Eric Ludy – The Ancient War Cry

Photo credit biblewalks.com – Valley of Elah where David battled Goliath

1 Samuel 17 2:And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together,
and pitched by the valley of Elah,
and set the battle in array against the Philistines.

Where’s our war cry?

We don’t even know that we’re at war! We don’t understand that we’re in hostile territory. This isn’t a time of peace. It’s against the principalities and the powers that are puppeteering the people. And we are in a position to see souls set free!

This has been the ancient war cry throughout all the generations of the Hebrew nations. Rak Chazak! Where does it come from? Chazak, this is the Hebrew: the rock like „oomph” of the spiritually zealous heart. The game face of a mighty man. Tenacity of soul, the gritting of the teeth of the Spirit inspired warrior. And the bearing of those teeth to the enemy. Chazak is possessing a resolute and growling resolve for the glory of God. A flush of spiritual fervor. A tensing of all of a soldier’s muscles. There’s a Chazak.

We don’t have that spiritually. We should. We don’t. Because we don’t know what we’re engaged with. Did you know that we have the armory of heaven? That you have everything you need for life and godliness to push the enemy forces back? And so, when you hear Chazak, your knuckles spiritually should immediately turn white. And you should find yourself gritting your spiritual teeth with a belligerence against the enemy. He goes down! There are souls that must be saved!

The Hebrew statement is Rak Chazak. However, in the Bible, where it came from it’s Chazak Amats. The other word that goes with it, Amats, it’s heavenly audacity. It’s rushing headlong into the most hazardous and impossible battles without pausing to consider the impossibilities.

Who had Amats in the Bible?

• David against Goliath? That’s some serious Amats. He’s rushing headlong against Goliath. „David, you might think about this for a minute.” „No, I am not weighing the impossibilities. This is for my God!” It’s a confidence in victory, even before the field is taken. It’s lambs moving with liquid ferocity straight into the lion’s lair.
• How about the three that overheard him in the cave of Adullam? All for a cup of cool water  from the well of Bethlehem. Those guys had Amats. They go running out, break through a garrison of Philistines to grab a cup of cool water, and then bring it back through the garrison. They’re being hunted by the Philistines the whole time, trying not to spill a cup of water. That’s Amats.

Mere men and women on earth are being eaten up by the enemy.

However, we’re not just mere men and women of this earth. We are redeemed. We are bought with a price. And we’ve been changed into the body of Christ. Amats means swift-footed, all believing, super conquering, prevailing faith in the Lord of battles. What happens to the world, if Christians once again get Chazak and Amats? Do you know what the apostles had after Pentecost? Something came into them. What was it? You can say it very simply as Chazak and Amats – the Spirit of God. He came in to win. He came in to turn this world on its head.

Moses’s last gasp, this is his great speech before the promised land, which he never got to enter into, and he’s laying out the ground rules for the kingdom that is about to be established across that Jordan river. „Be strong, and of good courage. Fear not, nor be afraid of them. For the Lord, thy God, He it is that does go with thee. He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” And Moses called unto Joshua, and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, „Chazak! Amats!” Be strong and of good courage! For thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord has sworn unto their fathers to give them. And thou shalt cause them to inherit it.

What’s happening there? The men and women of God are coming in to take what was purchased.. The promise. You are surrounded by 31 hostile empires. You know, that’s what they were headed into: 31 empires on the other side of that Jordan river. 31!

This is where we are at, as the church of Jesus Christ. Yet, we are there without a war cry. Let’s understand that we are out to win for the glory of Jesus Christ. And, even if we die, we win. It doesn’t matter what happens to our bodies. We obey… God wins. Now, suddenly we’re crossing. Joshua is the same name for Jesus in the New Testament, by the way. Yeshua- this is the Savior, the Man of Salvation, who is coming to bring us into the inheritance. Be strong and of good courage, for unto this people shall thou divide for an inheritance, the land which I swore unto their fathers to give them. Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage. Rak Chazak! Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee, withersoever thou goest. Rak Chazak, Israel! Rak Chazak, men and women of God almighty. And all the powers of earth and hell that come against your soul, and all the powers of earth and hell that are puppeteering the lost masses, you hit them square in the teeth, and you show love to this world. To anyone who would spit in your face, you serve them and you love them in return, and say, „Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Rak Chazak, Israel!

Video by  setapartlife

De la Conferinta Bisericilor lui Dumnezeu Iulie 2012

Voi posta o predica transcrisa din Limba Engleza recomandata de Pastorul Cornel Ilioi. Daca doriti sa ascultati/vizionati predica in video faceti click pe acest link – http://www.churchofgod.org/ga2012/stream-archive-thursday-7pm/

De notat: La minutul 82 Superintendentul Church of God, Dr. Culpepper declara ca singurul mod in care vom implini marea trimitere a lui Hristos e daca ne unim si lucram impreuna. Ne anunta ca statisticile dovedesc ca se intampla o mare trezire pe glob, in fiecare 25 de minute se intorc la Dumnezeu 3000 de suflete. Apoi face introducere la mai multi vizitatori speciali printre care este si George O. Wood, Superintendentul de la Assemblies of God impreuna cu Dl Arledge (Chief Operating Officer Assemblies of God) Dr Garrison Executive Director of US Missions, impreuna cu Niki Pop si Alex Sangeorzan (tot de la Assemblies of God)la minutul 86:00 (1 ora 26 min).

Bishop Ishmael Prince Charles este Pastorul Bisericii New Testament Church of God International Worship Center,  in Baughers Bay, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, o biserica cu 800 de membrii.

PREDICA lui ISHMAEL PRINCE CHARLES incepe la minutul 90 (1 ora 30 min):

I was preaching once in Leicester England, there were probably 3,000 to 4,000 young people at that youth convention and I looked and I got so scared that the only thing I remembered was ‘hallelujah’. And, I thought I remembered, maybe it was at Lee University, „Every time you say the word ‘hallelujah’ you are bringing down one kingdom and you’re lifting up another kingdom.” If you catch that, it’s not a hype. Tonight, there are kingdoms in this house that will try to elevate themselves over the kingdom of God. But, tonight we are here to lift up the name of Jesus, above every other name. His name is power, His name is glorious. His name is excellent. The Lord, our God is in this place.

The Church of God is going through what we are calling ‘one of the toughest times in history’, but I declare to you that we are going to rise again. Thank God for yesterday, but our brightest days are ahead of us. There is a reason why we’re going through something, there is a reason we see theologians and philosophical people doing all this stuff. There’s a reason for doom and gloom. There’s a reason for why we pray the way we pray. There’s a reason for the hysterical bombardment and all the boredom that we see and the reason is this: We are about to go through a perfect storm. Because our God is perfect. So tonight here is the key statement you must catch in this message. Get it: There’s a powerful spiritual force that is about to be released on the earth, over the church. It will shake the very foundations of the kingdom of darkness and the church will rise again. Get ready to receive this power! Get ready to stand up and declare again, „Jesus Christ is Lord of all!”

We know the story in Joshua 1, where God Himself spoke to the servant Joshua ² “Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them—to the Israelites. ³ I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. The missionaries that are here tonight, God has positioned. God has positioned the Church of God to take back territories all over the world. ⁴ Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates—all the Hittite country—to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. ⁵ No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. How many of you know tonight that God is with us?

I want to say to the people of God tonight, „God’s word is saying to somebody: ‘Be strong in these hard, turbulent times'”. Why? Because God is with us! I want to give you a word tonight and it is simple, „It’s time to rise again!” In spite of what the enemy is saying. We have seen it tonight with our missionaries.

(1) It’s time to rise again, but in the power of the pure Word

The problem that I have found out is this: We have deviated from the Bible.

We have deviated from the power of the purity of this book. That’s why we have so many problems. There is no money shortage or power shortage in the kingdom. We are diverted. We have moved away from the power of the Word. The Bible says, „In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.” And the Word is God Himself!

God told Joshua to meditate. The problem we have… Can I just be myself here? … A bunch of preachers are preaching ‘donkey heads’ instead of the Word. Preaching people’s business, instead of the Word. Preaching gossip and all sorts of modern day mess instead of the Word. Preach the Word! It’s time for the Word again. Let’s get back to the Word.

WHat I have found in this word is the very character of God, the essence of the qualities of God that tells me how to live. How many know that we are pentecostals? I was a little baptist boy, 14 1/2 years old on the island of St. Vincent. One night I heard a Church of God of prophecy preacher and he spoke in tongues on the roadside. I said, „God, if that thing is right, I need it”. I went home, knelt at my mother’s bedside and my lips started trembling. My tongue was stuck in my mouth. I couldn’t talk properly. What came out of my mouth, I couldn’t understand it, but it was so sweet. God understood what I was saying. He baptized me in the Holy Ghost. We are pentecostals. Something more than what ought to be seen must happen. If we have the power of this book, something must be wrong.

I love the missionaries of the field, because when they go in the field they have to stand on the word. The miracle we heard and saw from Zambia tonight is because the pure power of the Word. There is power in this Word. There;s life in this world. There’s glory in this Word.

(2) It’s time to rise again out of our competitive jealousy

Competitive jealousy is causing us not to live in the Word. The devil is the instigator of competitive jealousy. He empowers agencies to destroy and blocks the anointing. But the power of the Word is by the Holy Spirit outpouring, it’s what empowers us. There’s a problem in the church. One of the major pitfalls that blocks the missionary operation,  that block the local church from arriving at its destiny of greatness is competitive jealousy.

It stands behind the pulpit. It sings in the choir. It sits in the bands, on the usher boards, it sits on the pastor’s counsel board. The power of the enemy comes down, it’s a secret killer. It’s a spirit that says, „Why do they prefer him over me?” When bitterness overtakes a christian, it leads to nothing else but an empty self that depends only on the devil’s agencies. Competitive jealousy has a root in the preference over one another.

And we have leaders who lead by intimidation, manipulation, victimization and discrimination. Tonight the church of God is going to rise out of this spirit. The leaders must be raised up again to lead with love, to lead with joy. Come out of this spirit of competitive jealousy, there’s too much of it in the church. Let’s rise up out of competitive jealousy, the same spirit that overcame Cain and Saul.

Our present position is not an indication of our future potential in God.

(3) It’s time to rise again and come to grips with ourselves 

We must begin to understand that we must not lead by the enemy’s plan.It is time to return to true biblical, pentecostal spirituality. I want to read something to you: „The church today wants to be everything, rather than the people of God. That’s why we have an identity crisis. The church needs to constantly have the Gospel afresh in this culturally driven society. The church has an anemic epistemology today, hermeneutics of suspicion; we are prone to doubt what God is doing. We need to get back to the power of Pentecost. Peter and John did not doubt the power of Pentecostal spirituality.

Peter and John said, „Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” What they had, the apostles gave. The problem is that most of the people today have nothing to give, because they’re full of themselves… Empty vessels standing behind the pulpits. Grudge, hatred, envy, malice, preaching every Sunday…

The Bible said, when the lame man got healed he  started leaping, shouting and jumping when Peter healed him. Arise and leap and jump. When was the last time in your church that you’ve seen arising? When a church possesses pentecostal spirituality there’s nothing that can stop you from rising. Why is it that we are not seeing the recovery? Because the church has become a consumer item. The church has become what is called in theology a tithing unit. We see the church now, instead of walking with God, the church becomes an emblem of consumer mentality, where sometimes, we just consume in the church instead of having power.

The problem with Pentecostals is that they have compartmentalized their lives. They don’t see their whole lives under the leadership of Christ. This is why so many preachers, great leaders are falling. Because we separate Scripture from its ethics. We separate facts by values. We separate personal faith and say it should be a private matter. But, in this western culture, I’m calling you back. They say the neutrality of all knowledge is a deception of the devil. The essential biblical spirituality is that ‘Now is the time to rise again!’ The church is not just a tithing unit for a consumer relationship. The church is a place of divine capability. The church is a place where the power of God resides, where the sick must be healed, the lost must be saved!

Pastor Ishmael Prince Charles concludes with a poignant story he heard of a young woman, who had a dream when she was 12 years old that she would have a child and the Lord told her what to name him. Something strange happened. A man came to her village and this young girl, who was now 15 told the man, „Pastor, I was already a christian the night I got pregnant in a one night stand. She said I was studying to be a school teacher and now my life is a mess. I am just about to have an abortion”. The holy spirit, speaking through the pastor, said, „Don’t touch the child. I need him”. She brought the child into the world and she said her grandmother kicked her out. She lived by the roadside, in a shack. The child was born in a shack and he contracted pneumonia and asthma. At the point of his last breath, close to death she put him down and arranged his hands to his side. She was so poor she lay him in the street. She said she sat there, a lonely teenager, crying and the same voice spoke and said, „Pick up the dying child, take him to the river and dip him 3 times and the boy shall live”. She said she was so frightened, there was such a bright light. The voice said again, „Pick up the child”. She looked and picked him up and slung the boy over her shoulder. She walked about a mile to the cold, running river and dipped the child in the water 3 times. And the little boy got up and breathed again. That little boy is me.

It is time for you to rise out of your story.

You can watch the message, which starts at the 1 hr 30 min mark here- http://www.churchofgod.org/ga2012/stream-archive-thursday-7pm/

In awe of God’s creation – Joshua Tree National Park – California – Pomii Yucca din Parcul National – Coplesit de Creatia lui Dumnezeu

Joshua trees in Joshua National Park,  California.

click on photo to see full size and source

Romaneste – Joshua Tree National Park – acest parc national din sud-estul statului California este declarat un parc national din 1994 cand Congresul SUA a declarat cei 3,199.59 km²   ca pamant/desert protejat. Parcul este numit pentru padurile cu pomii bastinasi Joshua (Yucca brevifolia) care acopera cei peste 3 mii de km patrati. Aces pamant este putin mai mare decat statul din estul Americii- Rhode Island. Parcul include doua deserte- cel elevat, Deserul Mojave si cel plat, Desertul Colorado. Muntii mici San Bernardino fac parte din sut-westul Parcului.

Joshua Tree National Park is located in southeastern California. Declared a U.S. National Park in 1994 when the U.S. Congress passed the California Desert Protection Act (Public Law 103-433), it had previously been a U.S. National Monument since 1936. It is named for the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) forests native to the park. It covers a land area of 790,636 acres (1,235.37 sq mi; 3,199.59 km²)– an area slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. A large part of the park, some 429,690 acres (173,890 ha), is a designated wilderness area. Straddling the San Bernardino County/Riverside County border, the park includes parts of two deserts, each an ecosystem whose characteristics are determined primarily by elevation: the higher Mojave Desert and lower Colorado Desert. The Little San Bernardino Mountains run through the southwest edge of the park.

Photographed by Doug Dolde More images from this location at http://www.douglasdolde.com (via wikipedia)

Romanian – Pomii Joshua ( Yucca brevifolia), pentru care este numit acest parc national, se gasesc in Desertul elevat Mojave. Pomii se afla si in paduri si singuri la distanta unii de altii.

The higher and slightly cooler Mojave Desert is the special habitat of Yucca brevifolia, the Joshua tree for which the park is named. It occurs in patterns from dense forests to distantly spaced specimens.

The Joshua tree, Yucca brevifolia, is a member of the Agave family. (Until recently, it was considered a giant member of the Lily family, but DNA studies led to the division of that formerly huge family into 40 distinct plant families.) Like the California fan palm, Washingtonia filifera, the Joshua tree is a monocot, in the subgroup of flowering plants that also includes grasses and orchids. Don’t confuse the Joshua tree with the Mojave yucca, Yucca schidigera. This close relative can be distinguished by its longer, wider leaves and fibrous threads curling along leaf margins. Both types of yuccas can be seen growing together in the park. The Joshua tree provides a good indicator that you are in the Mojave Desert, but you may also find it growing next to a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran Desert in western Arizona or mixed with pines in the San Bernardino Mountains.