Standing

I've kind of ignored this blog a bit, mostly because what I've been writing about lately hasn't felt like it needed to be all that private. But I've decided to use Trigo Sem Joio for the next little while to write about "standing." And since I'm putting a lot of my efforts into learning about this concept, I think it would be good for me to process some of that here.

Why Standing?

Well, in the past 31/2 years the Lord has been teaching me to do this and calling me to do this. And it has come from a lot of sources. Books, yes. But I had a woman at a prayer conference pray over me and she spoke to me very directly and told me that I MUST stand. Another friend of mine had a very vivid dream about me in the midst of a very heavy storm, everyone else was being swept away and I was the only one left standing by a tree. And then another friend, also gave me a word from God that He was calling me to stand, and that much of my suffering has been to teach me this and that people will look to me when they are struggling and my words will be able to help them to stand. Then a woman with the gift of prophecy also prayed over me and told me that my "talk" would be a healing balm to the nations.

I don't know how or when any of this will happen, I don't sense that God is asking me to move on any of it. But when you have that many people speaking to you about the same idea, you begin to pay attention.

So I decided that I needed to understand what it meant to stand. I looked up a bunch of dictionary definitions. Maybe I'll post them. But I also went through a concordance and looked up and wrote out by hand every passage that used that term in any remotely applicable way. I've begun to copy them onto 3x5 cards and take them with me...like to the gym. I want to glean all I can from the passages and I am asking the Lord to teach me about them.

Yesterday, Pastor Sam preached a sermon on perseverance, and of course the word stand came up many times. As he was ending the sermon, he said, "The Lord is speaking to me and He is asking me to say this: there are times when the enemy tries to undermine our perseverance, our ability to stand by telling us that the visions or dreams or ideas that God has asked us to hold on to are not from God. And that we are out of God's will or sinning. But if you have seriously considered that possibility and prayed about it and the Holy Spirit has not convicted you of this then it is very likely that it is truly from God." "I don't know what person or persons that was for," he said. "But that was what I was asked to speak."

I don't know who else it was for, Pastor Sam, but I know it was for me.

The passage that I have been focusing on the past week is Deuteronomy 11:22-25

"If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow--to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, and to hold fast to him--then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours. Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebann, and from the Euphrates River to the Western Sea. No man will be able to stand against you. The Lord your God as He promised you, will put terror and fear of you in the whole land, wherever you go."

I've already been learning quite a bit from it, and soon I'll try to write about it. But I must get to other things right now. I hope writing about this will help me to digest it more, and perhaps it can be helpful to you as well.

Much love friends,

B