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It's never too late in America though... never.
The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: “This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord. I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds.” Then He adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.”…
Hebrews 10: 16
When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and said, “Surely here before the LORD is His anointed.” But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the LORD does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart.”
1 Samuel 16: 7
originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
And the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon and said, “The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valour.”
“Please, my Lord,” Gideon replied, “if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonders of which our fathers told us, saying, ‘Has not the LORD brought us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of Midian.”
The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Am I not sending you?”…
Judges 6:12-14
Greetings ATS, and welcome to the strange times that we live in. These are days in which we will be tested by the difficulties we are faced with, days in which we will see wonders, in which we will need discernment & yes, even a passion for true holiness. Because in order to ascend the hill of the LORD, we will need clean hands & a pure heart. These things can only be found by supplication to God, and so humility is needed first and foremost.
The scripture I have quoted above is dear to my heart, as it is the first statement of the Old Testament which was given to me by the pastor who led me to Christ. I had reached a point of rock bottom, total desperation in which I felt lost beyond all measure. In my distress, I looked up to the stars above & cried out to God: "If you're real, show yourself to me, and I will follow you all the days of my life". The next day, feeling that nothing had changed, I was drinking vodka in the town centre, slumped in a doorway, drunk at 11am, drowning my sorrows. Suddenly, I caught notice of a woman in front of me. She had walked a little past me without noticing me, but suddenly stopped, turned to me & pointed at me. "You've been praying.." she said, "God answers prayer - come with me."
With that, she led me to an Evangelical Church a bloack away from where I had been sitting. On entering, she introduced me to the pastor & explained that the Lord had told her to bring me there. The pastor sat with me to understand my situation, and he explained the gospel to me. At the time, I had been a spiritual seeker, but I was also deeply troubled by spiritual persecution. I'd had a few supernatural experiences, including an out of body experience in which I was attacked by a demon, and a very peculiar dream, in which the Lord Jesus had appeared to me, demonstrating miraculous powers, and offering a promise of conferring the same upon me in the future, as tools for a purpose that He would one day reveal. At the pastor's explanation of the gospel, the weight of the previous five years fell off my shoulders as I prayed to accept Christ. Having done so I felt lighter, free, full of hope for the first time in a long time.
The pastor suddenly looked thoughtful, and after a moment, he said: "The Lord has given me a scripture for you, which He wants me to explain - it's Judges chapter 6, verse 12 - "..the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon and said, “The LORD is with you, O mighty man of valour.” Naturally, I didn't understand this business of God 'giving me a scripture', but the pastor explained the gifts of the Holy Spirit, saying that he had felt God speak to him inwardly, impressing upon him the need to share the message of that Biblical verse. He stated that in no uncertain terms, God was referring to me as a warrior, called to warfare on behalf of the Kingdom of Heaven.
At the time, I felt exactly like Gideon, I felt weak & insignificant, totally incapable of leading anyone into battle, totally overwhelmed by the thought of the spiritual enemies I had encountered in the preceeding years of my difficulties (at the time of my conversion, I was nineteen years old, and had struggled due to the effects of a drug-induced psychosis since I was sixteen. At the point of my conversion, much of the spiritual oppression I had been suffering with dropped away, though some remained, which was cleared over the next couple of years through prayer with fellow Christians, particularly those with the gift of discernment, who practised deliverance ministry, who blessed me with words of prophecy, healing & wisdom as the months passed. A friend who was in my accommodation witnessed a vision of two angels casting out a demon from me when I was sleeping - a gift from God, preventing the trauma which would have been incurred in the process had I been awake when the exorcism took place.
You see, I am just as human as anyone else, just as susceptible to the perils of this fallen world, and the foolish decisions which I made during my troubled youth. God has called me to speak words of faith, hope & grace, but He has also called me to warfare, to battle forces which have cursed Mankind since the earliest days of our sojourn in this world. All power, all gifts, all titles & names are entirely God's to give, as He sees fit, and the days are coming where much that was hidden, or obfuscated, will be made plain, easy for all to understand, so that everyone can make their choices, in the full knowledge of the Truth.
Continued...