No Lack of Hope

This morning I got this prophetic word through Marsha Burns:  "It is not My will that you live in sadness and lack of hope.  I have made a way of escape, says the Lord.  Look up and get up."

How directly and lovingly Abba is speaking to us right now!  The moment we got the notice from the landlord, notifying us that he has sold the building and that we were ordered to move out by February 28, there was a group of us at the Door of Hope who refused to go into sadness and LACK of hope, and we arose and got up and began moving everything we have in the church building into storage.  For two days we labored from sun-up to sun-down to move load after load of tables, chairs, sound system, furniture, and kitchen supplies, rejoicing in our Great God who has not abandoned us, but simply said to us, "The cloud has moved. Be quickly obedient to move with it!"  We are being obedient, and in the process He has provided a temporary shelter for us to gather and worship Him through my daughter's pastor at the Bethel Family Praise Center in Eaton.  Even as I write this I am struck by the name of their church: BETH EL PRAISE CENTER - a place for us to gather in the House of God and give Him praise, even in the midst of our wilderness, and even in the pain of betrayal.

I look up and He is there.  His cloud that leads us has just moved us to a temporary dwelling place where we can be fed with manna and await His next direction. I look up and He is there. He provided a strong, faithful group of Levites to put the loads on their shoulders and carry it. I look up and He is there. FORTY DAYS FROM OUR EVICTION DATE IS NISAN 1 ON THE HEBREW CALENDAR. So what happened on Nisan 1? The Tabernacle was built!  The tabernacle was set up in the first month of the first year - Exodus 40:17.  We are in our second year of the Community called Door of Hope!  Forty days from this Sunday, our day of being sent out, is Nisan 1, the biblical first day of the first month!  We are in God's timing and under His watchful eye.

The number 40 in Hebraic understanding means TESTING. It is all a test; a test of obedience, of trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and of faith. This morning, for the first time in all this mess, I was being tempted to grieve our loss. The beautiful old building in Eaton had been a wonderful sanctuary in which to worship our God, and we had spent a lot of time and money to make it worthy of Him.  How could anyone be so cruel and vindictive as to pull it out from under all of us?  But He has already given me the answer to that question. "I hardened Pharaoh's heart and used him to bring glorious deliverance to My people."  And John has just come to me with Bible in hand and told me the Lord spoke to him this morning with these verses from Psalm 35: "May those who plot my ruin be turned back in dismay. May they be like chaff before the wind, with Malach-Yehovah (the Angel of the Lord) driving them away. I will give You thanks in the great assembly; among throngs of people I will praise You!"

And so we look up and get up!  God will deal with Pharaoh. We will rejoice in the wilderness, and I praise Him that it will not be for forty years! Perhaps it will only be until Passover, the Day of our Deliverance. But for whatever time it takes, He calls us to "Remember the Rock from which you were cut - and remember the name I gave to you: the Door of Hope.  It is not My will that you live in sadness and lack of hope. I am the Door." 

 The One who enters by the door is the Shepherd of the sheep.  The doorkeeper opens the door for Him, and the sheep listen to His voice. - John 10:2

We are the doorkeepers, Abba.  Many years ago you told me to call this "Doorkeeper Ministries" and I could not yet fully understand how I would walk it out! I only knew that in every circumstance I would need to listen to Your Voice and open the door for You to do Your will in my life, even when it was terribly hard, even when it meant great sacrifice. It has not escaped my notice that God brought some passionate, creative people into the Door of Hope just as this crisis was about to erupt. They were bubbling over with creativity in building us new websites, new ideas for spreading the word and reaching the people. Their zeal and faithfulness threw the enemy into full-scale warfare!  But together we will joyfully move forward with praise as our weapon, knowing that He is assembling HIS Remnant who are called and being equipped to bring a multitude of people to healing and salvation. This is a time of training for the difficult days ahead. The faithful are being prepared. 

There is a little sadness.  I am familiar with betrayal and sadness. So was my Master, Yeshua. But there is no lack of hope!  As He says to us today, He has made a way of escape.

Proverbs 11:21:  Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.

Purification

Purification. The smell of singed flesh. Smoky fumes, puncturing my lungs. A coal touches my lips and the sting is altogether painful and wonderful.

"I AM shaking everything that can be shaken," says the Voice. "And the shaking and purifying begins with you - with My Body.

"I AM cleaning My house. It has been defiled by unclean spirits that have no place in Me. Now, child, look inward and confess the sin that has separated us. Then go into My House and scrub. Look in corners, where little black molecules of lies and deceit and distraction tried to hide. Scrub, child! Sing as you clean. Praise Me in everything - even that which has disappointed and fallen short of your expectations. The disappointments, even the deceptions are My rod that corrects, teaches, draws you closer and closer to Me.

"Suddenly you see! Your spiritual eyes flutter open to all the fresh, new possibilities! Your nostrils begin to pick up the fragrance of myrrh as I embalm and bury the past.

"Now pick up your alabaster box and pour that oil all over My feet - a sacrifice of what you thought could be and then wasn't. Do you trust Me to re-fashion it, re-define it, mold it into MY perfect vision?

"It is not a moving forward, child; it is a moving back - all the way back to the very beginning of My Church, my glorious Body aflame with radical faith and passion, willing to cast aside desire for everything but Me, willing to die for Me.

"You are clay on My wheel now. It is My joy to spin you and re-form you and show you how to reach all the way back into that pure faith of long ago. Therefore do not lose heart. Though outwardly you are wasting away, yet inwardly you are being renewed day by day. For your light and momentary troubles are achieving for you eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

"Do not despise or miss the lessons, dear one. My lessons strengthen weak and feeble knees and infuse hearts with boldness and courage.

There, can you smell the fragrance now? Burned flesh oozed into burial oil, suddenly bursting into a hint of lavender - a fresh, spring scent of all that is about to emerge - a resurrection of the original vision I carved upon your heart: A DOOR OF HOPE IN THE VALLEY OF TROUBLE. I AM the Door.  I AM the Way.  I AM the Truth. I AM Life - Life to the full! I AM here. 

Thank Offerings

Writers sometimes have blocks. "Is there anything stirring in my spirit anymore?" I wonder, since the fingers haven't flown on the keyboard for many days and weeks.

Now I know it was because this little child of God needed a "time-out."  The block found a word, finally, and the word was ingratitude. Ingratitude can block the best of intentions and any sense of true joy in a life.  In fact, I'm learning now that ingratitude can even block our intimate relationship with a loving, ever-giving, over-flowing God. Today I see that He has been trying to heap gifts upon me, his child, but I haven't perceived them as gifts - wow, didn't some of them even feel like hurdles? Even like a "thorn in the flesh?"

The life-changing book I am reading, which removed blindness from my eyes and the terrible block of ingratitude, is titled One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp.  She quotes Luke 17:15-16, the familiar event where Jesus (Yeshua) cleansed ten lepers and only one returns to give thanks: He asks, "Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Then He said to him, Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

Voskamp continues, "Wait. Hadn't Jesus already completely healed him? Exactly like the other nine who were cured who hadn't bothered to return and thank Him. So what does Jesus mean, 'Your faith has made you well.'? Had I underinterpreted this passage, missed some hidden mystery? I slow down and dig. I read His words in Young's Literal Translation: 'And Jesus said to him, 'Having risen, be going on, thy faith has saved thee.' Saved thee?  It's sozo in the Greek. The literal meaning of sozo is -  to save. It means true wellness, complete wholeness.  To live sozo is to live the full life. Jesus (Yeshua) came to live life to the full; He came to give us sozo. And when did the leper receive sozo - the saving to the full, whole life? When he returned and gave thanks.

"Our very saving is associated with gratitude. Jesus counts thanksgiving as integral in a faith that saves. We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Thanksgiving is the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our Yes! to His grace."

Psalm 50:23: He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.

The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God - even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion - this prepares the way for God to show His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him."

Oh, how many years I have read and quoted from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Messiah Yeshua, yet wondering in my heart how I could ever possibly do this!  And so I have begun to follow Ann Voskamp's example, living life to the fullest by looking for every small, normally unnoticed gift that God sets before me every day. This morning I take up pen again and write what I am thankful for:
Husband's early-morning footsteps creaking upstairs above me
The warming sound of the steaming coffee pot
Kitty paws batting at string
Southern gentleman - my husband! - backing car up to sidewalk so I don't step in snow-mounds
Communication with an old friend - that glint of hope that our friendship hasn't died

It wells up in me, now, this new attitude of giving thanks in everything! It transforms my attitude and dispels fear. If even the thing I feared is something God can use for my good, what is there to fear?

Voskamp sums it up: "The miracle of thanksgiving, like the Last Supper, is in the eating of crumbs, the swallowing down one mouthful. Do not disdain the small. There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small things, the moments will add up."

It is yet early in the day today and yet the moments of gratitude are adding up - and the block is gone as I fully embrace this sozo He gives me! I am preparing the way by sacrificing thank offerings - fully aware that some of the thanks really could be - and will be - sacrifices.