God's Power at Work!

The Miracle of Springs

One aspect of Samson's life that's easy to remember was how he gave up the secret of his great strength and eventual death, but there is one that serves as a memorial till today according to the scriptures. It's a place called En-hakkore, a place where God's power came down mightily upon Samson and he was able to slay 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass (making real the bible passage that says one shall slay a thousand) and it's also a place where God showed great mercy by making springs of water to come forth from the jawbone or ground depending on the bible translation.

What I have learned from the above story as related in Judges 15 is that:

1. Battles are won only with the power and spirit of God

                2. Never fail to give God the glory due to his name
          
                3. God is able to meet all needs when we cry out in distress to him.

Some Commentarys

"En-hakkore. Samson gave this expressive name to the miraculously springing water, to be as a memorial of the goodness of God to him. Enhakkore, the well of him that cried, which kept him in remembrance both of his own distress which caused him to cry, and the favour of Jehovah to him in answer to his cry. Many a spring of comfort God opens to his people, which may fitly be called by the name En-hakkore; and this instance of Samson's relief should encourage us to trust in God, for when he pleases he can open rivers in high places. www.biblehub.com

"Samson prayed to God in this distress. Those that forget to attend God their praises, may be compelled to attend him with their prayers. Past experiences of God's power and goodness, are excellent pleas in prayer for further mercy. He pleads his being exposed to God's enemies; our best pleas are taken from God's glory. The Lord sent him seasonable relief. The place of this action was, from the jaw-bone, called Lehi. And in the place thus called, God caused a fountain suddenly and seasonably to open, close by Samson." Matthew Henry's Commentary

Song of Encouragement:

All things are possible: Sinach

 

God Got This

amvaca1                                                                                                      

After reading this very encouraging message, which basically confirmed everything I’ve been feeling for the past 3 months, I thought, I better reciprocate.
It started in early September, when my boss announced that he would retired and immediately, a new manager was promoted to take the role. I’ve been with the company for 10 years and the new manager is someone I’ve known for about the same length of time. Almost immediately after her promotion, she started treated me different. I was the only one I noticed she was treating this way.
I begin to pray, and asked my co-worker to pray with me. I’ve asked my prayer line to pray that the Lord would change my heart and her heart. I kept praying, but the relationship continues to deteriorate.
I didn’t know this new manager was scheming to have me fired. In November, she discovered an error that I made (although I don’t remember making such a serious error, however, I couldn’t prove otherwise). So, that was the ammunition she needed to have me fired. She confronted me with the mistake and although I tried to defend myself, it was done unsuccessfully. One month later, I got an email from compliance that I was being investigated and an interview was cancelled.
I never stopped fasting. I continue to pray and asked my family and friends to pray on my behalf. My prayer to God was, please do not allow my enemy to laugh at me. I said,

Lord, please don’t let me be ashamed in front of my enemies. After working for this company for 10 years, don’t let it end like this. I fasted and fasted since early November.

This whole time I’m praying, the Lord continues to assure me that He got this. Do not be afraid he says. Throughout this process, I discovered Dr. Tony Evans and Priscilla Shirer. And even though their messages were from 2-3 years ago, every time I listen to a sermon, it spoke directly into my situation. Every time I would read a passage from the Bible, He gives me a rhema word.
I continue to fast and pray. Until early January, when my new boss called me and said she needed a few minutes of my time. She took me to the HR office where I was told I was terminated. For some reason, I was not devastated or upset. I wasn’t even shock. I went back to my desk, called my husband and my friend helped me pack. The whole time, I couldn’t understand why, I was not upset or devastated.
My friend from work says, it is because God got this and all I have to do is trust him. I was thinking easy for her to say, she didn’t just got terminated. I was confused because this whole time the Lord says I will deliver you. I will give you victory! and I said, Lord, how could you allow this to happened. I asked the Lord to examine me and reveal things to me. I continued to pray and never waver. I didn’t understand why the Lord allowed this to happened, but I was going to trust him.
I want you to know that the Lord provided. Not one day I was without. The Lord opened temporary doors, since he knew, while searching for jobs, I needed to be doing something. I was able to pay all my bills and even now, I’m still wondering why I have not gotten upset about what happened to me.
As I started my job hunt, I applied for all kind of jobs, jobs I was overly qualified for and under qualified. The point was I wanted to apply for everything that resembled what I used to do. One company immediately contacted me. This is a company that I worked for before and I didn’t really want to work for again. But the Lord put in my heart to apply for everything, so I did. He conducted a phone interview and asked me to come in for an interview.
After a 2 hr interview, he offered me the job. I was disappointed because this is not the corporate job I wanted. This has a base salary, and it is a sales job and the Lord knows I don’t like to sell. The Lord says to me, I will provide the client. I wanted to run away like Jonah did. Just like Jonah, the Lord made the decision for me. Although I had many great prospects, I was rejected by all.
I kept asking the Lord for confirmation and guidance and He has given it to me every time. I don’t really know what the Lord has in store for me. But after reading the post from this web site, I know, the Lord has placed me where He wants me to be and He will provide and I will be victorious just like HE promised.
We serve a sovereign God. He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the same God, yesterday, today and forever He will remain unchanged. He is a God He does not lie. I know He has a plan for me. His plan is prosper me and to give me hope and a future.
I want to encourage you today, to have faith, trust and believe in the Lord. Sometime we don’t understand why certain things happened, but if you look back, if you ask him to reveal it to you, he will.
He gave me so many signs that I was going to be fired. I dismissed them, because I didn’t want to believe them. But the Lord knows what was going to happened even before I was born. Trust in the Lord your God. He will do right by you.
I encourage you to Google Priscilla Shirer and Dr. Tony Evans. I encourage you to read your Bible so you can understand God Sovereignty. I encourage you to read the 3 books of Wisdom. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Job.
I start my new job 2/1. Less than a month after being terminated. I can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store. I will do a follow up post in March.

Testimony culled from :www.testimonyshare.com

Praying Away or Through!

A Fresh Perspective

The month of January is gone leaving an indelible mark on my prayers, I got a fresh perspective on the purpose of prayer and what should be paramount in my mind as I pray and seek God. From the still small voice to devotional and articles, it was clear that I had been rather selfish in my prayers. My prayers should not be about me, but about God being glorified in my life and what am seeking his face on as explained below.

"We all want our prayers answered. The number one reason why our prayers are not answered is, “We are not focused on the glory of God!” Think about the prayers in your life. Do you want to be happy in your marriage, or do you want God to be glorified in your marriage? Do you merely want your kids to be nice and not get in trouble, or do want God to be glorified in their lives? Do you simply want to get out of your financial mess and feel some relief, or do you want God to be glorified in your finances. Our motivation for prayer should not just be centered on ourselves so we can have what we need. God thrives when He can prove Himself. He wants to be glorified in and through us, and He wants to be glorified in the earth. God will share that glory with no one. He deserves nothing less than all the glory, all the honor, and all the praise. Glorifying God has to be the motive of our prayers, not just our relief. "

Excerpts taken from Awakening: A New Approach to Faith, Fasting, and Spiritual Freedom by Stovall Weems (pp. 56-57)

At the end of Jesus ministry on earth and at a point when He was overwhelmed with what was before him, He prayed a simple prayer:

"Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again" John 12:28

God's Love Story

Am sharing a devotional sent out by Prayer.full (Faithgateway) on January 30th, it contains a story about a family's struggle and the place of prayer in their situation.


What Is the Purpose of Prayer?
by Mark Batterson, from Draw the Circle: The 40-Day Prayer Challenge

“This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” – John 9:3
 
The primary purpose of prayer is not to change circumstances; the primary purpose of prayer is to change us! But either way, the chief objective remains the same: to glorify God in any and every situation. 

My friends John and Tricia Tiller experienced a parent’s worst nightmare nearly a decade ago. Their three-year-old son, Eli, was playing by himself in his room when Tricia became concerned because it was too quiet. When she walked into his room, Eli was nowhere to be seen. That’s when she saw a table out of place. It had been pushed beneath his second-story bedroom window, and the window screen was conspicuously missing. Tricia’s worst fears were realized when she ran to the window, looked down, and saw Eli lying thirteen feet below.

Eli was medevaced to the hospital, where he fought for his life in the ICU for three weeks. He miraculously survived, but not without significant brain damage. He has virtually no peripheral vision on his right side, and the left side of his body has very little motor skills or muscle development. Eli speaks with a severe stutter and walks with a pronounced limp. Yet twelve-year-old Eli Tiller has as sweet a spirit and as courageous an attitude as anybody I’ve ever met. He recently sang at National Community Church, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

John and Tricia have thanked God countless times for saving their son, but their prayers for complete healing have gone unanswered. In the aftermath of the accident, John dueled with doubt.

Their Story 

I began to interrogate God. “Why, God? Why do little boys fall from windows?”

Why did my little boy fall from that window? Why him? Why me? I looked to Scripture for an answer, and it turns out that “Why, God?” is not a new question at all.

In John 9, Jesus encountered a man who was born blind, and the people falsely assumed it was the result of sin. They asked Jesus, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus told them it was neither! The people assumed it was a generational curse or a lack of faith. But Jesus set the record straight by revealing the real reason: “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Since Eli’s accident, Tricia and I have done everything humanly possible to make our son well. We’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on uninsured medical equipment. For the first three years after the accident, Tricia and Eli literally spent 80 percent of their waking hours in therapy. We had faith that he would be completely healed. We knew it was going to happen, so we just kept praying and kept waiting. We waited and waited. We knew that one day we’d be standing in front of crowds saying, “Look what the Lord has done! He has completely healed our son.” But that’s not what happened.

After three years of doing everything we could for our son, it was time to accept his current condition and choose to live life with disability. This disability was something we couldn’t remove, and evidently God was choosing to not completely heal Eli. So we had to burn our old scripts and look for what God could do with our new script. So for the past five years, we’ve accepted life with disability. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped praying for my son. Like any father, I’d give my right arm to see my son healed. But instead of getting discouraged or getting angry, I choose to look for what God can do.

What is the Purpose of Prayer?

Sometimes the purpose of prayer is to get us out of circumstances, but more often than not, the purpose of prayer is to get us through them. I’m certainly not suggesting we shouldn’t pray deliverance prayers, but there are times we need to pray prevailing prayers. We need to ask God to give us the grace to sustain, the strength to stand firm, and the willpower to keep on keeping on.

There is a big difference between praying away and praying through.

We’re often so anxious to get out of difficult, painful, or challenging situations that we fail to grow through them. We’re so fixated on getting out of them that we don’t get anything out of them. We fail to learn the lessons God is trying to teach us or cultivate the character God is trying to grow in us. We’re so focused on God changing our circumstances that we never allow God to change us! So instead of ten or twenty years of experience, we have one year of experience repeated ten or twenty times.

Sometimes we need to pray “get me out” prayers. But sometimes we need to pray “get me through” prayers. And we need the discernment to know when to pray what.

The Purpose of Prayer: Glorify God

If we’re being completely honest, most of our prayers have as their chief objective our own personal comfort rather than God’s glory. We want to pray away every problem, but those shortsighted prayers would short-circuit God’s perfect plan. There are seasons and situations when we need to simply pray through.

Can our prayers change our circumstances? Absolutely! But when our circumstances don’t change, it’s often an indication that God is trying to change us. The primary purpose of prayer is not to change circumstances; the primary purpose of prayer is to change us! But either way, the chief objective remains the same: to glorify God in any and every situation.
 

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Excerpted with permission from Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson, copyright Zondervan.