God is going to raise up a “New Breed of Believers” over this nation that call out to Him and live according to the Spirit. And they will not sin because the spark, the fire within them, that lives in each one of their cells remains and the desire to hold onto their flesh will be no more, because all they care about is pleasing God. They will walk and live by the Spirit. It will not be an easy year. For those that have only begun, it will be a very, very difficult year, but if we will press in, if we will bow the knee, day after day, moment after moment, second after second, we will arise as children who present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. That is our reasonable service.
The Spirit of Reformation is going to teach us how to live a life of righteousness with our hearts bursting with fire. I feel His fire in me, He is birthing a fire in His people. A fire. Submit to it and let that fire consume everything within you that is not of Him. Everything! Lay it out! We have learned how to repent for a nation, we must never forget how to repent for ourselves. Let Him reveal that which is in you, but He wants you to lay at His feet. If we give it to Him, if we expose our hearts and lay them on the altar, if we lay our flesh on the altar, the process will be so much easier.
You might think to Him, Well, if You love me, why is it going to be hard? Why does He not just take it? Because He is not going to wrestle you and if you want to engage in that war, He is going to let you sit in your sin and your flesh for a while and I am telling you, it is not pretty. I have been there. It is not a pretty sight and it does not feel good. You wake up in the morning with this dread in your heart and think, Why do I feel this way? This feels icky. But He allows that because He loves us.
He really does want us to come to Him. He really does want us to lay our flesh on the altar. But there comes a day, because He loves us so much and the call on our lives are so important, that He is will allow the external pressures to close in, until it begins to squirt out the flesh, like a giant boil that has been sliced and all this toxic ooze comes spilling out. That is a horrific process. Or, we can bow the knee and lay our flesh on the altar. Let Him show us, as we read Romans 12, to lay everything at His feet.
Paul says in verse 4, “We have many members in one body.” Ask yourself, Lord, am I remembering that? Am I considering the other members of my body? Analyze the scripture, ask the Holy Spirit to show you if you are not living this passage out. Let His Word have its way in your life, because 2018 is going to give birth to a new generation of believers—and you will hear me talk about that a lot—because the mantle of Paul has been released and a powerful release came with it! We talked about that last year along with the passages in the epistles that Paul wrote. These are epistles we need to know because that is how we arise as a new breed of believers, submitted to God, living our lives as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, transformed by the renewing of our minds.
That word transformed means “to be changed into another form—a complete change for the better.” Transformed by the renewing of our mind. That is the new breed of believers that is going to arise in 2018. The question I have is, will you be among them? And I think that is a question we need to ask ourselves every day. Every day because this new breed of believers is what is going to help the Church come out of the turmoil that they are in, and that will come in this next season. There will be those that come out, run from the Church pews and doors, because they see what is coming. And they are going to need to find a place to help them heal and to grow in God. Even though they have been in Church their entire lives, they need to find a place where they can come and grow in God. 2018 will give birth to these leaders who can help them.
Closing Prayer:
Heavenly Father I want to thank You for Your Word, I want to thank You for meeting Paul on His way to Damascus to arrest the Christians. I want to thank You for saving him, I want to thank You for standing over his shoulder for three years and teaching him who You are; revealing Yourself to Him through the Covenant of the Old Testament. I want to thank You for telling him to write these letters, compelling him to press through illness, imprisonment, stoning and lashings! He received 39 lashes five times (2 Cor. 11:24). He was stoned and then left for dead. He was shipwrecked. He pressed through it all, Lord God, to get the purity of the Gospel message out. I want to thank You for preserving his letters, that we might learn from them, and I ask You Lord God, that You take Your Word and write it on our hearts. You have taken our thoughts of sin and turned them into something malleable. Write Your Word on our minds, let it be all that we think about.
How do we submit to Your will? How do we conform to Your ways? How do we allow you to have Your way, Lord God? How do we lay ourselves before You, that You might transform our minds, the way in which we think, breaking off strongholds, breaking off traditions that are not of You. Breaking off the bondages of false doctrines. Breaking off even the wounds inflicted upon us as children. Heal us, Lord.
I am reminded of the vision that You showed me years ago. I was studying Your Word and I used to sit outside my children’s room as they fell asleep, and I would just study Your Word as they drifted off to sleep and You showed me a picture of a brain. As I studied the Word, an eraser came and began to erase the scars left in me from the prior years, decisions I had made that led me into a life of pain. You were erasing the wounds with the eraser of your Word. I thought, What a beautiful picture of the work that Your Word can do in our minds. You heal the whole body—the mind, the emotions, the body—You heal us.
Studying Your Word heals us, transforms us, conforms us to Your Spirit. Let Your Word have its way in our lives. Give us the grace we need, Lord God, to get through this process. Give us the courage we need to lay ourselves on the altar. Give us this strength to face the obstacles. Help us, prepare us, and let us arise at the end of 2018 a New Breed of Believers, having endured the refining process. I thank You Lord, I give You praise and glory and all the honor, in Your Name, Amen.
Blessings & Love,
Ricci Wilson
