Post #1 Establishing identity...

I know that I have been missing in action for the last week. For anyone who visits here regularly, I do apologize for that. I will however make up for that because I have a lot to say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Keep reading and you will understand why.

I have been under severe attack by the enemy in the last week. Anyone who really knows me, knows that I don't do rest very well. I like to keep moving so that I can get done anything that is on my agenda on any given day. I rest when the day is over.

With that said, I was forced to rest this week due to some challenges with my health. It was so bad that for a couple of days, I was unable to speak. Anyone here with children can understand how frustrating that in itself was because they try you on those days when they know you can neither speak, nor holler at them. I understood from day one that enemy was not merely trying to inconvenience me. With him, it's never about inconvenience. He wants to set up illness so that he can establish disease. If you lay down to a cold, he'll establish something stronger. The saints have to fight him with everything that we have available to us. The really sad thing is that many of us are simply unaware of the promises written between the pages of G-d's word. There is a promise for everything in there that we could want, need, and desire. We simply have to know how to tap into spiritual law attached to them so that we can obtain them.

Being challenged in my health this week, allowed me uninterrupted time in the word. I listened to tapes back to back, I read, and I confessed. The devil didn't know it but he gave me a Sabbath! A week long one at that! I understand that he simply wanted to steal my praise. He can't stand it when you praise too much. And for me to have the audacity to praise even when I still don't have in my possession the things I'm waiting on is really irritating to him! Not to mention that he was not catching me off guard for once in my life. Whenever prophecy is released the devil comes immediately to attack you. Check the record...In Mark chapter 1 and verse 11 G-d tells the world that Jesus is his beloved son in whom he is well pleased in. G-d established his identity and therefore his promise. Immediately in verse 12 Jesus ends up in the wilderness tempted by the adversary. He was having to fight the adversary over all things but mainly his identity.

That's all any attack is. It's about who we are. Knowing who we are is our first weapon. If Jesus hadn't established himself in his identity he wouldn't have won that fight. People look at the new testament without realizing that Jesus had to fight the same things we did. He couldn't be our example otherwise. He was God-but in a flesh body subject to things that we were as well.(Heb 4;15) He had to read that word to know that he was the messiah.(Luke 4:17) It's not enough to say you are saved and you believe it. You have to be established in both that belief and what the benefits are to being a child of the Most High G-d! It's not enough to understand that you are saved because if you don't believe it, you can't tap into the benefits that it affords you.

Case in point--when I first got saved, I really didn't understand that once saved, always saved. Being back slidden is not discontinuing church and returning into the things you once did. It's renouncing G-d. I had no clue that I didn't have to get "re-saved" over and over. I simply had to repent and move on. I can't tell you how many times I needed an altar call. I didn't know that all of my sins--past, present, and future are already erased. Cussing someone out today, is already forgiven. Repentance has to do with turning in the opposite direction, not telling G-d I'm sorry. When I tell him I'm sorry, I am simply coming back into agreement with him that I was wrong, with the understanding that I am already forgiven for it. The adversary does not want you to become established in your knowledge of your identity. Once you do that his days are numbered in his ability to deceive you.

I lived in condemnation for most of my saved life. I didn't know that was from the adversary either. I had it mixed up. Conviction is what we feel before we sin--that's G-d way of keeping us out of mess. It's his warning to us. Condemnation is what the enemy puts on us after we sin. He uses it to drive a wedge between us and father. Condemnation blocks harvest because what we are then saying is that the sacrifice of Jesus was not enough to cover what we had done. We are then lying against the truth of G-ds word. I guess if I had ever analyzed it, I would have realized the it would have been pretty dumb for me to only believe that all my sins prior to entering the kingdom could be forgiven, but not those after.

I said all that because too many of us still don't know that we are his children in the sense that he loves us in a greater capacity than we could ever even love our children. I know that it's almost impossible for us to fathom what that means, but it's how he sees us. What kind of father would see a need and not meet it? What kind of father would do something one time and not another? I'm not talking a bout a dead-beat some timey daddy! I'm talking about a father! If that's what you know because that's what you had, I admonish you today to establish yourself in FATHER. That means renewing your mind to in the word until you see that no matter what the children of Israel did, he always went and pulled them from their mess. He may have left them there for a while til' they got the lesson, But he came. However temporary they remembered what they just came out of it only to do it again, but he still went time and again to get them out and deliver them to greater things than they lost. It wasn't stupidity. They were children. He was so good to them after each deliverance that they forgot the last lesson. He was good to them because just like the father in the prodigal son, he was just happy to have them back. He loved that every time they called and he came they had called him--it hurt his feelings that they were trying to replace father with someone who neither could help them nor who could really love them.

We have to learn that every situation we face is his attempt to draw us closer to him. He is attempting to reveal a part of his character to us that we aren't familiar with. The reason why we continue to be challenged in certain areas is because we fail to get the lesson the first hundred times. That's why in Matthew 13:15 he says...
For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.

Once we are converted in our thinking and we have true understanding of that part of his character--deliverance is immediate. It couldn't be restrained from us. I am so thankful to him for mercy and grace. I needed a new healing testimony. The other one is about 7 years old. And at the time, he knew this week would occur and I would really understand that promise of healing. Last time, I was operating in the faith that he gave me unknowingly and relying on the prayers of the saints. It's been a rocky road, but I wouldn't have wanted to have spent my time any other way.

Be blessed. When I say that--I mean it!

Chosen.