Going
outside the camp
– There are times when there may be restrictions in our surroundings, our environment,
through the people around us, or from or our own inhibitions that do not allow
us to see or hear clearly what the Lord wants to do in us or through us, or
even on our behalf. That is why, going outside to a personal retreat is the
best answer. We must prepare with a pen, writing pad or a recording devise, our
Bible and worship music and go free of things that could become detractors to our focus
on seeking and hearing the Lord speak to us.
These
are also times in which what is needed for us is to get more rest and
relaxation and go away from what causes us stress which will help us have
better listening ears. God speaks through His creation and during these times
when we need a change of scenery, is when He can open our eyes and ears to His
will for us in the next season of our life and even prepares us for some hard
seasons approaching.
Another
reason that a personal retreat is necessary is when we are at a cross roads and
need His perspective in our situation to help us take the right turn. During
times like this, it is essential that we do not make decisions through our
emotions. Especially permanent decisions about our lives or others under our
sphere of influence and authority. Times alone with God are always refreshing,
encouraging, and invigorating for the next things ahead. This has been done for
years by many of God’s people, including Moses.
Exodus
33:7 says, “Now Moses used to take his own tent and pitch it outside the
camp, far away from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting [of God with
His own people]. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the
[temporary] tent of meeting which was outside the camp.”
Exodus
40:1-2 also shows that this was a requirement from God to Moses to receive every
new month on its first day in consecration with Him. 1“Then
the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “On
the first day of the first month (Abib) you shall set up the tabernacle of the
Tent of Meeting [of God with you].”
For
this, in the next verses of this passage God lists a set of instructions to
Moses of the conditions that should’ve been met and how, in order to come and
meet with Him. Some of them translate into our modern day with bringing the
Bible to read the Word, coming ready to pray and to worship before Him,
anointing the place and ourselves with oil for the oil represents the presence
of the Holy Spirit to overshadow us and also the Blood of Jesus to purify us
and our surroundings.
Praying
in the Spirit or other tongues
– Another thing that can be said about the Holy Spirit is that He lives in us
since the day we asked Jesus to come into our lives and become our Lord and
Savior. One of the evidences that He lives in us is that we speak in a heavenly
language that God understands, but the devil does not. This language is a mystery
and consequently, we speak the mysteries of what has been written in the book
that is written of us in heaven that will be fulfilled in the earth in our life.
In other words, these things have been predestined and are already written
about us. Therefore, our praying in tongues helps us unlock every season and
new cycle in our lives that has been predestined or us and also unlocks the
revelations and other things needed to help us walk them out in the earth.
Hebrews
10:7 states, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come To do Your will,
O God— [To fulfill] what is written of Me in the scroll of
the book.’’”
Romans
8:9 says, “9 However, you are not [living] in the
flesh [controlled by the sinful nature] but in the Spirit, if in fact the
Spirit of God lives in you [directing and guiding you].”
Romans
8:26-27 also explains, 26 “In the same way the Spirit
[comes to us and] helps us in our weakness. We do not know what prayer to
offer or how to offer it as we should, but the Spirit Himself [knows
our need and at the right time] intercedes on our behalf with sighs and groanings
too deep for words. 27 And He who searches the
hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes
[before God] on behalf of God’s people in accordance with God’s will.”
There
are other benefits of our praying in tongues such as; it increases our faith, helps
builds us up when we have been damaged through trials and traumatic experiences
in our lives, heals our wounds, and increases our faith levels. It also helps
us ask the right things from God that our minds cannot comprehend but the
Spirit does.
Jude
1:20 tells us, “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on
[the foundation of] your most holy faith [continually progress, rise
like an edifice higher and higher], pray in the Holy Spirit,”
3 John
1:2 also indicate to us that our praying in tongues helps the healing of our
soul. One of the parts of who we are as believers for we are mind, soul, and
spirit. “Beloved, I pray that in every way you may succeed and prosper
and be in good health [physically], just as [I know] your soul prospers [spiritually].”
Colossians
1:9 helps us see that we can pray specific prayers. This happens when we pray
them in our spiritual language. “For this reason, since the day we heard
about it, we have not stopped praying for you, asking [specifically] that
you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom
[with insight into His purposes], and in understanding [of spiritual
things],”
In
essence, there are many benefits of speaking in tongues. I understand that the
lack of understanding of what we are praying may cause some people to refrain
from praying this way, but eventually, as we mature in our walk with God, we
will also receive many times the interpretation of what we prayed. God will
guide us by His Spirit as we ask Him to give us the evidence that He lives in
us by speaking in tongues.
One last
thing to highlight about praying in tongues in this post, is that as we mature,
our prayer language changes and we can become more aware of what type of prayer
we are praying in the spirit. This means that our warfare prayer language will
sound different than our regular prayer language. This is also important to understand
when we are praying and will not be released by the Holy Spirit until we have
prayed the matter through.
Faith
and works–
Another important aspect of our prayer life is when God gives us a promise or has
told us how He will move in our circumstances. Along with this information and
revelation we need to take steps to demonstrate that we believed what He spoke
to us. God will also give us, depending on the type of promise, one or a series
of instructions to follow with obedience one by one. This is especially true because
His promises are always bigger than anything we could do on our own strength.
That is
why James 2:20-22 says, 20 “But are you willing to
recognize, you foolish [spiritually shallow] person, that faith without [good]
works is useless? 21 Was our father Abraham not
[shown to be] justified by works [of obedience which expressed his faith] when
he offered Isaac his son on the altar [as a sacrifice to God]? 22 You
see that [his] faith was working together with his works, and as a result of
the works, his faith was completed [reaching its maturity when he expressed his
faith through obedience].”
Many of
this works of obedience will require that we give up or do something
sacrificially. Something that is a stretch of our faith and that, as He asked Abraham,
requires that we give up what is dear to us. This is also a test of our
devotion to God that shows if we worship our promises more than the promise
giver. The other part of that is that God will ask us to give sacrificially to
see whether or not we may have raised any idols in our lives.
In the
example given here, there are two passages about the same person: a young rich
ruler that encountered Jesus and asked Him what was required to obtain eternal
life, according to the Kingdom. Jesus answers in these two passages demonstrate
some very interesting characteristics of our works which express our faith in
God and His promises to us that require that we give sacrificially, and follow
His instructions for us closely. First, Matthew 19:21 says,
“Jesus
answered him, ‘If you wish to be perfect [that is, have the spiritual maturity
that accompanies godly character with no moral or ethical deficiencies], go and
sell what you have and give [the money] to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me [becoming My
disciple, believing and trusting in Me and walking the same path of
life that I walk].’”
Mark
10:21 also states, “Looking at him, Jesus felt a love (high regard,
compassion) for him, and He said to him, “You lack one thing: go and sell all
your property and give [the money] to the poor, and you will
have [abundant] treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me [becoming
My disciple, believing and trusting in Me and walking the same path
of life that I walk].’”
From
these two passages we can see that the young man was already living a life of
obedience to the Word of God and he was also hungry for more of God and of the
blessings of His Kingdom, even the spiritual blessings promised in the Bible.
But at this particular time, Jesus, seeing him with eyes of compassion and
wanting to give him more, instructed him to give the riches he possessed to the
poor by selling his assets. When we read the full account we see that this
command made the young ruler sad for he had acquired a lot of riches. But he
was being tested for idolatry with this instruction for we cannot have any
other gods in our hearts.
What
this young ruler did not know at the time was that his steps of obedience and
works that demonstrated his trust in God’s faithfulness to supply for him out of
the riches of His glory, would have eventually granted him the true riches of
heaven, free from any idolatry and along with that, more influence and
authority on the earth to do greater exploits than Jesus did because the other
part of the instruction was to follow Him and become His disciple so he could
learn the higher ways of the Kingdom.
Obedience
not sacrifice – This
brings me to the next segment of this post which is also very important to
understand. When we are instructed by the Lord to do something, especially
something that is very sacrificial to us, it is crucial that we do not try to
half-do it or do it in some other way that keeps us in the driver’s seat of our
life. To do this is extremely dangerous because the results can be detrimental
to our walk with God and whether or not we get to fulfill our destiny. Not
obeying to the full extent of the instruction also reveals our idolatry which
is worship of the work of our hands and things created more than the Creator.
The end-result of this disobedience is death to our dreams, to our callings,
and replacement.
This
happened to King Saul. In 1 Samuel 15, he was instructed to destroy the
Amalekite race. All of it completely because they were an enemy tribe to His
people, the Israelites. The king was promoted to his position for that very
reason, but he had a big problem. He was a very presumptuous person that liked
to take matters into his hands that were not part of his calling. He had been
corrected for doing this by the prophet before, but insisted in doing it one
more time, but this time was the catalyst that led to God’s rejection of him as
a king and leader of His people.
King
Saul only got rid of the things that did not seem valuable and killed the ugly
cattle and some people that were probably the poor of the tribe. However, he
spared the king of the tribe which should have been the first one killed
because this king represented the authority of the enemy that would want to
continue ruling against the people of God in his lifetime if spared. King Saul
and his army kept everything presumably for an offering of sacrifice that God
had not commanded. For this reason, God told the prophet Samuel to render to
him in person the verdict given from the throne room in heaven for this last
disobedience. 1 Samuel 15:17-23 says,
17 “Samuel said, “Is it not true that
even though you were small (insignificant) in your own eyes, you were made the
head of the tribes of Israel? And the Lord anointed you king over
Israel, 18 and the Lord sent you on a
mission, and said, ‘Go, totally destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight
against them until they are eliminated.’ 19 Why did
you not obey the voice of the Lord, but [instead] swooped down on the
plunder [with shouts of victory] and did evil in the sight of the Lord?”
20 Saul said to Samuel, “I have
obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone on the mission on which
the Lord sent me, and have brought back Agag the king of Amalek, and
have completely destroyed the Amalekites. 21 But
the people took some of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things [that
were] to be totally destroyed, to sacrifice to the Lord your God at
Gilgal.” 22 Samuel said,
“Has
the Lord as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
As in obedience to the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed [is better] than the fat of rams.
23 “For rebellion is as [serious as] the sin of divination (fortune-telling),
And disobedience is as [serious as] false religion and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He also has rejected you as king.’”
As in obedience to the voice of the Lord?
Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed [is better] than the fat of rams.
23 “For rebellion is as [serious as] the sin of divination (fortune-telling),
And disobedience is as [serious as] false religion and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,
He also has rejected you as king.’”
Allow me
to explain this in a different way. By not removing everything God has
commanded to remove by killing, King Saul did the same thing that Adam and Eve
did and this was as eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Eating of this tree contaminated him and he started taking on the behavior of
the king he did not kill. We see this with his jealousy of David, the one
chosen by God to replace him to the point of wanting to kill him so we would
not take the throne that was his previously.
I Samuel
28:7-11 also says, 7“Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that
hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his
servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit
at Endor.
8 And Saul disguised himself, and
put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman
by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and
bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee.
9 And the woman said unto him,
Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have
familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou
a snare for my life, to cause me to die?
10 And Saul sware to her by
the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment
happen to thee for this thing.
11 Then said the woman, Whom shall I
bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel.” KJV
We can
see in this passage that Saul had taken the attitudes and behavior of that which
he did not kill. He even engaged in necromancy to seek information from the
prophet Samuel, who had by this time died. For this, he went to seek a woman
soothsayer that operated through a familiar spirit. She obviously had been
spared just like the king of the Amalekites. These were people that were
idolatrous and witchcraft and divination was their form of religion. Therefore,
know that everyone who goes to inquire of a psychic or witch doctor hears from a
familiar spirit which is a demon. This demon, as seen in this account, influences
the person to reject everyone and everything that comes from God to not only
obstruct them, but to remove and replace them with everything antichrist.
That is
why God said to King Saul through the prophet Samuel that he had found in him
witchcraft and divination. These are never tolerated by God from one of His
servants because they lead people away from Him, instead of to Him. Isaiah
48:11 establishes God’s stand on idolatry. It says,
“’For
My own sake, for My own sake, I will do it [I refrain and do not completely
destroy you]; For how can My Name be defiled and profaned [as it
would if My chosen people were completely destroyed]? And I will not give My
glory to another [by permitting the worshipers of idols to
triumph over you].”
So let’s
be people that heed the word of the Lord and His instructions, that even if we
do not understand them fully, we can ask the Lord to guide our steps by His
Spirit so we do everything asked of us and that way, reach every level of power
and authority in the spirit, and every territory, and every blessing promised
from God instead of His rejection. To God alone all the glory. ■
All
Scriptures from the Amplified Version, unless otherwise noted.
Images courtesy of Google Images
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