GOD SPEAKS
God gave me a prophetic word to preface this article with and I share it here before this article to put it all in His context. The article follows the word from the Lord, here is the word:
Elton Williamson
You are always coming before Me with needs. What you don't always remember is that I am always more ready, more willing to give than you are ready to receive. My presence is a holy place. It is a holy place.
My glory, listen to Me, My glory goes far beyond your greatest need. My presence reaches to where you cannot reach. My heart has been broken for you and My heart pours out so that I might receive you unto Me and that I might cause My compassion to flow through your life. Know that there is no struggle given to you that is insurmountable by My self and by My Spirit. Know that you can rest in Me in the midst of any trial. Know that there is strength in your weakness when you rely upon Me. Know that there is no struggle known to you that I have not prepared you for.
I am Jehovah, I am God almighty and yes My peace and My presence does surround you and you can walk in the midst of the storm. You can stand in that place of rest in Me, allow Me to strengthen you. Allow Me to cause you to be the example that I want you to be. Allow the preparation that I have put into your life, into your spirit and into your heart to manifest itself where I have placed you. I want to cause you to stand and be a tower of strength, I want the struggles that surround you to be as nothing as you rely on My Spirit, as you trust in Me for every need. Yes, I am a loving God; I want to bless your life. I want to pour into your life; I want to strengthen you without measure. I want you to trust Me, I want you to rely upon Me, and I want you to rest in Me as never before in your life.
That struggle, that turmoil, that thing that you face that is insurmountable; I want you to see it as I see it. I want you to see it as nothing in your life. I want you to rest in Me my friend; I want you to rest in Me. Give to Me every burden, every care, and every trial. Come, walk into new places with Me today, walk into new places with Me. Surrender, surrender all that lies before you and walk with Me.
HANGING ON OR HOLDING ON?
By: Elton Williamson
Prayernet Ministries
Do we know how good God is? Do we really know? Do we know the vastness of which He is? Do we know the power that we are tapped into when we are part of the Holy Spirit? I don't think so. I don't think we have an idea. We see a small portion of His power exhibited from time to time. We have no comprehension of what He will do if we will just release ourselves into Him fully. Truly fully. There is a place that He wants us to be in Him that we need to reside and that place is a place of intimacy and a place where we have constant communion twenty four hours a day with the Father. It is where He begins to flow through us constantly.
Read Matthew 6:25-34, it says much about what God is trying to get across to us. Our worries don't impress God. Our concern about the things of life don't impress Him, He already knows what the problem is. Our worry and concern certainly do not help Him get the answer to us any quicker. I think we sometimes feel that our showing Him our concern, our worry, our despair and being tied in knots will cause Him to help us sooner. None of these things will help Him bring the answer. There is only one thing He needs and that is our faith and our trust. That is all He needs, nothing else. We are all human and love to help because we have a perceived plan already in our minds. We see the end in the way we want to. We want it to come out according to our plans. That's why we want to help. God has other plans and they are usually not the same as ours. They don't mingle; He causes things to guide us to His plan. I know many times we have all been dragged from our plans to His and it hurts to be pulled through the dirt. I don't ever want to be dragged to His plans again. When will we get smart enough to step into His plans for us in the first place, no matter how good or how great our own plans may seem to us they can never compare to His. I have a vivid imagination and I can dream some pretty awesome things, but they don't begin to compare with what He has set aside for us already.
We save lots of wasted effort if we learn to go to His plan first. If we understand that His plans are not ours, we save loads of energy that can be used by Him. You know, many times we have all said that we just are going to hold on. As I thought about this, God through pictures in my spirit showed me that there were two things that happened when we just hold on. First, when we just try to survive to the end we are not really holding on, we are just barely hanging on. Just like hanging by our hands from a ledge, dangling in mid air and grasping for all we are worth to survive. When we hold on instead of hanging on, we hold on to Him, putting our arms around Him and having freedom to maneuver our hands. We can hang on and survive or we can hold on and surrender. Which do you want to do? Do you want to just hang on and survive, just get me there God, just get me there! Would you rather hold on and surrender?
He pointed some things out to me, you see just trying to hang on tremendously limits your capabilities in Him. When you just survive and get through another day, let me ask you, does it leave you free to go and touch other lives that day? When you are just hanging there you can't afford to let go and touch somebody else. You will be a goner if you do; it takes all of your strength to just hang on with both hands for the day. God wants to bless you by allowing you the opportunity every day to touch other lives.
But guess what, if you surrender and hold on He is right there with you. All of the power, all of the authority to touch life after life is available. Your hands are free to use everything He has to minister to others. You find true freedom in surrender in holding on to Him. When you have a need and you are just hanging on it is not even easy to let go with one hand and receive what He is offering at the time. There is fear of not surviving if you don't hang on with both hands. When your arms are around Him in surrender you can simply without even moving, whisper into His ear whatever you need. How easy is that? Father, I need this today, I am here with you, holding on to you and I have needs. It doesn't mean there are no trials; it means that we have a greater freedom and accessibility to His heart. A greater accessibility to move in whatever He wants to flow through you. I think the Church today has the habit of looking around and seeing the junk around us and saying, "Just let me make it through." Sure, we live in a crazy world but it is not a time for us to shrink back but a time for us to step forward. You see, if we would take our rightful place in Christ, that place of authority and boldness, we can do anything that we can think of in the Spirit. The only reason we don't is because we have both hands tied up just hanging on.
Go back to Matthew chapter six. What did it say; don't worry about the things of this life? He named all of the things that He takes care of. How much more will He care for us. His creation that surrounds us is beautiful but understand this, you and I He breathed life into. How awesome, He created you and me to be in His image. The only things He created to be that way. This must mean that He likes you and me an awful lot. He made you; He made each one of us in His image. How awesome, we are in God's likeness. The more that I seek Him and the more I infuse myself with Him the more I become like Him.
When all of these things come, the struggles and just hanging on to the end, just get me to the gate and I will step through it, when these come before us we can know that He has equipped us with everything we need to be overcomers. He gave us all power and all authority over the enemy, something that we don't use often enough, some of us almost never. The challenge is, do we hang on or hold on. Do we survive or surrender? The choice is ours. God will never force us to not hang on; He will not force us to hold on. He gives us the tools but He also gave us a free will. It is up to us how we spend our time here. Do you ever praise God for just being able to hang on? Sure we do. What are we doing when we do that? We are thanking God for the absolute minimum in our life. We are saying thanks for being able to get the very least amount of what He has available for us. Why are we not praising because we are using all of the resources that He has made available for us? We can do that if we just go to His plan first and not ours first.
If we trust Him and read the manual (Bible) He will reveal His plans for us, He won't give you the wrong plan. The manual says that if we ask for bread He will not give us a rock. His plan already has a place of completion in it, ours doesn't. What we do in ourselves is not eternal, what we do in Him is. God is about much more than survival. He is about hope, peace, joy and contentment. He wants you to walk communing and rejoicing in Him. Remember that if you are just hanging on with both hands and Jesus walked right by in front of you, your fear of letting go and being a goner would keep you from reaching out and shaking His hand. Live in your potential; hold on to Him in surrender.