Month: July 2010

THE MOTHER EAGLE “STIRS THE NEST”

Eagles are born to fly and to soar high above the clouds, and so are we as God’s children.

Now wait until you get a load of how they are taught to fly!

The maturing eagle is taught to fly when the mother eagle “stirs the nest.”

Do you understand what that is?

Those little eagles are not in any hurry to get out of their nest.  They are growing and their mom and dad are feeding them every day, and they are having way too much fun getting fat.

Their nest has been made out of thorns and briars.  That is how the father and mother eagle build their nest.  Say, how would you like to have your bed made out of things like that?

But that is only the outer shell.  They line that outer shell with animal skins and fur and they make it very comfortable for those little baby eagles; and so they are in no hurry to get out of that nest.

There is also lesson here for human parents too.  If you make it too comfortable at home your children will never want to leave home.

We could learn something from father eagle and mother eagle, for when it comes time for those little baby eagles to start flying, the first thing they do is stir the nest.

The mother eagle hovers over the nest and starts fluttering and flapping those powerful wings and that blows all of the loose feathers and fur away from those baby eagles.

The next thing she does is to go and take her powerful beak and tear that nest all to pieces.  She pulls out all of that fur and those animal skins and all of a sudden those little baby eagles are sitting on thorns.

That will move them out of their bed real quick will it not?  And then she starts flapping her powerful wings and then they start to get the lesson.

They think she wants them to start learning to fly.  Therefore they start flapping their wings a little bit imitating their mother.  And then she flaps her wings again.  And they will start flapping their wings again.  And then one day she screeches real loud and she swoops down and she places one of those baby eagles on her wing.  And they go up to 5000 feet and perhaps 7000 feet and then she starts swooping and soaring around through the sky and all of a sudden she tips her wings and the little baby eagle falls off.

He starts to do somersaults and flap his wings as he is heading down to the ground and all of a sudden before he goes splat on the ground she swoops down and picks him up on her wings and takes him up again to 2000 feet, to 5000 feet and perhaps to 7000 feet.

She repeats that process over and over and over again until that little baby eagle is able to fly.  That is the way the mother eagle teaches her babies to leave the nest.  She stirs the nest.

Well God the Father is compared in the Bible to the father and mother eagle.  God also will teach his children to fly high.  In the book of Exodus the Bible says,

“Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel:  ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.

Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” (Exodus 19:3-5).

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of Passage?

His father takes him into the forest, blindfolds him an leaves him alone.  He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it.  He cannot cry out for help to anyone.

Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm.

The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could  become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold.

It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him.

He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

We, too, are never alone.

Even when we don’t know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us.

When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

Moral of the story:

Just because you can’t see God, doesn’t mean He is not there.   “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

If you liked this story, pass it on…

Has gone up Yonder!!!

(May 18, 1949 – July 11, 2010)

Grammy Award-winning gospel singer, composer, and pastor, Walter Hawkins died Sunday at his home in Ripon, California after losing a battle with cancer. He was 61.

According to his older brother, Edwin Hawkins, Walter fought an arduous battle with pancreatic cancer. “Today, I lost my brother, my pastor, and my best friend… Bishop Hawkins suffered bravely but now he will suffer no more and will be greatly missed,” he said.

The gospel singer was born in Oakland, California and obtained his divinity degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1972 he recorded his first album ‘Do Your Best.’

In 1973, he became a pastor and founded the Love Center Church in Oakland.

The Mercury News reports that Bill Carpenter, a friend and family representative said that Hawkins garnered nine Grammy nominations after recording a series of albums. Hawkins’ ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ won him a Grammy in 1980.

Hawkins was once married to gospel great Tramaine Hawkins, but the union ended in divorce.

Hawkins is survived by two children, Trystan Hawkins and Walter “Jamie” Hawkins Jr., an R&B singer; a daughter-in-law, gospel singer Myiia “Sunny” Hawkins; two grandchildren, Jamie-Daniel and Jahve; and his siblings, Carol, Feddie, Edwin, Daniel, and Lynette.

R.I.P.

When life seems to have passed you by and all seems lost; when circumstances and problems mount and all you can see is more of the same; now is the time to dig in, tie a knot at the end of your rope, for your salvation is near!

God’s promise is never to leave you, nor forsake you; and though it appears from all you can see that He has done just that; and all rhyme and reason seems to have escaped you as to why, know this, God is NOT a man that He should lie!

When circumstances and life seems to contradict God’s Word, and when everything indicates otherwise, this is God’s test.

Faith in what you can see and what you already have is NOT faith at all; but rather FAITH by definition, as we read in Hebrews chapter 11, is based on nothing more than a HOPE; and it is made evident in things that are not yet felt nor seen in the natural.

Faith always sees through the eyes of the spirit, those things that are not yet visible, and are not yet manifested in the natural; but are nevertheless promised in God’s Word!

Faith also will cause us not just to see, but also it will cause us to speak of those things that are not, as though they were; just as we can learn from the “Father of Faith,” father Abraham himself:

Romans 4:17-21

¹⁷(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.

¹⁸Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be.

¹⁹And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah’s womb:

²⁰He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God;

²¹And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform.

So regardless of where you are today; or what’s going on in your life; it matters not what problems, trials, or tribulations have encroached upon your life, God is still on His throne; and is no further away than the very next breathe that you take.

Do not look for Him in heaven above, nor scan the horizon for a some sign of his presence!

Rather look inside your own heart (your spirit man); for the evidence you seek will not be found in anything you can see, feel, or touch; but it will be found in the FAITH that says I don’t care what happens; I don’t care what circumstances or problems are thrown at me; I will not let go, and I will not abandon my trust and hope in God, that He shall perform His Word in my life EXACTLY as it is written in His Word, and exactly as He has promised. Selah

Shalom,

Skip Barland

“Grace is a worship artist, ordained psalmist, songwriter/producer.
 She operates with a Davidic anointing to capture the fresh sounds of heaven.
 Her angelic voice brings healing, peace and comfort to the nations. 
Listen and you’ll hear a voice within her voice moving you closer to the heart of God. 
Catch this messenger of the Spirit…It’s more than music!”

My story begins pretty much at birth when I was born prematurely with water on my lungs. My chest would concave several inches as I gasped for breath in intensive care. Doctors gave up all hope for my tiny frame to survive as I lost a third of my body weight just struggling to breathe. On the 10th day I was miraculously healed and sent home with the name, Grace…”when God does what we can’t do”.

My mother remembers an angel visiting me in my crib when I was a few months old and then I was filled with the Spirit when I was three years old. My mom was rocking my sister to sleep praying in tongues when she surprisingly heard beautiful melodies wafting from her toddler. I was singing in tongues and shortly after I heard a piano for the first time at a neighbor’s Bible study. I reached my tiny hands up stroking the keys and said, “Mama, I want one of these.” 
The rest is history as I continue to be love sick for the Lord. I have always felt God’s presence singing over me and sensed His calling to echo His voice to the nations. I am continuing in the journey of my great, great, great, great grandfather, Orceneth Fisher, a holiness preacher who carried the Glory and traveled the West Coast igniting Revival Fires as an early apostle to California. The Fire of His holy zeal still burns within me as this is my inheritance!

I currently minister in our family church www.ocremnant.org in Orange County, California where God is stirring the Revival embers.

http://gracegrace.com/users/awp.php?ln=109708&p=home

Chuck Pierce:

The Next Move of God! Get Ready—the Pot is Boiling! The Gulf Region will See God’s GLORY!

I hope each of you is interacting with the “Issachar Devotions”. This is a special month for you to understand “God’s TIME and Calendar” in a new way! Many are beginning to understand the redemptive gifts that are activated within us when we are grafted into God’s covenant plan.

The Next Move of God!

Recently, the Spirit of the Lord spoke and said, “There is a DEEP MOVE of MY SPIRIT coming into the earth realm. The Glory of God fills the heavens. But if you will look at the Gulf region of America, you will see that the glory that would fill the earth like waters cover the sea is not moving. I am going to move in an incredible way. I will have a deep move. Get ready to ride the waves of the next move of God!“

Below, Robert Heidler shares on the Next Move of God:

God is doing an incredible work in our day! He is restoring His Church to the purity and power the early Church experienced. He is reconnecting the Church to its covenant root, so the life-giving sap of that root (Romans 11) can flow into every branch, producing the great last-days revival.

The Spirit of God is moving! He desires to bring His Church into third-day resurrection power! But we’ll never appreciate what God is doing today unless we understand what happened to the early Church.

The early Church was the most powerful entity the earth had known. It spread all over the world and nothing could stop it. Persecution only purified it and made it grow faster! Yet in the fourth century, satan found a way to destroy the early Church.

By the end of the fifth century, the Church the apostles planted was dead! The Church became a powerful political organization, but lacked the life of God.

For 1000 years, very few in the Church even knew how to get saved! If we see how the early Church died, we will be able to appreciate and flow in the great work of restoration God is doing today!

The Spirit and the Bride: A History of the Moves of the Spirit!

We are on the verge of the next move of Holy Spirit in the earth. That is why it is crucial to understand the history of the moves of the Spirit so we can “SEE” the next move of God forming.

Jesus alluded to Himself as “The Bridegroom.” God is not a God who distinguishes our gifts and callings based upon gender!

Therefore, all males in the Kingdom of God must pursue the Bridegroom. All males and females together in the Kingdom make up what is called “His Bride.” Husbands learn how to love the Church by the way they love their bride.

I actually think married men learn how to love themselves based upon their understanding of their bride. To “pursue the Bridegroom” must be a phrase that is understood by male and female alike.

The Bride, of course, is the Church! The Church is a pure virgin that will pursue (2 Corinthians 11:1-2). These are those, who by faith through grace, have pursued Him to form a relationship and go with Him throughout the earth. This can be to people, nations, highways and byways, based upon us following Him, the One we love.

My whole testimony revolves around two statements, “I will restore what you have LOST” and “Follow ME and you will see revival and restoration!” These two statements have built my life pursuit of our Lord!

In Revelation 21:9 the Church is called “the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” In the Old Testament, Jehovah and the Jewish nation were Husband and Bride. He was betrothed and married to His nation.

The prophet Hosea best revealed the relationship of a husband and unfaithful bride. As a whole, the nation of Israel rejected and was unfaithful to the One who formed them and developed His relationship with them, the people and the land.

As the Church pursues the Bridegroom and matures in this relationship, Israel will be restored by grace, forgiven, and reinstated as a nation to the firstborn, first-wife status that God intended in His origination.

This will give Israel a unique status among nations as God’s elect nation (Romans 11). This will bring them back to their call as “Bride.” All nations will then reconcile around this call and restored status.

We, the Church, the Body, the Bride of Christ, must pursue our Lover as He sends us to gather His inheritance among the nations (Psalm 2). We are being fragranced as a Bride through the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit. The Bridegroom rejoices over the Bride! We must not hesitate in our comfortable beds to open the door and leave our bedroom chamber to frolic after our Lord as He leaps from mountain to mountain, the cultures of our society.

The Word and the Spirit!

We are in a time to understand reality. Reality is when Spirit and Truth come together and we worship. To discern the world around us, we must understand both Spirit and Truth. The Woman at the Well experienced the reality of Jesus. You can also! Many people do not understand how revelation works. Without revelation, we perish or enter into humanistic thought processes.

Armed and Dangerous!

We are in a tremendous season of warfare. Warfare is conflict. Many of our books deal with spiritual warfare.

Things are getting darker and darker. Many do not understand spiritual warfare and the grace that we have been given to fight. Spiritual Warfare is wrestling and outwitting the enemy who would love to get an upper hand on you.

I See A Boiling Pot!

As I said last week, “I saw a boiling pot!” What does this mean to us? When I see something in the spiritual realm, my first step is to go the Word for an objective interpretation.

In Jeremiah 1:13, God showed the prophet a seething pot toward the north. Ezekiel 24:3 defines this boiling pot as an emblem of war. When this pot boils over, there are lands that will end in desolation. This verse reveals that from the north, evil comes. There was a steam that was rising representing an evil force in the atmosphere. This thick vapor would spread over the land.

I see war on the horizon. Many factions are in the midst of us, and war is being pieced together.

Someone asked me if I think we will be invaded in this land. I said to them, “We have so many factions vying for control that we must see that all the elements for a major conflict are already growing in our midst.”

There are religious factions warring against the next move of the Spirit of God.

There are doctrines of demons contending for the minds and time of God’s men and women. Leaders are being tested in their faithfulness toward the Lord and His ways of doing things. There are national representatives from other nations vying for information that will produce control. Mammon is influencing many against God’s purposes.

Another issue in the pot is the selfishness of many. God addressed all of Israel over the priests’ selfishness. Wars come from selfishness (James 1).

In the days of Hannah, God’s Kingdom needed a new representative. Eli and his sons had been tainted in leading the people toward the Lord.

The normal practice at Shiloh was for the priest to receive whichever part came up from the boiling pot on the end of the fork. Eli’s sons insisted on taking what they wanted, when they wanted it.

They selected the best parts for themselves. They preferred the meat being roasted rather than boiled. They refused to yield the fat for burning on the altar. God withdrew His presence. God is looking at our giving and what we are taking as well.

Hannah travailed to bring forth a new leader for a new season. God wants His presence to fill the atmosphere and His glory to cover the earth.

Jeremiah saw this boiling pot. The pot was a large kettle that was evidently sitting on a fire. A wind was blowing to keep the fire hot and the pot boiling.

In 1 Samuel 2:14, this word is also translated as “kettle”, and the word “cauldrons” is used in 2 Chronicles 35:13.

In Job 41:20, the smoke from the nostrils of the Leviathan pours out like smoke from a boiling “pot.” This causes me to see the Gulf beginning to boil and Leviathan creating stirring war over the issues that are loosed now in the earth.

Get ready—the pot is boiling! This nation is beginning to simmer. Watch around November for the pot to start boiling over.

Yes, we can pray… but in our prayers we must declare that the fire of conflict be turned down. Mammon is blowing a wind of confusion. Focus! Focus! We can gain momentum in these times that are heating up.

Watch Russia! Watch its influence in Syria and Iran. Watch as Russia attempts to align with Great Britain. Learn the concepts of war in a time of war.

Passover and Go Beyond!

We just celebrated the 4th of July. That is America’s Independence Day. Most nations have an Independence Day from someone or some type of captivity. The greatest Biblical basis for a nation being liberated was Passover. The nation of Israel, who had been submerged into the nation of Egypt, was liberated by the powerful acts of God through His servant, Moses. The Blood was the defining force of this liberation. The power of that Blood is available to each of us today through the Spirit of the One who gave His life as a sacrifice for us. Know His Blood! Know how to receive His Spirit! Know how to be liberated!

At Passover this year, we declared a shift in the timing of the Church that will bring us back into sync with the POWER of the BLOOD and DELIVERANCE! In the early Church, Passover was one of the most important times of the year.

However, when Constantine “legalized” Christianity, Passover was forbidden. In Syrian and Greek culture, Passover was not allowed to be incorporated into the worship service. Slowly, the power of His Blood was displaced as the central focus of corporate gatherings.

Passover is our Redemptive Feast linked with crossing over and entering resurrection power through His Blood! God gave us this Feast to help us celebrate that we are redeemed by the Blood of the Lamb out of the hands of the enemy!

It’s a joyful time to remember that Jesus died to set us free, so we can enter into every promise! Our Passover Celebration is a time to decree that the Church recognizes HIS BLOOD is active in the world to redeem mankind.

Don’t miss entering into and redeeming the time so you continue in this new season “free” and fully liberated!

The Power of Music and the Effects of Violent Worship!

My life is filled with music. My family loves music. We go to plays, concerts, and musical performances. We attend jazz festivals and outdoor music gatherings. We watch musicals. All of my children are musical. For some, music seems to be their goal. Sound and music play a great part of our lives. The people I minister with are musical. If they are not gifted musicians, they are worshippers. In Heaven, worship and musical sound are one.

Here is an example of music, sound, and violent worship. The Lord said that “the Kingdom is filled with violence, and the violent take it by force.” However, many of us cannot visualize what this looks like.

Wherever I minister, music and sound set the stage for the release of God’s will into the place I have been called.

Last year, I had a team ministering in Paris. Key leaders and influencers from the city were with us. In my heart I had this desire arise to go through the city and “sow joy.” During our worship, I kept hearing the Holy Spirit saying, “The sound of joy is in you!” He kept saying this over and over again.

Then He showed me that we, the people of God, must release the sound of joy!

No matter what our natural circumstances or situations dictate, and no matter what we feel physically, we have a sound of joy to release.

We must employ the law of sowing and reaping, and sow from the joy in us which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. As we release the sound of joy from the earth, He releases His joy from Heaven based on Psalm 16:11, “In His Presence, there is fullness of joy and at His right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”

That joy becomes our strength to produce supernatural victory! I knew that I could find the sound in Heaven that would produce joy in the people of Paris as I ministered and visited the city.

Heaven is filled with sound because Heaven is filled with worship. When we enter the Throne Room and come boldly before the Lord, we have access to the same worship sounds of Heaven.

We also have access to the same emotion of Heaven. Sound creates movement. Worship, sound, and music are important. Your conscience is like a window between your soul and spirit. Make sure nothing is clouding your conscience. Sound that leads you into movement and worship will cause your conscience to remain in alignment with God.

The conscience is one of the absolute authorities of our life. When our conscience is aligned and interacting with the Word of God, the “window” remains clean and open. The conscience is the lamp of the body. The conscience is the eye of our spirit that causes us to see into the heavenly realms.

Clean and open your window and receive the sound of the Lord! Let the wind of the Spirit bring the sound that you need through the window of Heaven and into the place where you are standing.

“Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5, NASB).

Unshakable praise must keep going forth in your life. Unshakable praise plows through the hardest ground. When the ground is hard, when the circumstances are adverse, God’s favor is on the one who will praise.

Fallow ground will break up. Declare the plow of praise will cut through the ungiving earth and make a way for the good seed of the Word to be planted.

The Word of God tells us to submit ourselves to God, draw near to Him and then resist the devil. I believe that as we worship and submit ourselves to a holy God, we can come into intimate contact with Him. Even though we walk here on the Earth in our worshipful submission, we ascend into Heaven. As we individually seek God and ascend into the Throne Room, we can hear the sound of Heaven in our spirit man on Earth.

Prophetic Word Released: Songs and Sounds

Recently in a worship service, LeAnn Squier, an amazing musician and psalmist, began to prophesy. I began to hear and release revelation along with her. The Spirit of God began to speak to us the following:

“I am creating a unique identity in My people. Even in searching for the sound of your sound, your identity is found in the unique sound within you. I am removing from you the noise of the world’s confusion. This noise has made you something that I never intended you to become.

“I am going to begin to pour such a pure stream of sound from Heaven around you that you will hear who you are to become. You won’t sound like any other individual and the place on earth where I have positioned you will not sound like any other location.

You are in My time, so you will not sound like another day, century, or decade. You will have a sound for now. You will have an identity that is unique and unmistakable. There are ten thousands of ten thousands of voices that are going to begin to join with your sound. This sound will be poured from Heaven, but then rise back from the Earth.

“I am tipping My golden chalice from My heavenly palace and disseminating and depositing thousands and thousands of songs and sounds in you, the sanctuary of your dwelling and the land around you.

You will birth words that express and sounds that impart and deliver the voice of what I have done and what I am doing to the societal culture around you. This will not be a sound that has one local expression, but will be linked together with harmonies of others around the world. This sound will produce a joy in the lands of the earth.

“There is a voice. The sound of My voice is going to come in an unmistakable clarity. Begin to look for the new expression. Begin to look for the new words. Begin to look for the new sounds that are going to accurately express the sound of this pouring out of this drink offering that I am delivering. I am giving assignments! Some will sing! Some will orchestrate! Some will create the movement of dance to the sound. You will bind the enemy in chains and break the back of principalities that are controlling and resisting the movement of My Spirit in the earth.

I am reordering your day with sound and the music of Heaven. This day will not sound like nor look like any other day.”

Chuck D. Pierce
Glory of Zion International Ministries
Email: chuckp@glory-of-zion.org

President Obama has appeared across Israel on a major TV interview in an effort to reassure Israeli citizens. But the fact remains: major tension still exists over the issue of settlements in Israel and what the response should be to the threat of Iran completing their nuclear weapons program. ~ Dr. Michael Evans (Your Ambassador to Jerusalem)