The Wild West

The Wild West

Why can't I live a nice quiet life that has all the grace and charm of a southern tea party? This is the question that I often ask myself when I am in the midst of some epic battle with the enemy. I see women who have lovely quiet demeanour's and who just can just smile and with grace and beauty lead quiet lives of peace and tranquility. But most of the time, I feel like Rooster Cogburn in True Grit in the wild west.

Women like Rooster Cogburn, are on a mission. And when you are on a wild west mission you have to learn to ignore the elements. If it's cold, you keep going, if it's raining you keep going. There are no fancy boarding houses with hot grub on the trail. You have to be brave when you are on a mission. If you are not then you will give up and turn back. You have to remember why you are out there. The Wild West had a special set of skills that were required. You needed to be able to ride, rope and shoot straight. You have to keep your boots on and your wits about you. Remember to watch out for snakes, outlaws and bad drinking water.

Well, I guess that's how a girl from the East Coast by the ocean ended up coming out to Oklahoma. She learned as the Apostle Paul said 'in every state to be content'. She remembered the words of Jesus that 'foxes have holes and the birds have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head'. She remembered that Jesus taught don't put your hand to the plow and turn back. She learned to put on the whole armour of God including having her feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace. She learned that she could overcome the power of the evil one by the word of her testimony. And she learned that only the living drinking water that Jesus poured out could satisfy her thirst. This is Pastor Susan Living the Every Day Prophetic Life.

My Angelic Encounter

My angelic encounter happened when I went with the Summer Missions program from Oral Roberts University. The first mission year ORU sent out 9 missionaries. The next year they sent out 27 of which I was privileged to be one. (I refinanced my AMC Hornet which is a car by the way- to get the money for airfare) I had the coolest car ever- it had seats that were factory direct made out of denim. It was the 70's and everyone thought they were the greatest. Anyway the next year they sent more and after awhile ORU sent out hundreds of students every summer. Mine was a three week trip and I got my first experience preaching. Haiti was an extremely poor country and there were significant shortages of water, electricity and supplies to be purchased. As part of the trip, our group was to go to a more remote island where there would be services in a small church. And so that is how I ended up going across shark infested waters in a wood boat to a remote island off of the Haitian mainland. I was praying the whole time that God would comfort my parents because I was not sure that boat would make it. Well not really the whole time some of the time I was busy being sea sick much to the amusement of the 50 or so Haitians who had crowded onto this little boat. I had been so sea sick in that little boat that I just had no idea how I would get back to the Haitian main island. I remember praying and asking God to help me. And I remember thinking if only I had brought some Dramamine the motion sickness pill. On the third day, the last day, I was sitting on the porch and I looked down the dirt road and this woman was approaching the cabin. She asked what I was doing there and I told her we were ministering but our last service was that night and we would leave in the morning. For some reason I told her how sick I had been and my wish for Dramamine. Well, she reached in her pocket and put two pills on the porch banister rail, said goodbye and walked on down the road. Years later I thought about it and realized that I had not seen another white person on the island other than our team and certainly not one with blond hair. I decided that the Lord had provided exactly what I needed in His own unique way.
This is Pastor Susan Living the Everyday Prophetic Life.

Lo the Winter is Past

Lo the Winter is Past

Wherever there is seed time and harvest there is always the season of the quiet. There is always the season of the rest. The incubation of going into the earth and dying to self. "For lo the winter is past and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in the land" Song of Solomon 2:11. The voice of the turtle dove is the voice of the prophet. And in the times and the seasons when God is beginning to bring forth a new thing, when the voice of the prophet rises up and you hear the voice of the prophet you will know that God is moving again in your life in a different way. Until we are in heaven where there is no night, no cold, no rain-there will always be seasons because that is the principle God has put in place for us in the natural seed time and harvest, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Until we are in heaven, we will go through seasons: the dry seasons and the rainy seasons and the hot seasons and the seasons when things fall away from us and we wonder where they are going and we think that there will never be new life again. But the life is in the seed and the seed is in the ground and the promise of the seed is in tomorrow.

The enemy of tomorrow, the enemy of the future is yesterday. The enemy of your destiny is where you have been. Because your destiny is where you are going and everything that is not God wants to tie you to your past and sit you down where you are and say that this is all there is ever going to be and things are never going to change. Because we a people of sight, we want to only believe what we can see. But the Bible says that faith is the expression of things not seen. Faith is the understanding that there are things that we don't see that are in motion. And in each of our lives there are things that are hidden in us that have not found their expression in the natural yet. There are seeds that have been planted in us from before the foundation of the world, that God wants to bring forth out of each of us. But as long as we stay where we are with what we have with the familiar and the comfortable. and the "this is the way it should have been" and "this is the way I expected", we are tied by our expectations of perfection and success to the place where we think it should be without being released into the river of God. We want to be released into the flow of the supernatural river of God. We want to be released into what God has for us and not what we expected God to have for us.

When the brothers went down into Egypt and stood in the courts of Joseph and everything that they needed was there, in front of them their provision, their salvation, their posterity, it was all there, but they did not recognize Joseph because he did not look like who they thought he would look like. They were tied to the past where the last place that they saw Joseph was the slave caravan. So in our lives we have to loose ourselves from the slave caravan of our past.

Not like those on the road to Emmaeus that walked with our precious Savior. They did not recognize their precious Savior Himself. He was what their hearts were talking about but consumed by sadness from the past they could not go forward into the joy of the future. Very often when the Lord would send an answer it did not look like the answer that the people wanted to look like. Saul the King not David the Shepherd boy. Joseph in the courts of Pharaoh not Joseph in the bottom of the well. It just doesn't look like what we think it is going to look like sometimes and we have to be able to give up our own natural expectation of success in order to find and loose the destiny of God in our lives. I believe that there are some reading this blog that are in the season of the winter, in the season of the quiet where everything feels like it is dead. But underneath the ground in the heart of your spirit there is a stirring of life and the word of the Lord for you is "Lo the winter is past and the sound of the turtle dove is heard in the land"

For lo the winter is past is from the Song of Solomon. It refers to the Bridegroom coming and when the Bridegroom comes He brings gifts. The key to the winter is past is to fall in love with our Bridegroom Jesus.

And so the Lord says to release the anointing to bring forth from barrenness. To release the anointing of spring, of life, to release the Hannah anointing, to open to life the place where life should grow. The Lord says that there will be a moment that the anointing for springtime will come forth; the anointing for abundance, the anointing for life from death will spring forth. There is a moment in the ground when everything changes. And the husks fall away and the flesh falls away. And the I wants and the I ams and I am going to be and our expectations fall away and the anointing that happens in the womb, in the ground, in the seed, God says that it is time to bring forth life from darkness, and light from darkness and peace from turmoil and prosperity from poverty. It happens in the quiet before it is manifested in the day. Things that grow quickly will be blown away. But that which is planted deep inside of us that which goes down deep like the Word that goes deep that is what lasts forever. That is the Word that grows and the evil one is not able to come and pluck that up. Ands so in the season of the quiet, the stillness and what seems like the forever dark, that is exactly when everything is being birthed and everything is getting ready to be brought forth, into the light into the day into the openness into the fulfillment of your destiny.That is when the root system of God is being put into place and is getting ready to take place so when the destiny of God is brought forth it is not easily plucked out by the evil one. In this day and this hour in these end times when everything we have is about to be questioned, we are going to have to know that we know that God is in the house that God is in the midst, that God is in the making, that God is in the doing, in the bringing forth, that God is in the coming forth, God is in the multiplying, in the growing, in the strengthening in the process of what happens under the earth during the winter.

There isn't a lot written in the Bible about the three days that Jesus was buried. But there was a lot that was going on. In those three days Jesus got the keys to death, hell and the grave. In those three days Jesus conquered your winter season. He took the keys of liberty. The river of God, runs through the New Jerusalem, where there is no more winter, there is no more night, and because the Lord God Himself is there-the Lord God Himself is the Light. So the Lord gives us our liberty by rising from the His ground, the winter experience that He went through so that our winter experience could bring forth the same result of resurrected life.

For lo the winter is past, for lo the time of springing forth is come. For lo the Bridegroom has come and He says arise, and come away with me my love. That's how you know it's over. It's over when you fall in love with Jesus.You know it's over when you realize you start to turn yourself and you start to look just as the earth turns itself on it axis and its springtime and harvest. You start to look again to the Bridegroom and you start to look again to the one who brought you forth. Jesus comes and He brings and gives gifts and He says come away, come away with me my beloved, come away with me, come away with me the time of singing of the turtle doves is in the land and the voice of the prophets is being heard again and the sound of the voice of the wisdom of the prophets is being heard again because the winter is past. This is Pastor Susan Living the Everyday Prophetic Life.

God's Prism

God's Prism

Last summer we had rearranged our living room so we could have shabbat service with the most friends and family. We had taken out all the furniture except the sofa, loveseat, chair and lamps. I had moved our buffet to the the south wall so we could use it for the challah bread, the kosher wine and the beautiful vases that we used to for salt and oil. One morning I was feeling sad and discouraged. I just wanted to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed. I had real heartaches and real reasons for feeling overwhelmed and overwhelmed is just what I felt.

I heard the gentle voice of Abba saying "Get up" and I knew He meant both physically and spiritually. Knowing that the feeling of hopelessness was just growing stronger, I knew I needed to obey and start this day. I walked out of my bedroom and into the living room where we had just had Shabbat service the night before. What I saw took my breath away. The room was covered in sparkling lights from the ceiling to the floor and all over the walls. Tiny reflections of light of every color danced all over the room. I called for Marc to come in quick and see this marvelous sight. In the few seconds it took him to get there the amazing spectacle was already fading. And then it was gone. The sun had come through the storm door and reflected off of the regular door handle and had bounced off the beautiful shabbat vase that contained the salt. And then the light show had begun. And God displayed all the colors of the light and used the vase as a prism to display His Glory.

It had to be the perfect moment of daylight savings time and open doors and angles and door knobs and perfectly placed Shabbat vases. It had to be an obedient heart and it had to be God setting up a moment of perfect joy and perfect assurance that He saw and He knew and He was present. For days I tried to recreate with the sunlight and the doors and the vase the sparkling lights and I never was able to get it just right. Because sometime's God's prism is just for the perfect moment. This is Pastor Susan living the Every Day Prophetic Life.

The Field of Boaz "A lesson from Ruth"

The Field of Boaz "A lesson from Ruth"

Now there was famine in the land of Israel and Naomi and Elimelech her husband travelled to the land of Moab. While they were in that place their two sons Mahlon and Chilion took wives from the tribe of Moab. Their names were Orpah and Ruth. While in the Moab all three men died and now difficult decisions had to be made. Naomi heard that the famine had ended and decided she was going back to her homeland. While travelling home, Naomi urged Ruth and Orpah to return to their people. Orpah turned back, but Ruth had other ideas. She had decided that her destiny was to follow Naomi back to Bethlehem. And so Ruth followed her mother-in-law to her homeland.

And so the older and the younger widow came to Bethlehem. Now in the land of the Hebrews the rules were different. There was a divine provision made for the strangers and the poor. According to the book of Leviticus 19:9-10, the harvest fields and vineyards were supposed to have "gleanings" leftovers for the poor and strangers. God had already set in place the mechanism by which not just Ruth's destiny would be fulfilled but the destiny of salvation. The coming of Jesus the Messiah. We find that Naomi sends Ruth out to gather the "gleanings" so they may eat and not starve. And so Ruth comes to the field of Boaz.

There is no indication that the first time Ruth goes to the field that she has chosen this field on purpose. But when she reports the events of the day to Naomi she discovers that she has found the perfect field to harvest.

In the field of Boaz, Ruth finds provision. In Ruth 2:16, Boaz instructs his workers to leave some stalks for Ruth not just "gleanings". He also in Ruth 2:14 offers her bread and wine. She finds protection in Ruth 2: 9 when Boaz instructs the men not to touch her and to allow her to drink from the water jars. In Ruth 3:20 she learns from her mother-in-law that Boaz is one of their kinsmen redeemers.

And then Ruth stays with the girls from Boaz fields through the barley and wheat harvests until they were finished. Now in the story of Ruth it is easy to go straight to the wedding and the redemption and the happily ever after. But first there came obedience to direction, Naomi told Ruth to stay in the fields of Boaz. And then there came the work.The barley and wheat season harvest lasted from approximately March/April to May/June in Israel. This corresponds to Passover to Shavuot. So the shift in Ruth's destiny happened at Passover and the completion of the plan happened at Shavuot, (think Easter and Pentecost).

In the field of Boaz, Ruth found her destiny. When she approached her kinsman-redeemer, at the direction of her mother-in-law, Ruth goes to the threshing floor, where the barley was being winnowed. When Boaz lays down, Ruth lays at his feet and asks him to "Spread the corner of your garment over me". The corner of his garment was his tallit, the Jewish prayer shawl that represented every promise of the Torah. In other words she asked him to fulfill the role of the kinsman-redeemer. By doing so in that prophetic act, the fulfillment of Ruth's destiny in the lineage of the Messiah, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, was symbolized.

Boaz next goes to the gate of the city where the decisions are made. He pays the price of redemption and in Ruth 4:10 he states that Ruth is now his wife. Ruth later has a son whose name was Obed, who was the father of Jessie, who was the father of King David.

When you find your field, when you find your place of ministry, when you find your field of Boaz, then you will have provision, protection, posterity and your destiny will come forth. Your generations will come forth. You will know your kinsmen-redeemer. Your bridegroom will come and bring you gifts. Jesus is our bridegroom and He brings us gifts, Jesus is our kinsman-redeemer and we are bought with a price. As you make the shift from the old that has passed away to the new dimension in Christ Jesus may you find your field of Boaz. This is Pastor Susan Living the Every Day Prophetic Life.