your battle, your struggle and
challenge. It was predicated upon how much you were willing to prepare
for it, and at the end of the line, it was your victory.
I have a friend whose name is Odeh, and he
is Nigerian. Are you familiar with Mr. Clean, the strong man on the
front of the cleaning bottle? Odeh looks remarkably like him. One time, I
asked Odeh, “Do you work out with weights? How is it you came to look
like you do?” He said, “It's genetic. My whole family looks like this.” I
said, “All your brothers, huh?” He said, “Yep. All my brothers.” He
looks like he has been working out with really heavy weights, but it is
in his DNA. Perhaps, for someone who has that kind of God-given natural
strength and capacity, running a marathon would not seem to be a big
deal. But for most, they really have to prepare themselves for the task.
If you have a winning finish, then the victory is yours. Bruce Jenner
said that he spent, on average, eight hours every day for four years in
an intense training regimen to prepare for the triathlon. When he won,
it was his
victory.
However, when we walk with God, are
victories that and depend only upon Him, and which must be worked in
and through Jesus. You co-labor together with Him. He is not going to do
it for you. You will have to do it, but He will give you the grace.
Where there is genuine weakness and you absolutely cannot overcome,
Jesus will do something for you, perhaps in you, to help you overcome;
if you are serious, that is. Most are not serious enough to provoke the
Lord in that way. But if you are, He is not going to leave you ashamed.
He is not going to leave you with your back against the wall and no way
to get out. When it comes to spiritual growth, such as overcoming the
soul and flesh, you must set your heart and mind to do it.
Someone can decide they are going to
become a world class athlete, and they can work and work to win that
title. Bruce Jenner trained with an unheard of determination to win.
Perhaps the greatest things that they have to overcome are the sore
muscles from working so hard, as well as the sacrifices of the
discipline required. Athletes of this caliber cannot go and do what
others do because they have a goal that compels them.
But when you are a Christian, and you are
trying to overcome yourself, it is an entirely different beast. Am I
telling the truth? It is amazing to me. Maybe before you got saved, you
were a person of great discipline. Then you decide that you are going to
go deeper in God. The enemy is going to come against you in every way
he can to break that disciplined nature of yours so that going on in God
becomes so difficult and so full of challenges that you have to give
your undivided attention to doing it or lose the battle. You have to
resist yourself more than you have to resist the devil. You have to
refuse to settle for second best, or even third or fourth best. You have
to refuse to be lazy and apathetic. You must fight against your will
and against hurt feelings. The enemy loves to fill you with hurt
feelings against the Lord, or against someone else in the Church, so
that you will give up this conquest of self. He never
lets it be easy.
You might say, “Well, why does God allow
that?” You are cycling in Christ's victory. He overcame the flesh, the
devil, and the world. He has already overcome. You have to come to a
place where you recognize that this battle is the Lord's, and you must
only learn how to cycle in His victories. This is the key. Satan will
make those victories so hard to achieve that you will want to give up.
Only Jesus knows how to overcome your flesh and soulish nature. Only He
knows how to overcome the devil and the world in you.
I used to ask Jesus, Lord, why is this
quest so difficult? Why can't I do it? Why can't I decide what is going
to get healed emotionally or physically and what isn't? When You show me
something that needs to be healed—why can't I decide how that's going
to happen?” I sincerely wanted the answers to these questions because I
was feeling very frustrated. He said, “Your soul is very fragile as is
the case with all men. Only I know how to work through the hidden
corridors of your soul and heal you without hurting you. So I will lead
you by a way you know not so that you will not interfere with My work.”
I cannot tell you how many times He has
taken me through the path of victory. Sometimes it has been very, very
difficult, and other times it has been quite easy. I can tell you that
every time He has taken me through the path of victory, and He finally
got taken care of what He was really after in my soul, I look back and
realize that I did not even know that we were dealing with that
particular issue. I thought we were dealing with thus and so, but we
were not. He also took care of many other issues along the way so that
He could take care of this big issue. Then I always praise Him as I
think, “Lord, You're so smart, so wise!”
To be continued...
In Him,
Nita |
