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I said to myself, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.” Ecclesiastes 3:17 By assuming my place on the throne, I set myself up to be king of my world. It didn’t work out well because that’s not how I was wired by God to be at peace. I was meant to be a child in His kingdom, not the pretend King who failed to bow to the real King of the Universe. God’s message in scripture became very clear ~ Give God back His rightful place, put the fate of those who have wronged me into His hands, trust Him to rule over them, and then live by faith that He will do so with holiness. Daily, I remind myself that my posture and mantra is, ‘Long Live The King!’ What trips up most every child of God is that God can appear inactive and we wrongly assume that He is also uncaring. He doesn’t appear to love as well as we love our own children. When they hurt, we come running. When they are wronged, we rise to defend. When they cry that something is unfair, we listen and mediate if necessary. Yet, God tells us that He loves us purely and perfectly. He tells us that all His intentions for us are good. He tells us that anyone who messes with us – touches the apple of His eye. How can I believe that when my heart is aching with injustice?I go immediately to the parallel of Jesus’ life on earth and my life on earth. That’s where I find so many of my answers. He was hunted down by Herod’s henchmen. That was unfair. His ministry was fraught with dangers I can’t begin to understand, and God didn’t deliver Him from everyone. Some, yes. Others, no. His suffering was part of God’s redemptive narrative. What was absolutely so stunning about it all was Jesus’ absolute trust in His Father.  His love and confidence in His Father never fractured while suffering. He never doubted His Father’s love and favor. A little further in our study, we will see that Jesus had to trust God to rule righteously when relationships with people and Satan got dicey.  He had to make the choice to live by faith, and He learned this, scripture says, through obedience. His way, His path, is also my way, my path.

“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.” Matt. 6:14

Forgiveness.  After hearing many sermons over the years and after reading many books on the topic, I believe it should be clear what forgiveness is.  The mandate, however, is to just do it.  “Forgive and forget.”  But having lived through multiple, messy betrayals in my life, I discovered that it’s not as cut and dry as often portrayed.  Nor is it instantaneous if the hurt is deep and the relationships are ongoing.  

God took me on a 5 month journey of forgiveness and it was mostly new territory.  I learned what forgiveness is, what it isn’t, and why it’s so hard to do.  There were many roadblocks and I found little help in working through them.  (Oh, but the Holy Spirit led me safely through unchartered territory.)  This series will give me the opportunity to share my own journey through anger, injustice, and then trust and active submission to the sovereignty of God.  I can promise you that the devotionals to follow will not contain well worn cliches.  I offer nothing that I have not first tried for myself.  

There was a day in early May, 1997, that God made it clear through an older woman speaking into my life, that I had not forgiven someone who deeply hurt me over a period of 22 years.  I was devastated and went to God about it.  I believe I heard Him speak to me deep in my spirit.  “Let me show you what you’ve done, Christine.  You’ve climbed the steps to the throne, looked right at me and said ~ ‘I want your seat please.’  You put my crown on your head and declared yourself qualified and capable to play judge and jury over the people who hurt you.  You will decide when they’re sorry.  You will decide when they deserve your pardon.  You will decide how long to make them pay.  But know this ~ I want my seat back.  I made you to be a much loved daughter in my kingdom, not a judge.  That’s my job.  Put the people who hurt you into my hands and leave them there.  I rule righteously and you can trust me.”

That was the beginning of my many discoveries about myself and about my King.  I learned that forgiving is not letting someone off the hook.  It’s taking them off my hook and putting them on God’s hook.  Because He is holy, is not that the best place for them to be?  Ah yes.  And here’s the thing.  No child is meant to wear a crown.  

Lord, I pray for each person who is reading this.  So many are eaten up with the sense of injustice.  Lead each of them safely through these next many days.  Give them freedom.  Help them trust you  enough to give You your rightful seat back.  Amen

The most dangerous thing we can do when choosing scripture is to choose with our flesh.  We know what we want and we’ll set out to find a scripture or two that, we think, will get it for us.  

I was teaching Prayer Mapping to a group of women’s ministry leaders.  During the break, a woman approached me and was all excited.  “I’m going to write a prayer map for my marriage,” she said.  

While that sounded like something to applaud, the Holy Spirit must have nudged me to ask more questions.  “How so,” I asked.  “Tell me more about your situation.” 

She went on to explain. “My husband left me for another woman a few years ago.  I have been hurt and angry.  But I believe God has shown me that He will come back to me.  My prayer map will target this ~ finding scriptures that will cause him to leave his new wife and return to me.” 

I cringed inside, knowing how easily she could extract promises from Jeremiah and other O.T. texts about God restoring, rebuilding, etc.  I asked her if she was open to my feedback.  She nodded.  I warned her. “Please don’t do that! That’s actually a form of witchcraft, to twist God’s words to bring about something God is actually against.”  She looked shocked.  

I continued. “God’s will is for him to be a righteous husband to his new wife.  God has a another future for you, first to heal your heart, and then to show you the new path He has for you.”  Thankfully, I felt she listened with an open heart. 

Nothing carries more weight than quoting God’s words.  We need to be careful before we actually do it.  Not only does it need to be in context, but we must wait on the Lord to show us what ‘word’ to stand on.  Jesus said that He did nothing without His Father’s direction.  That would have included how he answered the devil during the temptation period in the desert.  The scriptures He chose, He didn’t choose alone.  God showed Him and He followed the lead.  

You will decree a thing and it will be established for you.  Job 22:28 

A farmer went out to scatter seed. As he was scattering seed, some fell on the path, and birds came and ate it. Whenever people hear the word about the kingdom and don’t understand it, the evil one comes and carries off what was planted in their hearts. This is the seed that was sown on the path. Matthew 13: 3-4, 19 

When my parents traveled abroad, my mother used to bring seedlings from that country back home to her property.  She wanted to grow things that were new to her property, plants that might never have grown here in the US before. 

In a spiritual sense, this is what happens when Christ, the great Sower, sows heaven’s seeds on earth. These seeds are powerful and high reproductive. There is no guess work whether they will take root or not.  Jesus said that if they are planted in the right kind of soil, they willbear fruit.  .

The Bible is full of unseen life. The words on the page may look powerless, but then again, you can’t always tell what you’re looking at.  A handful of seeds don’t look powerful either but when you plant them, oh, they turn into something quite different.  A seed becomes the tallest of trees.

Why kind of seeds do you need to plant?   In at atmosphere of hostility, plant peace seeds.  If there is a church split, plant unity seeds.  If disillusioned and hopeless, plant faith seeds.  The Word, when planted, culminates in the effects God promises.  

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,so is my word that goes out from my mouth:  It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  Isaiah 55:10-11

As we customize prayers for isolated issues such as generational bents, soul ties, and strongholds of all kinds, we’ll be looking for scriptures that correlate.  Prayers are strengthened when infused with the Word of God.  We pray into them, stand on them make declarations of faith, and even echo the author’s words as they made confessions of repentance.   

To hunt for a scripture, most of us perform a simple word search, and if it seems to fit, we use it.    The problem is, it may be out of context.  We want to make sure to handle the Word with integrity.  To base our prayers on promises that weren’t even meant for us but for someone else in a specific period of time, is to misrepresent it.  

When we find a scripture we want to consider using, we must explore its origins before assuming it fits.  We should go back and read the chapter it’s in.  We should consider the author and to whom he was writing.  We should ask ourselves, “Was this a general promise to God’s people or was it a promise to one person – for a specific purpose and time?”  

When Ron and I faced infertility in our early years of marriage, I leaned into the story of Hannah.  Especially the part when Eli (the priest) announced that God would open her womb and she would have a son.  I was tempted to own that promise for myself, reminding myself that scriptures say that God can open a barren womb.  However, Eli’s words were just for Hannah.  

Before I decided to abandon the idea, I decided there was a way I could incorporate it that would be appropriate.  “Lord, you are the God who has the power to open and close wombs.  Just as you opened Hannah’s, would you also open mine?”  See the difference?  I didn’t use Hannah’s promise as my own; I affirmed that God possesses the power to bring about a miracle, if He chooses to do so.  It might seem like semantics but there is a big difference. 

Lord, give me insight and wisdom when I want to fortify my prayers with Your Word.  I don’t want to misuse it but honor you with it.  Amen

Since starting Prayer Mapping this year, we’ve studied our enemy’s personality, history, and tactics.  We’ve explored the origins of spiritual authority and how to exercise it. We’ve become acquainted with blind spots and the freedom God offers.  

It’s time to start thinking about how to create a prayer map. Prayer tends to live from the shallow end of the pool without a foundation such as the one we’ve built since January. Let me ask you a question: Because of everything you’ve learned so far in our Prayer Mapping series, haven’t your eyes been opened to understand more about yourself and how the kingdom works? All of that translates into more informed intercession.

As you think of sitting with a pen and a blank notebook in front of you, how does a prayer map begin?  The very first thing that should go on paper is what I’ve named a legal foundation. 

A legal foundation is a short collection of scriptures that declare Christ’s supremacy. They boast of His power, His sphere of influence, and His ultimate authority. By starting a prayer map this way, you declare that God is bigger, more powerful, and ultimately sovereign over all things. You are setting legal precedents, like serving the enemy legal papers before the first prayer request is verbalized.  

It’s the equivalent of carpet bombing campaigns in WWII.  When the Allies planned to invade new territory, they held ground troops back.  First, they went in and weakened the enemy’s infrastructure by blanketing the landscape (and key targets) with a relentless shower of bombs.  With the enemy scrambling and trying to re-group, ground troops went in, took advantage of the chaos, and freed village after village.  

A legal foundation is like carpet bombing.  Declarations of scripture weaken the infrastructure of the enemy’s strongholds.  With his chain of command trembling and in chaos, we commence with prayer requests punctuated with key scriptures that correlate with each issue.  

Begin searching for verses that boast of God’s power and glory. You’ll stand a little taller afterward, and your work will not be wasted. You’ll be using them in the days ahead.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation.  Hebrews 11:1 

When was the last time you heard news that seemed too outrageous to be true?  God says that anything is possible because He is God and there is none other.  We know this is true until it gets personal.  Then, unbelief plagues us all.

Humans can’t walk on the surface of the waters, yet Jesus did and Peter joined Him. The sea can’t be parted for people to pass through, yet the Israelites walked on it from one side to the other.  A leper shouldn’t be able to dip seven times into a dirty river and come out disease free, yet Naaman saw his own flesh transformed.  And finally, a dead man can’t walk out of a tomb alive, but Jesus did it!

Where has unbelief eaten away your faith?  Where have you closed the eyes of your spirit?  What have you accepted as normal that God wants to transform into something supernatural?   The resurrection happened and the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is ours, God says.

What are we missing that we were destined to experience?

Show us, Lord. Amen

What can be done to deal with the lies that dominate our thinking?  Can we be set free from long-time captivity?   The Apostle Paul weighs in. 

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

He refers to weapons that are at our disposal.  They are not weapons the world uses ~ physical things we can hold in our hands.  They are spiritual weapons, invisible yet effective, because they demolish thoughts that run contrary to the knowledge of God.  ‘Demolish’ is not a lightweight concept either.  It means to bring something down with violence.  It’s what happens to a tall skyscraper when a demolition experts strategically places dynamite in just the right places and then pushes a button.  The entire structure implodes to dust.  

It’s important for me to understand what, exactly, implodes. Paul uses the words ‘arguments and pretensions.’ These come from the root word for logic, or mindsets.  A mindset is the way each of us processes information. It’s the way we think, reason, and make conclusions. Mindsets are formed over a lifetime, over decades of experiences in a fallen world.  We didn’t set out to think like Christ.

Have you come up against a person with a depressing mindset, a negative mindset, a paranoid mindset?  You know that it is ironclad.  Get in an argument with them and they can’t see the truth.  They won’t budge no matter how many hours and days you try to reason with them.  The only cure for a broken mindset is an application of the Word of God.  It is sharp and powerful for exposure, conviction, and then demolition.

Oh, that I would always be willing to have my mind washed by the water of the Word, to be humble and realize that my ‘mindset’ needs to be offered to God as a clean slate.  Jesus modeled this way of life.  Though He was God and His thoughts were perfect, He still did not exercise equality with His Father, but sought God’s mindset in all things. 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.  Philippians 2:5-6 

Am I willing to lay down my points of view, my opinions, and my beliefs at the foot of the cross?  Fragile egos should not get in the way of what needs demolishing in order to be re-fashioned God’s way.

Every single one of us have to fight a series of pet lies that emanate from our stories.  We cling to them tenaciously because they feel so true.  We believe the life patterns we’ve witnessed prove them to be true.  

Though we embrace Christ, the One who is Truth, our mind is still fraught with tiny fortresses built upon the lies that control us.  If I want to know which ones are specific to me, I can listen to my own self talk.  I tell on myself all the time.  Here are some common ones. 

“My past will always plague me.” 

“God forgives sins, yes, but not mine.”

“Everyone in my family says I’m a loser. They have to be right because they all agree.”

“I’ve prayed so long about this.  God has done nothing so He can’t care about me.”

“Things won’t ever work out for me.  Too much of my life has passed.”

Just like the power of inner vows, these lies put us on the railroad tracks to nowhere.  We are stuck in their ruts until we are humble enough to realize that feelings don’t write truth and we don’t know more than God.  When I cling to my lies, I’m insisting that God is wrong, that He is a liar.  You might think that to be strong language. But when I disagree with what God says, and He is Truth, I believe His words to be untrue. 

There is a passage in 2 Corinthians that perfectly describes what happens when we have beliefs that grate against God’s words.  Tomorrow, we’ll explore the passage.  The fabric of deception is critical for any believer to grasp.  We must know what the lie is, where it came from, why I hold onto it with a tight fist, and how it adversely affects my life.  Is there anything powerful enough to break the stronghold?  Especially when it’s directed my life for decades?  Yes! 

Between now and tomorrow, see if you can name three lies that contradict what God says is true.  It will be about Him, about you, or your future.  Let’s set the stage for a new tomorrow.  God is waiting, eagerly, to see lies broken and His people freed from the grips of deception. 

Spoken with an evil intent, cursing words are words meant to inflict harm.  When we hear them as an adult, we do better at sifting them through the grid of God’s Word. Though they momentarily wound us, we know that we should not own them.  If we know Jesus well enough, we will know not to repay evil for evil and retort with cursing words of our own.  We will know to forgive and bless, the very opposite of what we want to do.  Our love for Jesus, and remembering how radically He forgave us, overrides our flesh. 

The reason I have included cursing words as a blind spot, however, is because we heard the most destructive cursing words as children. They were insults delivered by parents, relatives and friends.  

“You’re always in my way.”

“You were a surprise baby. We never wanted another child.”

“You are stupid.”

You’ll never be as successful as your brother.”

You can fill in the blanks now from personal experience, right?  Because the nature of children is to believe what they are told, the words stick.  They define our self-concept and we live out their predictions. 

Cursing words will continue to impact us until we decide to quit owning them, forgive the ones who spoke them, and ask Jesus to wash the effects from our hearts and minds.  Cursing words will quit harming us if we choose to believe God over the ones who spoke with cruelty.  As children, we accumulated opinions, judgments, and biases that were not of the kingdom.  We didn’t know that what proceeds out of the heart of imperfect people can be utter foolishness, leading us into darkness.  

What comments, nicknames, or insults still define and torment you – to this day?  Isn’t it time to shed the judgements, to believe what God says over what people said?   Ask your divine Counselor to help you work through the hurt and then help you forgive.  After you relinquish your right to make them pay, bask in the scriptures and ask Him to write the beautiful realities of your identity in Christ into the fabric of your heart.  

Like a flitting sparrow or a fluttering swallow, an undeserved curse goes nowhere. Proverbs 26:2