A word to encourage those who suffered much in 2014:
2015 is here! I went to bed kind of discouraged last night and didn't even want to celebrate anything. 2014 was one of the most trying years of our lives, and honestly I just couldn't wait for it be over. The crushing, the breaking, the suffering we went through in 2014 was pretty intense, and at times I cried, Lord, Lord why have you forsaken me? I went to bed pretty empty. I basically watched the ball drop and went to bed.
I know I am not the only one that has gone through things in 2014. I have received 100's of emails of those who have experienced great trials in 2014 as well. I wrote an article for Open Heaven and I got done instead of saving it, I deleted it and didn't feel to do it over again and now I know why?
The Lord gave me a word for 2015. Honestly, I didn't even want to post it. We have faced great rejection and persecution last year from many places and sources I would have never expected from. Yet, God reminded me of the word "identification."
Let's read Isaiah 53: Who has believed (trusted in, relied upon, and clung to) our message [of that which was revealed to us]? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been disclosed?
2 For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He has no form or comeliness [royal, kingly pomp], that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah’s] people, to whom the stroke was due?
9 And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When You and He make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; by His knowledge of Himself [which He possesses and imparts to others] shall My [uncompromisingly] righteous One, My Servant, justify many and make many righteous (upright and in right standing with God), for He shall bear their iniquities and their guilt [with the consequences, says the Lord].
12 Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers], and He shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because He poured out His life unto death, and [He let Himself] be regarded as a criminal and be numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore [and took away] the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (the rebellious).
If I could describe 2014 for me and perhaps for many of you. It would begin with verse 10, Yet it was the will of God to bruise him. Why? So that Jesus would see the travail of his soul. Through His suffering and death, and ressurection many will be made righteous, for he will bear our sins and guilt with our consequences put on him.
Is God against us? Romans 8 says, 31 What then shall we say to [all] this? If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]
32 He who did not withhold or spare [even] His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all [other] things?
33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect [when it is] God Who justifies [that is, Who puts us in right relation to Himself? Who shall come forward and accuse or impeach those whom God has chosen? Will God, Who acquits us?]
34 Who is there to condemn [us]? Will Christ Jesus (the Messiah), Who died, or rather Who was raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God actually pleading as He intercedes for us?
35 Who shall ever separate us from Christ’s love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword?
36 Even as it is written, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are regarded and counted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors [m]and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things [n]impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers,
39 Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Beloved, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
In 2014 the enemy has thrown all he could at us to question Gods' love or fairness with us at times. He has come to pit us one against another by lying accusing demonic spirits. He has tried to separate us from God's love and from one another as well. These are not new tactics they just got on steroids in 2014
Yet, Isaiah writes it was the will of God to bruise him. Somehow in a deeper way the Lord has allowed many to identify with those sufferings. Some of us have faced great persecution, rejection and hurt from those who are supposed to love us in the Lord.
Many have spoken about love and even written about it, but when the rubber hit the road, "ugly things" came out of those who claimed to say they were walking in love.
Judgments came, criticism came, and even attacks over the work and will of God that he gave us to do came forward. Why? What purpose was there for this in the heart of God?
Like Job, in 2014 I heard the voices of "my friends'" say, there must be something wrong with you, God would not allow these things if you were right? When we lost our Granddaughter through miscarriage, those same voices didn't even offer a word of condolences. Why? What was God up to? Was it about people, or what God wanted to work in our lives.
When we had a true need, all it could say was "trust God and don't look at people? Yet, people are the very instruments of God's love He wants to use. Jesus said, "the world will know you are my disciples by the love you have one for another? It just didn't make sense to me? How could those who love God so much, miss the simple truth of faith without works is dead?
Love is so costly. That is what Isaiah 53 teaches us? It would be great if everyone loved us the way we needed to them or accept us the way we want to be accepted? How many of you faced the same thing? How many of you have been rejected by those who are supposed to love you or persecuted by them? How many of you in 2014 faced being misrepresented and misunderstood? Why did God allow this? Does he hate us? Is He against us? Why all the suffering? Why all the hurt? Does God have a purpose for it.
The word I was going to bring for 2015 was this, 2015 will be the deepest revelation of God's love, who He is in us, then we have ever seen in the history of mankind.
That helped me to understand 2014 with a better perspective. In 2014 the suffering and trials had a purpose. The purpose was to empty us of all our human love, strength and emotional understanding of what we thought love was, so that God, who is love will fill us with the deepest and holiest love we have ever known.
A love that will say, "father, forgive them they know not what they do," as Jesus did. A love that will say like Steven when being stoned to death, "Father, hold this not against them as He looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father." A love that will lay down it's life as Jesus did for us. A love that will allow us to be led to the slaughter sought of speak and not say a word as Jesus did in Isaiah 53.
2015 will be a year of the "Burning love of God" manifested in us and through us to destroy the works of the devil. 2014 is a year of emptying. A year of emptying even the good things of God to get a new wine skin that can contain the new wine of this powerful holy love of God. That process began in 2014 in some, but in 2015 we are going to see it everywhere God's people are that truly love him.
It is going to be bring a paradigm shift in the remnant of God that will cause us to see we are our brother's keeper. We will no longer love in theory, but in living reality when your life becomes my life, your hurt, my hurt, your sorrow, my sorrow, your joy will be my joy.
This Holy love is going to knit us together as we have never seen before. We will not talk the talk but we will walk the walk. The suffering many have experienced in 2014 will bring forth the Glory of God in our midst in 2015. That Glory will manifest as the purest holy selfless love that Jesus has for us.
Like I told you, honestly I didn't even want to wake up this morning to face another day like those in the last part of 2014. BUT GOD! When I woke up, it was as if it was all gone. It was like 2014 didn't even exist. Something supernatural happened last night, I can't explain. But a word burned in me this morning:
Phil: 3:13-14 13 I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.
God has made me forget: God has given me my Joseph's son as a gift for 2015. Genesis 41:51 Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, "It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household."
That is the miracle of 2015. God has made us to forget all our troubles of 2014 because the deepest love we have ever known or will know is being revealed in us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is shedding the love of God in our hearts fully in 2015.
Beloved, I went to bed under the full weight of sorrows of 2014 to wake up in 2015 that the Joy of the Lord is my strength. God has made me to forget. My Manasseh is here and so is yours. God is bringing forth His prophetic word to His Joseph company, The Lord has made us to forget.
It was His brothers that sold him into slavery. In many ways in 2014 I have known that deeper than I ever have before, but God had a purpose in it for Joseph and His brothers and that was to save all of them and that is what Jesus is doing for all of us now, fully SAVING US'! Christ in us, the Hope of Glory!
Joseph was able to forgive his brothers fully and this deepest work of love in2015 will do the same in all those who have been rejected and suffered through the same way Joseph did through his brothers as well. There will be no scars, no residue of pain and hurt, just pure holy love. The deepest love we have ever known is what 2015 will bring for those who have been in the crucible of testing and trials.
I would not have thought it possible last night. I hoped it would be. But God did not allow me to celebrate this New Year in any natural way. I just went to bed, but "Oh God, does joy not come in the morning? His mercy is new every morning. 2014 is forever gone. The hurts are gone, the suffering is gone and a new day has dawned. It is not by might, not by power, but by His spirit.
I write this to those who may understand and be in this same place we have been. Maybe you did not have any natural joy in the changing of the new year, but there has been a supernatural miracle released to those who have suffered so much in 2014. If you have a trace of new hope and faith this morning, it is from God embrace it. A new day has come.
You and I can now like Paul not look back to what was, but can strain forward to WHAT IS AHEAD! PRESSING ON TOWARD THE GOAL TO WIN THE PRIZE TO WHICH GOD THROUGH CHRIST JESUS IS CALLING US FORWARD!
2015 will be the year you will experience the deepest love of God you have ever known. For if you suffered with him in 2014 you will be glorified with him in 2015. Love, mercy and forgiveness will flow out of you like a river in 2015 in places you never thought possible. Love never fails!
I hope this word encourages those it is written for. God loves you with an everlasting love.
There has been a deeper purpose that God has allowed us to suffer for in 2014. He has exposed what needed to expose to remove what needed to be removed in us to prepare us to be filled with the deepest love we have ever known. It will be worth it. Those God used in our lives were his tools to empty us, change us, break us and mold us, for such a time as this, so we can hold nothing against anyone God may have used as his iron to sharpen us.
So let us go forward into all God has for us in 2015. I sure didn't do a thing last night to change myself this morning. God did it. God did it. To Him be all the glory, honor and praise.
2015 is here! I went to bed kind of discouraged last night and didn't even want to celebrate anything. 2014 was one of the most trying years of our lives, and honestly I just couldn't wait for it be over. The crushing, the breaking, the suffering we went through in 2014 was pretty intense, and at times I cried, Lord, Lord why have you forsaken me? I went to bed pretty empty. I basically watched the ball drop and went to bed.
I know I am not the only one that has gone through things in 2014. I have received 100's of emails of those who have experienced great trials in 2014 as well. I wrote an article for Open Heaven and I got done instead of saving it, I deleted it and didn't feel to do it over again and now I know why?
The Lord gave me a word for 2015. Honestly, I didn't even want to post it. We have faced great rejection and persecution last year from many places and sources I would have never expected from. Yet, God reminded me of the word "identification."
Let's read Isaiah 53: Who has believed (trusted in, relied upon, and clung to) our message [of that which was revealed to us]? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been disclosed?
2 For [the Servant of God] grew up before Him like a tender plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He has no form or comeliness [royal, kingly pomp], that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him.
3 He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.
4 Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has made to light upon Him the guilt and iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, [yet when] He was afflicted, He was submissive and opened not His mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who among them considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living [stricken to His death] for the transgression of my [Isaiah’s] people, to whom the stroke was due?
9 And they assigned Him a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief and made Him sick. When You and He make His life an offering for sin [and He has risen from the dead, in time to come], He shall see His [spiritual] offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will and pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied; by His knowledge of Himself [which He possesses and imparts to others] shall My [uncompromisingly] righteous One, My Servant, justify many and make many righteous (upright and in right standing with God), for He shall bear their iniquities and their guilt [with the consequences, says the Lord].
12 Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great [kings and rulers], and He shall divide the spoil with the mighty, because He poured out His life unto death, and [He let Himself] be regarded as a criminal and be numbered with the transgressors; yet He bore [and took away] the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (the rebellious).
If I could describe 2014 for me and perhaps for many of you. It would begin with verse 10, Yet it was the will of God to bruise him. Why? So that Jesus would see the travail of his soul. Through His suffering and death, and ressurection many will be made righteous, for he will bear our sins and guilt with our consequences put on him.
Is God against us? Romans 8 says, 31 What then shall we say to [all] this? If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]
32 He who did not withhold or spare [even] His own Son but gave Him up for us all, will He not also with Him freely and graciously give us all [other] things?
33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect [when it is] God Who justifies [that is, Who puts us in right relation to Himself? Who shall come forward and accuse or impeach those whom God has chosen? Will God, Who acquits us?]
34 Who is there to condemn [us]? Will Christ Jesus (the Messiah), Who died, or rather Who was raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God actually pleading as He intercedes for us?
35 Who shall ever separate us from Christ’s love? Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation? Or calamity and distress? Or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword?
36 Even as it is written, For Thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are regarded and counted as sheep for the slaughter.
37 Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors [m]and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things [n]impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers,
39 Nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Beloved, nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
In 2014 the enemy has thrown all he could at us to question Gods' love or fairness with us at times. He has come to pit us one against another by lying accusing demonic spirits. He has tried to separate us from God's love and from one another as well. These are not new tactics they just got on steroids in 2014
Yet, Isaiah writes it was the will of God to bruise him. Somehow in a deeper way the Lord has allowed many to identify with those sufferings. Some of us have faced great persecution, rejection and hurt from those who are supposed to love us in the Lord.
Many have spoken about love and even written about it, but when the rubber hit the road, "ugly things" came out of those who claimed to say they were walking in love.
Judgments came, criticism came, and even attacks over the work and will of God that he gave us to do came forward. Why? What purpose was there for this in the heart of God?
Like Job, in 2014 I heard the voices of "my friends'" say, there must be something wrong with you, God would not allow these things if you were right? When we lost our Granddaughter through miscarriage, those same voices didn't even offer a word of condolences. Why? What was God up to? Was it about people, or what God wanted to work in our lives.
When we had a true need, all it could say was "trust God and don't look at people? Yet, people are the very instruments of God's love He wants to use. Jesus said, "the world will know you are my disciples by the love you have one for another? It just didn't make sense to me? How could those who love God so much, miss the simple truth of faith without works is dead?
Love is so costly. That is what Isaiah 53 teaches us? It would be great if everyone loved us the way we needed to them or accept us the way we want to be accepted? How many of you faced the same thing? How many of you have been rejected by those who are supposed to love you or persecuted by them? How many of you in 2014 faced being misrepresented and misunderstood? Why did God allow this? Does he hate us? Is He against us? Why all the suffering? Why all the hurt? Does God have a purpose for it.
The word I was going to bring for 2015 was this, 2015 will be the deepest revelation of God's love, who He is in us, then we have ever seen in the history of mankind.
That helped me to understand 2014 with a better perspective. In 2014 the suffering and trials had a purpose. The purpose was to empty us of all our human love, strength and emotional understanding of what we thought love was, so that God, who is love will fill us with the deepest and holiest love we have ever known.
A love that will say, "father, forgive them they know not what they do," as Jesus did. A love that will say like Steven when being stoned to death, "Father, hold this not against them as He looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father." A love that will lay down it's life as Jesus did for us. A love that will allow us to be led to the slaughter sought of speak and not say a word as Jesus did in Isaiah 53.
2015 will be a year of the "Burning love of God" manifested in us and through us to destroy the works of the devil. 2014 is a year of emptying. A year of emptying even the good things of God to get a new wine skin that can contain the new wine of this powerful holy love of God. That process began in 2014 in some, but in 2015 we are going to see it everywhere God's people are that truly love him.
It is going to be bring a paradigm shift in the remnant of God that will cause us to see we are our brother's keeper. We will no longer love in theory, but in living reality when your life becomes my life, your hurt, my hurt, your sorrow, my sorrow, your joy will be my joy.
This Holy love is going to knit us together as we have never seen before. We will not talk the talk but we will walk the walk. The suffering many have experienced in 2014 will bring forth the Glory of God in our midst in 2015. That Glory will manifest as the purest holy selfless love that Jesus has for us.
Like I told you, honestly I didn't even want to wake up this morning to face another day like those in the last part of 2014. BUT GOD! When I woke up, it was as if it was all gone. It was like 2014 didn't even exist. Something supernatural happened last night, I can't explain. But a word burned in me this morning:
Phil: 3:13-14 13 I do not consider, brethren, that I have captured and made it my own [yet]; but one thing I do [it is my one aspiration]: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the [supreme and heavenly] prize to which God in Christ Jesus is calling us upward.
God has made me forget: God has given me my Joseph's son as a gift for 2015. Genesis 41:51 Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, "It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household."
That is the miracle of 2015. God has made us to forget all our troubles of 2014 because the deepest love we have ever known or will know is being revealed in us by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is shedding the love of God in our hearts fully in 2015.
Beloved, I went to bed under the full weight of sorrows of 2014 to wake up in 2015 that the Joy of the Lord is my strength. God has made me to forget. My Manasseh is here and so is yours. God is bringing forth His prophetic word to His Joseph company, The Lord has made us to forget.
It was His brothers that sold him into slavery. In many ways in 2014 I have known that deeper than I ever have before, but God had a purpose in it for Joseph and His brothers and that was to save all of them and that is what Jesus is doing for all of us now, fully SAVING US'! Christ in us, the Hope of Glory!
Joseph was able to forgive his brothers fully and this deepest work of love in2015 will do the same in all those who have been rejected and suffered through the same way Joseph did through his brothers as well. There will be no scars, no residue of pain and hurt, just pure holy love. The deepest love we have ever known is what 2015 will bring for those who have been in the crucible of testing and trials.
I would not have thought it possible last night. I hoped it would be. But God did not allow me to celebrate this New Year in any natural way. I just went to bed, but "Oh God, does joy not come in the morning? His mercy is new every morning. 2014 is forever gone. The hurts are gone, the suffering is gone and a new day has dawned. It is not by might, not by power, but by His spirit.
I write this to those who may understand and be in this same place we have been. Maybe you did not have any natural joy in the changing of the new year, but there has been a supernatural miracle released to those who have suffered so much in 2014. If you have a trace of new hope and faith this morning, it is from God embrace it. A new day has come.
You and I can now like Paul not look back to what was, but can strain forward to WHAT IS AHEAD! PRESSING ON TOWARD THE GOAL TO WIN THE PRIZE TO WHICH GOD THROUGH CHRIST JESUS IS CALLING US FORWARD!
2015 will be the year you will experience the deepest love of God you have ever known. For if you suffered with him in 2014 you will be glorified with him in 2015. Love, mercy and forgiveness will flow out of you like a river in 2015 in places you never thought possible. Love never fails!
I hope this word encourages those it is written for. God loves you with an everlasting love.
There has been a deeper purpose that God has allowed us to suffer for in 2014. He has exposed what needed to expose to remove what needed to be removed in us to prepare us to be filled with the deepest love we have ever known. It will be worth it. Those God used in our lives were his tools to empty us, change us, break us and mold us, for such a time as this, so we can hold nothing against anyone God may have used as his iron to sharpen us.
So let us go forward into all God has for us in 2015. I sure didn't do a thing last night to change myself this morning. God did it. God did it. To Him be all the glory, honor and praise.
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