Good morning, or good day, everybody.
It is day 20, and this is labeled the prize.
So we are halfway there today through our 40-day journey.
Restful one, listen with your spirit
to the word of God for you.
Therefore, since we are surrounded
by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us throw off everything that hinders
and the sin that so easily entangles,
and let us run with perseverance
the race marked out for us.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus,
the author and perfecter of our faith,
who for the joy set before him endured the cross,
scorning its shame, and sat down
at the right hand of the throne of God.
Hebrews 12, one through two.
As much as you are loved, restful one,
you have experienced pain in your life.
This world is under a curse,
and you are a part of a great battle
against the enemy of the most high God.
You will endure pain.
I bless your spirit with the ability
to have joy that transcends pain.
I bless you with a clear picture
of what is before you,
the thing that God has called you to do,
so that you can endure pain to get there.
Let me reread that.
I bless you with a clear picture
of what is before you,
the thing that God has called you to do,
so that you can endure pain to get there.
For the joy set before him,
Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of your faith,
endured the cross.
He endured more pain than you ever will.
He paid a higher price.
He suffered greatly for you to receive these blessings.
I bless you with having his joy set before you.
You must have a clear view
of what is on the other side of the pain.
I bless you with eyes to see the joy set before you.
The enemy will do everything possible
to magnify the pain and cause you to focus on the pain.
But I bless you with an awareness
of the joy set before you.
I bless you with stepping up to the battle for joy.
Listen again with your spirit to the word of God.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers,
in view of God's mercy,
to offer your bodies as living sacrifices,
holy and pleasing unto God.
This is your spiritual act of worship.
Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
When you will,
then you will be able to test
and approve what God's will is,
his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Restful one, I bless you with testing and approving
what your father's good, pleasing and perfect will is.
I bless you with discerning between the good and the best.
I bless you with discerning the traps of the enemy,
the false offers that he makes.
I bless you with discerning between the real joy
that your father offers
and a counterfeit transitory joy that the enemy offers.
I bless you with an understanding from the word of God
to receive the principles of his word
and the joy that you can expect.
I bless you with hearing through revelation from the spirit
things that are specific to your own life
so that you can savor in your spirit
the joy set before you.
I bless you with rejoicing in the knowledge of God's will
as he reveals it.
For he cannot reveal to you now everything
that is on his heart.
I bless you with receiving all the joy
that God wants to show you.
Listen again with your spirit to God's word.
I have much more to say to you,
more than you can now bear.
But when he, the spirit of truth comes,
he will guide you into all truth.
He will not speak on his own.
He will speak only what he hears
and he will tell you what is yet to come,
John 16, 12 through 13.
I bless you, restful one,
with receiving every new revelation
that the spirit of God gives you
to see clearly each facet of joy
that your father is offering you.
The world offers you happiness.
Satan offers you delusion,
but God offers you the joy of his presence
that comes from partnering with him.
I bless you with embracing the call of God
for each chapter of your life,
seeing his joy in each step of your life
so that you advance to the next revelation and the next.
I
Bless you with sufficient understanding of the joy set before you that you will not count the cost
But you will pay the price
I bless you with godly dissatisfaction that you will always hunger and thirst for new joys new levels of your
Father's revealing his joy to you. I bless you with joy beyond any joys you have already experienced
I bless you with possessing your birthright and full with never being satisfied with a single measure of joy
But with always wanting more
Wanting the very best God has for you
I bless you with yearning for the fullness of joy that is beyond what you have already
experienced so that you embrace any pain scorn the shame and pay the price to
possess your birthright I
Bless you with a profound deep
Driving desire for more of the joy that you have a legal right to have joy
That is coupled to your birthright. I bless you with hunger for more and
For the satisfaction of that hunger. I bless you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth
I
Literally do not know what more than a prayer I could offer
Lord I truly pray God that you put a place in our heart
We have an unquenchable hunger it's been a prayer for mine for a long long time
That you wouldn't let us settle Lord
Just for transparency for the sake Lord I I have so many times said Lord don't give up
Or said please don't leave me and I I know intellectually that that I can't escape your love
But there's a hunger that I've tasted but I have not maintained
Lord I pray today there to be an unquenchable
Unconquerable hunger that you will not let us settle the Lord
You will doggedly pursue us just like when you pursued us into a place where we
Surrendered our lives to you
That there be that same
Dogged pursuit there's not like you just you you want us and now we're taken for granted that there be a place God
And out of the heart of God where their desires and things that only you could have placed there and that God
I'm asking for the grace for those things to remain and grow
I have a
friend that has a profound relationship with the Lord and he often is with all the crazy things he's done and experienced and
His two main focuses are is Jesus your first love and radical obedience
And Lord your love is not like our love we don't even understand it
Some people think that if we're just going back to the law and we just
Do the best job we can of keeping your commandments that that means that we love you
But we could do great exploits in your name and still you don't know us that there be a place God where we would
Know God and be known by God
But that we would we would take on a new aspect of love in our or what it is that we are saying that we love
you
There are things that we do or we don't do that really are communicating something completely different
Lord for each person here
We know the phrase that you are our treasure
You are our reward and that we in some form or fashion are your reward
And there is an aspect where we have received something that we didn't even pay for. I
Can't remember if I say if I
shared this before or not, but there's a
Another friend of mine
Ken fish I'll give him credit for this one and and he does this great message about the gospel
And it's an expanded it's almost like a call to arms he he he's a very learned man
He's very he walks a lot of power and authority
But he he's a very learned and probably the smartest man in the world and he's a very
He's a very learned and probably the smartest person I've met and he has had a
Love of histories his whole life in addition to all of the other things that he
He's done and experienced in his life, and he talked about during the time of Jesus that
there was an understanding of the term gospel that is lost to us.
That in each changing time during the Roman Empire, when there was a changing of the guard,
when there was a new emperor, that there was a need for him to establish himself, especially
in the minds and the hearts of the people.
And so typically, they would identify some area within the Roman Empire that was rebellious
or some place that needed, you know, that maybe was unconquered yet.
But by this time, it was mostly places that were living in rebellion, and they would send
forth the Roman army, and they would do battle.
And when they won, when they persevered, they would walk down the Appian Way on the way
back to Rome.
All roads led to Rome.
And they would have these heralds that would go all before the army.
And they would say, behold the gospel, which was good news.
There's a new king that is being crowned.
He has fought a battle on your behalf, one that you do not have to fight.
He's fought a battle on your behalf, and you get to share in the spoils.
So when Jesus came, he declared everybody there, when he talked about the gospel being
good news, it wasn't just there was salvation, which is absolutely true.
It wasn't just those things.
He was making a declaration of war that all people understood what that term meant.
Hear the gospel that there is a new king.
He has fought a battle on our behalf that we do not have to fight, and we get to share
in that victory, though we ourselves did not have to fight it.
And throughout the message of Jesus Christ, Lord, when you were on the earth, you had
a simple model where you would repeatedly go for, behold, the kingdom of God is at hand,
and bang, miracles, bang, healing, bang, Lord, the eyes were open, the ears were open, the
eyes could see, lepers were cleansed, the dead was raised, all these things came at
the declaration of your kingdom.
But the basis of all of this stuff, Lord, is there's an aspect of what you have done
that we do not understand.
Even if we do, we know what you've saved us from to some extent, but there's so much
more that we do not understand, that we don't comprehend, and if we did, we would live our
lives differently.
I heard it said by a well-known leader that there was a really famous itinerant, kind
of evangelist kind of person, and he said, you know, I think really about 80% of the
churches out there really don't believe in the resurrection.
It's staggering.
And the thing became, and I've heard this many times, it's, I won't say it's tickled
my ear, it's gotten my attention, is this idea that if we truly understood, Lord, if
we truly believed the finished work, if we truly believed that you had resurrected, because
in the early church, it was Jesus Christ crucified and the resurrection.
You know, there was the forgiveness of sins, but it was the focuses of the teaching were
very different than the focuses of our teaching today, that Lord, that if we really got it,
then our lives would look different.
What I pray today, that we see, we comprehend, we get something, an aspect of you and what's
been done already, but of you being the prize that we have not yet gotten.
That journey from the mind, the 18th inch journey from the head to the heart, and that
there'd be some aspect of that, Lord, where the mutual song is being sung between us.
I remember, Lord, looking at this noted.
person in the Christian world and it was a woman and I was fairly new to the
prophetic and I was very sheepish about all of this but I kept seeing something
and I kept hearing something and I felt so silly because it seemed so trite. And
I saw this person looking in a mirror brushing their hair and they were
singing that song, You're So Beautiful to Me. And I could see the notes. I could see
almost like the the scripts or the writing of the the bars and the things
that the you know traveling and it reaching your ears and then as she's
singing this song you're singing the same song, You're So Beautiful to Me, to
her and she's singing it to you and you're singing it to her and there was
this circle of elevation that was happening in between and I was just I
could see and experience this whole thing and it was magnificent and I felt
and I was like wow that's amazing I don't I mean but when it came time to
share I felt so small and I said I'm really embarrassed to say this but I
keep seeing this image and and it's so pleasing to the Lord and she
smiled with a bit of emotion and said that's our song. That's the song before
between the Lord and I only He could have showed you that. There is an aspect
Lord and I know everybody likes to borrow this phrase you know where we're
his we're your favorite and we're all your favorite but there's an aspect Lord
of of where you really are everything beyond and the more we can really
capture and understand all that you are the our life will really take on a
different dimension. It really will shift how we view life how we make decisions
that Lord if we truly get a hold of who you are and all that you are everything
as Graham Cook would talk about like the I don't know why I keep referencing him
but the majesty of life that that the the met the majesty of God like the
bigger God becomes the more insignificant everything else becomes
like I've heard it said by someone once that that that it is like anxiety is
like a sin because in a sense we're communicating that our problems are
bigger than God's ability to deal with so there's an aspect Lord of us needing
to understand and it will really shift us but there's an equal aspect which is
very mysterious we're somehow from your perspective we are the pearl of great
price we're the one that you went after that we are the thing that makes it all
made it all worth it that when you weren't enduring the cross you could
look ahead and see the sticky note here Casey Christine Kate Lindsey Liberty I
think that's Nick Rita and Renata and I believe there's one other person and
forgive me if I'm forgetting you that you saw each one of them and you're like
that person is worth everything that I'm about to go through I would do it
all over just for that one person God I pray that somehow some way into the
feeble words of this man that is trying to bring the ends of whatever this seems
to be meandering mumbling prayer that God that you would do something in our
hearts today that you would shift us not just our circumstances but shift our
position shift our comprehension our consciousness our being conscious of a
reality and a truth it seems so hard for us to be able to grasp
you would give us greater capacity today and I pray Lord that you truly get the
reward of your suffering we bless you and we love you in Jesus name