During a time of prayer, a word of prophesy came in August that there would be a “train wreck”… meaning that God’s glory was going to wreck religion & tradition and the “church” as we know it. I saw His train filling the temple and His glory colliding with every device and weapon of the enemy that has been keeping us from the liberty and abundance of grace that He has supplied. In this prophecy, He was very specific. He said, “Look to Labor Day.” I wouldn’t ordinarily speak a date but it just came out and I was surprised afterward.
I said all that to say this. For about a month, after what was an incredible prayer service on Friday of Labor Day weekend, I have been going through much deliverance. A prophet had been in the house that night and carries a very strong anointing and direct word. He said it well when he said, “Many would say that I am a great man of God but really, I am a man of a great God!” Our great God has been revealed through his life.
That night, when I went home, I was dealing with a heavy demonic oppression and was under condemnation, feeling as though my sin, what was past & repented of sin, was the end for me. I literally thought that God had separated Himself from me or that I had gone beyond His reach and that I would have to live apart from Him and I knew I couldn’t. I did not sleep for even an hours time. I remember asking the question, “God, what can I do? What can I do?” The answer was and is…nothing. I can do nothing to save myself, deliver myself, heal myself, prosper myself. Nothing in an of myself. It’s only through Jesus Christ that I live and breath and have my being.
The next day, I called my loving pastor and asked her if I could see her for a few minutes and of course, she opened her doors to me. I went to her and confessed all that I had done and all that I was dealing with and she gave me wise counsel and also helped me to understand the spirit I was dealing with. The word that I had heard the night before was filtered through an orphan spirit that would love to take me out. I literally felt the oppression leave me.
That day, I went home and began reading Joseph Prince’s book, “Reigning in Life”. Now my pastor is full of the grace of God and has shared and could probably write, word for word what this man has written. But as I read, it was as though the seed that she has planted was being watered and God himself was giving the increase, as He promised. I mean…Whoa! This is grace? Where have I been?
All the grace that will ever be available to me is available to me right now and forever more and no one else gets a greater measure. Grace is free and it is for everyone and in equal measure. It’s sufficient and it’s abounding and it’s in abundance. More than I could ever use up in my lifetime! Grace is Jesus Christ!
My sin never has been, nor will it ever be, more powerful than grace! Yet because of grace, sin doesn’t have dominion over me and I am no longer a sinner, nor do I have to give myself over to it, in thought or in action. But if I were to mess up, there is grace.
Recently, after traveling for ministry and then for vacation, I became ill and was in much pain and while I was fevered and laying awake at night, condemnation would try to take opportunity and the enemy would spew lies that I deserved it and on and on and on. There was a war waged against my mind and I knew I had to renew it. So I kept my face in the mirror of the word and I asked “Father, what do I need to be reading?” He told me to go to the book of Romans. So I did and I put in the bible on CD and played the book of Romans all day and all night long, even as I slept.
During this time of sickness, I had to go to the emergency room and while I was there, pastor and others were back at the church, praying not only for me but for others who were under attack as well. Pastor saw a vision of an ants nest being stirred up and instructed that we must be on watch. At what would have to be the very nearly the same time, I picked up my purse from the chair next to me in the ER waiting room and something moving caught my attention. It was a little red ant. I smashed it. Then a few moments later, my husband said, “What’s this?” pointing to another red ant on my purse. He smashed it.
Now, let me divert for a moment with the “ants” in mind. In Joseph Prince’s book, he speaks of the scripture from Revelation 3:16, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” He states that hot and cold is not referring to our passion for Jesus because if it were, why would we want to be cold? Why would that be acceptable? And if we were hot, that would indicate that we must read enough, pray enough, “do” enough to be hot. No, he says that HOT=grace and COLD=the law and that LUKE WARM=mixture of both. Jesus would rather we be completely under grace or completely under the law because at the least, the law would reveal our sin and we would know that we are in need of the salvation that can only come through Jesus alone. Being lukewarm would indicate that we are both under grace and the law and those together, will cancel one another out. Making them both ineffective and unproductive in the life of a believer.
I hope that makes sense. I didn’t write that as eloquently as he but I don’t have the book in front of me to take a quote word for word.
Now, in the car on the way home from church last night, my little girl Emily told me this and I know it was the Lord speaking. (Keep in mind that before church, there were ants in the kitchen sink that we dealt with.)
She said, “Mommy, that’s something else I learned in camp. That you can’t drown an ant in cold water. It doesn’t really die, it just gets paralyzed because they can breath through their skin. And when you take it out of the water, if you cover it in salt, it will get revived and move around again. That’s why when those ants were in the sink today…I really wanted to put cold water on them to see if they would pretend to drown and then try the salt. But you said to turn on the hot water on and kill them. So I did.”
Wham! God opened my eyes!
Here’s what I see…these ants (demons or oppressive spirits) that have been stirred up…in the past I have tried to kill them with cold waters (of the law) and they have only been paralyzed because they breath through the skin. Their life is in the “flesh” and when the cold waters (of the Word or the law) washed over them and my flesh was put under submission to the law, they would be still or be ”paralyzed” and become inactive. They had been stopped temporarily. Then I would just begin going about my business and these “ants” that had looked dead and were just left among the salt (we are the salt of the earth), they would eventually get stirred up again. I have wanted to kill them with the cold waters of the law and by trying to “do” and “say” and “be” right but it’s only in turning on the hot water of grace, that they will be truly exterminated.
You know, my husband often gets after me because I can be taking a shower and when I am finished, I leave the water running for him so that he can get his shower. He has often stepped in and gasped because the water is so “hot”. Father says there’s a reason for that!
I say, shower me Lord! Shower all of us! Let the river flow hot in our lives, in the church and into this world! I say, no more hot flashes! Let there be a flash flood of hot! Rivers boiling with grace!
