Spurring One Another Toward Love March 13 2012

 "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching."  Hebrews 10:24-25

This could be written as the Word for Today!! Wouldn't it be great if this is what the Headline was in the newspaper? Or the 1st for us to see in our email...or on fb...or twitter?  I mean really...how much the better for the household of God to always be...in each other's face...like a coach...or beside each other's side... as a teammate...or just leading with JOY!!! 

All about us...depression...despair...hopelessness...darkness...but we are the children of light! We are counting it all joy when we go through the diverse (different) trials and tribulations...because we have the Hope of Glory in us!  We know He is about to show up and show out!!! He is about to do something magnanimous!!! 

As a younger prayer warrior...just learning to war...when I got to the helmet of Salvation...I would put it on...yanking it down...and say..."pulling down over my ears so I can't hear the lies of the devil."  If God says so...then, everything that says "not" is a lie!!! 

Let me repeat! If God says it is so!!! I mean that's what Amen means...SO BE IT!!! Whatever it is!!  It is so!! I can read and walk away every day and not remember what I read.  Hellloooo???? Are you there? A few minutes here or there in the Word...jumping around...even if it is a promise of God for me...won't get it!! I have to know the whys and wheres and whats about the promise...I have to grab hold of it...I don't just know it's in the Bible...that's only step number uno!!! Step 1 is to know.  

I've known about the Bible all my life.  I grew up in church with parents that taught the Bible every Sunday. My parents prayed together and with me all my life.  I carried my Bible to church every Sunday.  I checked off Bible reading on my envelope...and if I just happened to pick it up for any reason each day and glance over some words...I checked it!  

I mean I was saved...right? My whole family saw me get Baptized when I was 8 years old...they knew that I had even forgotten a very important part of clothing...tee hee...I mean who could forget that night...right? 

I mean I argued with my high school peers about creation versus evolution.  I believed God created...just said...poof and it was there! I never could believe the junk about spontaneous generation...where a spark just started...and a germ...and then,.....misssinnngggg links galore....and an ape...and finally me.??? HUH??  I know that's not exact...but very close.

I mean as I look at creation...and I could do this as a young one...no one could convince me that all that perfect order...that divine design...just happened through an explosion...or I mean I even had textbooks that I was supposed to teach from that said this mess...but I could not each it.  I could only say that this pre-history stuff is all before the story was written down... and it takes faith to believe any of it.  I chose from a very young age to believe that if this was not in my Bible...I would not believe it.

That makes me know that God and I had an understanding, and every time I felt that I had moved away from Him, I rededicated my life.  I walked the aisle at least 4 times ...maybe a 1/2 dozen times before I got it right.  Before I believed that God was who He said He was and would do what He said He would do!

My oldest sister got assurance of her salvation, and then, went after her sisters to make sure we were saved.  We were all insulted that she would doubt that we were saved.  Well, on March 9, 1975, all 3 sisters were saved...the other 2 in the morning...me that night...at a revival.  That was 37 years ago!!! Woo Hoo!!!

I was mother of 2 at the time...a 4-year-old son, and a 13-month old son.  I've never turned back again...I was on a great adventure that I remain on until this day!!!   I'm sooo thankful my sister spurred us on to love and good works.  She felt so alone...because we had all been sooo insulted...so just plain mad at her...but her obedience has always had the best of results...so many saved a a result of her faithfulness to Jesus and her family.

Years later, my Daddy...wonderful father, grandfather, Bible teacher, deacon, and on and on...became a concern of my mother.  She said if she did not know that he was saved, she would think he was not. She asked that oldest sister of mine and me to pray.  We did together and separately.  I fasted for the 1st time in my life on only water for 3 days and then, only juice for several.  A revival was at my church that Sunday, and Daddy came without Mama (she felt bad)...which was a surprise in itself.

The next night, he came back.  Surprise again!!! When the invitation was given, he bolted down the aisle...almost broke the lady beside him's foot!  Now, I was in shock!! He said that he had dreamed that he saw himself in the pit. He settled it all that night! Mama didn't get it...she did not believe that he had not been saved all that time...until she saw the change in his life.  My TeddyBear daddy had become my Patriarch!! Glorryyy!!!

I saw my mother in-law saved that same week at that revival.  She said it was the words in the song that caused her to receive Christ.  My sister in-law and her husband had been saved but not baptized.  All four of them were baptized the same night.  It was an amazing time in my life!!! 

In the next couple of years, I shared the gospel with my father in-law...and I even took it to my Mama.  I remember this woman...the one who had taught me about Jesus as a child...and had taken me to church...look at me that night...and say, Do you think I'm not saved?  I shared, that I knew she was saved, but something was missing...the Joy of her Salvation.  A short time later, during a revival, she went down to regain the Joy of her Salvation...and was rebaptized!

God had really done a move on a family that had gone through the motions...in fact, we had done what we believed we needed to do...but the scripture that says Today is the Day of Salvation really means much to me! That's what I ask people...where are you in your walk with Christ today! Today is the Day of Salvation! Not, where were you 10 years ago...or at first...but have you left your 1st LOVE?? 

I really didn't mean to cover all that...but the Holy Spirit did! I pray everyday Proverbs 16, where it says Man makes a plan, but the LORD directs his steps.  He doesn't direct us when we are planless...without a plan.  Holy Spirit directs us when we have a plan.  My plan was to share spurring one another toward love...and Holy Spirit directed back through the years of us...2 parents and 4 daughters...spurring each other.

I mean the reason I'm a pro-life advocate...and intercessor and advocate for the unborn...is because my sister who would be the 2nd of the four girls led me to a meeting.  I had recently miscarried my 3rd son.  She had not encouraged me to go at 1st, she thought I needed time to heal before I saw pictures of aborted babies.  I was never the same after I went!  Spurred forever on for the unborn citizens of this nation and of this world.  

If the fruit of the womb is God's reward...then, who the heck gave me or anyone else the right to kill His heritage.  If He is the creator of all life...and He is...not doubt about it...then, He is the one we are sinning against when we take the life of any segment of life of the human being. It is not the same as killing a bug or killing animals for food.  The LORD, Himself, killed...shed life of animals...to cover Adam and Eve.  He told us Thou Shalt not Kill.  War is also different as is self-defense, for the LORD called forth the armies of Israel, and His callings don't change.  He also expects us to protect our children...our families.

I shudder to think of facing my God...having allowed evil to overcome good...of just lying down and taking what my adversary would do to me.  That's why I war daily...I am a prayer warrior!! I take the Kingdom by the force of the Holy Spirit...in my home...in my city...in my nation...and around the world.  

The LORD says Go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples of all the nations! I have been on mission to do this for 37+ years...and the more I am willing to take for His Kingdom...the more He allows me to take.  

I know I sound a bit wild...a little foreign at times...even to me...but the longer I am here in this earth...this world...I am more and more realizing that I'm merely a sojourner...here to do the will of the Father as His minister...as His servant and friend.  It's not about me anymore...it never was, but I didn't know that.  I thought that me and my husband and my children and my parents and my sisters and my grandchildren and my nieces and my nephews and my friends and my nation and my world...notice the my over and over.

As long as I had the my view, I was anxious, and I was working so hard to perfect...and I was failing constantly...not realizing that it's not about me.  It is all about Him...and it all belongs to Him...His creation...His children...His family...His nation...His world.  

He tells me that I am ...we are...a chosen generation...we are His nation.  Our forefather Abraham...he was the father of Ishmael and Isaac...but Isaac was the child of the promise...the one that was to be the father of many nations...that includes all the gentiles who have come in through Jesus...who was in the loins of Abraham.  

The Church and Zion and New Jerusalem...all are to be ONE!! The LORD has made a way for us all.  He so loved the world that He gave us Jesus...the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  I have a story to tell you that is as new as today...I mean this day...March 13, 2012...but as old as Bible days.

I am on my fb prayer page...Womenwho Pray...every day.  I recently have been tried, tested, and am just now reaping from passing the test...regarding my mission in Women Who Pray which is to reach to the uttermost by internet...taking the good news.  

I have a Muslim friend on fb, who first asked me for prayer though we had different gods, she said.  I've heard from her over this last year...and recently she's brought to me a vision she had to interpret.  I've not always understood my own pictures...not at first anyway...so I had to lean hard on Holy Spirit for revelation.

She saw herself taken up and looking over her city...not the one she's from but the one she's in.  When she was delivered back to earth, she saw that she had stuff in her hands, and she dropped something.  Out of no where, a man appeared and handed her what she dropped...the Bible.

The Muslim woman told me she was seeking the Truth.  She had friends who were Christians, and she had attended a church for awhile.  The friend that had 1st taken her to the church left and went home to her country.  This woman had become disappointed with some hypocrisy in the church...among the members and was turned off.  

However, she had chatted with me before...asking for prayer...and I had shared the good news of the gospel that I believed...so she believed I'd tell her the Truth about her vision.  We talked awhile, and she said she trusted me.  I shared with her that the vision was clear to me.  She was asking for Truth...Quran? or Bible? or?? and I told her I believed that God had visited her with this vision and was saying the Bible was the Truth.  Another vision she had soon after this one was of Jesus and the LORD's supper.  I told her that I believed God was saying Jesus is the Word and He is the Truth that she is seeking.

I must tell you that I am amazed at our awesome God! I knew He had found me when I was lost, but I for some reason wasn't realizing how very much He is seeking the lost to save them...that He would bring together for her after she was seeking Truth...the vision...and a prayer minister from very far away to tell her that the LORD loves her very much.

Recently in a Beth Moore Bible Study, I believe it's Why the Godly do the ungodly...anyway, Beth was talking about Rahab...known eternally through history as the prostitute...who when she met Joshua, she told him she believed in his God...and she hid him and another...and they told her to leave the thread out her window...and when Jericho was destroyed...and plundered by Israel...she and her household were saved.  .

Then, in Sheila Walsh's Bible Study on promises, she talked of the Samaritan woman...and how Jesus went out of His way to be at the well when she came to it ... to give her to drink of the eternal water of life!!! Glorryyyy!!! LORD...another Arabian woman...not of Israel...again.


Then, what about Hagar? Ishmael's mother...and the Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah, Abraham's wife.  Sarah sent her husband, Abraham, into Hagar to have the son that God promised.  Ishmael, however, was not the son of promise.  Sarah did eventually get so offended with her, that Sarah had Abraham send Hagar and her child, Ishmael away.  

Get ready...can you hear it?...can you hear that Hagar, too, was a what?...an Arabian woman...not of Israel.  Yes, Egyptian, but mother of Ishmael the father of the Arabs. One of the greatest names of our God...El Roi...is shown to us here with Hagar...meaning that He sees!  

Just like in Abraham, there was a promise to all nations...yes, through Israel...but God loved all the world...and He made Abraham the Father of many nations...through Jesus...we are also sons of Abraham...and we claim the promises of Abraham.  

The Muslim people...they are of Arabian descent...they are of Abraham...but not through Sarah...and the promise! They are of Ishmael...through Hagar...but God did not forget them.  Through the good news of Jesus Christ...we, the Church...of every nation and people...are told to love our neighbors as ourselves.


Of course, we know the story of the Good Samaritan.  Those headed to the temple...did not stop to help...but the Samaritan did.  This story teaches us how to love our neighbors as ourselves...and that the hurt man was our neighbor.  

We are called to go into every nation and preach the gospel! We are told...even in these last days...when the means of going is not only by foot, and then horse, and then ships, and then trains, and then airplanes, and now, the internet...to go ye therefore!!! 

I love it!!! I love that I can share with a Muslim girl from across the world from me the good news of the gospel.  I can pray with you...yes, I mean you, the reader...that she receive the Truth and be saved and her Household.  

I believe God is who He says He is! I believe God will do what He says He will do! I believe I am who God says I am! I believe I can do all things through Christ! I believe the Word is active and living in me! I believe You, GOD!!! 

Have a blessed day, night, week, and rest of your life!!! His mercies are new every day!!! 

Love you much!

Teddi