It started with an email from my cousin Ann asking me to pray for her because she was in great financial difficulty. I wrote back to her and said that I will pray, and will ask my prayer group to pray. But then I went on to tell her that there's another way -- God's way. I went into what the Lord says about his tithe. He says that if you bring the tithe into his storehouse, that he will open the window of heaven and pour you out a blessing that you cannot contain, AND that HE will rebuke the devourer for your sake.1 I told her that we have a choice. In bringing the Lord's tithe, you are placing your trust in HIM. Otherwise, you're placing your trust in the system, or in your own efforts to earn money by your own power.
Ann received the message. I went on to tell her that there is another Scripture about prospering too, and that says that if you support Israel, you will prosper.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.
Psalm 122:6
Later, she emailed me to tell me that she took her dog out to the dog park, a place she goes twice a day, and there was a car there that she'd never seen before, and on its license plate was the word, "Zion." That blew her mind, and mine too. We had just finished talking about Israel, in fact I had just sent her the addresses of some ministries I know in Israel. Later, she received an email from a woman she knew but not socially, asking her to go to lunch. The woman is Jewish. Ann knew now, God was answering her.
In the meantime -coincidentally? -Sandy had asked me about tithing, and we had talked about ministries in Israel. So I sent that same email to Sandy, and when she looked at the ministries I mentioned, the Lord directed her heart to one of them so powerfully, that she had a hard time to describe what happened inside of her. Now they are both tithing, and both to ministries serving Israel.
Well to make the coincidence even more coincidental, I had also spoken to Evelyn about tithing. She was having a hard time too, financially, and we talked about tithing.
So that's three conversations in one week about tithing. Hmmm ..seems the Lord is saying this is VERY important.
So today when the girls were here, I was telling them all this. And when I tell people about tithing, I always stress the latter part of the passage where God says that he will rebuke the devourer for our sakes. It boggles my mind to think that if we bring to God our profession of faith in him by obeying his word concerning money, He not only will provide for us, but he will also rebuke the devourer!
The devourer. That's the whole subject of what we've been praying about lately. In Evelyn's life and in Sandy's life the devourer has been devouring, especially in the lives of their children. I don't know how many times I've gone to the Lord about this as I've seen the very real suffering they have endured as their childrens' lives have been devoured. Sandy's pregnant daughter-in-law almost died recently and probably would have if we hadn't been praying. Long story, but the doctors tried one last thing after a whole string of attempts to bring her to health, and all of a sudden that last thing worked. Not only is she now not at death's door, she's even gone back to work. Now Sandy's daughter is facing very serious problems both in herself and in her own unborn child. And of course there's so much more, I won't go into it all. Evelyn's family has been so oppressed for so long that you just want to throw up your hands in despair, because we've prayed and prayed and prayed, and the attacks, serious ones, just continue.
So we know about the devourer.
But interestingly, the part about rebuking the devourer came up this week in the context of tithing. Not sure I understood why, but it's the way God is leading so we'll go that way, Lord.
One day this week in my prayer time, I was moved to pray for Evelyn. I was asking for the victory and in that context found myself saying "and may the gates of hell NOT be able to prevail." Well. I always have my Scripture time after my prayer time, and would you believe - in my Scripture reading right after praying that was this:
"...upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Matthew 16:18 ! ! ! ! !
You know, you just never get used to it. I was shocked again! And knew God was up to something.
So I immediately emailed Evelyn telling her this. But that wasn't all. Later, I was listening to Chuck Missler and in passing he starts talking about the gates of hell ......talk about shock ! ! ! ! He said picture hell. Picture hell as a place with gates. Gates are to keep foreigners out. It's not the gates of hell coming against US -- gates don't come against people -- it's US coming against the gates.
And the gates of hell cannot prevail when we come against them.
What Jesus said is not defensive, it's offesive.They will fall.
Ok, so what do we have here. We have the Lord starting with the command to tithe, and to claim that the devourer be rebuked. Then we go on to warfare and are encouraged to believe that the gates of hell will not be able to withstand. Lord, is there more???
Yes, there is.
I've been discouraged. Very discouraged. To the point where I've kind of given up, and just go about what I do half-heartedly. You pray and pray and pray, and nothing seems to break. Well, you're not going to stop praying, but it can become half-hearted after awhile. And I was surely in a slump.
But the Lord gave me an epiphany moment today that just changes everything.
I've been sharing with the girls that the Lord has given me incredible strength to attack my weight problem. Long story, but I have a strength I've just never had before, and a persistence that just isn't me. My doctor wanted me to walk. I just nodded, having no intention to because I can't go far before the pain in my back becomes very bad. One day a few days after my doctor said that, I was going out when another person was coming into the building where I live, and we stopped to chat. Come to find out, she has back pain too, and was using this rolling walker because it relieved the pain when she walked leaning on it, and it also had a seat you can sit down to rest on if you get winded. I said to her, "great, wonderful," and went my way. Later when I was back in my apartment, the suggestion came to my mind that if I had one of those, I could go walking too. "Nah," I said, "I wouldn't be seen out in public pushing a walker at my age, people would make all kinds of remarks." Days went by, but the thought wouldn't leave me. So I investigated the walker, and found myself ordering one. At least with one of those things, I could walk to the pharmacy and other stores if I could lean on something like that. And I could wear a straw hat and sunglasses so no one would recognize me.
Well the walker helped so much that I started going on brief walks with it. Then I increased the walk, then increased it again, and rejoiced that I found a way to so easily get where I needed to go. There's no limit to how long I can walk when I have that walker with me.
Then two more things happened. One morning I had something very sugary for breakfast, with a cup of coffee. An hour later I was shaking with what I recognized to be low blood sugar. Sure enough, I ate, and it stopped. Not long afterward, that same thing happened again, and I realized I might be facing problems with blood sugar. Kinda took me aback, but I just filed that thought.
Right about that time, I went to my grand-daughter's graduation. Later, I saw a picture of myself that was taken that day, and I could hardly believe how much weight I had put on. Until then, I NEVER weighed myself, I just didn't want to know. But seeing this picture really jolted me. So I put that picture alongside the possible pre-diabetes warnings and I saw a picture I couldn't live with. I thought it over and realized that this was going hand-in-hand with the walker story -- it looked like I'm supposed to get serious about losing some of this weight. That picture was just the stimulus I needed to get started.
Well I found that much easier said than done. I started out with a "almost no carb" diet and did not do well on it, lost some weight but I had some severe reactions to it. So I created a diet I could live with and started out. The weight loss has been coming excruciatingly slow. I was walking now nearly a mile a day, and eating very little. It was coming off, but by the quarter-pound at a time. And for days it just wouldn't budge, even after the walking workout and the no-snacks rigid diet. So one day I just had the strength to do something I never would ever have believed I'd be able to do. I fasted. The next day, I had dropped a whole pound. Hmmm. About a week later, after all the daily effort, the scale still hadn't budged, so I fasted again. And lost another whole pound.
Ok, let's look at this. For me to fast, takes a strength I just don't have. A few times previously I had tried something as simple as foregoing the snack I had in bed each night. Couldn't even do that. Now I'm actually fasting??? How on earth??? I knew it was the Lord, that was SO obvious, you'd have to know how weak a person I am; no inner strength. So what I was doing was definitely coming from Him. But why? Why is it so important to the Lord that I lose weight, so important that he'd make me able to actually go to bed hungry? I just couldn't understand it.
Till today. We had a good prayer meeting, then Sandy stayed after the others left and we began talking about the terrible attacks on our families. She just learned that her little granddaughter had almost died on two occasions that she didn't know about, plus the other attacks I've mentioned, plus more, enough to cause her to call all of us one day last week because she was losing it after two series of intense attacks. She was nearly overwhelmed because the attacks were very serious and could be life-or death in nature. Then today Evelyn was called away from our meeting because of another trouble in her family. So now Sandy and I were talking about needing to find from the Lord the key, the way to make these family curses fall. But how? We had prayed. Cried out to the Lord for direction. For so long.
So Sandy and I talked awhile and then, as women do, we went here and there on our "bunny trails," as we call it when we get off-subject. Somehow we got to talking about my weight-loss marathon, and how it was so clear that this is God, he instigated it. "So," Sandy said, "there's a reason, he has a purpose in this." "Uh huh," I said, thinking maybe it was for health reasons; never-mind I've never before been motivated by health reasons, I'm just not that disciplined a person.
But the words "a purpose" kept going over and over in my mind. And then -- all of a sudden -- the epiphany!!!!!
Had we not recently mentioned the Lord's saying, "this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting?" Ohhhh ...........
My mind took me back to last Tuesday after we met. After the girls had left, I had had a train of thought before the Lord that took an unexpected turn. The idea was fasting. I was fasting that day. If I understood him correctly, he wanted me to bring that fast to him. "Oh no Lord, I would never do that. I'm fasting to lose weight. I'd never bring that to you as a spiritual fast when it's for such a carnal motive." But the thought wouldn't go away. I could hardly believe that he would want this fast for any spiritual purpose. Why would he want a fast that I'm doing for a carnal reason?
So in today's epiphany, the lights that went on --- was that the whole purpose of the weight-loss marathon was not for weight loss, it was to get me fasting! ! ! There was no other way I could ever be motivated to fast, and fasting was NEEDED, so he took me on this whole weight-loss marathon FOR THE PURPOSE OF GETTING ME FASTING! ! ! Because the kinds of bondages and oppressions and curses behind most of the kinds of troubles being experienced by the girls in this group, were of the kind that only fasting will break. And not only the girls in this group, but for the success of this ministry. Nearly three years ago, the Lord created this group and gave us the ministry of praying for the people in the 50 apartments in this building. We've seen some wonderful things happen as a result, but there remained some very, very serious problems both in our families and in the lives of the people who live in this building, and we'd been praying and praying, but seeing little results in the very serious problems people here have. And today we realized that the kinds of problems we see here are the kind that only fasting and prayer will change. The light was on ! ! !
There is power in fasting, and I'm beginning to understand that it doesn't rest in your motivation. That's why the Lord would ask me to bring the fast to him, even though I was doing it for a non-spiritual reason. I considered the Muslims who fast for the month of Ramadan. I lived in the Middle East for several years and can attest to the fact that even though they are not fasting as unto the Lord (our Lord), the power is still there. It appears that fasting in itself produces power. So the Lord, wanting me to fast, went all around Robin Hood's barn with a totally unrelated issue (my weight)in order to get me to fast. That's why he was wanting me, then, to bring the fast to him for spiritual results.
I looked at Sandy and she looked at me, and we experienced this epiphany together. We were both as though we had been hit by lightning. We called Evelyn and asked her to come back here, and we shared all this story with her and come to find out, SHE had started fasting on her own (and hadn't told us,) because she saw in the Word that some kinds of problems require fasting to resolve ! ! !
WOW! ! ! The three of us were in absolute accord!!! This happened to us together! ! !
Tonight we made a commitment that on Tuesdays and Saturdays when we meet, we will fast. We made it a non-binding commitment, meaning that I don't want anyone to feel honor-bound to do this "or else." And I don't want us checking up on each other. The Lord brought to us the information we need to see results in the prayers we have been praying for so long. So we have committed our hearts to bring to him our prayers in fasting, on the days that we meet. I believe there's even greater power in it when more than one are doing it in unity.
Evelyn looked at me and said, "where two or more agree on earth as touching anything they ask ...."
That was my Scripture reading THIS MORNING!
I had just passed over it this morning because I couldn't relate to it.
Now I can.
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1. Malachi 3:10-11
