TNP - THE WORLD IS RUNNING ON EMPTY

TNP – June 28, 2012  

I came early and played a variety of worship music and created a slide for Don:

Prayer…

It is not seeking for answers…

It is connecting with God, to know HIM who has NO questions.

Noble seemed preoccupied or troubled he had been watching the news and the reports of all that is going wrong in the world. 

Attention: “All Flyers please CHECK ALL your BAGGAGE AT THE GATE!”

“There will be no carry-on baggage allowed on this flight.”

Don asked me to walk us all through the process of turning over our baggage to the baggage handler. 

It is not enough to be free of the WEIGHT of our baggage, we must replace it with the JOY of the Lord.  

We must receive the infilling of the Spirit of God rather than just leaving ourselves empty and swept clean…

If we are in debt it is not enough to be debt free; abundant life is more than just breaking even.

If we are sick, it is not enough to get better, we need to live in divine health and possess the power to bring healing to others.

It is not enough to be saved from sin, living in no man’s land. 

We must go on from there and live righteously, victorious over sin, and setting others free from sin. II Cor. 5 - reconciling the world unto himself.

It is not enough to come out of Egypt, out of slavery into wandering in the sterile world of the wilderness. We must go into the promised land and remove the things that oppose God and his rule as King.   

Don walked around the group and anointed everyone with oil and prayed over them, when he had finished, he motioned for me to anoint him with oil. 

I crossed the circle and took some of the oil from his vial and as I laid my hand on him, I began to pray in an unknown tongue, it grew in volume and intensity as I stepped out in faith. 

Afterward, Don said it sounded a bit like Hebrew; all I knew was that it wasn't my standard prayer language. It was a clearly spoken tongue that took on a public dimension, so I asked for the interpretation, God said the words Underground Aquifers.

When it came time to share the interpretation, I told the group that I had seen a picture while praying, it was as though the water table, underground had dropped precariously low because of the constant pumping of the water to the surface in order to irrigate the dry land during a long drought.

In my picture fresh water was running down and splashing off of layers of porous rock that ran diagonally toward the center of the earth. The word that came to me was underground aquifers, I saw oblong holes in the rock surfaces that would allow water to flow horizontally. I saw the underground rock aquifers filling with water and becoming submerged as the water rose higher and higher. 

Don responded by saying, “Idaho has the largest known underground aquifers in North America, or the country something like that. Since Don came to Mankato from Idaho, perhaps God is refilling some underground aspect in his life that was filled last during the years he was in Idaho. Perhaps it is that thing that is getting refilled after being dangerously low.

 

Aquifers in the news
Dried Up Seabed

 The Aral Sea has lost two-thirds of its volume because its source rivers were diverted for cotton irrigation during the Soviet era.

Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, it is now a dusty graveyard of rusting shipwrecks. When we divert the streams of God to help us grow

 Digging Deep
More than two billion people worldwide rely on wells for their water. As water tables continue to drop, many of them, like these Kenyan villagers on Pate Island, devote countless hours to collecting and hauling the valuable resource. The pits in this photo, taken less than 300 feet from the ocean's edge, yield a brackish, but drinkable water.

HOLES

This picture more than any other speaks of the futile attempts of man to bring the precious water that only flows out from a relationship with God, 

Brackish water hardly drinkable comes from our religious self help mechanisms, may keep us barely alive but will not bring the abundant life.

“Sometimes you think heaven is so far away, but all you have to do is reach up, Heaven is well within your reach."

Years ago during pre-service prayer at CFC, while we were at 805 South Riverfront, I had a vision of an autistic child, familiar to our local church family. Jaden was running through a field of tall grasses, leaping as he ran up a sloping plain toward the top of a small rise.

I could only see him when he leaped; his head would appear momentarily above the grass and then disappear again. As He looked up at the blue sky with puffy white clouds, somehow I knew what he was thinking, “that cloud looks so close, I bet I could reach up and touch it.” 

Then he reached up and pinched the cloud and the sky between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it down toward himself.  Like a piece of stretched fabric, it created a funnel shape. Clouds and blue sky all stretched down held firmly in the little boy’s hand. God spoke to me in my spirit, “sometimes you think heaven is so far away, but all you have to do is reach up, Heaven is well within your reach. 

If you believe you will act, if not... you will not.

If we obey that word and reach up then we touch heaven if we don’t reach up then we do not touch heaven.

A spontaneous song from that night.

C2             G

R e a c h    toward heaven

C2             G

R e a c h    toward heaven

C2             G

R e a c h    toward heaven

C2             G

R e a c h    toward heaven

D                              C                     G

If we knew who we were, and what we have been given

       C       D                G

We would ask our Father up in Heaven

D                              C                    G

If we knew who we were, and what we have been given

     C         D                  G

We would ask our Father up in Heaven

C2                        G

There’s enough in heaven

C2                    G

There’s stuff in heaven

(repeat)