Prophetic Gardening- Just a thought!

The other day I said to Marc that I thought I would have made a good farmer. I love to plant and watch things grow. I would love to have a huge garden. I can even see myself driving one of those depression era tractors. The kind that doesn't have a top or air conditioning. And then I said, well I guess I will just plant more herbs in my herb garden.
God has given each of us a place of ministry. I like to call it my field. Each field has particular characteristics such as what is planted best in the soil, and if it is sunny or shady, and where the boundaries are. Fields in New England are bordered by stone walls. Fields in Texas are bordered by barbed wire. What are the boundaries of the field for you? For myself, I am called to minister in Oklahoma and in particular in Western Oklahoma. That is my field. So where are you called to plant, water, and reap a harvest? Think about it....
And think about how only God gives the harvest.  I have my huge starter garden that I am a little embarassed to say how much I spent to get my one $142.00 zucchini squash. But then I have my corn is as high as an elephant's eye corn crop that is almost as tall as the first roof line and I spent 50 cents on that packet of seeds and didn't even use a trowel just shoved the seeds in the dirt.  Love that lesson about planting.  Right place, Right soil, Right moisture, Right wind and rain and you have a ministry, I mean a cornfield! HA! love it! This is Pastor Susan saying if you plant it they will come!

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When Revival Breaks Forth.

The cool thing about God encounters to me is that they are never really planned by us.  A God encounter is when HEAVEN breaks in on EARTH and everything changes. This process is something that we can learn from church history BUT hopefully it is something that we have learned in our everyday life. They can be expected by us, longed for by us, prayed for by us, and planned for by us, but God is God and when He breaks in with the supernatural to the natural it never really looks like we expect it to and we are usually not fully prepared for what comes next. Sorry everyone who goes to church at 10:00 on Sunday mornings or Wednesdays at 7:00 or ....well you get the picture.

     Now as much as we would like to think it is a common experience for HEAVEN TO COME DOWN TO TOUCH EARTH, it is  not. That is why the great revivals and times of God moving powerfully among men in a way that changes everything are so documented and talked about by those who were there so to speak. They write books about them and they make movies about them too.

     When our children were little, because these amazing  encounters were not happening everywhere,  when I would hear of a place where the HOLY SPIRIT was pouring out, Marc and I would get the kids in the car and head in that direction. Because one touch from GOD changes everything! We went everywhere we could where the Spirit of God was falling. We were literally God chasers because we would chase after the Presence. I remember standing in line in a parking lot for 8 hours to get a seat in a church where GOD had broken into the services.To this day when I carry a large purse I hear in my heart the greeting from the gentleman at the door, "NO backpacks, book bags, umbrellas or coolers will be allowed into the sanctuary" Why? Because there was barely enough room for the people to get in!

     Now friends, Pastors KNOW this about church.  They know that unless GOD breaks into a meeting everyone is going to go to the cafeteria in an hour and then home to rest.

     I remember a time when Marc and I were pastoring a small church and we decided to have a three night revival. And on the third night, God began to speak to my spirit, GET READY!! and the atmosphere in the room shifted. The whole air became alive like you were breathing the Presence! And then miracles started to happen! Like popcorn! And we were trying to figure out what to do next because we were NOT PREPARED for a GOD ENCOUNTER! The three days turned into eight weeks of non-stop miracles, deliverance, healing, destiny changing revival not because we planned it but because GOD broke into the meetings.

I believe Oklahoma has broken through and entered into one of these God appointed miracle Presence filled and fire imbued revivals!! I believe that God is raising up Pastors, leaders and those who know how to administrate a great move of God... There is a gifting to knowing how to host the Presence.  Until recently, I don't know why, but I had never really thought of hosting that revival as special.  I had just always expected we would have one and so I had studied what to do when one breaks out.  But now I realize it was a training ground for this new season.  I believe that many will be trained to host the Presence for sustained periods of time and to have an understanding of what the means.
Ok here is an example. Think of it like a hotel.  You have a place to stay BUT if you don't have staff to manage the hotel think of the results.. The rooms would never be cleaned. You would run out of supplies, the rooms would be double booked on one floor and vacant on another... the keys would not be coded for the locks... etc. etc. etc. You see the picture. Hosting the Presence and the Glory in the Old Testament was a full time job and there were rules about how this had to exactly occur.  We are not about "rules" but we are about honoring God's Presence in our midst. 
That is what I have been thinking about since Saturday night's crazy revival until midnight! This is Pastor Susan Living the Everyday Prophetic life and ministering in revival.

The Relentless March of Time

One of my favorite movies of all times is A Christmas Carol.  The one with the muppet characters, that is narrated by Rizzo the Rat.  And in this movie there is a line that I think about often. It is when Rizzo talks about the relentless march of time as Ebenezeer Scrooge watches his life past, present and future, march by in the form of the Christmas spectors. I think a lot about how time marches on and how we are incapable of stopping it. We are incapable of even putting on a pause button.  We can only participate in the river that is time. 
As Christians we understand that time has a beginning and an end.  And outside of the river of time is eternity.  We were created to live in the space of eternity, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden threw us into the raging river of time.  We have a space of the eternity known as time in which to enter the door of salvation through Jesus our Messiah. Think of time as the doorway, the gateway to the eternity and where you will spend it.  When you exit your river, where will you be? Which side of the shore will you be on? The Bible talks about the great divide and Christian writers have written about it previously, see C.S. Lewis book the Great Divorce. It is not about divorce it is about the separations that exist in eternity.
What does this have to do with the everyday prophetic life?  Just that there will soon not be an everyday but an eternity,  Think about it.

Grafted In Christ

I was thinking about the modern western Christianity concept of salvation. The concept of asking Jesus into your heart, is a fairly modern interpretation of what it means to become a Christian. When Jesus the Christ was born in Bethlehem, He had come as Messiah for the Hebrew people. He had come as the fulfillment of the Torah. He was the embodiment of the Godhead, the expression of God to His people. There really is no comparison that we have as Christians to what it means to have been Jewish. A nation based on faith in God and belief in the Torah as the Word of God.  When Christ came unto His people He came, so that all those who understood that He was the fullfillment of the Law and the Prophets, would receive the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets in their lives. He was the completeness of everything that they were. Now we as Christians are grafted in to the tree. We are a wild branch that has been grafted into the tree that is the Word made manifest. So I think instead of saying we ask Jesus into our hearts, which sounds like He is a guest in our room, think of it this way.... We are grafted into the mighty tree that God has been growing since the garden of Eden, the tree of Life. We become part of that expression of God and we draw our strength from the strong roots of that tree. It is an identity that we have assumed and become not a guest that we have made space for in our lives.  This type of identity in Christ is what allows Christians to face tremendous trials for their faith. This type of identity allows Christians to walk through persecution and affliction because we know that we are grafted in to the tree of eternal life. 
We have such a simple prayer that we ask people to pray. Lord come into my heart and save me. Try this Yeshua! Graft me into the tree of Life and make my identity yours so that when the world sees me they only see You! And then let the fulfillment of every promise made flood through you because that is your portion of that tree! The life blood of the tree is the precious blood of Christ and the power of the Word and the Ruach the Holy Spirit of God. Think of it that way for a minute and get a Hebrew perspective on your identity in Christ.
This is Pastor Susan Living the Everyday Prophetic Life and living life grafted in!