Mon Aug 9, 2010

Must tell you how grateful we are for all of your insight and messages you send.  Always looking forward to what ever you send.

Question:  When a person goes astray for a long period of time, like several years, can they still be quickened again and come back to being in fellowship with God?   Not sure if he is totally cold or not.   As far as it is known to me (wife) God no longer has a place in his life. We have had some talks lately and it seems like he wants to turn back to God.   How will I know if this is real?     

Having trouble hearing from God.  Everything is so silent.  Don't know how to break through.  Want what you have and desire to be all that you say we should be.   Yet all is so empty, like standing outside a candy store and can only look and not partake.

Thanks again and please keep the messages coming as you are given to share.

M_____

Silent? and Empty? Truly Impossible!

M_____,

Thank you for sharing with me.

I assume you are talking about your husband. Let me answer your second question first.

Don't look at your husband to know what God is doing.

Your desire to see your husband filled with the glory of God is Jesus inside of you. God's favor is all over that desire. As you ask God to open your husband's eyes, believe that He absolutely is doing just that. Do not look at your husband. What you see with your natural eyes cannot be true. God's favor is always causing what you ask to become reality.

Listen, M_____, God's favor is towards you, upon you, in you. You do not have to feel it or see it. It is there absolutely and always. What you must do is fall back into that favor and allow it to be the only thing that exists.

Give Him thanks, because right at this moment God is doing wondrous things that you cannot see to bring your husband to the knowledge of His glory.

Second, if your husband has known the Lord in the past, then he belongs completely to Jesus. He simply does not know it. But his lack of knowing or inability to see the Mighty and Holy One inside of Him cannot be true. Just because a blind person cannot see the chair he is sitting on does not mean the chair is not there. But you are not blind and you see only God. Jesus is real, He is Savior, and there is nothing else.

But that brings us to your next unstated question.

You have decided that you cannot hear God speaking. That He is silent and you are empty. But M_____, how can this be true? You are believing something that is truly impossible. It is impossible for God to be separate from you.

Look at your own heart, your own person, your own mind and thoughts and feelings, your own fears and hopes, your own pain and sorrow. All of it is the Lord Jesus Christ. All of it is Him walking in a tender union of care and kindness and hope with you. You are never ever separate from Him in any possible way and always everything is Jesus speaking to you, leading you, comforting you, teaching you of His life and love that fills you to overflowing.

You should not be anything other than what you are. You are all that He is right now.

That's where it has to start. You can't know Him as He is until you know Him as you are. You don't enter the "candy store" by reaching. You are in the candy store; He has already placed you there, and now Jesus says to you:

"M____, receive Me. I am coming to you all the time and in every way. When you feel empty, I am in that emptiness, when you feel sad, I am sharing that sadness with you and you with me. What you desire, I desire with all My heart. You cannot make me carry you; I carry you inside myself no matter what you think or feel or see. Accept Me, M____, accept Me."

So long as you don't know that God loves you, you will continue to imagine that you are separate from Him, looking in the window, wanting what you imagine you don't have. But you know that this imaginative "separation" cannot be true.

How do you know that He loves you? Because He says He does. And that is everything. There is nothing else that exists or that is true.

But, M___, there is something even better than His love for you. God likes you. He likes the way you think; He loves to listen to you talk. He is thrilled with the choices that you make; He gets so much excitement out of just being with you. To God, being with you is the most incredible thing in the universe. He'd rather spend time with you than do anything else He could do.

But let's look at something specific that you must change.

You say, "Having trouble hearing from God." This is not true. But the problem is that you say it. Don't ever say it again. Instead say, "God speaks to me all the time." Say it out loud, over and over. Now God says that He speaks to you all the time, so in saying what God says you are only speaking the truth.

You say, "All is so empty." M____, you know that you are saying something that is impossible. You ARE filled with Jesus; He lives in your heart. What you must do, and you must do it, is never say again that you are "empty," or anything like it. Instead say, "Jesus fills me right now with all of His glory." Say it out loud, over and over. Every time you "feel" empty say, "Jesus fills me right now with all of His glory." Now, God says that Jesus fills you right now with all of His glory, so if you say what God says you are only speaking the truth.

But don't say it expecting something to happen in your feelings at that moment. Say it because it is true. God gives wonderful feelings, but wonderful feelings do not tell us the truth.

Your eyes are bound to your tongue. What your mouth speaks is what your eyes see. When your mouth speaks things that cannot be true, then your eyes can only see things that cannot be true. For instance, it looks to you as if Jesus is not in your husband. But you know this cannot be true.

And when your mouth speaks the things that are true, the things that God says, then your eyes begin to see what you are speaking.

What I am giving you IS the key of the kingdom. When you speak what is true, you don't make it true. It's true whether you speak it or not. But when you speak what is true, you allow your own eyes to open to see what is always and already real.

It is far, far better to die a thousand times believing, believing, believing that God's favor is upon you in every way, that His goodness abounds towards you, that healing is at your doorstep, that wondrous things are just ahead, that in a few days everything will turn around, to get your hopes up, to get your hopes up, to get your hopes up, even though you may not "see" it right now, than to live five minutes in the nightmare and the lie that good things just don't happen to you, that you are somehow cursed, that God is far away from you.

The first is Jesus, the second is the lie, and you know that the lie cannot be true.

Some people do not hear God speaking to them through Joel Osteen. And that is perfectly fine. But I have been sitting under Joel's ministry for four years now, and I always hear God speaking personally to me through every word he shares. And what God speaks to me through Joel is to change the way I think and the way I speak. Here is the web page where you can go to watch Lakewood services as they happen, the first three times are when Joel usually speaks (the same word each time, so if you miss one time, you can catch it at another time - and this coming Sunday it will be Marcos Witt sharing and not Joel.) If your computer connection is not enough, you can always catch his teachings on TV.

http://www.joelosteen.com/Broadcast/LiveServices/Pages/LiveServices.aspx

I don't care what anyone says against Joel. Those who speak against him are missing the point entirely to their own loss. And don't worry about what Joel does not teach or what God chooses not to do through Lakewood. God never gives His entire word to any one person. He gives a small piece to each one, and those who are faithful give their little bit and don't worry about what God has not given them.

And here is an amazing thing. After four years of hearing Joel teach me to change my thinking to expect God in all things, after four years of writing my book and these letters, of speaking Christ and seeing Him in myself more and more, I still go to a Sunday service and hear Joel - again - and I realize that I am still slipping back into the false way of thinking. And I always walk out filled with a renewed joy that the goodness and favor of God is upon me in all ways and at all times.

It takes practice to change the way we think and the way we speak.

I know this; I sat under "deeper truth" for many years. But my thinking about myself was completely false. And as long as I thought false things about myself, God was always far away from me and "deeper truth" was always, "Maybe, maybe, someday."

If I think God's favor coming to me at all times and in every way, then I expect God. If I think or imagine "not favor" in any way, than I expect "not God." It's a simple equation.

But if Jesus is far away from me in my thinking, then "deeper truth" is a waste of time. And if I think union with Christ, then "deeper truth" is always mine as God reveals it for real.

You are much loved by Jesus,
Daniel Yordy