The Rains are Coming!

Joel 2:21-24 (The Message translation)
Fear not, Earth! Be glad and celebrate! God has done great things. Fear not, wild animals! The fields and meadows are greening up. The trees are bearing fruit again: a bumper crop of fig trees and vines! Children of Zion, celebrate! Be glad in your God. He’s giving you a teacher to train you how to live right—Teaching, like rain out of heaven, showers of words to refresh and nourish your soul, just as he used to do. And plenty of food for your body—silos full of grain, casks of wine and barrels of olive oil.

The Rains are Coming!

As I was asking the Lord about what to write this morning, I heard in my Spirit, “Tell my people the rains are coming.” He then reminded me of the rains spoken of in Joel 2:23. King James reads, “Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.” Just as the rains of heaven rejuvenate and give the life giving fluids to grow the crops, so the Spirit anointed teaching of God’s Word will come like rain to cause His people to come forth in spiritual fruitfulness. We have all set under much teaching and even good instruction, but this teaching and Word of God will be life changing and spirit transforming. It will come with the demonstration of such power and life that it will be a well of restoration, breakthrough and freedom. This rain comes after a time of great darkness upon the earth. It comes after a time where the people of God have entered into fasting and praying, of rending their hearts and not just their garments. It comes as we fully return to the Lord and bring the acceptable sacrifices of a broken and contrite heart.
When this rain breaks forth it will be like none you have seen before. It will be the former and the latter rain together, a double portion blessing upon the people of God. The rains are necessary both for preparing the soil to plant and also for bringing the harvest to fruition. These rains are for the bringing forth of a great harvest in the earth and also for the fruition of that which has already been planted. The rest of the passage of Joel 2 goes on to read, “24And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. 25And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. 26And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. 27And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed. 28And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions:
29And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.
30And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.
31The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD come. 32And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.”
There is a season for every purpose under heaven. There is a season for tearing down and destruction, but that preceeds the season of restoration, blessing and life. Let us prepare our hearts in the manner that God has prescribed, seeking Him in fasting, repentance and prayer. For surely He will answer us and bring the showers of His blessing and life.

Blessings,
#kent

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Garments of Righteousness

2 Corinthians 5:21
For he hath made him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

Garments of Righteousness

When you came to Christ, you made an exchange. He took your old filthy garments of sin, which He died for on the cross and exchanged, through faith and by His grace, the garment of your sin for the garment of His righteousness. What we could never do or earn to bring us into right standing with God the Father, Christ has done for us through the cross.
There are days when you are going to feel so condemned, so unworthy and so unrighteous. There are days when you feel only failure, defeat and discouragement. Remember it is not about your self-worth, but about your God-worth and what God has called righteous, who are we to call it unrighteous. Our defeat comes when we relinquish to the feelings of self. We are not who the accuser says we are. We are what God says we are “the righteousness of God in Him.” If we want victory, we must get our eyes off of self and on to Him. We must stop living in the cemetery of the old dead man and start living in the sanctuary of the Life-giver. When we set our eyes upon Him, we see what we are and what we are becoming. It is Christ that is now our value and our worth. There is none that can devalue Him. His blood cleanses us from all unrighteousness and maintains our right standing in Him.
Here is what the Lord would say to you who are discouraged. Isaiah 61 says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor. 4 They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. 5 Aliens will shepherd your flocks; foreigners will work your fields and vineyards. 6 And you will be called priests of the LORD, you will be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. 7 Instead of their shame my people will receive a double portion, and instead of disgrace they will rejoice in their inheritance; and so they will inherit a double portion in their land, and everlasting joy will be theirs. 8 “ForI, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity. In my faithfulness I will reward them and make an everlasting covenant with them. 9 Their descendants will be known among the nations and their offspring among the peoples. All who see them will acknowledge that they are a people the LORD has blessed.” 10 I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.”

Blessings,
#kent

Setting the Prisoners Free

Setting the Prisoners Free

Zechariah 9:11-12
As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit.
12 Return to your fortress, O prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.

This passage of scripture deals with the ushering in of the spiritual kingship and lordship of Jesus. His was not the outward kingdom that so many looked for, but His kingdom was one that was established in the hearts and souls of the men and women that would believe upon Him. Through the blood of His covenant Christ has come into our hearts to be our Lord, our salvation and our fortress.
While we have experienced the liberation of our spirits, our souls have remained the battleground of our will and desires coming into conformity and submission to the lordship of Christ. All through the Old Testament and into the New we see the warring of flesh and spirit in the midst of God’s people. We see the dealings of God when the flesh went unchecked and how it led to perversity and sin. God would warn, but the will of the flesh made for deaf ears and a hardened heart. So often it took the severity of God to bring His people back to repentance. We are no different today. We all have struggled with sin and its strongholds in our lives. No doubt we have often cried out to God to deliver us from our ungodly and impure ways. We have experienced being the prisoner of that waterless pit which is like a well without water. Instead of drinking from the wells of salvation we are experiencing the parched emptiness and life void we experience in that place where we have been a prisoner to our sin. How many times have we cried out in our weakness as we have sought to climb out of the slimy pit of our despairing ways only to slide back down again? In our spirits we know it is not what we want to be, we know it is not God’s highest or best for us and we know that it is void of the Spirit and Life of God and yet we still feel a prisoner to it.
The good news that the Lord is speaking here is don’t give up and don’t despair; the Lord has not given up on you and me. He will not forever leave us to our prison, but He says, “Return to the fortress”. You are not a prisoner of hopelessness and despair, but a prisoner of hope. Paul makes this cry in Romans 7:21-25, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”
Doesn’t Paul describe himself as a prisoner in this passage? And we can all relate with where he is coming from. Yet he is a prisoner of hope in the midst of his despair. He sees, as we must, our hope, our anchor and our fortress in Christ.
Joseph was thrown into a waterless pit by his jealous brothers and then sold into slavery. Joseph had nothing but the dream, the destiny and the hope that God had placed inside of him. How many times he must have longed for and cried out to God for his deliverance and freedom, yet things didn’t get better they only got worst. Joseph may have been a prisoner outwardly, but inwardly through faithfulness and a right spirit he was the Lord’s freeman. He remained a prisoner of hope until one day the Lord brought him forth out of the prison and into the palace. It was a day of double portion blessing. He not only gained his freedom, but he came out of prison to reign.
If we have become discouraged by the state of our life, our growth and seeming immaturity in Christ, never be a prisoner without hope. We keep returning to our fortress, which is Christ in us, our hope of glory. His blood covenant has made a promise to deliver us from this body of sin and death. ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Never succumb to your sin and fleshly weaknesses even though you may stumble in them. Never depart from the hope you have in Christ to bring you out of the waterless pit of your sin struggles. Continually turn to your fortress, identify with who you are in Christ and know that His blood covenant will bring you through and bring you out. Hold fast that you my see your double portion blessing.

Blessings,
#kent

Be Content

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

Be Content

The Lord was showing me something in the weather that pertains to our lives. We often think we want more of what we don’t have. With covetousness, the more we have the more that we want. Wealth and earthly provision is like the elements that come down from the heaven. When the earth is thirsty and dry, it needs rain. Often the best rain is a slow soaking rain that gives the earth time to absorb and take it in. If we need rain and get a huge down pour, we get more than we needed and it causes as much or more destruction than we had in our lack.
God brings the rain that we need in His season and His ways. Sometimes it might seem scarce and have long stretches in between, but as sure as He is God, it will come. Should we think that God cares any less for our earthen vessels? We see similar seasons in our lives; times of abundance and sometimes lack. The earth doesn’t fret over whether it will rain or not, but it learns to adapt to the season and the state that is in. The earth has yet to not have a seed time and harvest. Genesis 8:22 says, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” …
God has never intended that we should be consumed with the love of money, wealth, power or fame. Our truest state of contentment is when we are walking in faith and trust in Him. That is not dictated by our bank account, our promotion or lack of it, our popularity or position or any other circumstance. Even Job makes the statement as tribulation rains down upon him, “shall I receive good at the hand of God and not evil?” Jesus says that God rains on the just and the unjust alike. We are a heavenly people waking and living in an earthly state. While in this state we are subject to the laws and the state of affairs that happen in our natural world.
Jesus said in John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Jesus was an overcomer. He overcame His natural circumstances by His faith and obedience to the Father. Likewise, He has told us that we also are overcomers and you can’t be an overcomer unless you have something to overcome. We might visualize overcoming as emptying hospitals of the sick, raising the dead, bringing great deliverance and saving the nations. You may think, “I am not overcomer because I have so many trials, problems, sicknesses or bills that I may question if God even still remembers me.” The truth is, that is exactly what you are if you are keeping your eyes upon Jesus and continuing to walk in faith and trust in Him. Sure you are not seeing great miracle in and through your life. In fact, your physical state may be testifying against God being in your life, but before an overcomer can manifest into the fruitfulness and fullness of the seed within them, they first must be as the seed that is hidden in the ground and dies. You are the caterpillar that has ceased to devour and partake of this earth. You entered into your cocoon stage where you are hidden and dormant. As far as the outside world is concerned, you might as well be dead. But wait……….
You not dead, you are in a state of transformation, changing from the earthly to the heavenly state of being. There may well be no fanfare or outward evidence. When, in due season, you emerge from that difficult state of faith and obedience in the face of multiple difficulties, you shall spread your wings and fly, whether in this world or that to come. You will no longer be bound to earth but when you touch earth it will be for the purpose of perpetuating and cross-pollinating the life of God in Christ Jesus. When Job emerged from his season of tribulation, through his faithfulness, he came into a double portion of all of the greatness and riches that he had before.
Let us not set our affections upon the things of this world, for they are soon to perish and pass away. Let us, with diligence and faithfulness, pursue Christ, which is our life, our peace and our power to overcome in this world.
“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” — God

Blessings,
kent