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July 12, 2004 NEWSLETTER VOLUME 21 We Are The Garden Part 3 from Carol J. Warren PRAY FOR THE PRESIDENT:
Before I continue I want to remind everyone to pray for our President and for the upcoming election as the scripture tells us to. Never before has the Lord given such a clear word of the accountability of every Christian to pray. I may not know if you pray or not but He does. I keep hearing of more and more prophets and ministers that the Lord is giving a similar word. We “MUST” pray for the president and this election. It would be best to fast as well, even if it is just one meal a week.
Sherri King sent me this information concerning an article from Rev. Hilton Sutton who is well know for understanding Bible prophecy. He said that he was at a pastor’s convention with thousands of pastors and one pastor from Uzbekistan spoke. He was very humble. He was the pastor of an underground church because being a Christian in Uzbekistan is against the law. They even have 3 underground schools. He said that all of the Christians in his country are praying that Bush will be re-elected. There was a murmur as some were angry with this but he went on to say that the leaders of his country (which is on the Afghanistan border) are afraid of President Bush so they have eased up some on the persecution of Christians but under Clinton many Christians were killed and tortured. I encourage you to read this article for yourself at
It’s not just about us, the Christians in the entire world; especially the persecuted world will be affected by how we vote. It’s serious.
NKJ Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, (emphasis added).
I love the fact that He is our Lord and we are His. It is love ownership and it is important. If He is just a generic Lord to us we will not respond to Him properly but if He is truly our Lord we will act differently. For example when you were little I am sure there were many mothers around and you acknowledged them as mothers but only one of them was your mother. That’s love ownership.
Notice that he has blessed us. It is a done deal. It’s in the bank just waiting for us to cash a check on it but often we act fearful as though God’s check will bounce. What is a check? Is it money? No! It is a promissory note. It is a promise that there is money in the bank and upon redeeming this promise you will be given money. We could have a lot of money in the bank but it does us no good unless we access it. We must treat God’s promises as though they are good or we will not redeem it (cash it) because of uncertainty and fear, then we blame God. But He gave us the promise we just didn’t cash it in faith. God’s checks (promises) won’t bounce.
So what are the ‘done deal’ promises we need to cash? Every spiritual blessing. It’s hard for us to understand sometimes but everything is directly related to the spirit realm. It’s not spooky or just something some people seem to have an inside track on but it is a real part of each one of us – I am a spirit, I have a soul, I live in a body; and a real part of what is going on around us whether we see it or not. That is why when you have a need in the physical prayer can change that. Prayer is not physical but it is directly related because prayer is (or should be) spiritual. Everything we need whenever we need it is ours when we cash the promise in the spirit by faith.
Notice that it is in Christ Jesus. He is our heavenly space suit. We can’t always access things when we are only in our earth suit. It just isn’t capable of interacting in that spirit realm as it should. But “in” Christ Jesus I can access it. We are to be in Him to dwell in heavenly places now. It is in Him we have access to the Father. Jesus is the door we enter in through. We need to access through Him at least daily and often several times a day because we seem to wander without realizing it and suddenly we find ourselves in the flesh in the middle of a problem.
We often think we can’t access these spiritual blessings till we die, so that’s that; oh well too bad. That’s just not true. The Father delights to give us the kingdom and has made a way for us to access both it and Him. We must remember these are spiritual blessings and can only be accessed in the spirit, as we live and walk in the spirit. You may say yeah but I need physical blessing now. When we line up in the spirit we command the physical. All the miracles, provision, and power come through the Holy Spirit. To access these spirit blessings in heavenly places we must be in our heavenly spacesuit Jesus Christ and be hooked up to the oxygen backpack or heavenly atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. Only in these do we have access to the Father who then reaches in His pocket and His heart to give us all we need. We must practice the presence of the Lord in continuous relationship via the spirit.
Sometimes we have promises but we don’t access them. We think God failed us (though we would never say it out loud, sometimes our spirit man screams it) but we stopped the heavenly pipeline of love He flows through or for our garden the water source. Once some years ago I and another lady were asked to go pray with a woman who had hurt her foot. She had dropped something heavy on the top of it. It broke all the small bones in the top of her foot and they weren’t healing. The doctors had rigged a battery to her leg to send electrical shocks to her foot to help ease the pain. When I entered the house the Lord began to deal with me. I told the woman rather strictly, “I am only going to say what the Lord says, do you still want me to pray for you?”
“Sure.” She said. I could tell she didn’t understand the seriousness of the question, so by the unction of the Holy Spirit I became even more forceful. “I am telling you I am only going to say what the Lord says, do you still want me to pray for you?”
She was a bit concerned by my attitude but said she still wanted prayer. When I put my hands on her the Lord began to speak. “If your foot offends you cut it off.” Now that will get your attention. But I knew the Lord wasn’t telling her to cut her foot off but that she had a much more serious problem. The Lord said, “You use to love to rise up early every morning to spend time with me in love relationship. You use to spend much time in worship and when you were like that I promised that your children would be saved. But when it didn’t happen the way you thought it should happen or when you thought it should happen you began to get bitter. Soon you were too tired to get up early anymore, then you stopped reading the Bible and finally you stopped going to church. Seeing you stopped “the pipeline of love that I flow through” what do you expect me to do?”
The woman began to cry and asked me who told me all of those things because it was all true. I told her then that I wished I were invisible because it was the Lord who knows all things. I knew nothing about her myself. She said it had been just as I had said. I never saw that woman again but I learned a lesson from what the Lord said through me to her that I would never forget. The Lord flows His promises through our love relationship with Him. Things like disappointments, fears, bitterness, etc could clog the line and it is up to us to get the draino of repentance and clear the pipes. We certainly shouldn’t but we do blame the Lord when we are the ones who have clogged the relationship pipeline of love He flows through. As I always say, “Hook it up.” Get connected to God whatever it takes.
Most of us have been in the “River of God”. It’s wonderful, exhilarating, exciting and full of life. Then we go back to our drought and wonder why after feeling so much of God nothing seemed to have changed. But how did you access that river anointing? Through some anointed minister or service? They took the river with them when they left and left you high and dry, why? Because you didn’t hook up permanently with the source, so your garden withers. It is the difference in being given a bucket of water and owning a well.
Digging a well to the source can be hard work (a constant diligent determined effort) but the rewards are a never-ending supply. We’re going to look at this water supply in two ways one as the river and the other as the well.
Let’s look at Isaiah 12 for some insight on the well. First we see that this chapter begins and ends with intense praise and worship. Jesus said in John 4:23 “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” The Father is diligently seeking for you to love on Him in Spirit reality. Look at the next verse John 4:24 “God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in Spirit and truth.” Jesus is telling us how to access the Father (the Source). By pressing in through the Spirit continually we gain access to the place of all provision.
Isaiah 12:2 Behold God is “my” Let’s stop there for a moment. I am not only God’s but through the love ownership of a child to a parent God is mine. God is Father to me. Think about it. Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” All means all things. Let’s go back to Isaiah 12:2 and prove that. Behold God is my salvation I will trust and not be afraid. For Yah the Lord is my strength.
I know the Lord is my salvation so deeply that I even react from it, he is saying. Paul said in II Corinthians 12:9 And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
We learn to draw from the Lord’s strength, which is much better but we only learn to do that when we are forced to face our own weakness in that area. It’s not about our strength and abilities but His strength flows through our weakest point. The other day the Lord showed me a vision. He wanted to draw near to His people and the people were desperate for Him to draw near to them. But because He headed straight for their deepest wound they turned away feeling He had failed to meet them and perhaps He didn’t love them as much as He apparently loved others.
Our deepest wound has the most walls around it. We protect it because we are ashamed of it or afraid of being hurt even more. Sometimes it takes a determination ahead of time to allow God access to our deepest wound. But only in our deepest wound can the Tree of Life be planted. Our deepest wound or hole is our darkest most fearful place. That is where the Lord desires to plant His light and strength so it will anchor deep in you and out of your deepest wound and deepest hurt God can work so the greatest anointing flows from there. We tend to push the hurt deep inside past the surface because on the surface it would be seen and touched and hurt even more.
Why does the Lord seek our deepest wound, He meets us at our need and joins to us there. If I want to graft a branch from an olive tree onto another olive tree I have to cut both the main olive tree and the branch from the other olive tree and then I join them at the place where they were cut. (The Lord was already wounded for us; He is the main branch). Then you seal these two together at the cuts (or wounds) until they become one. It is the same with the Lord and us.
Isaiah 53:4-5 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.
He was wounded so we could be grafted in and through His wound become one. So He seeks the place of your deepest wound to join with you there because as He said in John 15:1-9 "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit…Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you,(one of the ways the Lord abides in us is by His word) you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love.”
We cannot bear fruit or have ministry of ourselves it only flows from that part of us that is joined to Him and abides in Him. We want to have fruit but we want to hide our wounds from the Lord. But in order to be joined we must join at our deepest wound and the fruit will then grow and abound. If we do not allow Him to join with us we are disconnected and in danger of dying like a branch broken off but never grafted in. As He said in John 17:21 we are to be one with the Lord and through Him one with the Father. So we must let Him seek us and draw near to our deepest wound. It is not a one-time thing but a process that goes deeper and deeper one layer at a time.
While I was in the Philippines Pastor Abe was digging a well by hand. When they reached water I was happy for them but I found out this was only surface water and was not good clean water. Also this surface water would run dry quickly. They would have to go through several levels of water to reach the good water source that would not soon run dry. Sometimes we survive on impure world mixed water but we must go deeper to purify ourselves and what we give out to others. Sometimes the Lord is only able to access our deeply wounded place one level at a time. That is why people say but Lord I already dealt with this and now I have to deal with it again? That is because it is a deeper level of dealing with the same issue. The levels as I have found them are:
Each step is a process that we need to continue in and through. It begins with allowing Him to meet you at your need. Not just enjoying refreshing and drinking when someone else brings the river but swimming up stream with the current hard against your flesh, pressing into His presence until you access the source of Christ in the Father and are joined to it to become one. Until you reach the point that you can’t be washed back down stream anymore. I have not attained as Paul said but I am pressing toward the mark of the high calling. Like the battered salmon I am swimming upstream (notice you must remain in the river to do this, it can’t be done on the banks of the river.) to fulfill my God destiny.
In Ezekiel chapter 47 we find that God enters the temple (us) through the east gate (the front) and the river flows from beneath the altar (our heart). In other words where our love meets His love the river flows. We see that the angel measures and takes Ezekiel to the river ankle deep but in NKJ Ezekiel 47:11 "But its swamps and marshes will not be healed; they will be given over to salt." Or as the Lord told me once if we only get into the shallow water of the river of God we are in danger because the shallow water is swamps full of snakes and alligators. Those Christians who just want a good feeling but not a life change wonder why things go wrong in their lives but when they do get in the river they only play in the shallows.
Are we letting go to the Lord by measure? The angel indicated each measure was deeper. It is a process that when completed becomes measureless, a river to swim in. The difference being as long as your feet are on the ground you are still in control in some way and still holding onto something of this world for security when we must only hold on to the Lord. But when you get into the river over your head you cannot hold onto the things of this world anymore. The current of the river is free to carry you wherever the Lord wants.
NKJ Ezekiel 47:9 "And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live." This is the river of life and it brings life. It flows through us to others when we remain in it. If it is the river of life and Leviticus tells us the life is in the blood, then the current of this river is the heartbeat of God and His love will carry us when we learn to let go to the source. Once while in the river I could see all along the bottom watches, wallets, money, jewelry, etc. the river washes away everything that hinders us from flowing in the current of the Lord’s love. Everything will live where the river flows and the river is supposed to flow from us. That is why it is river(s) plural because where each person connects to the Lord in their heart the river flows.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Sometimes we reach the source and are washed back down river. Don’t be discouraged, that’s normal. It takes time to change and learn to stay there longer and longer, but every time you press through a little more of you changes and we all need to change to abide in His holy presence. Let’s go back to Isaiah 12:2 Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid; 'For YAH, the LORD, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation.' "
Two times in this verse it says that God is my salvation. So if I access God in the Spirit, in Jesus I can cash it (have it). Let’s look at this word salvation to see what I am cashing in. In Hebrew it is the word Yeshuwah (strongs 3444) and it is a feminine past participle. The feminine reminds me of a mother’s love and the past participle reminds me that it is a done deal for us. It means saved, deliverance, aid, victory, prosperity, health, help, welfare. From 3467 which means to be safe, avenge, defend, deliver, preserve, succor, to open wide or set free, rescue, bring salvation, or get victory.
That is quite a list. In other words just like from a mothers heart salvation is a done deal, readily available and it is whatever you need whenever you need it. Now let’s read Isaiah 12:2 with a greater understanding: Behold, God is my salvation (whatever I need whenever I need it), I will trust and not be afraid; 'For YAH, the LORD, is my strength and song; He also has become my salvation (whatever I need whenever I need it).' "
This word salvation is everything we need when we need it. This word is for you now. NKJ Isaiah 12:3 Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. Complaining and judging will remove you from His presence and stop access to His blessings bank account for you. It says therefore, (because of this great salvation that is everything I need) with joy (which is my bucket attached to the rope of the Holy Spirit) you will (you must do it – you must access your salvation account with joy and confidence) draw water from the well(s) of salvation (everything you need whenever you need it).
Do you have an empty bucket of joyful expectation just waiting to be filled? Is it attached to the rope of the Holy Spirit? Otherwise you just throw your bucket in the deep well and lose it because you have nothing to pull it back up with. The results are you lose your joy by not working with the Holy Spirit. Joy speaks of trust and spirit expectation. Without it you can’t receive. You must move the expectation from your head knowledge to your spirit or inner being (heart) in order to be able to co-operate with the Holy Spirit. Often when I am ministering to teach people how to enter into the anointing and how to minister in the anointing I can tell when I lay my hands on them if they are flowing from the head (flesh) or from the heart. The Lord can only join us to allow the river to flow from the heart. So I pray with them and help them learn how to switch from the head to the heart (spirit) until they get the hang of it.
Perhaps your bucket of joy is full of worldly pleasures. How can you expect to receive if your bucket is already full of junk? Repent and allow the Holy Spirit to help you empty your bucket and arrange your priorities in God, then you will have a bucket empty ready to receive and believe for all you need joyfully. God loves a cheerful giver and a joyful receiver.
Notice with your bucket of joy you draw water from the wells – (it’s plural) of salvation. We have determined salvation is whatever you need whenever you need it, spirit, soul, mind or body. So why are there many wells of salvation?
Pastor Abe already has a couple of wells at the orphanage but two things caused him to decide to dig another well. During the drought of summer just before the rainy season has time to soak deep enough to refill the wells (praise God for the former and the latter rains) sometimes they would run very short of water. If you run out of salvation (whatever you need whenever you need it) you may need to dig deeper or dig another well to the source. How do we access, we access by the Holy Spirit in:
The other reason the orphanage needed another well was they are growing from 50 children to 65. Do you want to grow and have a bigger more anointed ministry or grow in relationship with the Lord? You may need to access more from the source by digging a deeper well or digging another well. You will need more pure holy water straight from the source. Do you seem to plant and plant but never seem to reap a harvest. Perhaps your seed is waiting for some more water. How can your garden grow without water? We will be talking about that next week in our series on the garden, “Fruit and Your Harvest”.
I pray that this has been helpful and given practical knowledge in growing and being the Lord’s enclosed garden. Please feel free to contact me with questions or comments. I love feedback.
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