Healing through His blood!

“The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.'

'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out

      While worshipping a while back the Lord gave me a vision.  I was standing at the parted sea and the promised land was on the other side.  As I stood there I realized how high those walls of water really were, how dark the passage at the bottom of the sea really was, and how fear and trust were the deciding factor - Can I do this?  Do I trust Him enough to hold back the walls or will He allow them to come crashing down on me and I will drown?  There in that moment, I heard Him say, "Don't ever forget this moment."  When you are in ministry, constantly called to be the Moses who has the faith to stretch out his hand in obedience to God, so that God will part the sea for those you are leading to the promised land, you can't forget the fear of that moment.  This is where our testimony comes into play.  I stood there at that sea, with my past racing up behind me, wanting me dead, with no clue to what was on the other side and more faith in the Moses God had sent to stretch out his hand than in the God who was actually the one to part the sea. 
     In the natural, at conception, our gender is decided, our eye color, hair color and the shape of our nose.  In the supernatural God has already decided these things, before our parents even met or the earth was even formed.  That day he called it into existence a war began.  The enemy plans to destroy us immediately through fear and through deception.  There is nothing so pure, beautiful and peaceful as a sleeping baby.  There is nothing so loved and so hated.  If we could only see what is really going on around that totally unaware child. 
     Do not fear.  The bible says it repeatedly and the baby does not fear, but as he grows and the enemy's plan starts to unfold around him, fear creeps in.  He uses abuse, divorce, bullying, trauma, etc. to scare the child from his identity in Christ.  The most important thing Christ has for us is our identity in Him and the last thing the enemy wants us to get a hold of, to truly know, is who we are in Christ and fear is his ultimate weapon.  Fear of abuse, abandonment, rejection, what man thinks, and on and on.  We are slaves to an identity that is not ours.  We become slaves, in bondage to the deception caused by circumstances brought into our lives by the enemy.  Then the day comes where we stand at the sea.
     Imagine it.  You are a believer standing at the opened sea.  Your past demons are racing up behind you threatening to return you to bondage for the rest of your life, you can feel the mist of the water on your face as you examine those tall walls being held back by a God you say you believe in, and you have been told His promise of freedom is on the other side.  You look up to the top of a huge rock where Moses stands with his hand stretched out.  Who do you trust?  Moses seems more in control right now than God, who you can't see.  What if Moses was screaming at you, "You don't deserve this.  You are a sinner!!  You better say your sorry for every thing you have done before you step into that pathway.  REPENT or BURN!!"   Wouldn't you start wondering if this so called path to freedom was really God at all?  If it is, do I want to trust Him to hold this open for me?  If He called this angry guy to stretch out his hand to hold the water back, who should I really be trusting here?  I have had the word repent screamed at me before and it was much more powerful and inviting when it was whispered to me.  To be led through the Red Sea to the freedom on the other side by Moses, began way back before they even saw the water. 
     Moses had spent time with his people showing them God's truth.  The locust, the darkness, the plague and death were all used so his people knew Moses was hearing God and this built trust.  When they stood at the sea, they already had reason to trust Moses and more importantly to trust God. 
     I was with a friend doing street ministry a few weeks ago.  On the street you don't have time to build years of trust, so you really have to listen to the Holy Spirit to accelerate enough trust to plant seeds.  We approached a young man who was high and about to get into a car with a complete stranger to get higher.  My friend took his hand in hers and aggressively spoke of Christ's pursuit of him.  She is usually very gentle and I was shocked at her insistence.  I began to pray protection as I felt darkness close in around us.  I wanted her to get back in the box.  This is not how we  usually do this.  But she kept at him and I kept praying.  He thanked us and began walking away.  I was a little relieved it was over, to be honest.  But then the Lord gave me a question to ask him and with some prodding, I finally did.  Holy Spirit nailed it.  We eventually found out that when my friend took his hand, his high left him.  The Holy Spirit gave us more words to share with him about his life and his trust in us grew, because there was no denying we were hearing God and He had sent us that Saturday morning to meet with this young man.  We have stayed in contact and this man has spent time with my friends family and is making his way through the sea.  The Lord showed us both that day who He saw when He looked at this young man and we saw a brother.  We told the enemy, "Let my people go" because we knew he was one of God's kids and he was broken and hurting and didn't know who to trust.  He is learning to trust Jesus.
     Fear keeps many believers at the edge of the sea.  They have set up camp there in the desert with the mist of the water keeping them just cool enough to stay in that lukewarm place.  Some are too fearful to take the steps through that passage to freedom and others have fooled themselves into thinking they have already passed through and are actually on the other side now.  One of the fears keeping believers in the lukewarm camp is a fear of the supernatural.  Obviously those walls of water are being held back by the supernatural power and authority of God. 
     To be humble is not about our behavior as much as it is about believing and knowing who He is and what He has done and what He can do.  The harder the heart, the bigger the fear of the supernatural.  To walk in the supernatural takes a humble heart.  The minute we fight pride, we fight belief in His ability to do all things.  Pride makes up the box the religious keep Him in.  Fear of the unknown keeps us from passing through the sea of cleansing and healing.  Yes, it is scary to walk through the sea and it gets darker and deeper as you go, but then there is a point where it gets lighter and we can see the other side and it is so worth it.
     Jesus told us to do many things and fear keeps us from them.  The enemy has been working on this all of our lives.  Fear keeps us from loving others, loving God and loving ourselves.  Fear keeps us from submitting to the Father and following Jesus in every area of our lives.  Fear keeps us from laying hands on the sick and healing them.  Fear keeps us from casting out demons, from raising the dead, from speaking in tongues, from weeping with those who weep, from humbling ourselves and forgiving.  Fear keeps us from  giving, from confessing our sins and all the other things He asks us to do.  Fear even keeps us from resisting temptation.  Pride keeps us from admitting we are full of fear.  We twist scripture to prove we are right.  We slander others to lift ourselves to a place of believing we know all about God and how we are to live.  This is all fear and it is fear of man and an unhealthy fear of God and who He really is.  Fear keeps us from worship and from praying and when this happens, we are in trouble. 
     We deny the gifts and the supernatural out of fear.  I was ministering to a man who was so hungry for God, but had fear that he wasn't doing things right.  The Lord told me to blow on his stomach.  Weird right?  Exactly what I was thinking, but obedience means everything so I told the man what I was going to do and he looked at me with the wide eyes of a little boy.  I had no choice but to trust and so I blew.  Immediately this man broke.  He cried and cried and raised his hands to the Lord shouting praises.  I don't know exactly what happened, and I don't have to know.  Yes, I probably looked like a weirdo by worldly standards, but the freedom this man found was worth every bit of being uncomfortable.  It increased my faith in God and how good He is.  Did something happen in the supernatural realm that I couldn't see?  Or was it a test of obedience that caused a breakthrough?  Doesn't matter to me.  If looking foolish by the worlds standards sets people free, I am your servant, Lord.  I don't care what I look like to others.  What I care about is getting people through to the other side of that sea. 
     Fear is a barrier to intimacy.  How can you be intimate with someone you fear? 
One of the ways the enemy uses fear is to keep people from their prayer language.  Does it sound foolish?  Only to those who fear it.  Have you ever shared a moment with someone and after that there is a word you can say that only the two of you know what it means?  You can be in a room full of people and you say that word or phrase and they know exactly what you mean (much more than what was spoken) but nobody else in the room knows.  That's an intimate moment.  That's what praying in your prayer language is like.  It's a conversation between you and Jesus that even the demonic does not know what is being said.  The enemy hates it and will try to convince people it is evil so they won't even attempt it.  He doesn't want intimacy and/or secrets between you and Christ.  He does not want you having a conversation that he cannot hear.  So he uses fear to keep us from it.
    Fear of man, fear of the gifts, all fear causes us to want to control.  Control is the opposite of submit.  We control by denying the gifts are for this time or controlling what people think about the gifts.  Doubt and unbelief grieve the Holy Spirit more than anything.  If you gave somebody a gift and they did not accept it or they wanted it in a different color or model wouldn't that be a slap in the face?  They are called gifts, because that's what they are.  We honor God by accepting these gifts as He has given them.  To say we believe in Him, but don't trust Him, to say we believe the Word of God, but only parts we are comfortable with, to trust man's word more than the Father's and to stand at the sea and not go through it, leaves us in the camp called lukewarm and you know what happens there.

The opposite of rejection is Jesus!!
 

“The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time.”
― Francis Chan