Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
I hope you had a great Resurrection weekend. The sun has been shining in Northwest Washington and there is a sense of Spring in the atmosphere. Passover was not the end of the past but the beginning of the new year. It is the beginning of a new season. Thank you to all who are being creative in seeking God and connecting to one another in this present time.
God wants to lead us in a path that takes us from today into tomorrow. That path is a path of God’s wisdom. It is not just a knowledge of the day, but a knowledge of faith. It is seeing what God sees before it can be seen in the moment. This is the power of faith that comes by God’s Spirit of wisdom speaking to our hearts from within. There are things happening in heaven right now that are the determining factor for the tomorrow of our lives. God’s thoughts for us are always thoughts for peace and not despair. They are thoughts of a future and a hope. This is true even in difficult times. When the children of Israel faced seventy years of captivity, God said that they were to pray for the prosperity of Babylon, that in Babylon’s prosperity they would also have prosperity. That prosperity comes as an expression of peace from heaven. God told the children of Israel to live life to the fullest in the midst of their captivity with the building of houses, the planting of gardens, and the further establishment of their families and lives. We can believe for the power of the peace of heaven to invade our world with heaven’s grace for such a time as this. We are in need of wisdom and knowledge to acquire true understanding in our lives. That wisdom and knowledge can only come from God, and not mere human experience or perspectives.
Jeremiah 29:4 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all who were carried away captive, whom I have caused to be carried away from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. 6 Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters—that you may be increased there, and not diminished. 7 And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.
We cannot find our true present or our true future by listening to the voices of Babylon. We can only find the true present and future of Babylon by listening to the voice of God in our lives. We are to be light in the darkness. We are the preserving salt of God’s grace in the midst of the covenant defying ways of the world. We are the gate of heaven’s influence to the world in which we live. God’s wisdom for our day and the path to our future is determined by His timing and His full testimony in our lives. The greater thing than our deliverance is the testimony of a greater understanding of the fullness of God in our lives.
Jeremiah 29:8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are in your midst deceive you, nor listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. 9 For they prophesy falsely to you in My name; I have not sent them, says the Lord. 10 For thus says the Lord: After seventy years are completed at Babylon, I will visit you and perform My good word toward you, and cause you to return to this place. 11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
I am not saying that our present situation is a seventy-year situation, but just as the number 70 is a prophetic symbolism of all the nations of the world, God’s work in our lives right know is for His perfecting love made known among all the nations of the world. It is time to call upon Him in expectation of His love. He is great, He is good, and His mercy endures forever!
Jeremiah 29:12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 13 And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.
God is listening, are we calling? God is watching with expectancy, are we seeking? God desires us, are we willing to be found by Him? God is offering us new freedom. Will we let go of our captivity and receive His true liberty? We must let go of things as they have been and embrace things as God says they should be to discover the door of today that leads to the path of our true tomorrow. Perhaps our social distancing is a call from God for us to join to Him more than we seek anything or anyone else. Perhaps the things that worked yesterday will not work today and we need to find God in our today, not merely His foundation in our past. Perhaps it is time to expect new things, create new things, and embrace His purpose in new ways. God is great! God is good! God’s mercy never ends!
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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Please continue to pray for us and contribute when you can.
Thanks Again – Ted J. Hanson
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Thank you Pastor Ted for your post. The Lord directed me to fast on the morning of Passover–it was a symbolic entrance into something “new.” I honestly did not have an intention for my fast as usual, rather it was a fast to know the heart of God. What you have written here is what the Lord has been showing me–not in the same words but with the exact meaning of this hour and how to approach it. I am seeking the Lord’s heart in a compelling way. At the same time, branches that are not bearing fruit are being cut away–as each branch goes into the “fire,” I am emerging more clear. I pray for people daily as Chaplain with the COVID-19 Community Helpers, and other Kingdom work–I feel with all my being that the Lord has prepared me “for such a time as this.” Thanks again–