A Better Word

Hi friends!

<Warning! This is not a cute and fluffy post. This is intense and maybe uncomfortable because we don't always like talking about the dark things. But I promise you, friend, it's for somebody. It's a Word. It's a better word, but before we get to it, I have to take you through some darkness. So, will you come with me?>

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.-Ephesians 6:12

I started writing three different posts. I started writing in three totally different flows. I started to tell you how messed up and dark everything has been in my life lately. I started to tell you about the war I have been waging with hell. I started to tell you about how hell has come for my daughter, for my marriage, for my joy, and for my passion. I will tell you about it, friends, because I know it's all love here. We are here to lift each other up and offer a support system. And we can't help each other with the things we hide. Things that are hidden don't heal. I know I may be the one who writes here, but it does not make me exempt from the struggles. In fact, I think it makes me even more the target for them. At least it has certainly been that way lately. The enemy wants to keep me from sharing with you and connecting with you. It has tripped me up and slowed my progress because in the moments of the storm I didn't really see it for what it was.

Spiraling. That's what has been going on. Downward spiraling, more specifically. I was thinking about the the previous posts I've shared with you. I can actually look back and see it. With every one came a little more struggle, a few more obstacles, and a little more resistance. I didn't know it was just getting started. I didn't know those were just the warm ups. I didn't know that I'd go from that place right there, ankle deep in the waters, to where I ended up two weeks ago, full on drowning. The struggle was more than I could take on. It seemed like I could get my head up just enough for a labored breath before I was swallowed up again. Friends, this spiritual warfare is REAL. Don't you underestimate it. Time is short here on Earth and hell is getting desperate. The enemy is coming for God's children. There is nothing off the table. There is nothing he won't invade.

Times are changing. The temperature is getting warmer, and friends, we can't play cute anymore. We can't just be lukewarm anymore. There is a real battle going on, and we need to BURN. We need to be on fire. We need to be passionate about protecting and praying over our children, our brothers and sisters, our marriages, our minds, our neighbors, our communities. We need to spend time in His word. We need to spend time with HIM.

That word I used, passionate. We make it sounds so pretty, but passion is about loving something so much you will suffer for it- agony, pain, suffering. These words come with that package. You're going to have to sacrifice time. You're going to have to do some diligent changing. You're going to have to face your pride and lay it down, and trade it for some humility. You're going to have to do some strategizing. You might have to unlearn some lies that you've been living you're life based on and it's been limiting you. It's been blocking the vision God has for you, and limiting your expectations.

It's time, friends. We have got to make some moves. I'm telling you this in experience. I'm telling you this because I just got knocked down because I wasn't ready for the enemy attacks. I wasn't prepared. I didn't have my strategy together. In the midst of it all, I felt paralyzed. I didn't even know how or what to pray. I just cried out to Jesus, but I felt so defeated and I felt so angry and I felt so confused because I am answering a call that He put on my life, and I felt like I was doing things right. I love Him, and I placed my trust in Him, but I wasn't ready for the war. I got knocked down and I panicked, and I am ashamed to say that in the thick of it all, my emotions became my strategy and it made it so easy for me to forget the ONE who never leaves. He never leaves. But I couldn't get out of my pain and my anger , devastation, and I started to operate from those things. My fear took over and then every time that I did pray, it was from a place of fear, and because of that, my faith was limited.

The enemy was in. I let him in and I didn't know how to get rid of him. But God, the great God that He is, He sent me a word. He sent me a friend. He didn't let me drown. He did let me wrestle with the enemy with all the wrong weapons for a little bit. However, He kept His eyes on me. He was watching the whole time. When it was His time, He stepped in and He reminded of all these things that He has been teaching me and equipping me with all along the way. He had to let me suffer for a while, because He needed me to feel what was going on, and understand that this is real.

My suffering was for a purpose. He doesn't let us suffer for the sake of suffering. So, I had to be reminded that if He was allowing it to pass through His hand that it was going to be used for my good. He was going to stretch me a little bit. He needed me to understand that I have some work to do. I have to be awake. I have to be prepared. He also needed me to know that it's His fight. I can only fight this kind of war with HIS weapons- in no strength of my own. I had to experience getting knocked down and almost drowning in order to make the choice that I will not let the enemy sneak up on me again. And I'm hoping that I can share what God showed me and it will spare you some of the unnecessary struggle and pain that I had to experience.

Notice that I said unnecessary because some of the struggle was strategic. Some of the struggle was allowed by God to stretch my mind and build me and strengthen me. However, some of that struggle didn't have to exist, but it did because I could not get myself together. So, I made a decision now, that when I struggle it is on purpose. I only do strategic suffering that is going to produce fruit in my life. And the only way to do that is to stay steadfast in my prayer and the position of my mind. I have to stay focused on Him. I have to stay covered in His word. I have to stay alert and watchful. I have to guard my Spirit and my heart and I have to protect my children. I have to expose the enemy for what he is in those moments, bind him up with the word of God, and the blood of Jesus, and send him back to hell where he came from.

I want to first talk about the way we pray. Okay, so there is no wrong way to pray. He will take them all. But here is the thing. As our walk becomes more intimate with Him, and the more that we read His word, the more mature we become spiritually. So, just like a baby starts talking with just sounds, and then they become words, and then eventually those words become sentences. That is kind of how we are in our prayers, in our speaking, in our faith. The Bible tells us that the power of life and death is in our tongue. It is not the things that we put into our mouth that defiles the body, but rather the things that come out of our mouth that defiles us. There has got to be strategy in our talking and our praying, too. He has given us access to His authority in order to dismantle every plan of the enemy and every attack. He has given us the things that we need to be victorious but if we refuse to receive and utilize those weapons, then we are going to be limited by our pride.

When we start speaking with the confidence in the authority that is inside of us, hell has got to back off. When we start speaking to our situations with the authority that God has given us, those situations have to change. We need to stop asking politely with some watered down faith, and start making demands on our oppressions. Depression you have got to let me go. Anxiety I demand you loose your grip on me. Stress you have to go!! We are pleading the blood of Jesus over our life! Think about this. God sent Jesus, completely sinless and filled Him with our sins, our anxieties, our pain, our anger, our dysfunction and when Jesus got up on that cross and died, all of those things died with Him. And so, when He rose again, victorious, that victory would be given to us over ever dark force and principality that dare step into our life. So, we need to demand our situations rise to align with what God says about it. Not the other way around.

We need to ask God, " What is Your better word over my situation? I know what my stress is telling me. I know what the doctor said. I know what my pain is saying. I know where the statistics place me. I know what it looks like, but what I really need to know, is what is Your better word for my situation?" That is what we are going to make a demand on. He says that no weapon shall prosper that forms against me. So, I make a demand on that promise that You gave me, God. I demand the depression to go because You said it has no place and no hold on me. I make a demand on the anxiety because God, you told me that You are the God of peace and not confusion and so if You dwell inside me, anxiety has got to move.

When He showed me this authority, I started swinging back at hell. I started putting the enemy back in his place and I put Jesus back in His place- on His throne in my life again. I got my priorities out of line for a minute. I started putting the situations above The Healer. I started reacting with the emotions I was feeling in the moment, instead of responding in the authority that He gave me.

I started taking inventory of my spirit. I had to break up with myself in some ways. I had to break the covenant I made with the fear that was supposed to just last a moment, but since I let it in, it got into my spirit. So I started operating from a spirit of fear. That wasn't the only one either. I found some spirits of anger and pride. I found some spirits of depression, of bondage. I had to break up with them. Then I could receive God's better word for me. Then I could hear the gentle, loving whisper of my Father again.

It was then that I realized I needed to talk to my situations , not from where they were, but from where God is. I had to bring them up to Him. I had to force them up to align with His better word. I had to operate in the authority that God placed inside of me when Jesus resurrected up into Heaven. He already won the battle. I had to realize that I had the victory already, because of my position, my lineage. I am the daughter of the Most High King who already defeated every dark force and principality, and because of that I have already defeated it too. I just have to have the faith to believe it. Then I can put works to that faith which gives it it's life. If I just claim that I have that faith of victory, but when the time comes to tap into it, I start operating from a spirit of fear, then I leave faith dead. Faith without works is dead, according to His word. So that faith can't be activated if I'm operating in my fear.

So what do we do? We are going to be in situations that make us feel fearful. We just have to make the decision that even if we don't know how it's going to work out, we know that it has to work out. We don't know when it's going to change, but that change is coming. We feel like God has left, but we know that is impossible. We have to come to Him in that honesty and lay it down at His feet, and then leave it to Him to work it out. We have to have enough faith to leave it there with Him. That means we have to stop fighting in our own strength, which let's rationalize here for a second. That means we are fighting in our lack or weakness. You don't show up for the battle and forget your weapons. Friends, we are merely dust! So, we have to fight in the strength of our Almighty God. And when you make that decision, you then have to leave behind every idea that crosses your mind that contradicts it. Every fearful thought that rises up and tells you that it's not going to work. You've got to set your faith in motion right there. "I may not know how or when, but I do know my Savior, and so I let it go. He is aware. He is watchful. He has made a way. He is Sovereign. There is no defeating God. Death itself couldn't keep Him! He is your strength. And He is NEVER going to let go of you.

"God destroyed the cords of death and raised Him up, because it was impossible for death's power to hold Him prisoner."-Acts 2:24

I will begin sharing some of the details of what I've been going through over the next few weeks. I just really wanted to get some of these things to you now because I feel like this is the part that is so much more crucial and important than the things that were going on.

<ALSO:>

Please take the contact/ prayer request form to heart. If you need prayer, and there is nothing too big or small, I want to pray with you. I want to pray for you. Do not go through things alone. That's exactly where the enemy wants you to be when he comes. Honestly, I am so grateful to God for a couple of my friends that know me so well, and when I start to isolate, they force me out of it. They do it so gracefully and lovingly, but they pray for me. They do not let me stay in my stormy seasons alone- no matter how hard I make it for them. Haha. God favored me when He sent these angels into my life. I will never stop being grateful for them. I want you to know, that we are friends. In fact, we are family now. Yeah. Family. I will go to war for you. My prayer team will go to war for you. You never have to do it alone again.

Let's pray together.

Dear Heavenly Father,

We come to you with arms open, ready to receive Your love. We come to you with our mouths open ready to sing Your praises. We come to You, Father, in all different seasons of life right now. We ask You to just meet us right where we are. We ask You to just come sit beside of us and let us experience Your glory. Let us just soak in Your presence. We ask You, Lord, to stir up a passion inside of us to know You more. I ask, Lord, that You would start stirring things around on the inside of every person reading this post right now, and bring to their attention the things that are blocking them from accessing the fullness of the salvation You have promised us in Your word. I ask You to remove every stronghold, every oppression that is tormenting the minds and blocking the creativity and the vision that You have set specifically on Your child's life. I ask You, Lord, to step into every situation and show every person that is reading this exactly what their position should look like in this season that they are in. I pray that You let them feel Your love, Lord. I pray that You would send them each a person, a friend, someone to unite with them that would bless their lives in ways that only You could orchestrate. I thank You, God, for Your Son Jesus Christ and the sacrifice that it required to send Him to that cross. The sacrifice it required to hear Him cry out to You in agony and pain. The sacrifice it required for Him to walk to that cross and hang there while He was tortured. The love that was expressed could never be measured in the scope of our flesh. I ask you, Father that this would penetrate into the core of our being so that when we have those rising doubts and feelings that this would remind us of your unfailing love for us. And we thank You for that, God. We thank You Jesus. We love You and we honor You right now, even in the midst of our storm. In Jesus' precious name, we pray.

Amen.

Have an amazing week, friends, and don't forget to RSVP your spot for Bible Study!! I am so excited for this particular study, and a little surprise: My beautiful daughter, Amaya will be hosting with me, so I am super -extra excited!!

Be Blessed!

-xoxo-

-Bethany Hope