City of Refuge Fellowship

Day 2 Giving God Possession of Our Dreams/Desires

Psalm 37:4 “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

Our desires come from our hearts. As long as our hearts are still deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9) our desires and dreams are of the same nature. Now that we have given God possession of our hearts we must also give Him ownership of our desires, our hopes and our dreams. Our new heart must not be filled with old desires or they will return to their old nature.

Today we fast and pray for the release of our old desires and dreams. We purpose to delight ourselves in the Lord and trust that He will give us the desires of our hearts, our new hearts; hearts filled with and owned by Christ. We declare Isaiah 58:14 over our lives: “Then you shall delight yourself in the Lord; and I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth, and feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. The mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

Day 1 Giving God Possession of Our Hearts

Jeremiah 17:9 “the heart is deceitful above all things.”

The cry of our culture has been “follow your heart.” Our hearts have led us astray; they have led us by emotion, by desire, by want and by the moment. Today we pray to become leaders of our hearts rather than followers. Proverbs 27:19 says “Guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life.” Today we give Jesus possession of our hearts, we do not invite Him in but rather we give Him control, ownership and authority to override, overtake and overrule every fleshly and self-seeking desire of our hearts.

We fast and pray today that Ezekiel 36:26 would be accomplished in our lives: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

We have set aside every Tuesday as a day of prayer for our National leaders: President Obama, the Senate and the Congress. Each week we present a specific focus, birthed from Scripture, that we can agree and pray together.

This week we pray that

Our National leaders will be imitators of Jesus and do nothing of themselves, but only what they see the Father doing; for whatever He does, our National leaders will also do in like manner. John 5:19

Please continue to keep in prayer the appointing of a new judge to the Supreme Court. Lets pray that God’s choice will be selected for this vacant seat.

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules the people groan. Proverbs 29:2

Therefore, I will exhort that first of all supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.  I Timothy 2:1-3

Is giving an obligation or an opportunity? When we are presented with the needs of others do we consider what we can give without being affected or do we trust God enough to be willing to give even if it creates a new need in our own lives? Yesterday I had an opportunity to present a need to our church. I was contacted during the week by a Bible college classmate that is now a missionary in Asia. She contacted me to share that she and her husband are trying to adopt a child native to the country in which they are serving. She shared all the steps that the nation requires of them before they can even begin the actual adoption process and how they have been working to meet each requirement. They have now come to a place in which they can begin the process to adopt the little girl that they have cared for as their own child for the last year and just found out that they would need a sum of money within the next few weeks that is large to many of us.

We took a special offering at the service and I was quite thankful for the amount that was given and was actually very proud to be able to report to my friend the amount that we would be sending. About an hour after church there was a knock on my door, one of the people from church was dropping off a check for the adoption offering, about two hours later another knock and another check, then this morning I had to stop at the home of another church family only to find two more gifts for the offering. By the time I sent the check this morning our little group of people (there were 33 people at church yesterday) had given $1400 to this need. I could not have been more thankful and honestly, as a pastor, more proud.

Isaiah 58:9-10 says, “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and the Lord will answer: Here am I. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” We were created to be spent, not to be filled up as storage containers. I believe that many of us have been contaminated by the spirit of poverty. We may have enough money, enough food, enough things and yet we are lacking in our spirits, we are lacking in our contentment, in our usefulness and in our willingness. The only thing that destroys poverty is generosity, not merely of those who have plenty that can give to the needs of others, but generosity of those that have needs that are willing to give from their lack. I believe this to be true, poverty is not about not having enough nearly as much as it is about not being willing to give from what we do have. Obedient, generous giving does not only bless the one that receives the gift but it blesses those who give, those who hear about the gift and those who then are led to “pay it forward.” In Scripture we see a young boy, as hungry as the rest of the 5,000 people in the crowd being willing to give his lunch, all he had, even though it didn’t seem enough to matter, so that God might be able to do something great with his lunch, with his life. We see the widow, instructed to use what little she had and first feed Elijah and then she would have her needs met. Every day for a year she had to choose to use her little for someone else and every day that she obeyed there was enough for her to feed herself and her son. Another widow was down to a little bit of oil, she was about to lose her sons to debt collectors when she was told to begin pouring the little bit she had into jars. She was told to borrow jars and containers from the neighbors. Imagine the foolishness of this act, her one container was not even full, what did she need with more empty ones, were they to show her how little she had, or to give her an opportunity to pour out her little and watch it become great?

We are not entrusted with more when we hold tightly to what we have, we are entrusted with more when we are willing to give what we currently have according to the leading of the Holy Spirit. I want to encourage and challenge all of us today to stop looking at our inventory and start looking at God’s; to give not only cheerfully but willingly; to not give from our plenty but to even give from our lack; “to spend ourselves” not because God  says we have to but because God has trusted us to want to. Giving is always an opportunity, it is an opportunity to bless someone else, an opportunity to share the goodness of God, an opportunity to trust God more than ever before, an opportunity to see God do something we have never seen Him do and an opportunity to sew seed that will produce a harvest. We destroy the spirit of poverty in the Body of Christ when we give generously, when we trust completely and when we count nothing as our own but everything as God’s. He is our provider; give as He leads and receive as He gives

This week we will begin our next corporate fast. In the past we have fasted a day a week together, this is the first time that we have called for a prolonged corporate fast. We will begin on May 21st and the fast will go through May 30th with a time of fellowship after the Sunday service on Pentecost Sunday, May 31st.

Our focus for this fast is “Becoming the Possession of Christ.” Each day we will have a different focus, a different part of our lives that we will be presenting to God, asking Him to search, to cleanse and to take possession of if we have held it as our own.

Every day, starting this Wednesday night the next days focus and Scripture will be posted in the News section as well as the “Days of Fasting” page of this website.  If you would like the full 10 days focus all at once you can email abie@cityofrefugefellowship.org and it can be sent to you.

My prayer is that we would join together to allow God to “shake everything that can shake” so that we would be found empty of ourselves, empty of the things of the world and filled to an overflowing measure of the Holy Spirit that we might be able to be poured out like never before. There is no limit to what God can do through a vessel that is completly possessed by Himself. I pray that we would be those vessels.

We have set aside every Tuesday as a day of prayer for our National leaders: President Obama, the Senate and the Congress. Each week we present a specific focus, birthed from Scripture, that we can agree and pray together.

This week we pray that

Our National Leaders would  declare the Lord our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey! Joshua 24:24

Please keep in prayer the appointing of the new judge to the Supreme Court.  Lets pray that God’s choice will be selected for this vacant seat.

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules the people groan. Proverbs 29:2

Therefore, I will exhort that first of all supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.  I Timothy 2:1-3

This Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM is Burlington Day. The following is a description from the City’s website:

“Join us along High Street and the Promenade as we celebrate Burlington! Music, Entertainment, Craft and Food Vendors, Artists, Taste of Burlington Free Food Sampling, Kids Games, Carriage Rides, Trolley Rides, Rickshaw Rides and Baby Clydesdale Rides are just a few of things you will find.”

Please come out and take part in the community. This is a great opportunity for all of us to meet new people, open our eyes and ears to see and hear what is happening in our community, and to be actively praying for the peace and presence of God to overtake our city.

My youngest son, Elijah, has a new favorite game, hide and seek. He loves to play even though he has yet to understand that the point of the game is to not be found. He says, “I’ll hide and you count.” He then tells me where he will be hiding. He runs to the closet or behind the couch and yells “now count”. I count to ten and he giggles the entire time. When I finally shout out “ready or not here I come”, he is so excited that he usually ends up popping out of his hiding place excitedly screaming, “Here I am!” He laughs and then wants to do it all again and again and again. The funny thing about this is that Elijah plays hide and seek with me the exact same way that most of us hide the weak places of our flesh. We try to cover them but they come out quickly. We try to deny them but they come and show that they are still there. We weep and make promises and vows that we will never give in to that weakness again and then we find ourselves back again, weeping and promising. Have you ever noticed that the things that we hide in our lives become the things that control us? They take over because of the amount of energy that it takes to cover them. We live in fear of stumbling again, of someone finding out, of being a disappointment. We spend hours imagining the consequences of no longer hiding and we spend huge portions of our lives being accused and lied to by Satan. He is the one that convinces us to hide, to be ashamed, to feel guilty, to cover ourselves so that no one will see. He is the one that has convinced us all that weakness disappoints God. He is the one that wants us to remain hidden, it is God’s desire for us to be found, even to be found out.

The last night of Jesus‘ life before the cross has to be one of the most richly packed few hours ever experienced on earth. Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, He shared Passover with them, introducing all of us to “the Lord’s Supper”. He announced His betrayal and even sent the betrayer on his way to accomplish his task. He shared His heart with His brothers and worked very hard to prepare them for the coming storm. Jesus announced to them that they would all “stumble” but that He would return to them. Peter heard this and boldly disagreed. He told Jesus, “Even if all are made to stumble, I will never be made to stumble. . . Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!” Peter meant what he said, he was willing, he desired to be strong for Jesus, he desired to prove his love, his worth, his position and his calling. Peter was the very definition of “the spirit indeed is willing.”

Many of us are like Peter in this instance. We are willing. It is our desire to overcome sin, our desire to change our attitudes, our thoughts, our past patterns of behavior. We are willing to go wherever Jesus leads, to be whatever He asks us to be, to do whatever He asks us to do, to let go of whatever He asks us to let go of. It is good to be willing, it opens the door for God to work in our lives, but willingness is not enough to see us transformed. We have put too much attention and focus on being willing. We have actually allowed the concept of willingness, of wanting to, to become a thorn for us, not one that keeps us humble but rather one that keeps us in pain. We have believed and even judged each other with the thought that we would stop sinning if we really wanted to. We would change our minds if we really wanted to. We would be healed if we really wanted to. We would be delivered and freed from our bondages if we really wanted to be. We have accused ourselves and allowed Satan to accuse us of not really wanting it enough and so we are failures. We have heaped condemnation upon ourselves and upon each other and I believe we have done it because we have not listened to all of Jesus’ words and followed His example.

“The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The point Jesus is making is that willingness will not overcome the weakness of your flesh. We have to come to grips with this point, we are weak. Our flesh is weak, it is easily led astray, it is anxious, worried, fearful, lustful, selfish and filled with doubt. I really believe this, we have to stop trying to change our flesh, it will not change, we need to learn how to take away it’s power. Jesus wrestled with His flesh that night. He asked Peter, James and John to pray for Him. He confessed to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” Matthew says that He fell on His face and began to pray. Luke wrote that He was in agony, that He prayed with so much emotion and sorrow that an angel was sent to strengthen Him. Luke finally says that He prayed so earnestly that “His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Let’s remember that Jesus was completely God but at the same time completely man. He wrestled that night not with His Father but with His flesh and Jesus taught us this incredibly important lesson, we overcome our flesh when we expose it.

Jesus wanted to save us, He wanted to conquer hell and the grave, He wanted to return to His Father victorious and fulfilling His purpose as the “Lamb of God slain from the foundations of the world.” He was indeed willing. And yet, as a man, His flesh did not want the cross, His flesh did not want to die, His flesh did not want to leave His disciples. He did not cover and hide those things, He did not pretend that they did not exist and He was not ashamed of the battle going on inside of Him. The opposite is actually true, Jesus knew that the only way to overcome all of the emotions of the night was to openly confess them, to put them out there for His brothers to intercede for Him and to give them to His Father to carry Him through.

Ultimately this entire night, this entire battle became a matter of trust. Would Jesus trust His brothers to intercede for Him? Would He trust His Father to have a perfect plan, to care for Him, to love Him, to protect Him, to use Him for the eternal purpose they had always known? Would He trust His Father to not reject Him when He opened His heart? Would He trust His Father to comfort Him, to help Him and ultimately to empower Him to overcome His flesh? Our battle is exactly the same. Will we trust God, I mean truly trust Him? Will we believe that He knows our weakness before we confess it and He will make a way of escape if we will only open ourselves up to Him? Will we trust that He will never leave us nor forsake us? Will we trust that He loves us, He always loves us? Will we trust that we are not rejected and that in fact, we have been accepted? Will we trust that if we will endure the moment, if we will endure the struggle, the hardship, the refiners fire, the discipline that is shaping our character’ then we will walk in victory? Will we trust God enough to believe that a cross of death can bring forth the eternal life of all who will ever believe?

Jesus’ choice that night was to try to do His best and hope it was enough to erase the flesh that warred inside of Him or to expose His weakness and trust God to receive Him and to strengthen Him. The choice is ours today as well. Will we continue to live in hiding, of hoping that today will be the day that we want to change enough to actually make it happen or will be expose our weakness to our brothers and sisters and to God Himself, believing that He will not reject us but rather will lift us up and make us strong?

The day is coming in which Elijah will no longer want to be found. Soon we will play hide and seek and he will actually be upset when I find him. I am not looking forward to that day. I want he and I to live our lives hoping to find each other, hoping to have nothing covered and everything exposed. I want the laughter of His voice to be because I am coming not because He is so well hidden I can’t find him. I believe that God feels about you and I the same way I feel about Elijah, He hates that we hide. He went looking for Adam and Eve, He searched for Saul, He went and restored Peter; believe me you are not coming to find God, He is always coming to find us, to restore us, to heal us, to mend us, to comfort us, to love us. I want to challenge each of us today, lets come out of our hiding places of weakness. May we follow Jesus’ example and confess the weakness of our flesh to brothers and sisters, asking them to intercede on our behalf and then, may we close ourselves up with God and open our hearts. Today, tell Him all your fears, all your doubts, all your bents and all your temptations. He knows them all already, we are simply taking away the power of our flesh by exposing it to the one that has the ability to overcome it. Jesus left the Garden of Gethsemane ready to fulfill His calling, sure of His Father’s love and stronger than the weakness of His flesh. He was not ashamed to be weak because He was confident that the Spirit within Him was strong. It is time to come out of hiding, to trust God’s love, God’s strength, God’s calling and our position as His children. His love covers a multitude of sins and masters a lifetime of weakness. It is an amazingly joyful thing to be found by the One that knew where we were all along.

Perspective is a powerful thing. It is the difference between panic and peace; hope and despair; confidence and fear. At some point in time we have probably all tried to consider whether we were “glass half-empty or half-full” people. I believe that we often think of perspective in terms of what we see, while this is definitely reasonable and probably true, I believe that much of our spiritual perspective comes from what we know. Our hearts will deceive us, our eyes will deceive us, but the Holy Spirit within us, He is called “the Spirit of truth”, He will always tell us what is true and what is right.

II Kings 6 tells us of a time in which the King of Syria sent his army, both soldiers and horses, to surround and capture the prophet Elisha. Early in the morning Elisha’s servant went outside and saw that the entire city had been surrounded by the Syrian army “with horses and chariots.” The servant panicked, he cried out for Elisha, “What shall we do?” The response of the prophet was classic prophetic perspective, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” At this point we don’t know what, if anything Elisha has “seen”. What we find out is what Elisha is sure of, that God is His refuge and His strength, that God is His provider and His protector and that God is always sufficient for every kind of need and every time of neediness. Elisha then prays, “Lord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” The passage then goes on to give us a dramatic description of what I believe Paul was speaking of when he wrote “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” II Kings says of the servant, “Then the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw. And behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” The servant saw what Elisha already knew, God is with us, God is for us, God is here. Elisha didn’t call on Him, He knew that he dwelt with Him. The Syrian army didn’t change his perspective because his perspective was found in God’s character, God’s love and God’s promises. Where is our perspective found today, with our eyes, with our hearts, with our minds or with the Holy Spirit that dwells within us?

Henry and Melvin Blackaby wrote in Experiencing the Spirit, “The servant saw the activity of men; Elisha saw the activity of God.” How do we see God’s activity? We see what God is doing around us when we are looking with the Spirit that dwells within us. We see the activity of God through our prayer lives, through the Word of God, through the Body of Christ and through our own personal and intimate experience with God. While I may be able to learn about God through someone else’s experience, the perspective of knowing and doing the will of God can only come in my relationship with Him. Others can lead me to His presence but I must experience Him for myself. The servant needed to see what Elisha already knew, Elisha couldn’t tell him about the army, he had to see it for himself.

There is one last thing that I find very interesting about this passage. It doesn’t tell us that Elisha saw the army. I realize that common sense tells us that he had to have seen them to be able to know that they were there. What about uncommon sense? What about the truth of knowing without seeing? What about the reality of not being afraid simply because of the goodness of God rather than the sight of an angelic army? I realize this is conjecture but for a moment let’s remember what Jesus said to Thomas after He showed him His scars: “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” The author of Hebrews told us, “we walk by faith and not by sight.” There is a place in relationship where we know, where we are simply sure, that is the place of perspective that I believe we are called to, even more, that I believe is available to each one of us. The Holy Spirit of God lives in us, He is not there to be silent or to let us be the leaders of our paths, He is there to lead, to speak, to shine a light and to make known everything that Jesus wants to be known. Today I would encourage each one of us to change our perspective. Don’t just change the gaze of your eyes, close them, and let the Spirit of God speak. No matter what you are in the midst of today; whether it be death or life; angels or principalities or powers; things present or things from your past or your future; whether it be high or low or anything that could ever be explained or created; “Those who are with us”, in fact those who are with you, “are more than those who are with them.” Don’t always trust what you see, trust in Him whom you know, He is always near, He is always working and He is always rejoicing over you with singing (Zephaniah 3:17).

We have set aside every Tuesday as a day of prayer for our National leaders: President Obama, the Senate and the Congress. Each week we present a specific focus, birthed from Scripture, that we can agree and pray together.

This week we pray that

Our National Leaders will walk as children of light in the Lord, in all goodness, righteousness and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And will have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

Ephesians 5:8-11

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice; but when a wicked man rules the people groan. Proverbs 29:2

Therefore, I will exhort that first of all supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may live quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior.  I Timothy 2:1-3