What praise? Theocentric praise

 

Earlier this month, I was talking with someone who was telling me about her misadventures. Her relatively new phone had stopped functioning for a while and an attempt of fixing the problem had resulted in her losing all her data, pictures and videos which had unfortunately not been backed up. A good ‘slice’ of her life had just disappeared. Then her car decided that it had served its time. Still, she gave thanks to God that she did not have to purchase another phone (which would have been the case since it wasn’t insured). As for the car, she told the Lord that He needed to replace it then, she praised Him. I asked her how and she replied that she had said something along these lines: “Lord, I praise You for this testing and I thank You for I know that You will give me another car.”

I told her that was not praise. She was taken aback and did not understand; so, I asked: "And what if He doesn’t give you another car?"

"I’ll still give thanks for His decision, but I'll be sad; it will be a consolation." (She said this with a pitiful look on her face which told me she had not contemplated that option at all.)

"In that case, why did you thank Him for it in the first place?"

"Have you read 'The Power of Praise'? This is what is recommended!"

"Yes, I’ve read it; but that is not the spirit of the book."

Even more disconcerted, she insisted: "But, it is..." And some examples followed.

"Wrong! This is what one might think after a superficial reading; but it is much more than that. Your prayer is not centered on the Lord, it is focused on you and on what you want to get. In 'The Power of Praise', people praise the Lord after they have truly deposited ALL at his feet; after their total surrender to His will..."

I went on to explain that the Lord is the object of true praise: His will, His love, His wisdom and His science (to name a few). Praise is not a magical key that we use to 'force' God to give us what we desire; it is rather something that we offer unto the Lord, regardless of the fact that He gives us what we want or not.

This is what Daniel's friends told the king who threatened to throw them into the fiery furnace (Dan 3:17-18): "Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." In other words, "We worship a God who delivers. And even if He doesn’t do it this time, it doesn’t change a thing. We know He is a God of deliverance and we’ll not serve your gods." Here is a theocentric praise. It is not, "Oh Lord I praise You because You have delivered Daniel and his friends; and Jeremiah; and Paul and Silas; and, and... You will also deliver me." We usually multiply such words because we think we can sweet-talk God and coax Him into delivering us/doing our will.

We do not praise the Lord because He will give us this or that; we praise Him because He is God and as God, praise is due to Him. It is a debt, an obligation, and not a favour: "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!" “Through him (i.e. Christ) then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name.” (Ps 150:6, Heb 13:15)

In order to praise the Lord in Spirit and in truth, we must reduce or humble ourselves (or even disappear) and He must grow before our eyes. We must focus on His goodness, omniscience, omnipotence and also on His sovereignty. We have to accept deep down in our hearts that: 'I do not know, but He knows; I cannot, but He can; I do not understand, but He understands; I'm lost, but He is not; it hurts, but it' is necessary.'

I told the person I was talking with, that she should have said something like: "Lord I praise You for Your love and kindness to me. I praise you because my future is in Your hands and is thus in the safest place in the world. I thank You for this car which you allowed me to enjoy for X years. You have even given us two cars while many people still dream of being able to afford their first second-hand car. Now, that it is written off and I was used to the comfort it gave me, I would love to have a new car; but you know best what You are doing in my life and why all this has happened. My life is not determined by a car; it is worth more than that. With or without a car, the joy and peace I have in You are priceless. I know that if You do not replace the car, then I simply do not need it anymore and You’ll show me how to live without it. However, notwithstanding what You will do, I praise You because You are Good!”

Can you see the difference? When one prays like that with sincerity of heart, the prayer ceases to be egocentric and becomes theo / Christocentric. It is absolutely useless to tell God that we praise and give Him thanks for the car, home, job, healing, husband, wife or children that we want whereas we know in our hearts that we will be really sad (and possibly angry) if at the end, things do not turn up the way we hope. It is for such prayers that the Lord said: "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." (Mat 15:8)

God reads hearts; let us adore Him, praise Him and serve Him in Spirit and truth.

 

Have a ‘wonderblessed’ week in HIM: He is the BEST!

A few more words on dreams

 

Last week, I said that whatever their origin (divine, human or demonic), dreams are not meaningless; so, none of them should be trivialized. Having already dealt extensively with divine dreams, I will now turn to the other two categories.

Dreams of human origin

The Ecclesiastes tells us that dreams come with much business (vs. 5.3). In other words, our desires, our fears, our anxieties; in short, anything that has consciously or unconsciously occupied our minds during the day, can so set its print in our subconscious that we dream of it at night. Thus, a singer who is about to release his album can dream that he has become a superstar and the album has sold millions of copies. Someone who has just posted a video on YouTube might dream that it became a global buzz. A student who has just taken his tests can dream that he has failed miserably, or on the contrary, that he did so well that his parents offered him the car or whatsoever he was longing for. A girl who is secretly in love with someone may dream that the guy has asked to marry her.

As these dreams can also be of divine origin, caution is required. When we have them, we need to be honest with ourselves and, if we’ve been thinking about the object of the dreams recently, we must not be carried away too quickly but rather put them aside for a while. We should not dismiss them, but just keep a bit of distance.

Dreams and visions of demonic origin

These are dreams that terrify you and deprive you of any sense peace; for some, they are nightmares. The Lord can sometimes give this kind of dream or vision and He did so with Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh. However, it was not their dreams that disturbed them the most, but the fact that they did not understand their meanings. Once the interpretation was given by Daniel and Joseph, they were appeased (see Genesis 41 and Daniel 2). The difference with dreams of demonic origin is that the meaning of the latter is usually very clear and results in a real freeze of our blood: you wake up in sheets soaked with sweat and with palpitations.

A few years ago, I was on vacation and in my room which was upstairs, the bed was next to the window. My daughter of almost 2 years of age loved to climb from the bed to the window. After seeing her at work once or twice, we tried not to leave the bedroom door open during the day, as we could not afford shutting the window during the hot summer. One night, there were only two of us in the house; after putting her to sleep, I went to watch the TV downstairs. At around 10:00pm, I had a clear vision of her getting up from her bed, opening the window and falling in the void while a voice was telling me, 'Your daughter is going to fall out the window and die.' I hesitated a few seconds then responded back, saying: "if you dare touching my daughter, you will see what I will do to you." I had recognized the enemy and I did not leave the couch, except much later, when I went to sleep. It is worth knowing that a few months prior to that incident, I had fallen asleep during the day in Brussels (I was pregnant) when I heard someone telling me to wake up quietly so as not to frighten my daughter. When I opened my eyes, she was on the windowsill, had stuck her head out of the window and was dangerously leaning outside to look at the children playing in the yard. The slightest movement would have ended up in a major drama as there was no terrace on that side of the flat and we lived on the 10th floor! I got up, quietly went up to her, grabbed her from behind and praised the Lord who had warned me. The devil had obviously tried to mimic that experience.

Then, when she was 30 months old, she became very ill with high fever and chills. All the tests carried out were negative. We had just come back to Africa and malaria had already welcomed her less than two weeks ago. I had to postpone an important trip because of her condition. I had booked a new flight and really had to travel this time. Five days before my departure, a friend and sister in Christ called me from overseas and told me not to travel because she had dreamed that my daughter would die in my absence. I listened to her; but something in her dream was not just compatible with the style of my Heavenly Father. So, I told her I was going to travel no matter the condition of the child; and added that in any case, her eventual death would only mean that the Lord had planned to resuscitate her because it wasn’t her time yet. I left in spite of her insistence, and of course, death did not dare knock on my door; or better still, Satan chose to avoid giving me a free opportunity to perform a miracle.

Anyway, the most important thing is that God speaks through EVERY dream. This is why I’ve been emphasizing that no dream is just a dream. You can hear God’s voice and know His will through any dream. Indeed, dreams of 'human' origin help us probe the state of our souls. If you dream that you’ve failed your exams or you’ve been laid off work and you seek the Lord about it, He will unmask your fears and tell you: ‘‘Do not be afraid, only believe.'' In the aforementioned marriage example, if you really want to know the truth, the Lord will tell you that the man represents your heart’s desire, not His; and He would speak to you about the one He has for you.

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you… Resist him, firm in your faith…” (Ja 4:7b; 1Pe 5:9)

As for demonic dreams, they help us understand what the devil is up to and what he wants to distract us from. Therefore, we can go ahead and do the opposite of what he wants. When I realized that he wanted to manipulate me at will by sowing the fear of my daughter’s death into my heart, I did not only refuse to yield, but I also understood in the second case, that her mysterious illness was part of the same diabolical plan. I took authority over it in prayer and on the following morning, my daughter was well. The most interesting thing is that by God’s wonderful grace, 12 years have now passed and she has never been sick again. She has obviously had two or three colds, but has never been sick enough to miss school. Afterwards the devil has realized that it was useless trying to destabilize me from that angle. God is Good!

God speaks in one way, and in two; and He speaks through ALL dreams. He may be found by those who seek Him with a sincere heart: “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” The angel told Daniel that he had been sent to him as soon as Daniel had set his heart to understand the meaning of the things that had been revealed to him (vs. 10:12). If we truly desire to do His will, and if we discuss all our dreams with Him because we do not want to be misled, He will answer and tell us what we do not know.

 

May God bless you with the understanding of your dreams: have a great week!

Thy will be done: labourers with God

 

I will continue to ride the wave of last week, because after asking a few questions here and there to see how the last posting was understood, I felt it was necessary to deepen it.

Dreams are never trivial. They may have three origins: our own thoughts and concerns, the enemy of our souls or the Lord. Indeed, the book of Job teaches that while we sleep, God speaks to us in one way or the other, by dreams and visions of the night, but we do not pay attention to it (Job 33.14-15). In the latter case, the dream is a way that God uses to show us what He is actually doing or what He wants/ will do in the field of our lives. It is a vision of the building that He is erecting; and our collaboration is essential for the work to be completed. Indeed, “We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.” (1Co 3:9) Other versions say, “We are labourers together with God.”

When this is understood, we also understand that the harvest (of our blessings) is ready and plentiful (hence the dream), but there are few labourers available to harvest in our field (they are busy harvesting in theirs); and so, we don’t hesitate to take the plunge and do our part: we labour WITH God before asking Him to send more workers in (Lk 10:2).   

Imagine you are a civil servant somewhere in Africa, and you dream that someone with whom you’ve been angry for some time has come to see you and the visit went well. Then, you took your BMW and drove to a big shop selling furniture mainly imported from China, and which obviously belonged to you. And after that, when you went back home, you noticed that you were swimming in glory – so to speak. A few details of the dream like your face and that of the visitor, gave you an indication that these things were probably going to happen soon.

This dream reveals that from the civil servant that you are, God will make you a businessman or woman. You will become independent, have a successful career in furniture and will be importing from China. God’s part here is to create opportunities for you and give you favour with men; so that doors open before you and success and prosperity follow your endeavours. It is God who will show you the kind of furniture to buy, help you meet the right people in China, facilitate the necessary administrative procedures etc. However, you also have your part to do for this GREAT harvest to be reaped quickly.

1) Reconcile with the person you saw: you cannot be blessed if you do not forgive or ask for forgiveness; Jesus Himself taught this in the Gospels. Through this dream, God is telling you, 'Here is what I want to do for you; but there is this obstacle: remove it.' You can decide to wait until the person comes to you instead of you making the first step. But aside from the fact that it is unscriptural (Mat 5:23-24), it will make you lose time. Indeed, God will not move until the problem is settled; and if the person does not show up before a year or 2...

2) Gather information about the furniture trade and use your savings to go buy some in China, knowing that God is with you in EVERYTHING you do according to His will (revealed in the dream). If your savings are not enough, pray that God shows you what you can do alongside your civil servant work to generate funds for the furniture business. You can also request to be laid off and use the severance pay to finance the vision.

3) Change cars and buy the BMW that you can afford. It is not necessary to wait until you have the store and the rest before buying a BMW.

To do so is to demonstrate by works that we really BELIEVE that God has spoken and that we have complete faith in what He has said. It is actually putting a stone to the edifice that God is building… in our lives. And it is aligning the heavens and the earth and allowing the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

If we remain seated with 'faith' that through our fervent prayers and fasting, God will manage to touch the heart of the person with whom we are not on speaking terms for her to come to us; that He will find a way to send us to China and sit us as the top of a big store, we will never walk in the glory foreseen because we would have left a reap and bountiful harvest, OUR harvest, rot in the fields.

What I say for dreams applies to any prophetic revelation. If God shows you that X is sinning or crying in a vision, you do not get up to go tell them or tell it to Y and Z; instead, you must ask the Lord what He wants YOU TO DO with what He has shown you: you must collaborate (co-labour) with Him.

If a servant of God gives a word of prophecy, go to the Lord and find out what is your responsibility towards what has been announced. Don’t just say ‘Amen’ and go lie down waiting for the manna to fall from heaven. And by the way, remember that when manna fell in the desert, the Israelites had to go gather it and prepare it: they had their role to play in that harvest.

Go back to all the messages that you have received from God through dreams and visions or else (hence the importance of writing them down) like Mary who treasured all the things that the angel had told her and pondered them in her heart. Then, truly become God’s fellow worker in this business. Put yourself to work and do your part diligently, so that nothing rots in your field and you enjoy your harvest more quickly.

God bless you!

Thy Will be done…

 

Exactly one year ago, I had a wonderful dream that allowed me to catch a glimpse of what the Lord was about to do in my life and my family. I say ‘was about’ because in this dream, my daughters were barely older than they were then and I wrote in my diary that what I had seen was probably going to happen within a year; and true to that, since June 2011, certain things have been happening to us which clearly show that the deco is being set to welcome what I had seen earlier.

I am telling you this because at the beginning of January, I remembered a specific part of this dream. I was seeking the Lord’s instructions about what He wanted me to do in 2012, when the way I was dressed in the dream suddenly impressed my mind. I was a bit confused because I thought this was something that would only happen after certain key things in the dream had taken place; but here was the Lord, telling me that wasn’t necessary.

The dream had revealed the will of God to me; a God who is not prisoner of time and who doesn’t see me as I am now, but already sees me in the position and status that were mine in the dream. As far as He is concerned, the dream is past history. Therefore, I had the choice; either to wait to ‘see before believing and living the life' (i.e., wait until some important details of the dream had been fulfilled before daring doing certain things), or to project myself into what I had seen and begin to live as if everything had already come to pass. The Lord went on explaining that this was a way for His will (shown in a dream) to be done (by me) on Earth as it was in Heaven. It was a way of aligning heaven and earth. There were many elements in the dream that were totally beyond my control (time, circumstances etc.); but there were others –like my clothing- that I could control. By doing that as soon as possible, in line with my vision, I was allowing God’s will that had been revealed to be fully done in my life.

I gave thanks to God and immediately set to work and acted upon what I had just learned. You know, we tend to think that God is only interested in the big picture; that if we ask: “Lord what do you have me do in 2012?” he’ll answer something like: “Buy a house”; “Start this business”; “Leave your job”; “grow in patience or giving”; “Get married” etc. But God is actually interested in EVERY aspect of our life and wants to be Lord of them ALL. Nothing about us is either too big or too small for Him.

It’s been years now, that I had taken the habit of inquiring with Him what He wanted me to wear and I’ve had interesting stories in this respect over the years; but this was the first time that God was linking a dream that might only be fully accomplished in the next 2-3 years or even more, with the way He already expected me to live now. In other words, the bulk of this dream is for much later, but part of it (which seemed to occur in the future) already covers the present. I repeat: God is timeless.

Understand all I’ve said and you’ll understand the power of vision and the importance of knowing who you are; these two are fundamental.

Thy will be done on earth and in my life as it is in heaven… Do you have prophetic dreams? If yes, what are the details depending on you? Identify them, act upon them, and leave the rest to God.

God bless you!