August 1, 2009

• The Father’s Love by Melissa Lowe

  Living Word Chapel has a Women’s Meeting every month where we invite speakers to come and share with us.  It is a time of fellowship and worship, and renewing.  You are always welcome to attend.  In July, Melissa Lowe came and shared with us.  She is from Living Faith Community Church in Maplecrest, New York – which is near Hunter Mountain.

  THE LOVE OF THE FATHER

  God is for you.  He loves us.  For some of us it is hard to understand the love of the Father because of some of the earthly father’s we have had.  Many have experienced abandonment from their fathers and that makes it harder to trust God.  But God wants to reveal His perfect love to us.

  Melissa shared that her father was in the military, was a Swedish Marine.  This led her to look for love in all the wrong places.   She had no church background.  Her mom died at the age of 18, and Melissa wondered why God took her mom.  She began searching, working and achieving all that she thought would make her happy, and that led to a cycle of bad relationships. 

  Then Melissa had an encounter with Jesus, and felt His love and His acceptance.  She felt loved and accepted for who she was.  It began with her crying out in her bedroom on the floor, and she asked Jesus to take it from her.  Jesus took the pain away.  She was born again, but it seemed as if nothing happened.  God came to her and revealed Himself to her, so she purposed to follow God with everything that she had. 

  God is revealing Himself to His children.  The Church does not always reveal the love of God, although it should be revealing the Father’s love. 

  We are in a season of preparation.  God is going deeper, shaking, and putting pressure.  The Lord’s disruption is because He wants us to be ready. 

  Melissa spent time in the desert like Paul – her desert time was when she moved to Australia.  Nothing strips you from familiarity like moving to a country where you don’t know anyone and it is so different from where you used to live.  There was no church, tv, radio, etc.  She had to begin to seek Christ and His Word.  She dived into the Word and fed herself.  There was spiritual warfare, and during this time God took over her life.  She began to speak in tongues – her prayer language, and communed with God. 

  Melissa shared the prophetic word that Randy Clark spoke about USA in 2004.  Here is the direct quote.  Melissa gave me her notes to copy from.

  “I believe we need to get ready to be vessels that can receive His presence.  I believe that God is shaking, preparing and wanting His church to get ready, arise and awaken from her slumber. It’s time to prepare our vessels to get our selves ready for what He is about to do!”

  His Glory is coming, and His Holy Spirit far surpasses anything that we have seen before.

  Then she continued with this quote from Randy Clark (Global Awakening). “As many of you know I consider myself a student of revival. I love reading about it, studying it, hearing about it and most of all living in it.  I recently read a book by Tommy Welchel called Azusa Street: They Told Me Their Stories.  It is a powerful book about lives of people who were touched by the revival a a very young age.  In reading this book, I realized this revival was marked by the Shekinah Glory of God.  I read something else, though, that has gripped me ever since.  In 1909 or 1910 (the writer is unsure), both William J. Seymour and Charles Parham prophesied that in about 100 years ‘there would be a return of the Shekinah Glory and a revival that would surpass the Works of God at Azusa.’  I believe that as we go into these next two years that we should expect the fulfillment of this prophesy which will bring us into a level of healing that we have not seen for 100 years.”

  We need the anointing, we need to know the Father’s love.  When we are in a season of pressing and shaking, what do we do?

  1 Peter 1:3-4 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,

  God does nothing without revealing it to His prophets first.

  1 Peter 1:5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

  We are kept by the Power of God.  Put our problems in God’s hands and keep them there.

  1 Peter 1:6-7 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,

  In love, God will use what he needs to grab a hold of us and get our attention – even if that needs to be trials. 

  1 Peter 1:8-9 whom having not seen^h]’> not only the earth, but also heaven.”^j]’> serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

  We can be shaken to a core.

  Our environment requires us, as we grow closer to God, to readjust, to be shaken up.  God begins to hack off cultural things.  If we are not in line with the Word of God, He will shake it off.  Sometimes this shaking is hard and painful, and we need to hang on.

  How do we do this?

  Surrender to God.  Tell God how you feel.  Talk to Him.  He loves you.

  Romans 8:31-32  What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

  We see the love of God through Jesus.  Jesus knew the Father’s love and He brings us to the place where we, too, can know the Father’s Love.  

  Melissa learned to pray to FATHER GOD, and she was set free.  God shows us as a loving Father, how things are arranged for our good.  Satan can come in and steal, kill, destroy, but God brings healing and love.

  Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

  Nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

  Romans 8:38  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come,

  We are convinced that nothing can shake us.  No person can separate us from God’s love.

  When we are shaking and our circumstances are troubling, we can run to Daddy God.  We can tell Him that we don’t understand what’s going on, that it hurts.  Ask Him to help.

  God wants our hearts because He has great plans for us.  Everything that is permitted in our lives is directing us, causing us to be where we should be. 

  Sometimes we get satisfied and stuck in our day to day things, and God lets trials come in to break us free.

  Melissa’s father did not give her discipline.  When she came to God, He disciplined her.  She had to run to God and go to a place to let God take her to a spiritual maturity.

  Spiritual maturity is not measured by years that a believer has been saved, but rather by a heart that longs for the Lord.  We need a heart and a hunger for Jesus and He will take us from glory to glory.

  Song of Solomon 2:10-14 My beloved spoke, and said to me: “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away! O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.”

  Song of Solomon tells us to come away with Him, dwell, soak in His presence. 

  If broken how can we minister well?  We need Jesus.  It is a choice.  We need Him.  The children today have rebeled, they have been subject to rules without love and balance.  They have been forced to God, to church, and they love the community but hate the message of being holy and righteous, for they have learned no relationship with God. God wants maturity, and the church needs to give out the message.

  Isaiah 60:1 Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you.

  We are to arise and shine. The Church needs to arise and reach out to the unlovely, hurting, wounded, see the harvest, and bring them in.  We need to raise them up and send them out, so that the Glory of God rises on this plain.

  Isaiah 60:2  For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people;  but the LORD will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you.

  There is darkness on the earth, but God has much greater things for us.  The Church needs to rise up.  There will be a collision in our culture.  People will be in places where they can’t cut it, and we will be ready to reach out and help.  God wants people to be in places to begin to bring the harvest in.  After 9-11 people came in, but the Church wasn’t in position to do what they needed to do, for we were sleeping.  Now we need to rise up.  We are an army, and we can shake things.

  Aimee Semple McPherson was raised up in the depression and she prayed that God would put her where she needed to be.  He did, and she was able to minister mightily.

  Isaiah 60:4  Lift up your eyes all around, and see: they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters shall be nursed at your side.

  We have to lift our eyes to Jesus, not look at our situation.  Go beyond where we see things are.  Call those things which be not as though they are. 

  There is a call on our life.

  What are we to do?
  1. Surrender to God
  2. Ask the Holy Spirit to lift our eyes back on Jesus, no jealousy or comparing.  See what God has for you.
  3. Get into the Word; remind yourself of His love, His faithfulness
  4. Gather someone around you that you trust, who is mature in the Lord and share with them – ask for help.
  5. Remind yourself that we are in a season of preparation: God is wanting to work in  you because He has something up the road that you need to be ready for.

  Melissa shared a vision her husband had.  I am sharing straight from her notes:  “My husband sees prophetically.  When we came to the United States for the year 2004, he had a vision of a tall tree and God spoke,  ”I will cut it down”. He went to Daniel and found the scripture about the tree being taken down limb by limb but God didn’t allow the stump to be removed.  He felt that that was the United States.  He watches the things going on, reads much and has often spoken of a coming season of hardship for the United States. ”

  But last week God showed Melissa that something greater was coming, and this is from her notes: “and He’s confirming it. There is an outpouring coming that will not compare to Azuza Street.  It won’t come like we expect it, it won’t come through those who are not surrendered completely to Christ.  He will only use those vessels that have surrendered to Him, allowed Him in to clean, heal and restore the broken, hurting places, the wounds and infections that are in our hearts.”

  Melissa told us that we need to keep doing this and finish the course.
  
  I pray this blessed you, it sure blessed us at our Women’s group.

  Heather

  • 8:19 am
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