Make Room for Your Miracle (9 page)
When the flesh is running things, the glory will move away. If God has given gifts the gifts will stay, but it is possible for them to get under another anointing. So for those of us who want just His glory, it is about something else. It is about having Him.
God is teaching us how to recognize His glory. We want to be a dwelling place for Him to come and rest, and eventually we will see the miracles from His Presence.
Allow God to Be Your Peace
The great miracles happen in the place of shalom—that place of peace, hope and wholeness where He can abide. Sometimes people disdain Jehovah Shalom in favor of other aspects of His Presence: “I want Jehovah Jireh! I want Jehovah Rapha! I want Jehovah Sabbaoth! Let Him provide for me; let Him heal me; let Him fight for me.” They miss the point that allowing God to be our peace within allows Him to minister in all these other ways. We want Him to enter immediately into action when possibly we need to let Him come and rest.
“All is well,” the Shunammite says. This is the Hebrew word
shalom
—wholeness, well-being, prosperous peace.
I, Bonnie, told earlier how the Lord had visited me prior to our son Aaron’s birth. His voice literally traveled into my body and birthed Aaron in the presence of twenty or so intensive care workers according to the word of the Lord.
A few weeks later Mahesh was in Africa. Aaron, who was still no longer than my hand, was undergoing his fifth of an interminable number of major surgeries. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself that day—we had already faced death and death and death with his situation. I was tired mentally, I was tired spiritually and I was tired physically. I just could not sit still for another hour, so I went outside and stood under the portico of the hospital. It was a gray, rainy day.
I have always been careful about not being flippant with the Lord, but that day I leaned against a column of the portico and said, “Lord, if this is the way You treat Your friends. . .” Before I could say, “I sure don’t want to be one of Your enemies,” it was as if the eyes of my spirit opened and I saw Jesus standing there. He was leaning on the column across from me—just like an exact mirror image. He looked at me, and I heard these words clearly. He said,
Bonnie, I am here with you, and that is more than enough.
I got a revelation of Psalm 23 that day. The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He was saying, “Shalom. I am here with you. Shalom. I am Jehovah Shalom.” And He was. The circumstances continued to be turbulent, but that was a turning point. The situation did not make us lose our peace, and God ultimately brought Aaron into resurrection life.
The secret we learned that day was that the difficulties we had been through had actually strengthened something in us to be a dwelling place for the glory. We may be experiencing difficulties in this mortal flesh, times when we are really in need. But if we have made room for Jehovah Shalom to abide then it does not matter what the circumstances are. You can be in the lowest pit of hell, and in a moment your spirit man suddenly realizes that you are in His embrace. When that happens, nothing else matters anymore.
Keep an Eternal Perspective
As you make a place for God, He will reward you. He can reward you on earth, but your eternal reward is in heaven. This eternal reward has not been emphasized enough in the Church. There has been a lot of attention on the charismatic gifts—healing, miracles, provision for now—but we rarely focus enough on the fact that we are going to be rewarded in heaven.
We need to emphasize the comfort of this more and more. It will give us strength in days to come. When the greatest economy on earth is shaken, everything can be shaken. It is nothing to be afraid of. We need to pray that our eyes will turn to the Lord. And we need to talk about the heavenly as much as the earthly, if not much more so.
Why would the prophets have told the story of the Shunammite over and over again? Israel was facing one difficulty after another—famine, war, another famine, invasions. In the midst of these turbulent times this was a story about a person who had real peace. God became her peace. Jehovah Shalom could abide there.
That kind of habitation speaks of the crucified life and the satisfaction that comes from obedience to the will of God. He dances with us when we are in step with His plan and the glory and fullness of joy are present. There is ease in the glory. Making room for the Presence in our lives is the way we move from crisis to contentment. As we make a resting place for the Holy Spirit, He will descend and remain.
In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily; and you are complete in Him.
Colossians 2:9–10
The Shunammite Speaks . . .
One evening when Elisha arrived at our door, he was more animated than I had ever seen him. We sat at table after the servants had gone to bed. The candle lights danced up the wall behind us, making shadows as if the figures of holy witnesses from beyond the veil listened to our conversation.
He finally told us of his mentor, the great Elijah, and of the days of his wrestling to bring Ahab’s court and his Sidonian courtesan under the hand of the Lord. Elisha’s hands waved in the air in dramatic illustration as he spoke of the confrontation on Carmel and of holy fire suddenly pooling above the altar and breaking open like some alabaster box come down off the brazier of God Himself to consume the sacrifice and throw Baal’s priests upon their heads.
I sat with rapt attention, leaning forward, my elbows on the table, hearing him recount the miracles done at the hand of his master. The old prophet had called for drought as God pressed King Ahab to his knees. Seduced by his witch queen, Ahab had turned Samaria into a center of Baal worship.
“He did more to make the Lord God of Israel furious than all the kings before!” Elisha observed. “My master stood before Ahab in those days and made a solemn oath. I imagine him even now in my mind’s eye as he strode into the court, his hair coat cinched tightly in his girdle.” Elisha’s eyes shone. “On legs like trunks of juniper trees he must have planted himself immovable before the thrones where Ahab and Jezebel reclined like lizards. He would have hooked his thumbs into that girdle and bellowed when the anointing came upon him. Sometimes he seemed to know his days were numbered on this earth and each one had its fill of trouble. He was like a charioteer driving furiously before the rain to reach the stronghold.”
I longed to ask how it sounded when one hears the voice of the Lord as these men did. But I dared not break this spell of wonder over our table. The lights seemed to brighten as he talked on.
“In Ahab’s time Hiel came down from Bethel and thought to rebuild Jericho, the ancient fortress where Joshua had prophesied that setting up that city’s doors again would cost a man his firstborn.”
Joktan spoke. “What a hateful legacy, erecting a stronghold that God had cursed. An insolent fool to build a city to his renown and by that act to die without sons to carry on his name.”
When those words came from my husband, Joktan, whose wife had given him no sons, my skin flushed hot and I hoped the men did not notice.
“As the Lord God of Israel lives,” Elisha went on, “I can see him now, eyes of fire, that bush of wiry hair sprouting from his head like a lion’s mane.” He changed his voice to imitate his formidable mentor. “There will be no dew or rain during the next few years unless I say so!”
He took a draught of his sweet wine. “And it was so,” he continued, his voice again his own, as he sat his cup back on the table. “He was a true shepherd in Israel.”
But then he told us of the tender side of Israel’s greatest prophet, that the man had been very human. How he fled before the threats of Jezebel when she sought his life. How the word of the Lord had come—not in fire, or wind or earthquake, but as the soft voice of a gentle lover.
“Still and small but so full of certainty that it moved him from his hiding place,” Elisha said. He looked up with an innocent face. “And that’s when he came after me. Perhaps I should have fled that day!”
We laughed but knew there was sardonic truth in what he said. He took the anointing of the Lord as seriously as life and death itself.
“Imagine,” I said at last. “Not even dew upon the grass according to his word!”
“‘Three things only God Himself holds the key for,’ is what he told me,” Elisha remembered. “‘Rain, children and resurrection of the dead.’”
And We Listen . . .
The spiritual and political climate of the Shunammite’s times is reflective of much that we are experiencing today. Classically, the spirit of Jezebel or witchcraft is the forerunner of the spirit of Antichrist. It seems evident that this spirit of witchcraft is appearing in greater measure in the world, setting groundwork for the Antichrist spirit to come and lead societies and nations away from God.
As we make room for the Presence, we can rejoice in our position of victory in Christ in the great battle around us. But because it is a battle, we need to be alert to the strategies of the enemy. There is no neutrality in the spiritual realm. On one hand, as we have seen, God’s Presence brings blessing, peace, miracles. But on the other hand, if we fail to make room for good, the door is opened to evil. The more that people shut the door on the anointing and the glory, the more they make room for the power of darkness to come in.
Here is a clear example. In the early years of the twentieth century, after the Azusa revival began to sweep like fire across the world, the major church authorities in Germany became offended by some of the expressions of revival. They actually wrote and signed a document rejecting this move of the Holy Spirit in their nation.
Essentially they told the Holy Spirit, “Don’t come here.” This created a vacuum in their hearts, which the enemy filled. That is how some of the most educated, cultured, artistic people in the world could massacre millions including children and think they were doing good. Since they rejected the move of the Holy Spirit, there was plenty of room for the spirit of witchcraft and the spirit of Antichrist to move in. The spirit of Antichrist was able to work so effectively because the power of the Holy Spirit was turned away.
The spirit of witchcraft, in ushering in the Antichrist spirit, seeks to accomplish three goals. First, intimidate. A classic example of this is rampant political correctness taking over the Western mindset. If that fails, then, second, manipulate. It looks for the places where someone can be seduced or drawn in. Third, if you will not cooperate through less overt means, the spirit of witchcraft will use force to dominate and control. These are some of the roots that are present in the clash of spiritual kingdoms evident today.
That Antichrist spirit is growing stronger. It is the spirit that calls good evil and evil good. It calls abortion a rational solution and labels as evil those who oppose the killing of babies. It calls alternate lifestyles normal and criticizes as judgmental those who uphold the biblical view of marriage. It includes spirits of racism, bigotry and anti-Semitism.
Most people do not realize that the spirit of Antichrist starts within the church. That means it can hide under a religious guise but will ultimately betray the truth. The book of 1 John describes this:
Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.
1 John 2:18–19
We are seeing a lot of Antichrist doctrine, movements, cults, heresies, identity movements—different things that appear or claim to be Christian, while the fruit is anything but. The Antichrist spirit opposes the true anointing of Christ Jesus—Messiah,
Mashiach
, which means “the smeared One,” indicating the thick Presence of the Spirit of God—and also opposes the anointing Christ gives to all of those who believe in Him and who have been washed in the blood.
The antidote to these evil spirits is to know who we are and why we are here. It is time for the Church to rise and shine!
The First Anarchy
The evil forces that are becoming more and more evident today have been at work for a long, long time. The battle started in the very first anarchy when that anointed cherub called Lucifer revolted against God’s rule in heaven and sought to take the throne for himself. It was not a war with the usual weapons; Ezekiel 28 indicates that it was like a great political campaign of words (the Hebrew word for
trade
in verse 5 can also indicate a campaign of words).
If you think Satan is not beautiful and seductive, remember that he was able to convince one third of the holy angels—those beings that had been created as God’s ministers—to join him in the revolt. That is the backdrop for the events occurring in the Garden of Eden. That fallen cherub was after humans, who were to be the heirs of creation together with the Son. It is hard to imagine that one created to be so logical could deceive himself into trying to usurp God.
But even before that original anarchy, there had been another council in the Godhead and, in advance, the Son had said, “I’ll go down.” Jesus met the devil face-to-face in the wilderness and laid him in the dust!
How did He do it? Jesus knew who He was, and He knew why He was there. There is power in agreement. Adam and Eve agreed with the seductive words of the serpent and gave him the kingdoms of the world. Jesus agreed with the eternal Word of God and broke through to victory, ultimately believing God’s promises even unto death and the grave. And He came out victorious in resurrection power not only for Himself but for all who would become heirs of God through Him!
These are not myths or fables. These are not legends. These are spiritual realities that have impact on our lives day to day. When He opened His body on the tree at Calvary, Jesus spoiled those principalities and powers once and for all and put them under His feet. Though Satan knows that his time is almost up, he has refused to concede defeat, and so until Christ appears there will be war. Satan will go on deceiving as many as possible.