Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.”
Matthew 15:32
In the darkest of seasons, hearts full of compassion shine brightest.
A heart cannot remain full of love and compassion in trying times without the Spirit of God.
And when we allow His Spirit to fill us with compassion for those around us, then the dark season turns light within those compassionate moments.
We are choosing to be a living sacrifice for God while most in this world choose selfish acts.
This is what differs us from the world. We remain in hope and peace while many fall deeper into despair and confusion.
This does not mean we won’t experience negative emotions as we process our lives, but it does mean we have an ability to choose to allow the Lord to strengthen us despite our challenging situations and how we feel about them.
Jesus was full of compassion for those He ministered to while here on the earth. It is out of His heart of compassion that He chose to help them in miraculous ways.
“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
Matthew 14:14
Jesus chose to have compassion even in the midst of His own sorrow. In this verse above we see Jesus choosing to have compassion on a large crowd right before He heals their sick. Prior to this, He had learned about the brutal death of John the Baptist and had retreated alone to a solitary place by boat. However, when Jesus saw how large crowds had found Him and were following Him on foot, He chose to have compassion on them.
That example of compassion amazes me, and mostly because in His sorrow Jesus found room to still show love and compassion. This definitely reminds me of the verse that encourages us to be ready in and out of season to be used by the Lord.
“Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction.”
2 Timothy 4:2
This type of love and compassion can only be sourced from the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural compassion to be able to love and help others in need when you yourself are going through a difficult time in your life.
Loving someone else in their dark season while you are walking through yours, will help your focus remain on the Lord. Serving others with a heart of compassion provides us the blessing of having a shift in our perspectives about our situations. It places our eyes on God and we cannot but help see our situations through His eyes.
If there is anything that you can do in the midst of your trials, it is to still choose to be an individual full of compassion for those in need and to be available to be used by God in any season of your life.
Through the prophet Ezekiel, God spoke a lot of judgment against the sin in the leadership of His people, as well as, with the people themselves and surrounding nations.
And after He promises judgment and the cleaning of the nation of its detestable acts and worship of idols, He then begins to promise His restoration of His people. He promises them the hope of raising them up again under the leadership of One King, prophetically speaking of the reign of Christ.
And then we come to a place where God shows Ezekiel the restoration of His temple. He shows Ezekiel a great vision of the temple and its measurements and different rooms and functions.
And He explains that His glory will return to the temple!
“…the glory of the Lord filled the temple..”
Ezekiel 43:5c
“He said: ‘Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever. The people of Israel will never again defile my holy name…”
Ezekiel 43:7 a,b
As I was reading this I kept being drawn to verses found in the New Testament, verses that say that we are the temple of God. And that being God’s temple, the Spirit of God dwells within us and lives with us.
“What argument is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’”
2 Corinthians 6:16
So God calls us out to be holy! He calls us out to avoid idol worship because He already dwells within us, His believers.
If we try and wrap our minds around being a temple for the Lord, a temple where He promises Ezekiel that His glory returns to after it is made clean, after the detestable practices and the idol worship are not defiling His holy name any longer, then we will recognize our own personal need to have our hearts cleansed.
If we allow God to clean out our temple, to clean out our hearts of different sins, then His glory will have room to fill us up.
But if we do not allow God to clean us out, then we are missing out on a promise that He gave us where He says:
“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be there God, and they will be my people.”
Ezekiel 37:27
God promises that He will dwell with us and He is! He will be with us, but we need to live a life void of placing other idols ahead of Him.
If we truly want the glory of God to manifest within us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we must continue to keep our temples clean. We do this by the grace of God, asking Him to clean out anything that does not honor Him.
The more parts of us that we yield to the Lord, the more He has a place within us. But if we hold anything back from Him and keep it for ourselves, telling Him that He cannot have this part of us which becomes a form of idol worship within us, then we are robbing ourselves of that promise that He has given us all the way back in the book of Ezekiel.
We need to make ourselves available for Him to live in every part of us so that His glory is able to be reflected in our own lives, and so that His presence is seen in our actions and our words.
Paul understood this as a great miracle when God chose to make His children a temple that He can dwell in and glorify Himself through. It is an honor to be considered a temple of the Lord and we must live as such and abandon things that we’ve held onto tightly, things that the Holy Spirit continues to convict us over and over again to yield to Him.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;”
1 Corinthians 6:19
Yes, we are not our own. And God, by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, has fulfilled a promise spoken through Ezekiel. We are living out that promise as believers in Christ today, for His temple, that’s us, is filled with His glory! Let His glory dwell in you!
“My dwelling place will be with them; I will be there God, and they will be my people.”
I had a dream where I was sitting at a table listening in on an interview with a boss and an individual that had been in this interview process before.
I recognized this individual as a dear friend from my past who had at one time a sincere and close relationship with the Lord, but because of life and pain and hurts he had not kept his intimate relationship with God, though still a believer. And because of that he lost a position he was being screened for to be a mighty prophetic voice for the Lord.
My heart was incredibly happy to see this friend of mine returning back to where he left off in this interview process. He appeared more determined than ever before to fulfill a call placed on his life.. and the boss, recognizing this man, was also eager to give him a second chance at attempting to fill the vacant position.
Friends, God is calling people back to Himself and their calling in this hour! Friends of yours that have walked away from pursuing their calling will return, some will come back and choose salvation in Him again. They have abandoned their posts because of trials and siftings, taking offense to God for Him allowing such intense hardships to take place in their lives. But they are returning.. because HE is wooing them back.
“Therefore say: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again. They will return to it and remove all its vile images and detestable idols. I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.'”
Ezekiel 11:17-19
Wherever their hearts have turned in their rebellion, to whatever places they have been scattered, to whatever idols they were worshiping…. it does not matter when God softens their hearts towards Him again. They will return in full repentance and with minds and hearts set on only Him. It will be wonderful!
As we have walked this race, too many I personally know have fallen away, and surprisingly some that had a gift of speaking prophetically. And my hearts sings as I have not ceased praying for these to return, because God is moving to gather them to Him as a hen does her chicks.
Pray with me for those that have turned away from their calling to come back to it and God. Pray that as they walk into their hour of being screened and interviewed in order to be used by Him in a great way(for trust, loyalty and faithfulness to God needs to be tested) that they would not give up in their process. Pray that they withstand their personal testings to be shown that they can be trusted with the words and heart of God.
To be clear, salvation is a free gift in Christ, but I am talking about a returning to a calling on one’s life, not salvation alone. To be trusted with assignments from the Lord you have to withstand trials and testings. And the dream was specifically for those that had abandoned their calling within their hour of testing.
We are in a grace season for them to return and step into who God is calling them to be fully! Prophetic voices are being called back!
As evil is being revealed and uncovered in our nation and the world, the righteous are being prepared to take their stand.
“All the trees of the forest will know that I the LORD bring down the tall tree and make the low tree grow tall. I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.”
Ezekiel 17:24
God can definitely multi-task, I may not be able to, but He can! At the same time that darkness troubles our hearts the more it becomes exposed, He is still speaking loud and clear to encourage and uplift His own.
And as each nasty principality raises its’ head to combat what God is now doing, do not let that alarm you or put fear in you.
Things have been hidden behind closed doors for a long time, and more and more will be exposed in the light. It will be troubling and awful, but that does not take away God’s involvement in our lives and HIS good plans for us.
Evil has to be exposed in order for judgement to be brought down on its’ head. This is a time to rejoice! To see our God move mightily and swiftly in this hour.
Discern good from evil.. listen to the Spirit of God.. He will speak to you if you ask and seek.
But to not work out of a discerning heart and to choose to be ignorant for comforts sake, will lead you in the wrong direction and keep you blind.
Let Him remove that blindfold and grace you to be ready and prepared to see truth. Let Him prepare you to take your stand!
“It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name….”
Ezekiel 36:22b
Anything the Lord does for our nation is not done for our sake, it is done for the glorifying of His name and making Him known to other nations.
In fact, our nation is so steeped in sin and the church is not shining as bright as God intends for her, that any acts of mercy and grace shown us by God are not because of what we have done.
Nothing we do will be enough to deserve His hand of grace … our salvation is grace alone in Jesus and we never worked or could work enough to bring ourselves to have that salvation.
So then why do we feel entitled for God to move on our behalf as a nation and, much like spoiled children, cry and complain that He does not do as we ask.
The response to God doing anything for us is to have a heart of humility and gratefulness.
Too many times we want to see our will be done rather than agreeing with His will. Too many times our prayers and petitions are for our own selfish interests, rather than for His plans.
Entitlement is raging in our streets.. agreeing with the ideas of the world has sidestepped us away from God’s plans, His agenda.
Repentance is needed in this hour.
We must ask God to forgive us of our entitled hearts, to forgive us for overlooking evil when it’s clearly in front of our eyes, to forgive us for being easily tossed within the waves of what is told us from any sources of media, and to forgive us for not being grateful for the protection God has provided us in this storm.
When we are met with great difficulty we need to tell our souls that God can sustain us and hold us above the raging waters. We need to not be offended that He allows these things to happen.. for He has given people free will and we are seeing the results of human free will… but He is still on His throne!
Walking in dark seasons does not mean God is against us.. it does, however, mean He will walk with us through it.. and we can learn by His grace to not be bothered or discouraged by such storms.
Everything we do have is by the grace of God. Nothing is deserved. Nothing should be expected to be ours.
A heart of gratitude of what we do have will carry us deeper into relationship with Him. Let us not allow our present sufferings to bring us to a place of being offended by God for allowing them, but instead seek His heart in the situation.
The greatest challenge for missionaries overseas is not being overcome with bitterness and anger towards the Lord when, after committing our lives to Him to serve Him, He still allows seasons of great storms to come to us.
A heart that believes they will be kept free from difficulty because they have done so much for God, will be sorely disappointed because that’s not why we follow and obey Him.
We follow Him because we love Him and because He first loved us. To feel entitled to not have to walk through valleys as a believer is foolish. But to have a heart that understands this walk with the Lord is not about us, but about glorifying Him and making Him known, then when life becomes unsettling we will have found a resilience we never knew we had in Him.
For a time may come, sooner than later, when the world we live in will not want Christians in it. That time has come for so many other believers in other nations. This is not new to see ridicule of the believer. Yet, it is not a time to shrink from our faith, but to grow even bolder. That’s what persecution can do for the church, make her unstoppable. But first we need to move past our immature thinking and behavior.
We are more than believers of Jesus Christ, we are warriors for Him. And warriors learn how to fight and not complain about the battles. It is time we grow in our maturity of faith in the Lord. Be strong.. have courage.. and don’t be easily offended or swayed!
An hour of judgement has come on the evil in this earth. It is time to clean out our temples which are our hearts.
In a dream I saw Jesus in the sky, mighty and great and the entire earth saw Him as well. Everyone ran to hide from His glory, from His presence and righteous anger. He comes as ruler, as King, as mighty in power and the whole earth fears Him as they should.
“Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
Revelation 16:15
I’ve been feeling a strong pull towards pursuing holiness and purity like never before. I have also felt an hour of judgement upon us like never before as well. The Lord continues to highlight this judgement on the evil in our land each time I go to spend time with Him. And each time His voice grows louder in my spirit.
He is sending out a cry for believers to come out of the world in this time, to be the church He is calling set apart for Himself. But also to protect us from this hour of judgement.
“Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.”
Revelation 18:4b-5
When I was reading in Ezekiel yesterday morning the Lord spoke to me through these verses found in chapter 8. He said the judgement is on an evil that is behind closed doors.. and we will be made aware of it in time. He called Ezekiel to look into a hole and dig in the wall in order to discover sins he knew not of being done behind walls.
“Then he brought me to the entrance to the court. I looked, and I saw a hole in the wall. He said to me, “Son of man, now dig into the wall.” So I dug into the wall and saw a doorway there. And he said to me, “Go in and see the wicked and detestable things they are doing here.”
“He said to me, ‘Son of man, have you seen what the elders of Israel are doing in the darkness, each at the shrine of his own idol? They say, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.’”
Ezekiel 8:12
But the Lord has seen and knows. Nothing is hidden from His sight. The Lord also used these same verses to bring to light the need for the church to search the depths of their own hearts for hidden sins.
Each elder was sinning before their own idol.
What idols are we holding in our own hearts that we commit sin before?
Have we allowed the Lord to dig deep into our hearts to discover these idols?
This hour of judgement is not meant for the church. However, if we are caught unaware in our own sin and refuse to be made clean we can easily fall under what was not meant for His own.
This sounds terrible, I know, and I would never share a word like this if the Lord had not pressed on my heart about this season as much as He has for the last couple of months.
My prayer is that we choose this day to pursue Him, to pursue a heart of purity and holiness. To choose to be set apart from the wicked ways of this world and to be His and His alone.
Be clothed in purity and holiness, let it adorn you and seek to understand what that means.
In seasons where it grows dark, those with His light shine brightly. Be the light He has made you to be in this hour… and be set apart.
I had a horrible dream last night. In the dream I was heading to bed and for some reason was careful to get into bed without having any of the lights on. I did not want anyone outside to know I was inside. Then I heard screams.. terrible screams from right next door to me. I sat up startled and thoughts raced in my head. The first thought was.. “oh no, they are close and coming”.. the second thought immediately after that was, “my sister and her family are right next door”.. and I was alarmed for my sister. I got up still afraid but ready to go help my sister and her family. Then I woke up.
When I woke up I continued to feel the urgency in my spirit to get up and help my sister and her family. I felt frightened still even though I was safe. I began to pray for the family I dreamed about and I loosed angels from Heaven to go and protect that family from harm. While I was praying I literally felt something pressing on my chest. When I finished praying it lifted off me and I immediately knew it was the hand of the Lord! I’ve never felt that before in my prayer times as I felt that last night. I knew a family was in trouble somewhere and I knew my prayers were being heard and responded to.
Church.. God is calling us to be His Watchmen for one another!!
I have no idea where the cry for help came from.. whether here or abroad.. I know it was the repercussions of all that is happening in this hour… and I know that it was my sister.. my sister in Christ, your sister and brother in Christ. We are to intercede and stand in the gap for one another. We are to be alert in this hour. God is calling out for His church to stand and pray… and there are literal lives caught in the crossfires that are crying out for help as well.
I encourage you to listen to His prompting to pray, to wake up in the night and obediently intercede for the helpless and hurting.
“Son of man, I have made you a watchmen for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me.” Ezekiel 3:17
The Church is supposed to be Christ to the world… not caught tangled in politics.. or divisiveness..or arguments that are fed by the enemy.. or any of the ways of this world. Those are just distractions of the enemy to keep you from your role in this End Time hour.
We are to be set apart.. and to be His mouth… not our own. There is no more room to be a mouth for the things of this world.. it’s tiring and exhausting and deceptive.
“But when I speak to you, I will open your mouth and you shall say to them, “This is what the Sovereign LORD says.” Whoever will listen let them listen, and whoever will refuse let them refuse; for they are a rebellious people.”
Possibly even a few years or more ago. But you tried to step into what He asked you to do before and it did not go as you would have liked it. So you simply gave up and said to yourself that it wasn’t the Lord’s voice directing you.
In this season God is refreshing that call once more… asking you again to do what He wants you to do. You are confused because it didn’t work before. It didn’t go as you planned and you were discouraged. So how can He be telling you the same instructions again?
God never misspeaks.
He has plans for us to follow through with.. and He is patient in seeing those plans come to pass. He is patient with us even as we are committed fully to His plans and purposes one day, and the next day we pull back in fear or discouragement.
When He gets us in a place of yielding to Him once again, choosing to obey rather than to ignore or do things our own way.. then don’t be surprised that those plans you abandoned a while back begin to surface in your heart once more.
Pick up where you left off…
Don’t abandon what you know deep inside of you is Him. Don’t wait till the instructions change or a better plan comes along. God has told you what He wants of you.. He has made it clear even in this second opportunity to obey.
He loves us too much to NOT allow us to abandon what He has purposed for us to do. It’s not about what we want to do with our lives.. it’s falling in love with Him so passionately that we also fall in love with obeying. And our hearts will cry out to do whatever He asks of us!
You’ve been around this mountain before. This path is so familiar to you. You can’t seem to go higher, so as you circle around once more you quit trying to climb upwards. Climbing up means mastering the path you failed at.. and you’re tired of trying out that path.
But God hasn’t given up on you mastering it. He believes you can overcome in Him. He is waiting for you to revisit the obstacle you abandoned in frustration before.. waiting to give you new tools of wisdom and understanding to make it through.
Testing and trials are what provide you what you need to overcome. They provide you hard lessons, experience, and develop in you deeper faith and trust in the Lord.
He’s calling a second or third or fourth time to you. He wants you to succeed at this and cannot let you avoid it or find an easier way to pass through. He wants you stronger. Once you are through this obstacle it will show you how far you have come and how much you have grown.
What is that obstacle for you? What is He speaking to your heart right now? What will be different this time tackling that difficult part? Where have you added to His instructions that need to be removed? Where have you possibly misheard? Write down what He speaks to you.
Sometimes we think He spoke something into our hearts, but really it was our own voice. Learn to discern between your voice and His. Seek Him fiercely to know when He speaks. He will confirm His word over and over again.
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” John 10:27
The Lord has asked you to lead a Bible study.. He has asked you to volunteer at the food pantry.. He has asked you to reach out to your neighbors or to start a Bible study at your workplace. He has asked you to connect with an old friend to share His love with them. He has asked you to redirect your ministry or your business. He has asked you to be kind to strangers. He has asked you to attend a church. He asked you to start something new. He has asked you to look for a new job. He has asked you to care for the elderly or to work with children. He has asked you to get up earlier in the morning to spend more time in His Word.
It doesn’t have to be a grand action to obey Him. It can be a simple step you need to take. Take that small step and the next step will be a bit more bigger and a bit more challenging than the last step. He has asked you to obey and to follow Him… and nothing is more rewarding than to do just that.
Be encouraged to try again. Know in your heart the testings and trials were not meant to keep you down, but to strengthen you and your walk with Him. Be strong in Him and try again.
I had a dream where I was observing a gathering of church members worshiping together. However, this large area we were all inside of was dark and eerie. Then I looked up and flying above us all were a handful of literal witches on broomsticks shouting over the crowd. I heard one yell out a new law for the church to follow and if they didn’t God would shun them. Fear broke out across this audience, but not a reverent fear. A fear that was demonically influenced and that woke me up from the dream.
Immediately, I heard the Spirit tell me what that dream meant. He was showing me how some in the believing church have created for themselves their own altar to a god they have in their mind. A god that is NOT the same God in our Bible. Because they have created for themselves this false altar to a false god, they have opened themselves up to witchcraft. They are in bondage to this witchcraft and live out of fear because their understanding of God is not true.
The Lord then reminded me of an experience I had one time worshiping Him at an altar during a retreat I was attending. He reminded me of another lady who was literally sitting beside me in worship, but was being attacked with condemnation and lies. I comforted her and corrected what was being thrown at her. It was strange to me because I was feeling the presence of God powerfully and she was being attacked so horribly. How could that be? How could two different dynamics take place in the same place?
God showed me that even though we were at the same altar in the natural worshiping Him, and because of her idea of who He was from false teaching she had received, she was at another altar in her heart that was not the true altar of Him. Therefore she was under attack.
This is a hard word to share. It’s convicting and also alarming. I know.
God sees these false altars created by man to make themselves feel comfortable and feel not convicted of their sin. He also sees other false altars created through a religious spirit that pushes people away from Him bringing guilt and condemnation. And then there are those false altars made for profit by so called preachers and prophets that seek their own gain and hurt the church on their way to fame. There are too many false altars to name here.
How do you know you are at a false altar?
When you step away from the altar there is no real change in you and your heart. Others see no change and that speaks against the true nature of God and His work.
You go to the altar out of fear and not out of love and devotion to God. You do your duty and you go on with life.. no real change takes place.
The frightening part is that witchcraft rules over your heart.. not the Lord Jesus. You are ruled by religion and it’s laws instead of God and His word. You are constantly being deceived at this false altar and it shows in your life and choices.
Some have sadly walked away from who they thought God was.. but they just walked away from a man built alter to a fake god.. an idol.. a deception. You thought God would respond to your prayers the way you wanted Him to. You treated Him like a genie in a bottle and never came to Him just to be in His presence. He didn’t meet your expectations and you walked away. But you walked away from a false altar. You’ve never learned of His True Nature and Character. You depended on church leaders to show you who God is rather than pursuing God for yourself and now you have a corrupted view of who He is. You have worshipped at a false altar.
Therefore the Lord is declaring judgement on these false altars. He is destroying them and calling people to Himself. But He wants you to find Him apart from going to church and from listening to influencing voices.. He wants you to come to Him in private first.. behind closed doors, where the altar is for Him and Him alone.
No longer will He allow growth in churches that tolerate such idolatry.. with leaders that allow these false altars to be made, some sadly building up altars for themselves instead. If you walk away from any service confused or conflicted in your spirit.. ask the Lord why. He will tell you, but you have to go to Him and be willing to hear the truth.
Churches are not gathering right now in buildings. They are empty and hollow.. but have they been empty and hollow all along? Have we been doing church and remained busy without the pursuit of God? Have we allowed ourselves to be humbled and repentant of our sins? Or are we allowing the altar of complacency to take seat in our hearts?
“The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.” Jeremiah 10:21
God is a jealous God and for good reason. He will not tolerate for long the worship of idols where He belongs. We need to recommit to Him and get rid of the Asherah poles.. get rid of these false places of worship and put Him on the throne of our hearts.
“Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.’ But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. Everyone is senseless and without knowledge; every goldsmith is shamed by his idols.”
It was night. And I was watching a great mass of water rising next to a building, an important and old building.
Once the water reached the threshold, I immediately understood that the water represented masses of people and the water rising were all the votes for Trump being counted in his favor for President.
And then I heard the words within me, “the scales have tipped.”
Next I saw fire 🔥 appear onto the floor inside this old important building that looked like a rather large house. I tried to stamp out this small fire foolishly and I was unsuccessful, as well as, ignorant of what the fire actually was.
I saw this fire 🔥 move ahead of me a little and then something shifted from seeing reality to now seeing the situation spiritually.
Now the fire was much larger and more intense within the spirit realm. I then felt a fear come over me, but not a fear that comes from the enemy. It was a fear of God’s fiery judgement that was released on earth.
The scales tipping represented God’s timeline of judgement. Once they tipped in one direction heavily with sin and evil, God was moved to bring His judgement.
Then the fire 🔥 began to pull me towards it and I knew it meant to plummet me into a fiery lake below and beyond sight. But before that could happen I was awakened from the dream.
I literally could not move for a minute, though it felt like many minutes, from the real fear of God’s great judgement that I had just witnessed.
His glory was within this judgement. And the fear did not come from the fire itself or the thought of destruction in the fiery lake, but rather the fear came purely from an awareness of this glory of God that makes one tremble with fear.
Jesus said, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28
In processing this dream, the Spirit helped me understand how God was now bringing judgement against the great evil in our nation and in our world. Their souls will have to face this fiery judgement of God and it will be terrifying for them.
God has seen the heart of the people in our nation. How they are exhausted from the corruption in our nation’s leadership. Our move to put in a leader that desires to fight against this evil has been seen by our God. This action on our part as believers in Christ, along with the constant evils being done by those corrupt and perverted in their thinking, has caused the scales to tip and has brought this timeline to a close.
Look for God’s hand of judgement against great evils and rejoice that He is acting on our behalf and His.
“Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.”Matthew 12:33
In this trying hour, where many are confused and disoriented by what we see in our nation and world, there is still a godly wisdom we can gain and use to help us discern the voices around us.
Who is telling the truth, who is deceiving their audiences and who is only telling half-truths, which is also a great deception?
I used to listen to a preacher for a season and attended a two week training he hosted. But something strange was happening at this event.
The other attendees around me began feeling confused and hurt. We all felt an onslaught of spiritual attacks during our stay at this event.
Soon some of the attendees began turning on one another in the midst of the confusion, and competing for approval from this leader was strong.
I left this training having met the Lord there by His mercy, but with an awful aftertaste of the experiences I had with some of the others and this leader. It was baffling to me and I continued to pray for clarity and discernment.
I prayed for several years after this event, asking the Lord for help and insight as to what had occurred spiritually during that event. He kept telling me to look at the fruit that was produced from it and from this specific leader.
So I watched carefully with a heart to recognize what type of fruit was being produced.
It began with the leadership directly under this particular leader. Several soon left his ministry and one even publicly repented without specifics of what happened and when, but I and a few others knew what he was referencing. Another leader that had walked away shared publicly her pain from what appeared to be betrayal of leadership she had to leave behind.
And then the confusion of those that attended this event alongside of me never fully lifted for us until a couple of years later. Some of us were able to help one another bring understanding, others we never heard from again.
The fruit was clearly bad and the fruit did not lie. It produced strife within that ministry, wounds to those that trusted this ministry, and even pushed others to walk away from their faith. It was terribly sad to see the aftermath and the product of a leader that was not to be trusted.
I continued to ask the Lord why He led me to this event. I was certain without any doubt that He wanted me to be there. And as I processed what had happened, the Lord revealed to me that the multiple lessons I had personally gained was His intent. He wanted me to learn how to recognize who to trust by looking at the fruit they produced.
He also revealed to me other reasons He had me there, but I want to focus on the valuable lesson of discerning fruit.
Jesus taught us in the New Testament that there would be wolves amongst us walking around in sheep’s clothing. That should make us aware that there are those that are bad who will not be easily detected. They know how to blend in, they know how to appear as one of us, but they are not of us.
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.”Matthew 7:15
For these it will be by their actions and not necessarily their words that will tell on them.
Whenever we find ourselves confused about a certain individual we can always go back on these basic truths from our Lord. Let us look at the fruit they produce and ask the Spirit of God to confirm what kind of fruit it is. And let us be wise in who we allow ourselves to trust to listen to.
Listening to a wounded heart well can be learned.An individual that is trying to open up to you about a hurt they received is important for you to take notice.
They are choosing to trust you with their pain. They regard you as a trustworthy individual that they can turn to for help.
A lot of us are intimidated to be that individual that a hurting person turns to for help, and that is because we do not understand what they really need and we feel inadequate to know how to help them.
More often than not, these hurting individuals want to be heard. They want their pain to be validated and they want someone to share in their grief with them.
Romans 12:15 tells us we are to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice.
However, if we do not know how to mourn with those that are mourning, then we are unable to step into this truth.
I strongly believe that a huge part of mourning with those who are mourning or are grieving, is learning to listen to them and to sit with them.
There is not a lot for us to do when we sit with a wounded heart. The fixing of their heart is not our responsibility, that is the burden of the Lord.
When listening to this individual, listen intently and with compassion and empathy.
Do not allow yourself to be distracted as they are speaking with you. And do not hurry them as they share with you.
If time is not on your side, set a specific time with them where you are able to give them your full attention and time. And share that with them. This will show them that you truly care about them and what they have to share with you.
Listening does not involve offering up your opinion or a solution.
It does involve caring and loving this person and finding a love for them that comes from the Lord.
I try and remind myself when I have the opportunity to listen to someone else’s story, how others have listened to me and shown me great love.
If culturally appropriate, make eye contact while they are sharing with you. And repeat to them what you have heard from them, in order to make sure you are hearing them correctly.
And if you are asked for your opinion or advice, this is your invitation to provide that, yet do not be pressured to have an answer for them. It is okay not to know an answer.
Always offer to pray with this individual, bringing them before the Lord and their pain as well and asking God to heal them.
