June 25, 2007

• women’s luncheon speech by Mary Winchell

  Before you read, Go say “Hi” to my friend Pam from church. She has put up some neat Bible quizes.

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  June 16 we had our monthly Women’s Luncheon. This is a blessed and anointed time and I am grateful that I got to attend. It is not always possible with three teenagers to get the liberty to attend, so I count my blessings. The speaker for June was Mary Winchell. Her website is www.amazingloveministries.org For your information here is her bio from her site:

  Mary Winchell has been ministering since 1972 in the United States, Great Britain and the Far East. God has used her through teaching, exhortation, prayer, counseling, healing and restoration, as the Holy Spirit fulfills the Word in Isaiah 61 “To bind up the broken hearted and set the captives free”. Mary and the ministry team of Amazing Love through radio, conferences and retreats reach thousands of people with God’s message of hope, love, and change through Jesus Christ. Amazing Love Ministries is here for your life, to minister the Father’s love into your circumstances and the fresh Word of His Spirit for today!

  Her message to us was inspiring and filled with God’s love.

  Mary began by pointing out that we are all gifts in God’s Kingdom. God, by His Spirit, will surface a gift in us for the Body of Christ, and God stirs up gifts in us. We need to stir up the gifts in us that God has provided. God is waiting for us to expand the gifts He gives us. The gifts are not just for looking at or unwrapping, they are meant to be used beyond ourselves, they are given so that we can share the hope and glory of God.

  She told us, “Break forth O daughters of Zion, in the name of the Lord.” Let this day be a day of New Women of Faith coming out of passivity, breaking forth. Come forth into your calling and take your place.

  We might not be able to see beyond our situation and self conceptions, but God can see more than we. He has set us apart to be a new creation. We are not to live in yesterday, but to go forth. We need to let go of yesterday, not run the old VCR tapes in our mind, but to put in the new tape. God has created us as tabernacles, with the ability to be all over the earth, doing His will. He has given us the ability to communicate.

  See within ourselves the new things God has for us. The old stuff will not help us to come into the new person. We do not want to let the words of the past annihilate us and keep us from God’s plan.

  The emphasis is, do we LIVE or do we just put our time in life?  Without visions the people perish. We cannot live in our past circumstances. Excuses from the past keep us from claiming the new that God has for us.

  The truth is that we have a limited amount of time on this earth, Are we just breathing in, breathing out? Are we going nowhere? We need to get out and do SOMETHING. Faith without works is dead. But we do not want to do work just for works’ sake, for that is empty works and then we are working for nothing. We want to do what the Spirit tells us and then the works that we do are significant.

  Jesus told us that we would do greater works than he did, but we haven’t done that yet. At one point we did manifest His works in our lives, and if we have lost that, if we are running on idle and going nowhere. We need to go back to where we broke down, to find out what we need to change in ourselves. Some of us have broken down for so long we can’t find the last point where we were manifesting His Spirit. But His Spirit can help us reconnect, to where we are physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually manifesting Him. He can help us to know what wounded us, what is keeping us from doing His will.

  Some think that obeying God means that we will live a boring life. Life is not BORING when we are doing His will. If we feel life is boring, it means that something has to change, and that something is ME. Did I lose the spark? Life in Christ should be exciting. Some of us need a jumpstart.

  Our lives are consecrated to God. When we are not living consecrated lives, we need to ask God to reveal what is blocking us. We keep refining the consecration that God gives us, there is never an end of growing in God. When someone offends us it can indicate areas that we need to work on in our lives. Little offenses can block our love quota. His love is powerful. Choose to live a life in and through Him.

  Some people, when hurt, shut down, blocking out close contacts, wanting to be more like a rock, not responding. But Jesus points out that even the rocks will cry out. Shutting out life is not a protection from hurt. There are songs to sing, words to say, smiles on faces, things to share. How can God use us if we are not totally alive, if we are walking deadmen?

  We need to choose life, to be fully alive. Yes there will be hurts. But when someone hurts us and we shut down our selves, we are the ones who pay.

  Jesus is God of the new, to be totally alive. Mary asked us, what is your drug of choice? TV, food, alcohol, drugs, what is it that you use to take away the pain? Our Healer is here and wants to heal us. He loves us each as if we are His only child. we don’t know how He does it, but He can. We do not have to compete with sisters and brothers for His love, He loves us individually. He knows the words we speak, and He speaks to us. He looks into our hearts, knows our every sin, and is waiting for us to let go so He can come in. We have free will.

  Sometimes we want Him to knock us out and make the changes in us so that there is no pain. But often we have to walk through it, and take back the ground that we have given over to the darkness. Our fight is not a fight against the flesh, but against spiritual wickedness in high places. The devil has stolen much from us. Jesus came to give us life and give it to us more abundantly. What are we going to choose? Life with joy, peace, love; or death and destruction?

  Women get emotional over situations. Men get over things more quickly. Women remember, keep laundry lists, with page after page of wrongs done. How easy it is to list another’s faults, but we don’t look at our own. Often when we are aware of something in another person that annoys us it is because we also do the same thing. What easily offends us is a trait that we often possess.

  We often are seeking for a way to change – looking at self-help books, seeking other’s counsel, when only the Holy Spirit and our repentance can change anything.

  We sometimes call our little annoying behaviors, idiosyncrasies, but they really are sins that are not our friends. God will deliver us not only from enemies, but from friends that are really enemies of us.

  To get out of the cycle of sin and death we have to:

  1. Recognize that I need to change
  2. Cry out to Him to change us, and let Him come in and remove what needs removing.
  3. Realize that we want to be free and not impaired by sin, learned behaviors and things that are doing nothing but hurting us.

  That is what God is doing when He is freeing us. Women have held onto behaviors for years, bought into the culture. We have been taught things that women shouldn’t do, have believed that men do certain things, women others. We have been caught up into stereotypes, but what we need to focus on is what GOD WANTS US TO DO.

  Men think differently than women. When women have a problem and bring it to a man, the man looks for a quick way to fix the problem. The woman wants to spend time talking about the problem, understanding the problem. God fixes things. Some things in  our lives no one can fix. If God doesn’t intervene, provide a miracle, or deliverance through His sovereignty, things will not happen. God builds our faith that way, especially if we consider ourselves a fixer and a doer – sometimes we need God to sovereignly intervene.

  We cannot change our children at a certain age. We can try to reason, but often they are not willing to reason. So we pray, “Oh God, if you do not come through, where will we be?”

  We live in time, space and situations. God is there in it all. He can go where we can’t go, he can travel instantaneously. Our prayers release God into places we can’t go ourselves.

  2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. We need to keep this in mind so that when we get that phone call, instead of focusing on the situation, focus on God. Ask God to tell us what our part in the situation is and obey Him. We need to keep in mind that in some strange way all things work together for good. We don’t know the results of the situation, or how it will affect a persons’ life. But we do know our God is into redeeming, saving and restoration. Sometimes it seems that on the surface things are falling apart, but God is working things out for the person’s good. If your child hasn’t contacted you in years and you don’t know if they are dead or alive, believe in faith that someone else has come forward to take care of him or her.

  Remember that it is God who does the things, he chooses the weak things of the world to confound the wise.  It is NOT US, but it is Christ who is the hope of glory. He heals, delivers, encourages, and gives hope to the hopeless.  Sometimes we want to see things change quickly, and we say that if we were God we would change it instantly. But we don’t see things from God’s perspective. We may not see the change in the external but that does not mean that change is not occurring. Faith is the substance of things not seen. We need to have faith that God is working in the situation even if we don’t see something in the external. God is faithful and He is outside of our time frame. We need to hold onto the promise that Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. That it is God’s nature to save, deliver, and care.

  That it is not who we are but who HE IS. It is ok if we do not have all the answers. What is important is that I BELIEVE.

  God is moving in a new way. He is coming again. It will not be like we think, it will not be according to our plans. He will be transforming us on the earth. We can see changes in Israel. He is making changes, and is calling us to trust what He is doing. We need to believe He is and that everything will be OK, even if you do not think He is doing anything. When things seem to be in chaos in the earth, watch the panorama, but don’t get caught up in the chaos. See what God is doing and join Him in his work. Pray, “Lord, show us what You are doing and what our place is in what You are doing.” We need to let God move us out of the box, to change quickly, and to not be afraid of change. God is stirring us up, the dross will float to the top and be skimmed off, so that the good remains. We need to let God do His work in us.

  She then went around prophesying to the women and praying for the women at our luncheon. All left the meeting profoundly touched.

  Hoping your day is blessed.

  Heather

  • 12:21 pm
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