Dear friends,
Our time at the Washington DC Gathering of
the Eagles was so productive. We will put a complete report together
and send it out shortly, but we did want to share at least one victory
with you right now. One of the areas that we prayed over was modern day
slavery, otherwise known as human trafficking. Human trafficking has an
estimated 20.9 million victims (According to the Polaris Project- http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/international-trafficking )
trapped in its talons today and every individual freed is a victory. We
prayed over this Wednesday March 12, 2014 and since then, we know of
two very large victories that took place. Freeing both children and
adults from their captors - this is a victory my friends and we should
celebrate such a victory! See these links below for more information:
We are expecting to hear more good news in
the coming days. That said, our next Gathering of the Eagles will be in
New York. We are working on the details now and will notify you as soon
as things are set in place.
As usual, our CedarWood team is hard at
work and this coming week in particular will be dedicated to increasing
provisions for our BackPack Kids. These children rely heavily on the
school breakfast and lunch programs to keep them fed. With spring break
approaching, we want to be prepared to meet the additional needs that
these children will face while school is not in session. This increased
need has led our CedarWood team to plan a huge BackPack Kit assembly
session for Monday, March 31st. The team will come together and assemble
enough kits to allow each of our BPK participants to receive a few
extra kits to take home with them while school is out for spring break.
If you are in the area and can join the team for assembly, please
contact our CedarWood Director Kathy Rickey so she can plan accordingly.
If you are not in the area and would like to contribute financially,
please click the link below: KathyR@worldforjesus.org
Thank you for your prayers and support as we work to develop an outreach to those in the Seattle area.
Blessings in Him,
Ricci
Following is "Part C" in our next teaching, "Choose to Trust: Trials and Truth" by Nita Johnson.
Choose To Trust:
Trials and Truth
Part C
By
Nita Johnson
Seattle
He wants to give to you a greater glory
than what was in the face of Moses. The Bible clearly says that the
glory that was in the face of Moses was so brilliant that the Hebrew
people could not look upon it. He had to cover his face because they
could not bear to gaze upon it. I am inquisitive, and I asked the Lord
for years, “Please let me see the glory in the face of Moses. What
happened to him? What did he look like when he came down the mountain
with the glory flashing from his face?”
He answered that prayer unexpectedly. Our
team had gone to Africa to minister, and we stopped over in England for
the night before moving on the next day. I was in prayer, when suddenly,
I found myself before Moses. The glory that flashed from his face
looked just like the light dancing on the head of a sparkler. Those of
us who are older will remember when we were kids, and our parents bought
us sparklers for the 4th of July.
That is exactly how the glory flashed from his face. The flashes of
glory were so great that the flashes themselves covered his body. Can
you imagine what he looked like on the inside if that is what he looked
like on the outside?
The heart and the soul must be greatly
purified to contain the glory, and with Moses it was. He walked in union
with God. His soul was so purified that it was pure light. God wants to
divest the soul of the darkness, once developed by the lack of the
knowledge of the light, and the lower nature. He wants to remove the
part of us that craves sin. One of the things that Christians do is to
misbehave, and then they blame someone else for doing it. They say, “You
made me so mad!” What happened to our personal choices? We do all kinds
of things in our Christian life, and then we want to point the finger
at someone else about why we have done it. The only bad thing about this
business of pointing the finger reveals that we have been touched by
the light. This business of pointing the finger at others shuts down the
light that would have healed our soul.
When God sends truth into you, you receive
light as truth is light. If there is a color to truth, it is the color
of light. Truth is also living. It is not like having a flashlight
shining on your heart. It is the embodiment of God who is living light
and truth. When truth pierces your heart, and you do not want to deal
with what the truth is revealing, you respond by blaming it on someone
else. What happens with the light and truth? You shut it down, and you
lose the growth that you could have had. You can do that just so many
times, and God will quit flashing that particular truth into your heart.
Then there is no remedy because you have rejected truth. What is going
to happen next? The Bible tells us: deception.
You do not ever want to tell God, “No,”
when He tries to give you truth. You can say to Him, “This is too
painful; I can't deal with it. Give me grace to deal with it so that I
don't throw it away.” You can say things like that, but you cannot say
no. You cannot blame someone else, blame circumstances, or shove the
truth away. You can only do that so many times, and it will not be given
again.
But you want to go on with God, right? So
that means when He shines the light of truth into your heart, mind, and
soul, and it pierces, it hurts, it brings conviction, and you feel
overwhelmed—cry out for grace, but do not stop it. The enemy will try
His living best to bring offense so that you will shut down the stream
of truth. You must protect your heart from offense. Truth will bring
with it offense. I promise you; it will. Truth offends the flesh. If it
does not offend the flesh in you, then it will offend the flesh in
someone else who will be happy to try to offend you. Do not allow
yourself to nurture the offense that truth brings.
I am going to be very vulnerable with you.
There was a level that I was challenging God for in my walk with Him,
and when I set my heart to that challenge, things around me began to
happen. Some of the things that happened were so painful that I felt
like I was being shattered into a million pieces. The storm got so thick
and so long that I forgot that for which I was vying. I became so weary
in the battle that I lost the vision of what I was even fighting for.
It did not mean I turned away from God. I still fought for God, and I
still wanted Him more than I wanted to breathe. Nevertheless, what began
to build in my heart was a resentment over all the wars, and I did not
even know it.
Several weeks ago, the Lord began to show
me where resentment had come into my heart here and there through all
the various battles. When we were in New Orleans, the battles were so
incredibly intense. On top of everything else that I had to walk
through, I was constantly, every single day, fighting for my virtual
life until I became so physically weary that I did not know how I was
going to be able to keep going. Battles happened around the
circumference of my life. My daughter was severely injured three years
ago; she just had surgery to hopefully fix that injury. There was
intense suffering on her part and on mine. Just because you are a
minister does not mean you quit being a Mom. I will not even go into all
the things that were touched before God began to put His hand across
the troubled waters. It felt like everything in my world was being
shaken and shaken until I felt like I was blind. I could not even see
through the fog.
I wondered, “Why didn't You protect my
daughter, Ricci? Look what she has gone through. Look what her children
have gone through because of this. Why?” I did not know there was just
this little seed of resentment that had been sown into my heart. I
honestly did not know. There was also a little seed over the struggle
for life for the years that I lived in New Orleans. You just cannot know
what it is like not to be able to breathe for four years unless you
have lived there. It was horrible. I am still recuperating from what I
went through in New Orleans.
The Lord finally brought me out of New
Orleans, and He brought me to a place where my physical being could
begin to heal. When He got me to a certain place, He started dealing
with the baggage that I picked up along the way. Every time He shed the
light on another issue that caused contention in my heart, I cried and
cried. The one thing I want to do is to do it right. I had wanted to do
it right so badly that I ended up shoving things down left and right
instead of dealing with them. That was, until I felt such a distance
from the Lord that it was unbearable. I fasted, prayed, and pleaded with
Him, “Please show me where all this began!”
To be continued...
In Him,
Nita |
