psalm 91

got gloria copeland's book and want to get serious about trusting god!

DREAM ON

Dream On
by Kenneth Copeland

Imagine for a moment that somebody provided a servant for you. A rich friend just decided to bless you by hiring someone to help you—around the house, at the office, wherever you need assistance.
Once you thanked your friend for his kindness, what would you do?
You’d put that servant to work, that’s what. You’d give him a list of all the things you’ve dreamed of getting done but haven’t had time to do yourself. Housecleaning. Gardening. Detailing the car. The list would go on and on…
You certainly wouldn’t leave the servant sitting on the couch all day with nothing to do. You wouldn’t let him idle away his time watching television while you rushed around trying to get things done by yourself. That would be foolish. That would be a waste of the servant’s time, and your friend’s generosity.
Nobody in their right mind would do that. Yet spiritually speaking, we as believers do it all the time. We neglect the spiritual assistance we’ve been given. We leave the servant called faith, which God has so graciously provided for us, sitting around idly with nothing to do.
“Wait a minute,” somebody might say. “Did you just call faith our servant?”
Yes, I did. But I didn’t come up with the concept myself. I got it from Jesus. He compared faith to a servant in Luke 17. When the disciples asked Him to increase their faith, He said,
“If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not” (verses 6-9, New King James Version).A White-Hot Expectation
Obviously Jesus didn’t view faith the way most people do today. He didn’t see it as something fragile and religious—meant to be used like fancy china, only on special occasions. Jesus considered faith a workhorse, an able-bodied helper given to us by God to roll up its sleeves and get the job done.
Exactly what job is faith designed to do?
It is designed to transfer material from the realm of the spirit into this natural realm. Faith goes into the spiritual world, lays hold of what is already there and manifests it in the natural world of matter. Hebrews 11:1 says it this way: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Faith is what clothes our God-given, Bible-based hopes with natural substance. It’s what makes them become a reality in this material world. So when believers don’t cultivate hope in their hearts, faith is left with nothing to do.
“But, Brother Copeland,” you might say, “I have lots of hope. I’m hoping for a better job. I hope my kids will do well in school. I’m hoping it won’t rain tomorrow so I can go fishing.”
That’s not hoping. That’s wishing. True Bible hope is much more powerful than that. The definition of the Greek words translated hope in the New Testament literally means “an intense, white-hot expectation that something is coming to pass.”
Most believers have very little of that kind of hope because it’s born out of Holy Spirit-inspired dreams—dreams based and built on the promises of God’s Word and heaven’s bounty. A dream becomes hope when the dreamer starts expecting it to come to pass.
And there lies the problem. Too many believers have stopped dreaming.Not Just Kid Stuff
As for me, I’ve been a dreamer all my life. As a little boy, I had an imagination as big as all outdoors. (I still do. I can entertain myself for hours.) One of my most enduring dreams began when I was a kid during World War II. There was an Army air base just outside the West Texas town where I grew up and they used to fly squadrons of P-47 Thunderbolts out of there. Since I was practically born with the desire to fly, I’d lie on my back porch and imagine what it would be like to be in those planes looking down through the clouds at my house.
Once when I was about 8 years old, a man who owned a Lockheed X offered to fly my dad and me around the city and I got to sit up front with the pilot. I absolutely couldn’t keep my hands off the yoke. We ended up sitting on the ground for a while and I spent the whole time in the cockpit making airplane noises and dreaming about flying that plane.
I realize that just sounds like kid stuff to most people, but over the years that dream became a hope, and by the time I was in my 20s I was flying airplanes for a living. My dream had become a reality.
If that was the end of the story, my dream of flying wouldn’t have been of any eternal value. But that wasn’t the end of it because in 1967, that dream ran head-on into the Word of God. And a dream that is based purposely on God’s Word and on His promises becomes more than just a personal desire. It becomes spiritual seed that is guaranteed to produce fruit for the kingdom of God and bring rewards that will last forever.All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go
Jesus taught about that kind of spiritual seed in Mark 4. (Study the whole chapter carefully if you want to see how to take your dreams from hope…to faith…to reality.) He said: “To what shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what parable shall we picture it? It is like a mustard seed which, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth; but when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs, and shoots out large branches, so that the birds of the air may nest under its shade" (verses 30-32, New King James Version).
Notice Jesus said that when a divine dream seed is fully grown, others can rest in its shade. That’s the wonder of Word-based, Holy Spirit-inspired dreams. They not only satisfy the longings of our own hearts, they glorify God and bless others as well. They bring increase to the kingdom of God.
That’s what happened with my childhood dream of flying. It became a spiritual seed on my very first day in full-time ministry. I’ll never forget that day. I got up early in the morning, put on the only suit I owned and went to the living room of our little house.
I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Nobody had asked me to preach yet. I was just stepping out in faith and obeying God.
As I took out my yellow pad and Bible, I started to dream about what the Lord had told me to do. He’d commanded me to preach the uncompromised Word of God on every available voice. He’d instructed me to preach that Jesus is Lord from the top of the world to the bottom and all the way around.
So I began to say it. I stood in my living room and declared, “I’ll preach that Jesus is Lord. I’ll preach that Jesus saves. I’ll preach that He baptizes in the Holy Ghost and heals. I’ll preach that He is our financier, the Lord of the Harvest, and the soon-coming King. And I’ll preach it from the top of the world to the bottom, and all the way around the middle!”Go as Far as You Can
Then it dawned on me. I can’t do that without an airplane!
Of course, about that time, my old fleshly mind piped up and asked me how I thought I was going to buy an airplane when I could hardly afford to get out of the living room. But I decided not to pay any attention to it. I said, “I don’t have time to think about that. Glory to God, I’m too busy dreaming about going around the world! I’m too busy seeing myself preaching the Word of God to multiplied thousands of people.”
Before the end of that first day in ministry, the phone rang and Pastor Harold Nichols from Fort Worth, Texas, asked me to come to his church and preach. I accepted…and we were on our way.
I didn’t know where I was going after that. But I had a dream and a vision. I had hope and I kept that hope alive by meditating on God’s promises and feeding continually on His Word. I figured I’d just go as far as I could go and expect God to take care of the rest.
Sure enough, He did. A few days after I finished the meetings at Pastor Nichols’ church, Hilton Sutton asked me to come preach a meeting at his church in Houston, Texas. “When can you come?” he asked.
“Right now!” I answered.
Brother Sutton asked me to come for a weekend and we wound up staying three weeks. It was marvelous.
The last night of the meeting Brother Hilton’s dad asked me to come to his church in Beaumont, Texas.God Put a Dreamer in You
I charged down to Beaumont full of hope and enthusiasm. I’d been dreaming of preaching to thousands so I was expecting a landslide. But what I found when I got there was a mess. A flu epidemic had hit the church and the first morning the only ones who showed up for the meeting were the pastor, his wife and two other people. The next meeting two more people showed up.
At first, I let that get to me. I let it cut off my dream. But after I spent some time in prayer, the Lord showed me 1 Peter 5:6-7: “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”
I saw it. I had to roll all the care of the meeting over on Him. Carrying the care was killing my dream. The care said, “There’s no hope of you having a meeting here.” But faith said, “I don’t have a care. I’ll preach whether anyone comes or not. That’s what I’m called to do—preach the Word. Period!”
I got back on my feet again. I decided the first thing we needed to do was get these people healed. So the pastor and I took our anointing oil and went out praying for the people. Every one of them got healed, except for one man who just refused to get out of bed.
The next service, I went in and preached like there were 15,000 people there. I preached all over the room. I preached up and down the aisles. There were still less than a dozen people but I was shouting the victory like the place was full. As I remember, there was one sinner there and the rest were believers, but that one sinner got saved. As far as I was concerned, that was 100 percent success—we were having a landslide!
Afterward, somebody said, “That poor preacher hasn’t ever been to seminary. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know the difference between a landslide and a flop!”
He didn’t realize that I was a dreamer. He didn’t know that while I was preaching, I was seeing that place full. I was seeing people crowded in until they were hanging out the windows. Before the week was out, that dream had become hope…that hope had clothed itself with faith…and the building was literally running over with people. It only held about 130, and by Friday night they had to raise the windows so the people outside could hear. We stayed and held two services a day for 21 days. It was glorious.
That was almost 40 years ago now, and I’ve been dreaming Holy Ghost dreams ever since. I’ve spent my life preaching that Jesus is Lord to multiplied thousands and flying from the top of the world to the bottom and all the way around. Over the years, my dreams have gotten bigger—and I’m not finished yet.
“Yeah, but Brother Copeland, that’s just you. You’re a dreamer.”
So are you, my friend. If you’re a born-again believer, God has put dreams inside of you, and He’s given you a servant called faith to bring those dreams to pass.
So stir yourself up. Stir up your divine imagination and reach out into the heavenlies. Immerse yourself in the Word of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and dare to dream the dreams He gives you. Bring your hope to a higher level by declaring the Word, and keep meditating that Word until your hope is clothed with faith, and that faith reaches into the realm of the spirit and makes your dream a reality.
Don’t let fear or past disappointments hold you back. Plant your dream like a mustard seed so it can grow up and become greater than the impossibilities in your life. Plant it so it can grow up and become a source of blessing, encouragement and support for others.
God is waiting for you to dream. The people you were born to bless are waiting for you to dream. So don’t let the devil stop you. Dream on, my friend. Dream on.

from an article by gloria copeland on healing

Faith in Two Places
"I'd have no problem at all believing God's Word would heal me if He'd speak to me out loud like He did in Genesis," you might say, "but He hasn't!"

No, and He probably won't either. God no longer has to thunder His Word down at us from heaven. These days He lives in the hearts of believers, so He speaks to us from the inside instead of the outside. What's more, when it comes to covenant issues like healing, we don't even have to wait on Him to speak.

He has already spoken!

He has already said, "...By [Jesus'] stripes ye were healed" (1 Peter 2:24). He has already said, "...I am the Lord that healeth thee" (Exodus 15:26). He has already said, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up..." (James 5:15).

God has already done His part. So we must do ours. We must take the Word He has spoken, put it inside us and let it change us from the inside out.

You see, everything--including healing--starts inside you. Your future is literally stored up in your heart. As Jesus said, "A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things" (Matthew 12:35).

That means if you want external conditions to be better tomorrow, you'd better start changing your internal condition today. You'd better start taking the Word of God and depositing it in your heart just like you deposit money in the bank. Then you can make withdrawals on it whenever you need it. When sickness attacks your body, you can tap into the healing Word you've put inside you and run that sickness off!

from today's bible study

i decide to major in majors, becoming christ-like:
i am setting my priorities straight:

JEREMIAH 29

11bI have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for. 12"When you call on me, when you come and pray to me, I'll listen. 13-14"When you come looking for me, you'll find me. "Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I'll make sure you won't be disappointed."

1 JOHN 3

All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus' life as a model for our own.

making them who they are
GOD, MAKE ME WHO I AM!


it all boils down to walking in love:

Here's how you tell the difference between God's children and the Devil's children: The one who won't practice righteous ways isn't from God, nor is the one who won't love brother or sister. A simple test.
11For this is the original message we heard: We should love each other.

18-20My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

21-24And friends, once that's taken care of and we're no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we're bold and free before God! We're able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we're doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God's command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.

your promise of protection

Your Promise of Protection: The Power of the 91st PsalmBy: Gloria Copeland

Description: You can have the protection of the strongest defense in the world. In an ever-changing world, the constant protection God promises in the 91st Psalm will cover you in all situations. Outlined in this powerful chapter in the Bible is a secure plan for those who trust in the Lord. In Your Promise of Protection, Gloria Copeland, world-renowned speaker and author, provides a detailed description of "the secret place of the Most High". By understanding the depth that God will go to ensure your protection, you and your family will find peace in every encounter. In this practical message, you'll learn:
The role of angels in protection
The importance of preparation for times of crisis
The full extent of God's refuge
The accounts of those who live under God's shelter.Walk into the secret place that is already yours. Discover Your Promise of Protection through the lives of those who have escaped harm as they live out Psalm 91. Dwell in freedom from fear today!

american girl

marie ist im american girl fieber! gestern lernte sie ueber diese puppen in der sendung "lollytop"! hier ein bild von ihrer lieblingspuppe stefanie!

pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest

today we saw this movie with johnny depp, which made me think of the time some years ago, when adele, the reference librarian on duty, did not recognise him when he came to the library to do some research on gypsies. she even asked him to take off his sunglasses, saying it was impolite to wear them inside!

e-mails i want to keep

this is from sharon, an american friend i met in bucharest in a choir singing christmas carols in december 1989! she is now 63 and retired to asheville, NC! she is jobhunting to pay of her debts after buying a house there this spring!


"Yeah, I posted my resume on Career Builder dot com and got a response from one company who needs a Legal Secretary/Assistant. They're calling people for interviews shortly. Yesterday, I also faxed my resume with an accompanying cover letter to a woman who is looking for an "A+ Assistant" to work for "Wonder Woman" in a fast-paced, stressful environment. She sounded totally loopy yet interesting/intriguing, so it won't hurt to find out what the business/job is and what she expects, etc. I'll keep you posted on those and any other jobs that come up.

A book I can highly recommend to you is one by Sheila Kay Adams titled "My Old True Love." Absolutely fantastic story teller and a native of the Appalachian region near Asheville. You will love the story, which takes place just before, during and after the Civil War.

Hugs and bises galore! Shar"

today's insight

my AHA-moment today: while exercising i listened to a teaching by joyce meyer about developing a god-like character! she says and this made me realize that reading the bible and living by it, will result in an awesome life, it would not mean that i would not have any problems but the devil would not win!
it really boils down to seeking his kingdom first and everything else will fall into place! she also said, the sweeter she became, meaning, the more she walked in love and became a blessing to others, the less problems she had with the devil!

thanking for healing prayer

"Lord Jesus, I thank You that You have paid for all of my healing needs. As it is written in Isaiah 53:4-5 and Matthew 8:17, You took up all of my infirmities and pains and sicknesses. As it is written in 1 Peter 2:24, by Your stripes I was healed. As it is written in Galatians 3:13, You have redeemed me from the curse of every kind of sickness and disease. You have given me healing as a free gift, and on March 27th, 2006, I accepted that free gift with joy and thankfulness. The healing that I need is now mine, and I am patiently waiting as long as it takes until the healing is complete in my body. I am standing in faith on the Word of God, and I refuse to allow any fear or doubt into my mind. Devil, in Jesus' Name you take those effects of my brain bleed off my body because I'm not signing for that package. effects of my brain bleed, you have no legal right to attack my body because Jesus has redeemed me from the curse of the Law. You are a mountain, and as it is written in Mark 11:23 I take authority over you in Jesus' Name and I command you to leave my body now. Get off of me and be cast into the sea! I rebuke you, as it is written in Luke 4:39. I curse you at the roots and command you to die in Jesus' Name, as it is written in Mark 11:20-24. Lord, I am confessing that You are my Healer, and I thank You for Your healing power that is working in my body right now!"

tea

i love tea and dislike coffee! i am definitely a tea person, i find tea so cozy and soothing!

the picture shows esther's famous orange marmelade cake -(from jan karon's mitford series!), doesn't it look yummy?

louisa may alcott as detective

anna maclean: louisa and the crystal gazer:



from the author's website:

Welcome to my electronic parlor! Pour yourself a cup of tea and enjoy this site about my mystery series, featuring the most beloved role model of American womanhood, Louisa May Alcott.

from historical mystery review:

This series gives us Louisa May Alcott who in her old age looks back to a “secret” part of her life, her “adventures...in the curious role of a lady detective.” Not yet a well known author, Louisa willingly sets forth from the protective bosom of her hard working, loving family in order to solve a murder. In the process, her own life is threatened.

it also provides rich details about the required manners and dress of “respectable” Boston women. Find also bits of information about social issues in pre-Civil War New England, of Louisa’s father, Bronson Alcott, and of Ralph Emerson.

this is the cover of a different mystery but i like the romantic image of louisa!

a book that stayed with me

from the bookreporter website:

A friend of mine has a theory that you can tell a lot about someone from which of the Little Women she preferred. The trouble is, most people I know picked Jo. With her tomboyish ways and authorial ambitions, she was clearly a more thrilling model than Meg (too housewifely), Beth (too virtuous, and doomed besides), or Amy (vain and bratty). Still, for a lot of us avid readers, Marmee and her four girls were a profound early influence. Their struggles to make do, to be good, and to realize their dreams seemed contemporary to me in the 1950s, even though Louisa May Alcott's story took place almost 100 years earlier.

I never thought much about Mr. March. Perhaps the notion of an absent father and an all-female household resonated with an era when emotionally remote men went off to work and joined the family only intermittently, on weekends. Or perhaps it was just that this was almost entirely (and delightfully) a world in which males didn't yet count for much, which is certainly the way I felt before the age of 12. Despite the endearing Laurie, the helpful and ardent Mr. Brooke, and the avuncular Professor Baer, LITTLE WOMEN is not an equal-opportunity novel. In MARCH, Geraldine Brooks redresses the balance, giving us a sensitive chaplain from Concord, Massachusetts, who volunteers for the Union cause and finds himself caught in the bitter carnage and wrecked ideals of the Civil War, finally ending up in a military hospital, whence Marmee (as readers of LITTLE WOMEN will remember) is summoned to nurse him back to life. In flashbacks, we learn the details of March's earlier life as a peddler in the antebellum South, a culture outwardly gracious and essentially cruel; his courtship of Marmee (who turns out to have been a hothead who Jo strongly resembles); and his anti-slavery activities and passion for educational reform. In fact, Brooks --- author of a stunning novel about the Black Plague, YEAR OF WONDERS --- based March's character explicitly on Louisa May's father, Bronson Alcott, just as Louisa May based her LITTLE WOMEN characters on her own family.

Bronson Alcott is the unsung Transcendentalist; his radical views were a major influence on Emerson and Thoreau, yet today he is known principally as the improvident father (he wasn't much of a breadwinner) of a famous children's novelist, writes Brooks in an essay for The New Yorker (January 10, 2005). Despite ill-fated projects such as the utopian community Fruitlands and a general tendency to let the purity of his principles sabotage any worldly success, Alcott held views remarkable for his time: He opposed corporal punishment in schools, believed in education through "conversations" rather than rote memorization, and supported women's suffrage. Some of the most touching scenes in this novel involve education. When March is sent by the Union Army to start a school for freed slaves on a former plantation, he writes Marmee of his pupils: "We are so used to judge a man's mind by how lettered he is, yet here I have already seen that there are many other measures. With book-learning so long denied them, they have, perforce, cultivated diverse other skills. Their visual acuity is remarkable, and their memories prodigious." Although they have no ink or paper and must learn to write by scratching in the dirt with sticks, his students become devoted to March and watch over him when he contracts malaria; later in the story, they save his life. But Brooks is appropriately wary of projecting our own 21st century version of moral enlightenment --- about race, gender, or class --- upon her characters: She is well aware that even the most progressive intellectuals of the 19th century had limitations.

Consider, for example, March's remark that the ears of his "little women" should not be sullied with descriptions of the barbarous rapes and mutilations that take place under slavery; or Marmee's reaction to the unpalatably large number of impoverished Negroes ("Are there no end to the people?") in wartime Washington, D.C., quite unlike the "one or two colored citizens, carefully dressed and decorous in manner" that she is accustomed to seeing in Concord. MARCH is beautifully written, cleverly conceived, and dramatically plotted; my one complaint is that the central figure doesn't entirely come alive. In her New Yorker piece, Brooks comments that Bronson Alcott, while possessing a "joyful, affectionate nature," was also guilty of "narcissism, moral certitude, and impractical idealism." Perhaps her diligent research created some inhibition when it came to building March's character, for there is a relentlessly self-righteous (and at the same time self-abnegating) strain in him that rouses impatience in the reader. You feel like saying, "Oh, get on with it!" MARCH is also a double love story --- the objects of his affection being Marmee and an elegant, highly educated former slave named Grace --- and I must confess that I found the women more interesting than the man. In a neat twist, toward the end of the book Brooks abruptly shifts the point of view from Mr. to Mrs. March, and Marmee's character, taken out of the purely maternal role she plays in LITTLE WOMEN, is a revelation: courageous (she hid runaways as part of the Underground Railroad), given to losing her temper, and sexually eager. Her ambivalence about her flawed, visionary husband; her difficulty in adhering to the prescribed demure model of womanhood (March patronizingly refers to the "lawless, gypsy elements of her nature"); and her hopes for the girls (she refuses to punish Jo's outbursts, saying that "the world would crush her spirit soon enough") all found a response in me.

I was sorry when the narration passed back to Mr. March. Despite Brooks's best efforts, women still insist on dominating this story. Older children's books such as LITTLE WOMEN are like family heirlooms, handed down by generations. My mother and grandmother loved it, and Brooks, in her Afterword, thanks her own mother for suggesting that she read it. Too saintly? More than a bit sentimental? Maybe, but passionate and inspiring too, and the same can be said of MARCH. Thanks to Geraldine Brooks, the father of the "little women" is no longer faceless. --- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

tea with my favorite author Jan Karon

quote: - Tea Time Magazine, along with many of Jan's friends, relatives, and neighbors, recently attended a White Tea on Jan's summer-green lawn. The story and photographs are in the upcoming September-October issue, on newsstands August 22. Or, call Tea Time's Customer Service at 888-411-8995, for a subscription or individual copies. You can also enjoy a relaxing getaway by visiting their website: http://www.teatimemagazine.com/.

i am back

it is quite embarrassing to see that i have not written anything in more than two years! so much has happened, and although my focus has changed, i am now telecommuting to work three hours a week, i still like the attitude behind the name "YES" to life and "YES" to god!