THE FULFILLER OF DREAMS

     I want you to know that God is a God who fulfills dreams and visions when they are ones that He has given to us. Just as He fulfilled His promise of a son to Abraham and Sarah, taking it upon Himself to make that which seemed impossible, possible, so He does for us.

  I recently experienced this beautiful miracle in my own life. Something that I was “pregnant” with in the Spirit came to fruition in a miraculous, unexpected and marvelous way.

   A little over 3 ½ years ago the Lord gave me vision for a house of prayer that would be called WOWHOP (Watchmen on the Walls House of Prayer). The vision for this house of prayer is that it would ultimately be 24/7 and that the prayer going up from it would be exclusively for the peace of Jerusalem, Israel and the Jewish people. It would be filled with a combination of worship and intercession. I saw that it would be a place where we could help fulfill God’s prayer request for 24/7 prayer in Isaiah 62:6 & 7: I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem. They will never be silent day or night. You who call upon the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give Him no rest til He establishes Jerusalem and makes her a praise in the earth.”

  A small group of us from my Messianic Jewish Congregation began to pray for Israel in the “upper room” of our congregation every Shabbat after services. Then a door opened where I was invited to lead worship/intercession for Israel at the University of Minnesota House Of Prayer (UMHOP) on Monday evenings. Many of our little band of intercessors would come faithfully and regularly to pray for Israel there as well. We prayed there for a year every Monday evening, while still praying on Shabbat. Then, I was asked to lead a worship service in Buffalo, MN and the lovely woman who had invited me asked that I come every Thursday to her storefront and lead worship/intercession for Israel. So we had 3 worship/prayer times for Israel a week.

    All the while, with no obvious way to go about it or get it done, the Lord kept the vision for WOWHOP alive in my heart and mind. Our little band of intercessors would often pray for that time and place only the Lord knew about, but we prayed in faith that He would bring it about.

   A Messianic Rabbi in our community suggested my name to a visiting missionary from India to lead worship for his services. The woman who oversaw his ministry, Lisa, was a lovely woman and we connected heart-to-heart immediately.

  Later on I invited her to be a part of a new woman’s prayer group that a friend had just begun, so we began to fellowship together bi-weekly. This prayer group knew about the vision for the house of prayer the Lord had placed on my heart, and would often pray into it.

   I had been through a lot in the way of receiving ministry for generational curses, and doors opened for me to do teaching on spiritual warfare. As a result, people began to ask to meet with me to pray for them over generational strongholds in their lives. I would invite them to my apartment and a friend and I would team up to pray for people and saw wonderful breakthroughs in their lives.

   Lisa heard about this and told me she had some offices available in the building she and her husband owned in Long Lake for us to use for that kind of prayer. I finally visited the building a couple of months later…exactly 3 ½ years to the week that we had begun praying for Israel. The offices were perfect for the prayer ministry; and then I went around the corner of the offices into a 1000 sq. ft. space that Lisa had told me another vendor in her building was going to be renting. But, now she told me that person had backed off from renting it.  It had been vacant for 2 years. We both saw that it would be perfect for WOWHOP and she and her husband donated the space to us to begin the house of prayer.

  WOWHOP officially opened on May 20^th, 2014.  We had forty people come that first night to pray for Israel. The numbers aren’t always that high, but it doesn’t matter if there are forty, fifteen or five…the Lord is always SO present and SO leading us in strategic prayer by His Spirit.

  I wanted to share this testimony with you to strengthen you in your faith to believe for those things He has planted in your heart, even as you faithfully do those things He puts in front of you.  (I have included pictures of the beautiful WOWHOP space the Lord has so graciously given to us.)

Til next time,

Shalom!

  

HOW CAN WE BELIEVE?

One of the passages in Scripture that has really captured my attention lately is in the 5th chapter of John, where the following words of Yeshua are recorded: “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me.  Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life. I don’t receive glory from men. But I know you, that you don’t have God’s love in yourselves. I have come in my Father’s name, and you don’t receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him.  How can you believe, who receive glory from one another, and you don’t seek the glory that comes from the only God?  Don’t think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope.  For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me.  But if you don’t believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”

I know there are those who are following a teaching these days that any encounter with Yeshua apart from the scriptures is deception. Yet, in these verses we find Yeshua telling the people of his day that they were believing that the scriptures themselves gave them eternal life, and he acknowledged that those scriptures testify of Him, but these same people were refusing to come to HIM, the Messiah in the flesh, not just in the Word.

But what really stood out to me in this passage are the two times Yeshua asks how we can believe. The first time he asks  us how we can believe if we receive glory from one another, and we don't seek the glory that comes from the only God. He's telling us that  seeking to be praised by one another rather than by God makes it impossible for us to believe in him! That's something I had never considered before. Where and how we seek to obtain glory affects our ability to believe. I know we have all suffered from this malady of wanting the praise and applause of men more than praise from God. But, Yeshua isn't just recommending we seek the praise that comes from His Father and not from each other--he is equating it with our ability to believe at all!


 But how do we walk this out? False humility, where we are constantly pointing to God when we get compliments about our ministry isn't the answer. We may think we're seeking God's glory in that, but what we're doing is walking in fear--fear of taking glory away from God and fear of not appearing humble before men. It can also be a subtle form of pride that tells the person who is complimenting you that they really need to see more truth and not give you any credit or praise for your efforts. That actually hurts people who are looking for a way to express their gratitude for what God just did through you! It really is OK to hear each other tell each other how the anointing and the gifting God has placed in each of us has blessed our hearts. The correct response is to rejoice with them over the wonder that God would use weak jars of clay to display His glory, and respond with a loving, "Praise God! I'm so glad you were blessed! I was blessed, too!" That is walking in love and humility, not fear. It's all about our hearts' motivations and our needs. Seeking the praise that comes from God is found in spending time with Him in the "secret place" where we find our inestimable worth in his eyes. Only that can leave us satisfied and not seeking our sense of worth elsewhere. Then we are able to take the compliments without them meeting a need that is unmet by God. I believe that is a key to what can deliver us from seeking glory from one another and not from the only God. Yeshua put it this way in Matthew 6:5 & 6:And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.  But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

I don't believe Yeshua is saying we should never pray in public. But if the heart motivation is like the Pharisees he is referring to--"to be seen by others"-- then it's time to get into the secret place with God and pray to him there. That is where we find our worth.
I can tell you from experience that when I journal my prayers to God, he pours out praise on me! He just goes on and on about how much he loves me, how he sees me, what I mean to him. I come away from those times with fresh revelation of my inestimable worth in his eyes; and my heart is filled with the love of God!

Another statement Yeshua makes about our ability to believe in Him is that if we believed Moses' writings then we would believe Him. Then he makes a statement that I have never heard a sermon preached on in my whole life. He says "But if you don't believe his (Moses') writings, how will you believe my words?" 

When Yeshua spoke of the Scriptures that were being searched out,  he was speaking of the Law and the Prophets--what is now called the "Old Testament." And he tells us that these scriptures "testify" about Him. He tells us that seeing how the Old Testament scriptures testify about Him makes it possible for a person to come to Him to have life. We see an example of this after his resurrection when he walks with the two disciples who are filled with doubt and unbelief on the road to Emmaus. This is what he tells them as they express their dismay over all that had taken place when Yeshua was crucified, and how their hopes in his being the Messiah had been dashed:  He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

Here we see what he had said in John 5 confirmed; we are foolish and slow to believe when we don't know what Moses and the prophets say concerning Him. It kind of makes the doctrine that is commonly preached that all that Moses has said and, in fact, the whole 
Old Testament are "done away with" a dangerous one, doesn't it? So many are taught that all scripture before the Book of Matthew  is no longer relevant to our faith. Yeshua himself has told us the exact opposite---that not only should it not be ignored, but it is vital to know what Moses wrote about him in order to believe in him, and might I add,to know who he truly is!

So in this one passage he speaks of two conditions of our faith, our belief, our hearts that determine our ability to believe in Him and believe His words. One is if we seek praise from each other, and not from God. The other is if we don't believe what Moses wrote about Him. I know the Holy Spirit is at work throughout the earth to bring correction to the children of God in regards to both of these detriments to our believing. May He use my little offering here, which is spoken in love and compassion for all who are seeking to truly believe, to do that work in our hearts.

Til next time,

Shalom!