In the meantime ...

Prayer Warriors, Part 1
(En Español)
In our rapidly changing times, people are desperate to know the future. Barely do we adjust to the last changes when totally new realities explode into our world.
In answer to the common fears spawned by change, society has been inundated by a plethora of occult and demonic sources -- fortune-tellers, astrologers, psychic hotlines -- all pretending to be able to peek into the mystery of tomorrow. Indeed, how many otherwise intelligent individuals glimpse, at least occasionally, at their "astrological signs" and try to get an edge on knowing the future!
Why anyone would consult someone who cannot predict his or her own future is beyond me. These fortune-tellers almost always live in poverty. Their ability to predict the future should at least work for themselves, should it not? They could invest in the stock market or pick the right lottery numbers. They cannot even predict or better their own fortunes, yet people go to them for discernment.
Tremendous Power in a Christian!
Christians must realize that God condemns this demonic, fleshly probing into the unknown. He has called intercessors not to wonder about the future, but to create it through the knowledge of His Living Word and prayer! Our Father gives us access to the future right now. You ask, "How do we know what to pray" The Lord Jesus told us plainly, "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:9-10 KJV).
We can look at the conditions of the world and faint or look at the possibilities of God and take faith. To bring revival is to pray for the reality of God's kingdom to be made manifest on earth. Jesus was not offering His disciples a millennial prayer focus, for that rule of God's kingdom is coming whether we want it to or not! No, Christ calls us to pray for God's kingdom to manifest itself in our world today.
How will tomorrow look if God answers the prayer Christ gave us? Read the gospels. What we see in the life and power of Jesus Christ is a faith picture of God's kingdom. Jesus said that we can have that same full manifestation. In fact, He actually commanded us to pray for Heaven's release!
The Prayer Womb
The reality that God has planned will always manifest first in the prayer life of His intercessors. When you hear from God and then pray His Word, you are having an impact on the as-yet-unformed essence of life with the Spirit of God Himself! This is why God calls us not only to know His Word, but also to pray it. We must go from intellectualizing God's Word to being impregnated by it.
I know that many churches have special areas where intercessors can pray or people can meditate. Maybe we ought to change the name of such places from "prayer room" to "prayer womb." Everything good and holy that we see manifested in people, in churches and in life is first conceived and then birthed in the womb of prayer.
We have answers to prayer all around us. The place you are living in is an answer to prayer. When you asked God to lead you to the church you should attend, your current church became God’s answer to your prayer. Similarly, your attendance and participation are answers to the prayers of your pastors and intercessors.
Paul wrote, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might" (Eph. 1:18-19).
If you are a Christian, a power accompanies your life that is greater than great: the "surpassing greatness of His power." It is not human power but the actual "strength of His might." God demonstrated this "power toward us who believe" first "in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places" (Eph. 1:19-20).
In other words, the power of God’s might is His resurrection power. What does resurrection mean? It means that things that look dead, smell dead and act dead can be touched by God and raised to life!
Now think about it: The resurrection power God has given us is the same potency He demonstrated when He raised Jesus out of the grave. Right now, because the strength of God Almighty is attached to our prayer lives, we can look on things that are absolutely dead and pray forth eternal life!
Our mission is to bring resurrection life to situations that are dead. If the devil challenges your prayer, remind him that you are seated with Christ "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come" (Eph. 1:21). Christ's authority is final. But not only did the Father put "all things in subjection under His feet," He also "gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all" (Eph. 1:22-23).
Notice how the Lord uses anatomical metaphors to explain the downlink of authority: Christ is the "head" of a "body" that has all things put under its "feet." This is a most profound understanding of our role: What the Head, Christ, has attained, the feet of the church walk out. In other words, God has positioned the church as the living bridge between the terrible conditions on earth and the wonderful solutions from Heaven!
As we truly, passionately and accurately submit to Christ in prayer, the kingdom of Heaven steadily enters our now prayed-for world. The key, of course, is to know Christ's Word, for our authority does not originate from ourselves, but from the "sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Eph. 6:17). What we have is revelation and submission. But as we submit to the Word and persevere in prayer, the future is changed and conformed to God's will.
The devil knows that if he can keep our prayer lives silent, he keeps God’s hand distant.

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Back to Laodicea ... in a moment.

Dear Reader
I'm going back to Laodicea and will finish what I set out to write ... but not just now. If you are out there and visiting this blog from time to time;  and know how to pray in the name of Jesus ... then say a prayer for me too.

Se you in a moment
Take care
Ida

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.

9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge —
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.

11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.

14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

... of first importance

Salvation through Jesus Christ isn’t mixable with “salvation” through other religions or self-imposed righteousness. God has given HIS salvation to man the way it is given; through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and it isn’t negotiable.  Salvation has been through the refiner’s fire on Golgotha and nothing can add to it.

1 Cor15 says:

The Resurrection of Christ

15 Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

^*3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance^[a]:

*that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ 

*that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas,^[b] and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸ and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
⁹ For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. ¹¹ Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.

Emmaus

Read Luke chapter 24

³⁰ When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. ³¹ Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. ³² They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Resurrection Day.

Waiting for resurrection ...

John 11:25

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;

 

Romans 6:5

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,^[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷ because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
 

Good Friday ... the rescue for Laodiceans ...

                             Jesus said: It is finished

Maundy Thursday

John 17 

Jesus’ Prayer for His Followers

17 ^1-5 Jesus said these things. Then, raising his eyes in prayer, he said:

Father, it’s time.
Display the bright splendor of your Son
So the Son in turn may show your bright splendor.
You put him in charge of everything human
So he might give real and eternal life to all in his charge.
And this is the real and eternal life:
That they know you,
The one and only true God,
And Jesus Christ, whom you sent.
I glorified you on earth
By completing down to the last detail
What you assigned me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me with your very own splendor,
The very splendor I had in your presence
Before there was a world.

^6-12 I spelled out your character in detail
To the men and women you gave me.
They were yours in the first place;
Then you gave them to me,
And they have now done what you said.
They know now, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That everything you gave me is firsthand from you,
For the message you gave me, I gave them;
And they took it, and were convinced
That I came from you.
They believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
 

I’m not praying for the God-rejecting world
But for those you gave me,
For they are yours by right.
Everything mine is yours, and yours mine,
And my life is on display in them.
For I’m no longer going to be visible in the world;
They’ll continue in the world
While I return to you.
Holy Father, guard them as they pursue this life
That you conferred as a gift through me,
So they can be one heart and mind
As we are one heart and mind.
As long as I was with them, I guarded them
In the pursuit of the life you gave through me;
I even posted a night watch.
And not one of them got away,
Except for the rebel bent on destruction
(the exception that proved the rule of Scripture).

^13-19 Now I’m returning to you.
I’m saying these things in the world’s hearing
So my people can experience
My joy completed in them.
I gave them your word;
The godless world hated them because of it,
Because they didn’t join the world’s ways,
Just as I didn’t join the world’s ways.
I’m not asking that you take them out of the world
But that you guard them from the Evil One.
They are no more defined by the world
Than I am defined by the world.
Make them holy—consecrated—with the truth;
Your word is consecrating truth.
In the same way that you gave me a mission in the world,
I give them a mission in the world.
I’m consecrating myself for their sakes
So they’ll be truth-consecrated in their mission.

^20-23 I’m praying not only for them
But also for those who will believe in me
Because of them and their witness about me.
The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind—
Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
So they might be one heart and mind with us.
Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.
The same glory you gave me, I gave them,
So they’ll be as unified and together as we are—
I in them and you in me.
Then they’ll be mature in this oneness,
And give the godless world evidence
That you’ve sent me and loved them
In the same way you’ve loved me.

^24-26 Father, I want those you gave me
To be with me, right where I am,
So they can see my glory, the splendor you gave me,
Having loved me
Long before there ever was a world.
Righteous Father, the world has never known you,
But I have known you, and these disciples know
That you sent me on this mission.
I have made your very being known to them—
Who you are and what you do—
And continue to make it known,
So that your love for me
Might be in them
Exactly as I am in them.

(taken from the Message)

Passover 2013

 

 

The Jewish  Passover started on March 25 and will end April 2nd. During the Seder meal you follow the order from the Haggadah. On the Seder plate there is symbolic food to remind of the time of slavery in Egypt and the Exodus.

Gold

GOLD

Maybe you have come across jewelry or other items that are gold plated; which means that a metal has been covered with a thin layer of gold to look like gold.

“Gold plating is a method of depositing a thin layer of gold onto the surface of another metal, most often copper or silver by chemical or electrochemical plating” (Wikipedia)

“When an item is electro plated, the plating material is very thin - less than 0.01mm - so there is hardly any volume of gold. So even though gold is expensive, a gold-plated item is worth just a few cents more than the item would be without the gold. Any product plated with gold or silver doesn't have a scrap value. This is for the simple reason that gold or silver plated items will not melt during the separation process and it adds impurities in the gold or the silver, Most of the time these "impurities" in the gold are nickel, iron or flat base metals that disrupt the melting process; for this reason those who buy and sell gold only accept pure gold, silver or platinum.”

(information found on Internet)

There is also “gilding” which means a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold.

Dictionary.com explains “gilded” as “having a pleasing or showy appearance that conceals something of little worth”.

Jesus says: “Buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich”

“Gold that’s been through the refiner’s fire” is as far as I understand pure gold without impurities.

While doing research about Revelation 3 I have read some commentaries of famous Bible study authors and almost all of them refer this “gold” to “faith”. A faith that is tried and has been tested compared to a shallow and “thin” coat of religion that show off a certain tradition or custom but has no depth or root in Jesus.

I can agree with that but to me this also points to what God time after time has said to his own people Israel in the Old testament and what he says  in the New Covenant through Jesus himself and the Apostles:  “I’m not mixable!”

Why would the creator of heaven and earth; the life giver and healer mix with dead bones, gods of no value and belief systems that talks against him? He is Holy and there is no darkness in him. He has decided a wonderful way for man to accept; salvation through Jesus, so man can share his glory. There is no way he will change that and mix it with demons and dead bones. 

 ... to be continued.