TODAY’S PROPHETIC NUMBER
2 Chronicles 12:8 – “Nevertheless they will be his servants, that they may distinguish My service from the service of the kingdoms of the nations.”
God will let you choose who you will serve. We all serve something or someone. Your retirement fund, your legacy, your job–you name it. There is nothing wrong with preparing for future or making a path for someone else to follow, but it all ends. Serving the Lord and His purposes lasts for eternity.
Declaration: I’m a servant of the Lord Almighty. I will love what He loves and hate what He hates.
BLESSING OR CURSE?
Not every blessing looks or feels like a blessing. If you’ve walked very long with Jesus, you’ve experienced pain, rejection and things that feel like a curse while you’re in the midst of them. Perspective is everything. Take Mary mother of Jesus for example.
There she is, laying there in a sheep stable giving birth for the first time. She’s just a teenager going through that tremendous pain only women know about, wondering if if’s suppose to feel like this or if maybe something is wrong.
Her mama’s not there and the women of Joseph’s family have shunned her and thrown her out with the livestock to fend for herself with a husband who didn’t have any idea how to help her. They had to have felt tremendous shame.
I can just see her laying on the floor of that stable remembering the words of Gabriel. “Hail Mary, you’re blessed. You’re the most highly favored woman anybody’s ever seen.”
I can also imagine her going over those words saying, “Didn’t God say I was going to be blessed? That I was special to Him and favored? This doesn’t feel like favor or being blessed.”
While most of us would be cursing the Lord or begging Him to take this away from us because we’ve changed our minds, there is no recording of Mary doing so. While she had to be feeling cursed, at that moment, Mary had to have faith that the angel told her the truth. This may be bad, but something good would come out of it.
Have you ever lost a job and felt like the biggest loser? Maybe you thought God brought that on you and you shook your fist at the sky asking, “Why? What did I do to deserve this?” only to look back a few months later and realize that job loss was actually a blessing. Maybe it allowed you to move on to something better or escape something you didn’t realize was eating you alive.
God is not in the cursing business. He’s in the blessing business and business is good. He even takes those blows life deals us and works them out for our good. He did that for Mary and He promises He will do that for you too.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28
This is the new Hebrew year 5783, and 83 in Hebrew is Pey-Gimmel: the picture of a mouth-camel. Whaaat? As weird as that sounds, it’s actually very beautiful. Pey, 80, is speaking and declaring; lining our words up with God’s Word. Gimmel means “lift up” as a camel lifts up one who rides it and bears burdens in desert places.
It’s a picture of a choice we have this year: to speak words that bless or curse; to lift up and bear burdens or to cast down and ignore the pleas of the needy. It’s a great big word I will be unpacking at my New Beginnings 2023 Conference January 18-21. Join me! There’s a personal word there for you, I promise.
NEW BEGINNINGS 2023 – TICKETS NOW!