Author: cardscoffeeandgod

Can we talk? I want to talk about the obvious, the elephant in the room, if you will. It’s been a tough week for me. I’ve been depressed. I know that many people are feeling the way I have been. We are living in difficult, trying times. Many things don’t make sense and many things we hear and see are confusing. I’m not usually a depressed person, so I knew that I was reacting to outside circumstances but somehow I felt guilty for feeling the way I was. Isn’t it a lack of faith to be down? Isn’t it a sign of weakness to be afraid? This morning as I sat here in my prayer room, talking to the Lord, He showed me some things that I want to share with you. He took me to Acts 18:9-10 where we are told that the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision and said “Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent, for I am with you.” The Lord asked me why He would tell Paul not to be afraid, if he wasn’t afraid? Then He took me over to 2 Corinthians 7:5 where Paul himself writes this to that church: “For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears. Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus”. Again, Paul is not only afraid, he’s actually depressed. That’s what downcast means. But God comforted him by sending Titus, a friend to comfort him. Then the Lord asked me if He himself was lacking in faith, when He asked the Father to remove the cup of suffering He was about to drink: …He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” Jesus told His disciples while in the garden of Gethsemane, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”. We know that in this fallen world there will be trials and tribulations, and our flesh is weak at times, so what do we do about it? If you look at Revelation 2 and 3, you will notice that every one of these 7 churches is given the promise of a reward, if they overcome. The church of Laodecia (who many believe is the present day church age, the lukewarm western church) is perhaps given the most interesting one. “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne”. (Rev 3:21) I find it interesting that to this church, Jesus promises that if they overcome, they will be granted permission to sit with Him on His throne, just as He, Jesus had to overcome, so He could sit with His Father on His throne. Jesus had to overcome. He’s not asking us to do something He has not done himself. But, we are never really told what it is we are to overcome and I think the reason is because each one of us has their own problems and issues to deal with. Overcoming might look very different for you than for me. Now, having said all this, I want to suggest something that I never saw before this morning. In Revelation 6:1-2 we are told about the first of six seals that Jesus opened in heaven. There is a lot of question over who or what the first seal is about. I’ve heard many interpretations of who this rider could be. “And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer”. What this particular translation does not reveal is that the word conquering and conquer are actually the exact same Greek word as “overcome”, the very same word that Jesus uses in the second and third chapters of Revelation when He tells us to overcome. Now, I’m no scholar, I’m just a mother, but I do believe that I have some understanding of scripture, and when I saw that this word used is the same word used earlier, I began to have an interesting thought. What if the rider of this first horse, this white horse, is actually given power to use psychological warfare? What if this particular rider has the power to make people so depressed, so afraid, so filled with despair, anger, hopelessness, and offense at God, that they give up their faith and walk away from the Lord? What if the reason we are told 7 times in these two chapters in Revelation that if we overcome, He will reward us, is because overcoming is difficult? If you go to Matthew 24, the disciples ask Jesus what will be the sign of the end and how will we know that it’s the end of the age. The first thing Jesus tells them, and it is repeated in 2 other gospels, is “Take heed that no one deceives you”. Deception is psychological. If you knew you were deceived, you wouldn’t be deceived. It sounds so simple, but it really isn’t, is it? There is only one way that I personally have found the ability to overcome and that is to spend time with the Lord and to spend time reading my Bible. During this incredibly difficult time, spending time in the Bible and with Him is the only thing that will protect us and keep us safe. It also means I have to be willing to accept that there will be times when my flesh is weak, but that’s ok too. I don’t have to beat myself up for being afraid or depressed, as long as I don’t stay there. I have to allow Jesus to comfort me, and that requires spending time with Him. I have to be willing to trust Jesus, that even when nothing makes sense to me, He is still in control. If you have been struggling like I have, take heart my friend. Let this be a comfort to you and an encouragement. The Lord is with us and He will keep us. 

I love it when the Lord takes two separate stories, from two completely different books in the Bible and combines them to give me a word. I know we Americans are very preoccupied with our election results, but there is so much more going on in the world today than just that. There are frightening things happening such as natural disasters, economic hardships, uncertainty and fear of the future. Unless you have your head in the sand, you know that the world is no longer a safe place. It may never have been safe, but at least we all had some illusion of safety, at least in the western world. So with all that as a backdrop, I was reading the book of John this morning, and I couldn’t help but notice how many times it tells us that “no one laid hands on Jesus, because His hour had not yet come”. This sentence is repeated numerous times, just in John chapters 7 and 8 alone. They could not take Jesus and kill Him, even though they wanted to because it wasn’t time yet. So I asked the Lord, “Has the hour which the enemy is planning for the whole world, come yet? No, my question is not entirely clear here, and I’m not trying to get into eschatology with anyone. But I do realize we are very, very close to the end. How close, was really my question. He responded by pointing out that if I know that a harvest has to come first, then so does the devil. The devil is of course trying to bypass the harvest, speed things up if you will. He’s got some nifty plans in the works too. Look up “the great reset” on google, and you will be surprised at what they are planning. Anyway, this is where things got interesting in my conversation with the Lord. He took me back to Genesis 27, which I had just finished reading. It is the story of how Jacob managed to get Esau’s blessing for the firstborn. He lied and pretended to be Esau and fooled his dad. However, the blessing was actually his to begin with, but none of them really understand that, yet. When Esau realized what had happened, he planned to kill Jacob, after their father was dead. But God intervened and told Rebekah so that she persuaded Isaac, his father, to send Jacob to her brother Laban, back home. Interestingly enough, Jacob ended up with two blessings. The first one that he stole from his brother was really just a general blessing if you will (Genesis 27:27-29) but it is the second one that really caught my attention. It was like a light bulb went off in Isaac’s mind. Here it is: 

“May God Almighty bless you,

And make you fruitful and multiply you,

That you may be an assembly of peoples;

And give you the blessing of Abraham,

To you and your descendants with you,

That you may inherit the land

In which you are a stranger,

Which God gave to Abraham.” Genesis 28:3-4

Do you see it? The blessing of Abraham! The promise that this land would one day belong to his children’s children. The promised land! And here is the amazing revelation that God gave me this very morning.  In his fear of being killed, Jacob obeys his parents and leaves. The very thing that Jacob was afraid of, was the thing that drove him into his destiny: Rachel and Leah. It was because of his leaving when he did, that he ended up marrying these two women (yes, there were two others as well) and producing the twelve tribes of Israel, which would many years in the future, produce the nation of Israel. And if you take it even further, brought us the promised Messiah, Jesus. So how does all this speak to us today? The Lord longs to gather His children, all those whose names are written in the book of life. They have not been willing, but, but, the hour has come. His promises are yes and amen. The prodigals are about to come home. He told me that the pilgrimage has already begun, and to keep watch on the horizon because the harvest has started. The very thing that frightens us all, all the things happening on our earth, will actually drive us and them into our destinies. The enemy’s plans are but for a moment, but God’s plans are eternal. He is gathering His children from the far ends of the earth, for such a time as this. Do not fear for them. Do not despair if they have to go through tough times. The prodigal had to lose everything before he came to himself and remembered his father. God is using what the enemy means for evil, to accomplish His purposes on this earth. Do not be afraid. God is in control!

I have walked with the Lord for over 45 years now and it has always been my habit to spend my early mornings with Him. I love to read His word, I love to hear His voice, I love to feel His peace and His presence. But I have to be honest, it has been a real struggle these past few months. My struggle has not been with spending my time with Him, it has been to believe that I am hearing His voice. This year has been a year of turmoil and so many of the people I care about and love have dealt with trials. Hard, hard trials. Trials that made no sense in many ways. When you add all the trials to the situation going on in our nation, to the things happening in our world, it is easy to become confused. So many people have spoken “peace, peace”, when there really was no peace. I know that confusion is not of God, and yet, I really did not know in many ways what He was really doing, both on an individual level and a global level. I know that I am not alone in this struggle. The Lord has been teaching me the difference between truth, and people’s interpretation of the truth. Many of the things I have been taught over the course of my life were not actually truth, they were merely someone else’s understanding of the truth. So with that in mind, I have been asking the Lord for months now, “what are you doing? Teach me how to pray your will. Help me to understand”. It is not that I did not hear Him, I did, but often what I heard was very different from what I heard elsewhere. So who is right? This morning I sat here once again, reading His word, listening for His voice, talking to Him, and He told me something that I want to share with you. He told me that He sees my struggle to sit here and believe that it is His voice that I am hearing. He told me that He knows I am confused, and yet I persist in sitting here at His feet, drawing close to Him and choosing faith over fear. He told me that by continuing to do that day after day, month after month, I am learning to overcome. I am not shrinking back (Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back,

My soul has no pleasure in him.”Hebrews 10:38). But then He told me something that surprised me even more. He told me that He has allowed this time of confusion in my life because He wanted to see how determined I am to obey Him, to trust Him, when it would be easy to draw back, to walk away and to give up. He told me that by continuing to come to Him every single morning, I was in fact choosing Him, over my own understanding. I am choosing Him, over my fears. He is a jealous God and He is looking for people He can trust in the midst of confusion, people who will not walk away and become offended, when they don’t understand. The image He gave me was that of a blind man learning to use a cane. He must learn to trust the cane, not himself. That level of trust is very hard because it goes against the flesh. We want, we feel the need, to be in control, but it is necessary to give up that control, even crucial, if the cane is to actually work. I am to a large extent spiritually blind. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we all are. Yes, we have some level of understanding, but none of us see clearly. (“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, (darkly) but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known”. 1 Corinthians 13:12). We do not see what is going on in the spirit realm around us. We might, like the blind man, hear things, even see a tiny bit, and know some things, but we do not see clearly. We must learn to realize that we cannot navigate the spirit realm in the flesh. We must learn to lay aside our natural desire to follow our own understanding, and learn to trust Him, and Him alone. If you have been having this struggle of trying to understand and wanting to giving up, then let me reassure you. He sees you. He knows what you are dealing with and He understands. Don’t give up. Don’t shrink back. Don’t lean on your own understanding. Don’t be like John the Baptist and question who He really is. Don’t be offended. Choose faith over fear. Choose Him over all else because He is trustworthy. He is still in control and He knows the plans He has for you, for us, for this nation and for this world. He loves you and He is a rewarder of those who earnestly seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

Late last Spring I decided to do something I’ve never done before. I put aside my own understanding of things and I asked the Lord if I was deceived. You’re probably wondering what on earth I am talking about. What brought me to ask that question is something that Jesus told His disciples in 3 out of the 4 gospels. When they came to Him and asked Him about the signs of the end and when He would return again, the first thing He told them was “Take heed that no one deceives you” (Matthew 24:4, Mark 13:5, Luke 21:8). As I said, it is repeated 3 times, so I know that it must be important. The funny thing about deception is that it wouldn’t be deception if you know you are deceived. Think about that! So, I put on my big girl panties and asked the question: “Lord, am I deceived in some way?” I want to share with you one of the things He showed me over the course of these past weeks. Let me begin by asking you what may appear to be an off topic question, but really is not.  Did you know that in order to bake something, such as a cake or bread, you have to use a specific formula? We call it a recipe but it is a formula because if you don’t use exact ingredients and exact amounts when baking, then the recipe won’t work. I forgot to add salt one day to my bread dough, and the bread didn’t have a good consistency. If you forget to add baking powder or soda to your cake, it won’t rise. So why am I talking about formulas? The first thing the Lord spoke to me about after I asked Him about being deceived, is that He is not a formula. He is not a recipe that requires certain ingredients to get a good result. He is a loving Father, who desires a relationship with each and every one of us. And yet, there are books, teachers and entire schools that teach formulas to get answers to prayer. He tells us to ask Him, to seek Him and to knock on the doors of heaven, but He never has us jump through hoops to get an answer. One of the Scriptures He gave me in response to my question is from 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ”. Following Jesus is simple, but it is not easy. He requires purity and devotion. He requires our whole heart, not just some of it. He is a jealous God. (for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. Exodus 34:14) Satan likes a formula and if you can just figure out the correct formula that will appease him, then you can bypass a relationship with the living God. Let me repeat that. If you don’t want a relationship because that requires obedience, repentance, devotion, and other things that so many don’t want in these last days, then you come up with a formula to get what you want.  If you don’t believe me then do a study on witch doctors and shaman. They all have formulas to appease the gods and if you find the correct concoction, the devil will leave you alone. In Exodus 32 we are told the story of Israel and how they made themselves a golden calf. They had Aaron, the priest of God, make this calf because Moses was taking too long on the mountain. How many times have we grown weary with waiting for our prayers to be answered, and looked elsewhere? If you continue to read the story, he molded a calf out of gold and guess what they called it? Jehovah! Yahweh, the eternal name of God! How many mental graven golden calves have I worshiped over the years, thinking that if I just follow them, I will get my answers quicker? Sooner. More easily? I think in the past, the Lord allowed some of these “Christian” formulas to work, because He is a kind and loving Father and He knew that many who tried the formulas, were ignorant, such as myself, and even innocent in their understanding of Him. But times have changed. I will be so bold as to say that any formula or recipe that you have to follow to get your prayers answered is based on witchcraft. Yes, there are witch doctors out there pretending to be Christians, giving us formulas to appease God. I was shocked that I actually own some of these books, have followed some of these teachings and wondered, why they are not working? So what did work for me? Simple devotion and telling my Father that I trust Him no matter what happens!  I am loved and He is my Father. Jesus tells us in Luke 11:11-12 the following: “If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?” I am His daughter, His beloved, and if I choose to trust Him, He answers my prayers, not necessarily when I want or how I want, but He listens and He answers. No formulas needed. Trust is not a feeling. Trust is a choice and trust requires me laying down my own understanding and my need to be in control, and allowing Him to be God. 

I have a question for you. Now I want you to really think about this and take your time in coming up with an answer. Let’s say one morning you come out of your front door, leaving for work or whatever you have planned that day, and there is a protest on your walkway. The ants have banded together, they have signs and banners, and they are chanting at you. You’re wide awake now and you lean in to hear what they are saying. What you hear amazes you. They are telling you that they want your house and your property and they want you to move out. They say that they no longer believe you are the rightful owner. What would you do? I don’t think it would take you too long to go back into your garage and get out the raid. Am I right? I want to quote to you Psalm 2:1-3:

Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us break Their bonds in piecesAnd cast away Their cords from us.”

Why am I comparing us humans to ants? Because I want you to see things from a different perspective. We look back at the generation that rejected Jesus and crucified Him and we wonder why they did that. But if you look at the circumstances they were in, under Roman occupation, you will quickly realize that they were looking for a Messiah who would come as king and deliver them from their enemies. They didn’t want a suffering servant who died for their sins. So they rejected Him. Fast forward two thousand years and I’m going to suggest that this generation, and perhaps a couple before us, don’t want a conquering King. No, I think we want a suffering servant. We want a docile lamb of God who takes away our sins, heals our diseases and makes us happy. We do not want a God who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Oh no, that would require repentance, humility and fear of the Lord. I don’t believe there is a whole lot of that left on the earth right now. Do you? But let’s go back to Psalm 2:4. Do you know what God does in response to the chanting and protests and breaking free from His rightful ownership of this earth? He laughs. I would say that is about right. I think if I had the ants protest on my property, I too would laugh. And yet, this generation teaches that God is not in control. It teaches that we are! This generation of leaders teaches us that the gospel is about your salvation. I’m sure you’re thinking, well isn’t it? No, actually the gospel is about the Kingdom of God. The “good news” is this: “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth!” (Matthew 28:18) Yes, Jesus died for our sins, no question. But that is only part of the equation. Listen to what Jesus said to His disciples in Matthew 24:14: “And this ‘gospel of the kingdom’ shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then the end shall come”. He said “this gospel of the kingdom”, not this gospel of your salvation. So what is the good news? Jesus is the King who sits above all rule, authority and power. Period. We don’t like that however, so we come up with all kinds of beliefs and opinions and we twist the Scriptures to fit our desires. We blame the devil and we come up with all kinds of reasons for why the devil is actually in control, not God. And this year, of all years, makes no sense! I think that God is once again stepping into our little lives, and turning our tables over, and throwing out the money changers and rebuking the leaders and shutting down the churches and saying, “worship Me, and Me alone”! I believe that this year is God’s mercy, not His judgement. He is making it very easy right now to come back to Him and choose to make Him Lord of our lives. I personally don’t want to get sprayed with raid. Do you? 

Have you ever thought to yourself, “If I could just understand what God is doing, I could trust Him more?” It’s easy to feel that way, especially in this year of so much confusion and turmoil. At first glance, it would seem to make a great deal of sense. But I want to show you something that God has been teaching me this year. If you look at the word “understand” in scripture, you’ll find that the first time it is used is in Genesis 3:6, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one “wise”, she took of its fruit and ate.” You’ll notice that the word used is wise, but in the original Hebrew that word also means “understand, to have insight, to be prudent, to prosper”. It is translated as wise only a few times and therefore it is easy to miss what is really being conveyed here. What the serpent was telling her is that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she would understand God, and therefore be more like Him, and in effect be able to trust Him more. After all, if you know what is going on, if you understand the situation better, you can trust God and you in effect, become “like God”! It is the original lie. I think this year, of all the years I have lived on this earth has made the least amount of sense. I have been through tough years in my life, but the world still made sense. This year, if we are honest, makes no sense. So what do we do? How do we then live? I believe we need to go back to the scriptures and see what they say to us. If we look at the life of King David, I think we can learn from this man who slayed giants and was called a man after God’s own heart. In the Psalms David used the word “trust” 55 times. No matter what was happening in his life or in his world, David chose over and over again to trust God. Surely, he did not understand why he was anointed King by Samuel and then spent 13 years running for his life. Yet in the midst of the turmoil, confusion and sometimes fear, he chose to trust. How could he have done this? We are told in Psalm 119:97-100, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.” David loved God’s word (the law). David discovered that God’s commandments made him wiser than his enemies. He had more understanding than all his teachers because he meditated on God’s testimonies. And, David kept all of God’s instructions. His trust was in God alone! When the events of today made no sense to David, he focused on scripture and on what God had done in the past, on how He had been faithful to both him and Israel.  Trust came before understanding. It has to. If I trust that He is good, that He is faithful, that He is in control, and that He loves me, then even when things happen that don’t make sense, I do not lean on my own understanding, as Satan would like me to, but instead I trust in Him. We are told not to lean on our own understanding and for good reason. Isaiah tells us in chapter 55:8-9 why: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” He knows things we don’t. He sees the hearts of men, we usually don’t. He sees my heart, and knows what I need. Not what I want, but what I need. And since I believe that He is for me and not against me, I can trust Him even when I don’t understand. And the wonderful thing about arriving at a place of complete trust, is that it is rest for my soul.