INSPIRED WORD

FEBRUARY 2, 2005

PRAYER

Lord, we turn our attention on You. We thank You, Lord; we thank You for being present here with all these people who love You. We love Your Presense, we worship and praise You tonight, Lord.

PRAYER

O Lord, give us that hunger and thirst for You. O Lord, give us eyes only for You. O God, You are our only desire here in this place. Let us look upon Your face; upon Your beauty; upon Your radiance; upon Your holiness here. Let us drop everything else, O Lord. Let everything else fade, O God, in the light of Your glory here. Lord, we are not satisfied. Lord, we are not satisfied, we want more of You.

SCRIPTURE

Psalm 27:4-6 One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek; to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple. For in the time of trouble, He will conceal me in His tabernacle and in the secret place of His tent, He will hide me. He will lift me up on a rock. Even now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me. I will offer in His tent sacrifices with shouts of joy. I will sing and chant praises to the Lord.

SONG

We will praise Your name! Yes, we worship You! With shouts of joy, we will praise Your name, for You are worthy. You are holy; You are worthy of all our hearts. So here we are to worship You; here we are to praise Your name. Lifting holy hands; lifting up our voices to You. We lift our eyes to You, Lord. We lift our eyes to You. There is none like You, in heaven or earth; so we will seek You, Lord. We will seek You, O, holy One. We love You, Lord. We love you. We will lift up our eyes to You.

MESSAGE IN TONGUES

INTERPRETATION

“Do not be afraid, I am with you”, says the Lord.

WORD OF KNOWLEDGE / PROPHECY

The love and mercy of God are coming tonight like a soft and gentle rain. A soft and a gentle rain that breaks up the hard places that we don't even know are there. God is saying, “Feel my soft and gentle rain. Feel my soft and gentle rain upon places that have been hardened; for I mean to plant a new seed; a new seed of praise; a new seed of love. I want to do a new thing within you, so I send My love and My mercy like a soft and gentle rain. I ask nothing of you, but that you say “Yes, Lord, break up those hard places with Your soft and gentle rain; break up those hard places and plant that seed; plant the seed within my heart.”

CONFIRMATION

Psalm 37:5-8 Give yourself to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will help you. Be patient and wait for the Lord to act. Don't give in to worry or anger.

SCRIPTURE

Psalm 62:6-9 My soul rests in God alone, from Whom comes my hope. God alone is my rock and my salvation, my secure height; I shall never fall. My safety and glory are with God, my strong rock and refuge. Trust God at all times, my people! Pour out your hearts to God, our refuge!

PRAYER

In the words of the Psalm (130), ‘Out of the depths, I cry out to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my prayer. Out of the depths of my heart, I cry to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my prayer. Out of the depths, O God, I cry to You; Lord, hear my prayer!'

SCRIPTURE

Psalm 51:13-14,17: Do not caste me away from Your Presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare Your praise.

EXHORTATION

I hear the words from the Lord saying, “Tell them to tell you their story. Tell them to tell you their story.”

SCRIPTURE

Isaiah 43: Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name; you are Mine. When you pass through the water, I will be with you; in the rivers, you shall not drown. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned; the flames shall not consume you.

PERSONAL SHARING

I really don't know if I am the person who is supposed to share, but the Lord has done a great thing for me. I have spent much of my life in fear, outside of 15 years of complete bliss with a very good husband. But my fears came back and nearly destroyed me. The Lord taught me something – that scripture had been given to me many years ago. I had always been afraid of failure and I didn't really know the source of it. It should have been pretty obvious to me; we all have our histories. When you go through suffering or hardship, there are different levels in that testing. Some of it is just plain oppression and you can pass by that; you know the Lord is with you. Some of it is feeling swamped and you feel such fear, you don't know if you are going to survive it. Then there is that kind of trial where you think you have been destroyed – something has been taken from you. You think that you are not going to be the same again. That is what the Lord brought to me recently. He had been trying to bring me to that place over and over again and I wouldn't go. I actually even refused to remember what it was that I was afraid of. I was sharing with another Christian – ‘the Lord was with me in this, the Lord was with me in that' – then a small little whisper said, “Maybe the Lord was with you in everything!” When I let that small thought in, the Lord began to change my identity. The nature of dismay - the Bible gives a completely different diagnosis than the experts. ‘Fear not the reproach of men nor be dismayed by their revilings.'(Isaiah 51:7) God showed me that He can, even when we don't believe in ourselves, when we think we cannot do something, God pursues us. When we are to that place where we are flat, God pursues us and He is with us. We are being called to seek the Lord in prayer. You know the burning bush – when Moses approached the burning bush because it was so unnatural for a fire to be burning and not be consuming. In this final push to teach me that God is really there, I used to ask the Lord, “how could this be that Jesus could suffer so much on the cross, how could He be naked before people, how could He be suffering before people and be dignified?” I believe in my heart that His Godhead was apparent in His very manner. The Centurion said, “Truly this was the Son of God”. Why did he say that, I have often thought. I believe it is simply because of the way He gave His life. It wasn't “taken” from Him. The world can understand a life that is just taken or destroyed. But they cannot understand God walking in the midst of the fire with His people. They cannot understand survival. This is different – this is holy ground. No one knows what the future holds for them, but God is telling us to not be afraid; to trust Him. He has picked the biggest whimp to tell you this.

PRAYER

Lord, we do give you thanks and praise for that gift you gave to her. The recognition that You have been with her and You are with her and that Your love overcomes all fear.

EXHORATION / PROPHECY

I know that we are out of time, but the Lord really put this on my heart to share with you. Earlier this week I went to Mass at The Citadel and Father Curtis gave Mass. Father Curtis said he once heard this saying: “spending one hour in church, doesn't make you a Christian, anymore than spending one hour in a garage, makes you a car.” When the Lord brought that to my mind, what I really heard Him saying was that if we come here and we spend one hour with Him and then we don't take it out and live it for the rest of the week, then perhaps our praises, even though they are great, do not build the way they should. I hear Him calling to us, saying, “What you have done here tonight; what you have experienced tonight, I want you to live all week long. Find Me in what you do; find Me in what you say; find Me in what you read; for I am present there, just as I am present here.”

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