And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work (2 Corinthians 9:8).

The world around us is looking darker than ever.The economy right now doesn’t look good.The United States is wrestling with debt levels never before seen.  Their Congress and Senate are trying to work out a deal to raise the Debt Ceiling – really a plan to pile debt on more debt. At the time of writing, there is a government shutdown in the United States.  We are seeing wars and plans for wars in other parts of the world, and yet those that are in Christ Jesus have nothing to be concerned about because His hand is upon our lives.

I was in Texas about three weeks ago and in one of our meetings a gold nugget manifested on one of the pews.  In that moment wealth seemed so easy to be acquired in my mind.  I began to understand that God is able to provide all my needs according to His riches in glory.  I wasn’t worried about what my bank account might say.  I understood that God knows where all the wealth of the earth is hidden and is able to get that wealth to me when I need it.

Many of us are going through a time of lack.  I know many people right now that I have been praying for that are seemingly in financial trouble in the world’s eyes.  They are not paying their bills or they don’t have enough to do what God has called them to do.

If you are in this position, I would just say to you “rest in the Lord.”  He is more than able to make all grace abound to your life.  In the midst of the lack, know that God is going to supply your need according to his riches in glory.  There is nothing that the enemy can do for long that will stop the flow of God’s resources into your life.

This is something that I know in the core of my being.  I know that God is my provider and that He not only wants to provide for my day-to-day needs but He wants me to be wealthy so that I might be able to do the Kingdom work He has called me to do.

Therefore I know that any present lack in my life will never last.  In fact breakthrough is always around the corner.  Even in the face of the debt that I carry God is able to restore wealth to me.  I am not afraid of money and the enemy knows it.  I make plans based on vision and not on what is in my bank account.

When vision hits my heart I might wonder how the money will come to take care of the vision but I don’t allow that thought to stop me from moving towards it.  This year I have learned much in the way of faith and money.  I have done so many events for the Kingdom and each one of these events did cost money and yet every penny that I needed did come in.  For this I am truly thankful.

I know my God in a new way.  I know him as a God of abundance and not lack.  As you advance toward your destiny, I pray today that you will be stretched to live generously even in the face of many obstacles.

 

I have wrestled and wrestled with the idea that I don’t have to work to earn my place within the Kingdom.  I remember when the Lord began to speak to me about being His Son.  It wasn’t something I was comfortable hearing at all.

I did not consider myself to be a son of a King and yet in Christ that is exactly what we are.  We are a royal priesthood in Christ.  The inheritance that comes to a son comes to us.

The problem is when you grow up believing that you are nothing, it is very difficult to believe that you are the child of a King, and yet that is what you are.

As we wrestle with the thoughts that God has for us, we come to a new identity of self.  This identity is formed by the word of God working its way into our very hearts.  The word of God is sharper than any double edged sword and will accomplish what it was sent to do.

When God begins to speak to you about His grace and mercy and how they are sufficient for you it can be difficult to believe such a wonderful thing.

So many people are working hard to try to please God.  As a prophetic minister many people come up to me asking me to pray and ask God what His will is for their lives.  They are looking for something to do.  They believe that if they do something for God then He will be pleased, but this is not what God is like at all.

His first desire for our lives is to be His child, to enjoy His presence.  Slaves look to their masters for a task to complete so that they can please the master, but in Christ we are children of God and have the right to just hang out with Him and enjoy His presence.  It is not doing something for God that pleases Him, it is enjoying His presence.

I have prophesied over so many people now that I can’t tell you how many I have prophesied over but I would imagine that there have been thousands.  Not one of these prophetic words has the power to make me more wonderful in God’s eyes.

I have prayed for many people who have been healed physically and emotionally, but not one of these things made me more special or gives me greater honor as His son.  I am his son.  It is as simple as that.  I do these things because as a son I can do them.

He just loves me and considers me His own.  When people ask God what they should do sometimes He will say “Don’t do anything.  Just rest.”

He is trying to destroy a mindset that says that in order to be loved I have to earn it.  I have to accomplish something to be His child.  I have to become a great man before my dad loves me.  These are all lies.  God loves you because you are His child.  In the same way that I love my children, because they are my children.

My children did nothing to earn that love.  In fact they are not always the best people to deal with.  Some of them have said all kinds of lies about me and even go out of their way to sometimes hurt me and yet I still love them because they are my own.  Nothing can change that love.  I love them because they are mine.

I pray that today you will get a revelation of this Grace so that you understand the love of God for your life.  I ask God to bless you with the sound of His voice in your ear.

God will spend an entire lifetime trying to communicate the truths of Christ to the inner sanctuary of the heart.  Many people wrestle with pain and fear, not wanting to let go of vengeance, bitterness and anger, but it is these things that hold our hearts captive. They do not liberate us.

When our hearts become like the heart of Christ, great transformation is worked inside of us.  This is the place that we reach where we lay down our very lives and wills.  It is in this place that we begin to walk in humility, love and peace.

The old nature is dead when we come to Christ.  It is by His grace that we are transformed into His nature.  We cannot hide the old self.  It is what it is.  Many will try to hold onto their old ways, but unless we truly die to this world, we will never really know the peace of Christ in our hearts.  And this death to the old self is worked in us by the grace that was released by the act of Christ’s death on the cross.

I would have to say that the transformation of the human being from Adam to Christ is much of a mystery to me.  I am not sure why some seem to hold onto their angers and abuses and others lay down their arms and surrender to Christ.

I have seen many people with great potential never amount to much in Christ.  This always confuses me because the same God I serve they seem to serve.  They still seem bound after 20 years even while you might be free as a flower in the wind of God’s Spirit.

I don’t know why one person surrenders and another holds onto their lives.  It confuses me and is a major point of prayer for my life.  I ask God to bless those who seem to hold onto their old ways.  Certainly if they do not have a change of heart they will continue in their sin.  And perhaps one day stand before their God to hear that they were not really his friend.

We must seek Him first.  We must cherish His presence.  We must allow Him to transform our nature and we must love our fellow man even when they don’t love us.

There is a portion of this transformation that lies in our hands.  We must be humble when He speaks and step out in the way that He dictates.  When we do, we will be transformed.  We will be changed.

It gets easier as we surrender more and more, because the blessings of surrendering seem to overtake us.  We learn to surrender quicker in order to remain in blessing.

I pray that you will have courage to live for Christ because to live for Christ is gain.  All else is folly.

Perhaps most people will never know love unless we become love before their eyes.  Perhaps Jesus in our hearts will work a miracle in their hearts and they will come to surrender.

Recently I stepped back into a place where people once judged me because of the anger that was once in my heart.  When I stepped into that place again, the anger was all gone.  They could see the love of Jesus in my heart.  One person in that room burst into tears in my arms repenting for the anger they held toward me, asking me to forgive them.

I did nothing except shine Jesus before their eyes.  We must become light in darkness in order for darkness to be ripped before people’s eyes.  This is the way of revival and this is accomplished by the grace of Christ in our lives.

The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers. (Job 42:12-15)

The prophet’s life is often a living prophetic utterance of what God wants to do in the lives of His people.  I often think my life is only a kind of first fruit of what God wants to do to an entire generation.

My life was dark and broken.  Unlike Job who was a righteous man who lost it all, I was an unrighteous man who lost it all, and yet the same grace that God applied to Job’s life to restore everything the devil stole from him is also on my life.

We have no righteousness of our own.  There is nothing I can do to earn my way to be seated at the right hand side of the Father with Christ.  And yet, by the mercy of our Saviour, that is exactly where I am seated.

The evidence of this grace is that broken lives are being restored in every way.  I look at my family, my home and the blessings on our lives as evidence that God is restoring what the enemy took from me.

Many years ago my ministry was destroyed in the province of Nova Scotia.  I couldn’t hold my head up in that province at all because of the destruction and ruin that came over my life.

I was a preacher there when I was a young man and had much success leading young people to Christ, but when I was removed from that pulpit, great sadness came over me and the ones that I was leading.

In the natural, I never thought I would ever be restored to those people I once considered my closest friends. Yet just this past weekend I was preaching in that pulpit again, but this time with greater love and greater anointing than I ever experienced there before.  Our hearts were knitted together in a greater way.  I blessed them, but they certainly blessed me.

You see, when God restores what the enemy steals from you He gives back a greater portion. This is what he did for Job and this is what He will do for you.

God’s grace on our lives is not an earned commodity.  It is given to show that He is a loving God intimately interested in blessing that which He created.  It is because He loves us that He blesses us–not because we did something right or wrong.

The story of the prodigal son is one of great grace.  The son did everything he could to separate himself from his father.  He took his inheritance and spent it all on wild living.  He even had selfish motives in returning to his father’s house.  He felt he would be taken care of and that he would eat well if he could become his father’s servant.

And yet his father, the scripture says, ran to him “even when he was a great distance off,” to restore him to his proper place within the family.

This is the way our God is.  He is kind and compassionate, loving and embracing.  He will restore to you all that was lost when you turn your heart toward Him and begin the long march toward home.

His grace does indeed restore greatly. This is my story and it can be your story as well.

He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:5-6)

The Lord has been speaking to me recently about “opportunities,” or “open doors.”  Many of my friends have also been hearing God speak in like manner.

Recently the Lord said to me that there are two ways a person can position himself toward God.  He can either “receive” from God or he can retreat and “complain” against him.  Throughout Scripture we see people of faith rise to the place of inheritance in God.  They did nothing to inherit except they believed by faith.

Kathie Walters had a vision a few nights ago and she heard that the door is now open and that people need to step into their positions to reap.  When I heard her say that I remembered an article I read on the significance of the current Jewish Calendar year.  The current year is 5774 on the calendar.  The number four is an interesting number.  It is called a dalet. In Hebrew it is depicted like a tent flap.

I know very little about Hebrew, but if you want a really good read on this you should check out something written by Melissa Flores called The Year 5774: Ayin Dalet.

Essentially God is calling us to consider His dreams for our life and not to allow our own limitations to limit what He wants to accomplish in us.  As we dream God’s dreams and step into them, the door will open for us to accomplish greater things than we ever imagined before.

All we have to do is receive from God.  All we have to do is step into the place of His grace and mercy.  He wants to do more with you than you can even imagine.  Every desire in your heart He wants to meet in His way.

Just yesterday I counselled a person who just did not trust God to take care of her dreams for her life.   She kept saying that she was too old to achieve God’s dreams for her life.  She kept retreating into her own wounds, anxieties and limitations.

I could see inside of her the complaining spirit.   She has been in a desert for a long time.  God wants to fulfill her dreams but she has chosen to not trust Him to accomplish what He says He will do and she is trying to fulfill His dreams for her in her own way.

And many of us are like that.  God has been promising and speaking over us for many years the things He wishes to accomplish but we stay on the sidelines murmuring and wondering when.  And if someone should dare step past us into the place we think is for us, we complain to God wondering “why them” and “not me?”

God wants to bring you like Abraham outside of your tent, which represents your present limitations and show you the stars in the sky, which are the endless possibilities for your life.

Why not let this be the time and the season to expand your life in Him?  Why not begin to dream God’s dreams for your life?

I pray that you will be strengthened to believe as Abraham believed despite his circumstances and became the father of promise to Isaac in his old age. Sarah gave birth to Isaac way past her child-bearing years. And through Isaac arose the mighty race of the Hebrew peoples.

Welcome to the Year of the Open Door!

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

In Christ we are fruitful.  Such a simple statement, but the truth of it resounds throughout all of time.  You are a branch in Christ and outside of Him, you can bear no fruit.

I remember the days of fruitlessness that I lived many years ago.  I remember the absence of God’s presence and the dryness of walking without Him.  I would not go back to that for anything in this world.  To have the love of Jesus in my heart is the greatest thing I have ever had.

When you are deep in Christ, you don’t want to leave His presence.  It doesn’t matter what comes at you, because you know that God is still in charge of your life.  You don’t’ walk away from Him because you have suffered.  You simply begin to understand suffering differently.  You begin to sense God’s presence in the midst of it.

When trials and tribulations come, I sense His presence in a most special way.  In those moments His presence becomes like a fire all around me.  I feel lost inside of Him.

The truth is you can be fruitful even in the face of the worst circumstances that come your way.  Even when it looks like death and suffering are upon you.  Even in death we are fruitful in Christ because our testimony continues on.

There is nothing I have to do to remain except listen to the voice of my God.  This is what it means to walk in the spirit.  When I listen to God’s voice and do as He says, I am walking in the Spirit and I cannot satisfy the flesh.

Sometimes His voice speaks and we are asked to do things that will test our flesh.  He will ask us to do things that the old nature might not want to do, but when we do it, we learn that the old nature is indeed dead inside of us.

God is pulling us deeper into His grace.  Each time that He speaks to us and we listen, we encounter a new level of glory. And we are going from glory to glory and will appear before God in Mount Zion.

I am not sure what it is we will be rewarded in heaven.  Recently a friend commented on one of my paintings–a small cottage in the woods.  She said “I hope you are not prophesying the size of your mansion in glory.”  I thought to myself “as long as I am there, I don’t care what size of mansion I will have.”

A cottage in the woods for all of eternity would be very nice as long as I have no more sufferings or trials.  As long as my God is with me, I would be content with whatever He has in store for me, because He is a good God who gives good gifts to His children.

Dear DWOD friend, just focus on abiding in Christ. And you too will experience how fruitfulness follows as a natural consequence.

For God does speak–now one way, now another– though man may not perceive it. (Job 33:14)

I remember the early days of my salvation when I first began to realize that God did indeed speak to man.  I was utterly amazed.  I had been taught that God was dead and He did not speak.  When I began to hear His voice, life came to my heart.  I also learned that He was a very funny fellow.

But then as I went deeper into Christ and the sound of God’s voice began to resonate within my being, I began to hear God in many different ways.  Dreams and visions were a primary way that God spoke to me in the early days, but then I began to discern His voice in many other forms.

You see God is not limited to the way He can speak to a man.  As the Scripture above says, “For God does speak – now one way, now another.”

There are times that God speaks to a man’s heart and the man comes into agreement with the sound that God made, but the man did not understand that what he came into agreement with was the voice of God.

Kings and those in authority often act from hearing the voice of the Lord and don’t even know it  Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turns it wherever he will.”

Perceiving the voice of the Lord is the greatest gift a person can ever receive.  To hear from God and to know that you are hearing the voice of your kindest friend is a marvelous wonder.

Sometimes the wind will blow across your yard and you will hear God’s voice within it.  Another time two people might walk past you deep in conversation and not even be aware that you hear them, but God uses their words to communicate to you the answer to your deepest prayers.

Learning to hear His voice is a lifelong pursuit for the one who will accustom himself to the journey.  We must fashion our way into our futures this way.

It is so exciting to hear Him.  It is a wonder every time I hear His voice.  We all can go deeper into Christ. In fact we must in this hour go deeper and deeper.

We have all heard His voice and not perceived it nor acted upon it, but let’s celebrate the times that we did.  Let’s rejoice in the moments that we did hear His voice and did something about it.  Each time you act in His voice you will go into a new glory, and the more you act, the more glory will come upon your life.

You will grow addicted to hearing Him because such peace, joy and love come into your heart as a result of listening.  In fact, personally I want to hear God because of the peace that comes in His voice.  I don’t want to do anything that would remove me from His peace or His presence and so my constant prayer is: “Let me understand what you are saying, my God, so that I may remain in the vine.”

I pray for you today and ask God to open your hearts to the deeper expression of His voice.  May He activate your five senses and may you realize the depths of the things that He wants to say to you.  I pray that His voice will boom in your hearts today in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  (Jeremiah 29:11)

I have been sensing that this is the season for acceleration in many lives and ministries.  I believe that God is about to raise people up into places they didn’t even imagine being just a few short years ago.  I am also aware that there are ministries that were a part of revivals in the past that are now falling because of immorality and sin that has not been dealt with under the blood.

I am relating to you my personal experience now and would not want to suggest that it necessarily has to be your experience, although if you can relate, then perhaps God is suggesting that you might need to be healed as well.

Recently, I started receiving very specific words that I was about to be promoted to a higher place in ministry, that doors would open for me with people at higher levels in ministry.

It has been my experience that when I am about to be promoted in ministry, all hell seems to break loose around me.  Things seem to start to go wrong in some parts of my ministry and my emotions begin to go off the rails.  I have come to understand that this is God preparing me.

What I have learned is to discern during these times what God is trying to do.  When I come underneath an emotional heaviness, I now quickly begin to ask the Lord to show me why I am feeling this way.  I never assume that my present heaviness is something that has roots in the moment, but links to a first root in the past.

As I seek the Lord regarding the emotional issue that I am facing, He often brings me back to when I was a child where the original wound lies dormant.   Very often my emotional heaviness in the present is linked to this first wound in the past.

You cannot hope to be well-known in ministry if you desire fame above pleasing God.  I have seen so many men and women who are very anointed ministers go nowhere because they cannot get over their desires to be well-known.

I remember God healed this in me during one season of my life and the next thing you know I started to be more well-known and in that moment I couldn’t have cared less.  If God wants you to be well-known, it is because He wants His light inside of you to shine in front of more people. So let Him heal you so that being known isn`t the motive, but pleasing God.

My need to be well-known was linked to a wound of not having a dad near to speak into my life.  When it was healed, being well-known didn`t matter to me anymore.

As I forgive the people who first hurt me and as I repent for holding bitterness, envy, or anger in my heart, wounds just seem to have a way of disappearing before me and it is like nothing ever happened to me.  My emotions go back to peace and joy and I am walking in a brand new day.

You see, there are things that you once struggled with that you can’t hold onto when God wants you to enter into your new season.  You can’t hold onto what you think is rightfully yours.  You have to let go in order for God to open new doors before you.

He wants to know that you are completely sold out to Him and not the ministry or life that you have grown comfortable with.  He has plans that are greater for your life than any plan that you have for yourself.

Let go of your plans and let God guide you.  Then you will walk on higher plains in the next season.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

The way of the Saint is not a principled journey but rather it is a life set on pleasing God.  It is not about law, it is about a freedom that comes from living life in a way that is dictated by heaven itself.

There are many examples of people who have gone before us who strived to have heaven in their hearts.  These people pierced the darkness around them with the light of God that stemmed from somewhere in the deepest parts of who they were. No matter what they faced they continued to exhibit the character of Christ to the world around them.

They were broken time and time again.  They continued to be persecuted, kicked, tormented and even killed by their enemies, but they reflected Christ in every part of who they were.  I want to be the same as them, but until the end I am still on this journey, still being tested.

Many of these people tasted heaven in the most glorious manner.  They drank deeply of the Spirit of God, became imbued with the light of God, and grew into people who carried His glory and presence.

We are all saints in Christ.  We all can reflect his glory.  My heart is to reflect His glory in such a way that the whole world learns that He is God.

I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good and I know that He will be good to everyone who comes into relationship with Him.  I also know that life without Him was perilous and devoid of any good thing, but in Christ I have experienced such love, peace and joy in my heart.  God wants to touch you in the same way.

The way of the Saint is to reflect God’s glory to the world around in such a way that God determines it should be reflected. I don’t even understand His glory enough to determine how it should be reflected.  I just want Him to have freedom in my life to reflect His goodness in the way that He sees fit.

This might mean that there will be times that the reflection of His glory comes in ways very difficult for my mind to understand, but I am just a carrier and He is God. He can do what He wants, when He wants and how He wants.  I have given Him permission to do what He wants with my life.

You have to ask yourself, “Are my greatest ambitions for God, or for myself?”  We need to make this our lifelong prayer.  Who am I trying to reflect – myself or God?

It is the battle of every heart.  We must lay down self in order to reflect God.  There will come many tests and retests from God.  You will be put through the fires and in the end every soul that turned to Christ will have passed the test.

It is the path of grace.  It is the way of the saint to reflect God.  Once you start on the journey toward Christ you become partakers of the same nature that he had on earth.  What he was you will be. There are days that this will seem like it came willingly and then there will be days it will seem that you came kicking and screaming into it, but become a saint you will indeed.

I pray for your minds to be enlightened to the grace and kindness of our God.  I pray you will come into a true understanding of grace and not just the artificial intellectual substitute.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matthew 13:45-46)

There is a place in the Spirit of God that is pure feeling.  It is a place that cannot be adequately described but only felt. 

When I was a boy, the Holy Spirit often visited me and this feeling of His presence would come upon me. There was nothing like it.  It never lasted long, and I wasn’t even aware of the feeling being linked to the presence of God, but there was such sweet feeling within it that when it left, I felt completely lost.

Such feeling of God is what causes a man to pursue Him with all of his heart.

I remember when I first returned to the path of Christ at 32, after spending many years as an agnostic and evil man, there was a moment when I set my heart on pilgrimage that God’s presence manifested in such a wonderful manner.  All my shame and guilt was lost in the purity of His presence.

I remember that moment so vividly.  I remember this awe and wonder that came over me.  It stayed with me and lingered for many days.  Everywhere I went, this feeling of holiness and purity went with me.  It is like a pure inner peace and knowledge that everything would be alright with the world.  It was the true spirit of peace.

I have sought to describe this feeling many times.  It is enough to say that this is none other than the presence of God within my heart.  It is what carries me through the difficult days–the days that are lonely and difficult, the days when men are men and see nothing good inside of you.

When I have been abandoned by the world around me, I am still in this place of His presence.  In fact the more alone I feel at times the more powerful this feeling of His presence becomes.  I don’t long to be persecuted by men, but when it does occur, God’s presence does come strong.

I remember thinking that this feeling would never end when I first encountered it.  It was eternity in my heart.  I remember the excitement of the knowledge that I would be wrapped in such purity for all of eternity, that sorrow would not always grip me but only this inner contentment, joy and light.

This is a real place I am describing.  If you have not experienced it, I pray now that God will consume you with it completely.

I pray that you will have an encounter with the spirit of purity and holiness, that God would come and wrap His arms around you and show you His excellence and goodness in such a manner. 

There is nothing like God’s presence.  It is the only thing worth pursuing.  It is the pearl of great price found in the field that is worth selling all that you have to go and buy.