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Love says the things which need to be said, the hard things.

Lately I have heard the Body of Christ run the gamut of emotions and reactions, especially following the elections.  Everything from ‘the end is near’ to ’stock up on food, purchase a gun, barricade your house’ has been uttered ‘from the pulpit, so to speak.  A lot of this comes from prophecy in Scripture being not misinterpreted, but misapplied, or poorly timed.

Everything in the Word of God, whether the Logos - written form, or the Rhema - spoken/uttered form, is for the Body of Christ to hear.. but not all of it is addressed to the Body of Christ, not all of it is about the Body of Christ.

Case in point: there have been numerous, strong, and, I believe, accurate and authentic, prophetic words from the Lord delivered through some well-respected ministries detailing the hardship and blight and destruction coming upon this nation in the very near future.  I don’t doubt most of that.  I agree, and I agree it will be very dark in the days ahead.

But not for the Body of Christ.

There have been an equal, if not greater, number of prophetic words from the Lord detailing how the coming days will bring the Church’s finest hour, how her ‘land’ will have Light in the darkness of the world.  Light will shine in Goshen while the rest of the world is in utter darkness.

Which report will you believe?

While it may be true that colossal doom is fast approaching the world, does that mean that it is fast approaching you?  Where sin abounds, grace that much more abounds.  So, for instance, if sin has increased by a factor of 5 (whatever the measure is), automatically, by the law God established, as sure as the God-established law of gravity, Grace must not only match the increase factor, but must esceed it by that very same factor.  So, if sin is now sin x 5, Grace must at a minimum now be Grace x 5 to the 5th power.

So, where do you fall in this equation?  The collapses and destructions must fall upon you?  Are you aligned with the world this way?  You can be in the Body of Christ, and still suffer the woes befalling the world.  Its not always an automatic thing to be protected.  This is where the good fight of Faith comes in.

By now, you must know how God does things.  Its fairly clear how He takes cares of His people, even when they make mistakes, all they need to is turn, repent and get back into His Will, and He turns the situation around.  Its all over Holy Scripture.

And His Promises are sure: Jeremiah 29:11 says this:  11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. (NIV).  That, to me, says that I have absolutely no business accepting for my own future the future which is to befall the world, it completely contradicts the Promise in the Word of God.

Moreover, Psalm 91 states that:  7 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.  So, whose report are you going to believe?

No, I’m not acting delusional or feeding some spiritual serotonin addictive need to hear only happy words, only good things, only ‘yes and amen’.  I am a realist, and God really did say that.  He really did promise all that, and more.  He really is that Good.

God will move Heaven and Earth for us if that’s what it takes.  He’ll do it for just one person.

During a season of ravenous famine, we find this out about Isaac in Genesis 26: 12 Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him.

Isaac was not just kept safe, barely provided for, protected from destruction, etc.  He sowed during famine and increased by a factor of 100.  That’s how my God works.  When everything and everybody else around you is hell-bent on destruction and plummeting toward death, you get promoted, get a raise, win a new car, see record profits in your business, start hiring more people to help with demand, lose weight, get in shape, receive deliverance, complete your degree, etc.  God doesn’t half-step, He means what He says and does what He means to do.

Numbers 23: 19 says: 19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?

I mean, how many more scriptures do you need?  What does it take for you to believe?  God cannot do that part for you, you have to choose that yourself, and then act on it.  Its not wishful thinking that moves mountains, its faith.  Raise your Shield of Faith, wield your Sword of The Word.  Decree and declare and establish.  Put on the whole armor of God.  Stand, fight, and then stand, therefore.

You’re either going to believe God, or you’re not.  You either listen to the fear-prognosticators of the world, or you don’t.  I’m not saying to avoid all of the information.  We cannot effectively pray if we are not properly informed.  But sift all of it through the Word of God.  His Promises really are “yes” and “amen”, but we must contend for them.  They belong to us, they have been bequeathed to us, but we must make the claims, file the petitions, water those seeds with the washing of the water of the Word.

I recently heard a prophetic word from a man of God about the terms, in order, “respite”, “resplendent” and “response”.   Respite, rest, is quintessential Faith-standing: once you have taken your stand, declared and decreed and established, believed and received, Faith rests in God, trusting, completely, that what He Promised, He will perform, and any part you still need to play will be made known to you thoroughly, and on time.

Resplendent is the time we are entering as a Body in Christ.  It will get so very obvious who the people of God are, we will shine like light shone in Goshen.  People who are lost in the darkness, the death, the destruction, will be drawn to that Light over , and from within, us.

Our Response will then be key.  What will we do?  God needs us to shine, to be resplendent, to prosper, to be in good health, to abound in blessings.   We must be the ones to reach the lost, those who need rescue from the dark.  We must be those who make provision.  The government is nobody’s savior, but we know The Savior, and we administrate His Kingdom Government Affairs on His behalf.  We must have the abundance in order to administer to the needs of those trapped underneath the rubble of the collapses of the world systems.  It is imperative that we do so.

And we have to believe for abundance.  This is no small matter.  God is rich.  His kids must be rich, have to be, not only in order to reach those suffering from the world-system-fallout.. but also to make up for all of those among us who, unfortunately, are not believing, not contending, for the wealth and abundance Promised to us.

This concept has Biblical precedent.  In the book of Joshua is described how there remained about 7 tribes which were “slack” in going in and taking the promised land.  Chapter 19 later states: 9 Out of the portion of the children of Judah was the inheritance of the children of Simeon: for the part of the children of Judah was too much for them: therefore the children of Simeon had their inheritance within the inheritance of them.

Not only do we need to believe for and claim abundance for ourselves and for those who are lost, but also for those already in the Family who are not believing and contending for enough on their own, perhaps not for anything at all.

We are well-past the time to debate which way to go.  I speak this to myself as much as anybody else.  I choose to align myself with the Lord.  I choose to believe The Report of The Lord.

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