Today, I want to share with you the third (and final) portion of the Prophetic Word for 2019. This part focuses on the coming harvest and the desire God has for us to use our gifts to build the Kingdom of God. Sharing your gift matters! I pray that this portion of the word for this year will inspire you to collaborate with God and see His promises come to pass in your world!

Remember, prophecy is an invitation to partner with God to bring His life-giving Kingdom to earth. Without your participation, that task would be impossible! God has chosen to include you in His harvesting process, to use the unique gifts and talents He gave you, and to give you great joy as you see Him move. Listen carefully to what He's promising here - and even more closely to what He's asking from you. 
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The Lord will always lead you, satisfy you in a parched land, and strengthen your bones. You will be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters never run dry.
~Isaiah 58:11

I hear the Lord saying: “At present, you are more like a water spigot than a fountain. You are connected to your Source and can access My power, but you enjoy the ability to turn on or off the water at your own good pleasure. I would rather you be a fountain flowing continuously, not a spigot flowing sporadically. For this, you will need to yield full control to Me.”
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*Please note: $30 Registration online by June 6th, 2018.   
$35 registration at the door on day of event.   
Registration fee includes catered lunch by Tabitha's Table!   

​Location: Freedom Worship Center, West Boylston, MA (Rte 12)   
Click registration button for more info and full schedule.   

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​Questions? Contact Deborah here.

This morning as I prayed, I heard the Lord saying: "When you realize that I never leave you, it will change your life. Where you see separation, I see unity. Where you feel division, I feel only love. The measure of My love does not depend on the size of your container! I will pour until you overflow... you cannot contain My glory!"                                               

What does it mean to you to serve God?   
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For most Christians, serving God is a joyful expression of our translation from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of Light. We exchange bad habits for good ones, spend time in Bible studies instead of bars, and invest our talents into churches, ministries, and good causes throughout the world. We hope that our investments will yield eternal rewards. Some time later, though, we may wonder, is this all there is to Christianity? Just meeting the needs of my church? 

Let me be the first to admit that sometimes, my prayers don't get answered. It happens to everyone. We're all on a journey, growing in the knowledge of who God is and how He works. No one - not even the most "spiritual" believer you know - has his prayers answered all the time! 

But in 30+ years of growing in the Lord, I've discovered that there are some prayers that are powerful. More powerful than others. One such prayer is asking God for what we call "Divine Appointments." 
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This week, I had the honor of interviewing Pastor Jason McGee, Senior Pastor of One Family Church in Shrewsbury, MA, for His Inscriptions readers. My husband and I have known Jason for several years, and helped him plant his church in Shrewsbury.

​One of the things that most impressed me during the church plant was his emphasis on prayer. I was curious to know, several years later, how he views prayer and what priority he gives to prayer in his growing congregation. Here are his thoughts.

For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel.
~1 Corinthians 4:15, NKJV
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"The more you rely upon the Anointed One (Jesus) and His anointing in you, the more life you will impart to others through your creations." 

This is what God whispered to me this week. He is looking for people who rely fully on Him as they live, work, minister and create things for Him. I believe He wants us to move beyond the quick prayers we send up at the beginning of our projects or events ("Bless this, Lord...") and move deeper into a place of total reliance on His Holy Spirit. Listen to what He shared in my prayer time: 

Sometimes God hands us a spiritual “Key:” a sign or token of our mastery of a gift we have or a role we play in the Kingdom of God.  For example, you might realize, as I did one day, that worship is your key to the throne room, and that when you praise Him you find breakthrough, peace, and renewal. Our strategies for the future come from this place, and our function within His Kingdom is often tied to this key. When we “turn the key” by using this gifting, others are mysteriously drawn to us, and enter into the Presence of God along with us.

Leaders in the Body of Christ are called, among other things, to be lifeguards. Watching is the key function of a prophet or intercessor. Rescuing is a priority for the evangelist. Guarding is elementary for the pastor. Warning is a main component of teaching. Vision is essential for the apostle. Believers in the Kingdom of God are expected to be on guard, or more specifically: to keep watch.
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My pastor runs a waterskiing ministry at the lake near his church in the summertime. On days when he is alone, the kids know that if he is out on the water training someone, no one swims until he gets back to the dock. 

Growing up, I remember my parents repeating the phrase, "Knowledge is power." My mother insisted I get a college education because she never had one. My father was a well-educated Wharton grad who ran the family business. My grandmother used to corner me at unsuspecting times and tell me I should become a teacher, so that I'd always have something to fall back on if things "didn't work out." In our family, knowledge was VERY important; it seemed so essential to survival!

In the family of God, I've found that knowledge is still seen as power. We Christians relentlessly educate ourselves in the things of God: through conferences, seminars, books, degrees, and videos. We are thirsty for understanding, especially for the knowledge of what God might be saying about us. We don't want to miss anything! 

It's here! Deborah's new Bible Study, How to Inherit Your Spiritual Promises: 5 Steps to Success, is now available on Amazon.com in Kindle and print formats. Click here to order!

​This week, instead of my usual blog post, the Lord asked me to share a special announcement with you concerning this ministry. Please indulge me as I try to sum up in a short letter what God has been saying in the past few weeks! I believe this vision will inspire you - and perhaps confirm some things He might be saying to you, as well.  

I had spent most of the week in what you might call "Mary" mode, and was really enjoying the time I'd set aside for intensive prayer. So far, things were going very well. The house was quiet and I managed to spend several hours each morning in focused prayer. Although intercession is not my primary calling, it is, for me, a powerful passion. But as the end of the week neared, all hell broke loose.

​There are two questions every believer must deal with in their Christian life. The first is: "Why aren't I bearing more fruit for the Kingdom of God?" The second is more troublesome: "Why does a good God allow evil and suffering in the world?" 

I have been a missionary both at home and abroad. I have traveled to dangerous inner-city ghettos and dusty, dirty African compounds. I have sung songs with poor children in the streets of Mexico and built houses for the homeless in the streets of New Haven. In all my travels, I found that there was only one thing I needed.

Are you ready to respond to an emergency? Would you be an effective leader in the midst of a crisis? How are you reacting to the disasters we are seeing on an international scale - would you be prepared to face one in your community?   

As a little girl, my greatest ambition was to become a nurse. Somewhere around age 7 or 8, I had a minor "emergency" of my own. I broke my leg in a biking accident. It was a spiral fracture of the tibia, I think. Stuck beneath my bike wheel, I couldn’t move my leg because of the pain.

I cried for my baby sister (then 3 or 4) to go and get help, but she laughed and kept on biking. She was too little, too carefree, to understand. I cried for my father, who was mowing the lawn at the time and could not hear me for the noise of his motor. After what seemed like hours of yelling at the top of my lungs, I finally convinced my sister to run and get my mother, who was inside the house. By then I was upset, frustrated, and terrified.

What happened next made such an impact on me that I never forgot it. A trip to the hospital was in the cards, and I was placed on an exam table by a nurse. Hers was the first smiling face I had seen in several hours, and her kind eyes made contact with mine and calmed me. Gently, she explained that they would need to take an x-ray, which meant straightening my leg.
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I panicked. I knew my leg would not straighten without pain. But this nurse knew how to position my leg just so. In an instant, my leg was straight, and it had not hurt at all! I was astonished, and I marveled at her ability to turn a painful and scary situation into one that radiated peace.

I remember not wanting to leave that nurse to go to the casting room. To alleviate pain and suffering – that was miraculous! To be so calm in the midst of a 7-year-old’s crisis – that was amazing! I decided right then and there that I would devote my life to becoming a nurse. Every scrapbook from subsequent years of my childhood bears notes in my mother’s handwriting to the effect that I would be a nurse when I grew up.

Although in the end I never pursued a nursing degree, I have chosen – perhaps unconsciously - to reach people in crisis, not only to alleviate their pain, but to extend the love and hope of Christ. I've spent countless hours ministering, praying, counseling, doing missions work, and even training as a volunteer first responder for my community.  All because of a “first responder” who took her job seriously and made a powerful impact on me.
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Retired USCG Rear Admiral Mary Landry calls this “purposeful work.” The desire to help others is a defining quality of those whom we call “first responders” in our communities: people like policemen, firemen, EMT’s, the military, and those involved in humanitarian work.
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I had the honor of spending the day with 700 Massachusetts first responders last week, at MEMA’s* annual training conference. The theme of the conference was “Effective Leadership During Crisis.” As I listened to the speakers, the Holy Spirit began showing me the need for believers to think of themselves as spiritual “first responders.” He seemed to be asking: "Are you ready to reach lost, wounded, and dying souls with all the peace, benefits, and resources of the Kingdom?"

I thought of the end times. We are closer than ever to the types of crises, or tribulations, that the book of Revelation describes. We are also closer than ever to revival. Many of my friends are diligently preparing themselves for emergencies, storing up food, water, and other necessary items. Like the nurse I admired, they are ready to deal with what’s called a “routine” emergency.
But what about compounded or extended large-scale crises, the events for which we have no standard "recipe" for our responses?

Dutch Leonard of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, explains it this way: in recent years, our nation has become very good at responding to what he calls “routine” incidents. If there’s a fire or a flood, you send the fire department. If there’s an active shooter, you send the police. You follow the recipe. However, when disasters are extended or compounded (as with “Snowmaggedon” in Boston or the Oil Spill in the Gulf), the incident transcends standard responses. Suddenly we need to get out of the box, so to speak, and join forces with others to define a more creative and effective response. Traditional methods don’t work in unprecedented events.

For example, the National Guard is prepared to clear up to 4 feet of snow in Boston at a time. But 15 feet? 20? They are prepared to plow for one night, or maybe two, without sleep. But a week of storms? Or a “Sandy” level hurricane? Suddenly, a cross-disciplinary response is required. We need reinforcements. We need to work together and we need to find creative responses in these novel situations.

Some of the most pressing needs in our communities are identical to those in the church. In both natural and spiritual emergencies, we must move beyond pleasing our “constituencies” to serving each other sacrificially. Just as a standard emergency-response framework will be inadequate in a multi-level crisis, so a denomination-oriented church cannot provide a unified response to either tribulation or revival. There is a critical need for us to work together in crisis, to lay aside doctrinal differences of opinion and selfish ambitions and focus together on spiritual restoration.

Think of Joseph, an Israelite, who helped the Egyptians prepare for an extended famine. Led by the Holy Spirit, Joseph was motivated through a dream to respond to impending crisis. (See Genesis 41-47) His was an “out of the box” response! Joseph both worked with and provided for people he considered unbelievers, in a large-scale disaster that affected thousands.

Or consider a positive, large-scale spiritual event such as revival. When God brings revival, He doesn’t touch just a handful of people. Revival, like disasters, impacts thousands.

If you read Jonathan Edwards’ accounts of the New England-based revival in the 1700’s, you find immediately that in the midst of a wonderful outpouring of the Holy Spirit across his state, every pastor, church, and believer needed to work together to respond to what amounted to a gigantic “crisis of the soul.” The unsaved were crying out for help, asking how to deal with the unbearably deep conviction they felt in their souls. Day and night, people were pounding on the doors of the church, looking for hope.
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Someone needed to be available to tell them about Jesus. Are we ready for this? Are we the types of friends who will get up at midnight to provide spiritual bread for those who ask? Are we ready to work with believers outside of our own church or denomination to advance the Kingdom of God?

Retired Boston Police Chief Dan Linskey said something unique in his message on leadership in crisis. He stated: “It’s in the breaking of bread, not the exchanging of business cards.” Trusted relationships with others are far more valuable than a Rolodex full of potential contacts.
 
Dan was the incident commander-in-charge during the Boston Marathon bombings. I do not know if he is a believer. But in the midst of utter chaos that day, Dan said it was the people with whom he had drunk beers, shared meals, and built trust beforehand that helped him the most. In the midst of all the FBI, police, and medical activity happening on scene, it was the friend who stuck his head in the trailer and asked Dan, “What do you need right now? What can I do for you?” that mattered most. Why? Because Dan’s kids were home alone, and he needed someone to get to them. 

I don’t think it’s an accident that Chief Linskey referred to the “breaking of bread.” It’s a picture of where Jesus wants believers to be: in intimate fellowship with each other and in communion with God. Only then will we be ready for whatever crisis comes next.
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MEMA’s challenge to “work together” in crisis applies to believers, too. As God has challenged me, so I want to challenge you to move beyond traditional or denominational responses and work together under Jesus, your Divine Commander in Chief. Are you ready to extend all the peace, benefits, and resources of the Kingdom to a lost and suffering world? 

Prayer: Father, I believe You have called me to be a “first responder” for Your Kingdom. Train me to be ready. Show me what I should be doing to prepare for both natural and spiritual crises, so that when they come I am available to reach others with Your peace, grace, and love. Give me the kind of calm, steady spirit that a first responder needs. Help me to use this “downtime” to break bread even with those outside of my usual sphere. I choose to build relationship with others throughout Your Kingdom, to strengthen Your Kingdom’s corporate response in both the revivals and the trials. Amen!

c. Deborah Perkins / His Inscriptions. 
*MEMA is the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, a division of FEMA and Homeland Security.

Deborah Perkins is passionate about connecting others with God. She writes about knowing God and hearing His voice at HisInscriptions.com. To subscribe to her free weekly blog, click here. 

​In the eyes of God, a leader is a servant. We know that Jesus places a high value on servanthood and teaches His disciples to do the same: "Whoever desires to be great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:26-28, NKJV). 

A servant, by definition, is one who waits on his master. Attentiveness to the master's commands produces an effective, treasured servant who is entrusted with more responsibility and becomes a leader in his own right. It is primarily our listening, not our busyness, that makes us good servants. When we have first understood what our master needs, we will do a better job meeting that need. 

Society honors leaders who "step up" to the proverbial plate and take authority. We admire, respect, and follow such people. Our busyness becomes a badge of identity and self-importance.

Yet God demands that His leaders "step down," often into a place of obscurity, where the tasks are menial and the recognition is scarce. I know several mature leaders who began their "ministry" cleaning toilets! They graduated to helping people get "cleaned up" later. God's model of servanthood is designed to help us avoid the idolatry of leadership: the allure of titles as well as the worship of leaders themselves. It is servanthood cradled in humility.

Why does God do this? Doesn't He need good, strong leaders today, who will take charge of things and champion the Kingdom cause in a world filled with corruption? 

Yes, He does. He longs for mature leaders - servants - to go and impact the world for Christ, just as your pastor probably longs for someone to lead a small group or set up the chairs on Sundays. God longs for those He can trust with greater things: those who have been faithful over little things and graduated to weightier matters. The catch is that He also longs for us to recognize one simple truth that many of us miss: HE is the leader!

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After years of "service" in the Christian church, God had to adjust my understanding of whom I was actually serving. It's easy to be caught up in the needs and demands of a growing church body: lead a small group, serve coffee and donuts on a Sunday, join the parking team, or minister to people at the altar. The needs never end; they only increase as a church grows. And this is a good thing, because it provides opportunity for believers to exercise their faith and grow in the grace of servanthood.

​But somewhere along the line, God calls us to examine our hearts. Have we become a slave to man or a servant to God? 

Here's what the Lord spoke to me concerning leadership: 

"A leader, in My eyes, is a servant. Yet the focus of servanthood is different (from the world's). Would you rather be a slave to man or a servant to Me? If you serve Me, I will lead you to help others. But if you serve man, you will only burn out - and quickly! I will offend your sense of what should be done in order to show you that what you do is to be done for Me alone. All other types of "servanthood" are nothing more than idolatry - the idolatry of self or others." 

In other words, a good leader leads by listening. 

Leadership that magnifies itself or its own mission overmuch causes people to stumble. If we are truly serving Christ in the way He intended, we will place His requests above those of man - even those that may come from our leaders. We will recognize Jesus as our Lord, and see that leaders, too, should be working in subjection to Christ's authority, direction, and mission. Christ is the head, not man. Every man - even the pastor - is part of a Body, receiving orders from the Head. 

Lest it sound like I am against Christian service, I am not. Yet there is a distinction between doing something because it "needs" to be done and doing something because the Lord has asked you to do it. Many of us blindly accept requests to serve without checking first to see if that is what the Lord wants us to do, and as a result, we have a growing body of Christian workers, missionaries, and pastors who are burnt out and exhausted. They have focused their eyes on something or someone other than Christ.

We must be willing to trust that the Head knows what the Body needs to do, in what order, and by whom. We must also be willing to let things go undone when He does not call us to do them. Either He will raise up someone else to do the task, or the task is not a priority to Him at this point.

The only way to know what we should be doing is to listen to our Master, and sadly, many leaders are not listening. Studies of Christian leaders in the US have found that 80% of pastors spend fewer than 15 minutes a day in prayer.* A true servant is one who waits on his Master first, not as an afterthought. 

Besides the idolatry of leadership and the constant needs presented by the church, there is another reason why we are so quick to jump onto the "service" bandwagon: pride. Jesus cautions us in Matthew 6: "Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven." (Matthew 6:1, NKJV).

Joining the prayer group seems like a good thing until it becomes evident that someone is hoping to be "heard for their many words." (Matthew 6:7; notice Christ's emphasis on "being heard" as opposed to "seeking" or "listening"). Serving with the goal of being recognized by man is never a good idea. 

In fact, the entire chapter of Matthew 6 addresses the issue of being seen by men, a form of pride. If men are the ones we are pleasing, we have missed the essence of Jesus' lesson on service. Service should flow out of our quiet times with God, with a clear sense of purpose and mission, and a balance to how much we are taking on - balance that can be provided only by God Himself. 

If I had my way, I would serve relentlessly. I thrive on service, and I love to accomplish things - especially when I know those things benefit God's Kingdom. Many of us are wired this way. We get excited about "doing" things for God instead of finding out what God needs to be done! It is all the more important, then, for us to be sure that we stay in contact with the Head of our Body, who will keep us from doing too much and burning out.

In God's eyes, tasks are never as important as people. He sees whether we are responding to our pride, to man's expectations, or to Him alone. When our priorities are not in order, He will hold us back from the task in order to preserve His people. No matter how pressing the need, our reward only comes from serving His way. A secure leader can serve without need of recognition because he knows that God sees what is done for Him, even in secret. 

Leading by listening is the most effective way we can become a servant. Serving man will cause us to burn out quickly. We need to stay in the flow of the Holy Spirit. When we listen first, we allow God to place us exactly where He wants us, doing what He wants done. This is not an easy lesson, since it requires that ministers and laymen alike make listening to God a priority. But leaders who listen will have the greatest impact on their generation.
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c. Deborah Perkins/HisInscriptions.com. *Source: US National Prayer Council.
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Deborah Perkins is passionate about connecting people with God. She writes about knowing God and hearing His voice at HisInscriptions.com. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook, or contact her directly here. 

One of the benefits of walking with Jesus through this life is that we gain the advantage of perspective. My husband likes to picture it this way: imagine that you are walking along the “timeline” of life: a horizontal line with both a starting and ending point. The starting point would be Genesis and the ending point, of course, is the end of time, as pictured in Revelation.

God, however, lives outside of time. He is the Creator of it, yet is not bound by it. Picture God as residing somewhere above our imaginary timeline, seated on His throne, and able to see both beginning and end at once because of His “omniscient” position.

When we connect with God as believers, our spirits are no longer bound by time or distance because of the regenerative work of the Holy Spirit within us. God steps into our world through the Spirit who now dwells within us. The distance between us and God has been eradicated, and God now walks with us. He enters time.

Yet we also have the ability to ascend, in the Spirit, to a place that is outside of time. The Bible says that in Christ, we, too, are “seated in heavenly places,” and from this new position, we gain God’s perspective. (See Ephesians 2:6). It might be likened to the view the astronauts have when they soar into space and see the earth from afar.

Suddenly, we can see the “big picture.” The puzzle of life now has shape, definition, and form. We see how it all fits together, how it really looks.

Seeing the big picture, however, has both blessings and pitfalls. In this highly connected digital age, it is easier than ever to see the big picture. And on a personal level, our newly-acquired perspective sometimes confuses us. 

Suddenly, we are overwhelmed by the needs we see – the gaps in the “ministry” puzzle which so obviously need to be filled. There is no way that one believer can meet all the demands of the worthy ministries we come into contact with. Where are the laborers, we ask? Should I be stepping in to fill this gap? Many pieces of the puzzle seem to be lost or missing. Leaders, especially, can be tempted to yield frantically to the search for missing pieces in a valiant attempt to complete the puzzle. 

Just as God expands our vision prophetically to release strategies for Kingdom growth, so the enemy tries to stretch us to capacity as we seek to fill ministry needs we are not called to fill. Whether at a local or a national level, we are forced to see that there are gaps (still!), and also that we cannot possibly fill them ourselves.

Fortunately, this is a good place for us to land. Our new perspective shows us both the greatness of the mission task and our utter inability to fulfill it alone. The solution, as always, is to do things God’s way: to ask Him for His strategies, so that others might be enabled to find their places in the big picture, too.

A jigsaw puzzle must be completed piece by piece, in a certain order, before the placement of certain sections will be revealed. Without connecting preliminary pieces, it will not be known how others are to fit in. Only God can show us what’s next and where we belong.

Many of us have prayed, “Lord, show me where I fit in. Show me which piece of the puzzle I am. Should I be in this section, or that one? Am I at the top or the bottom? Where are the pieces I should be connecting to?”

I prayed a similar prayer not too long ago. Faced with mounting pressure from ministry needs and gaps I could see in the divine puzzle, I felt confused. There were simply too many needs for me to fill - needs I could fill and had even been prepared for – in other words, too many viable options. Like a puzzle piece suspended over a work in progress, I couldn’t see where I should fit at the time. God’s answer surprised me.

“Despite how you may feel,” He said, “you have already been placed within my Kingdom puzzle. I have divinely ordained the place where you live and the Body you are a part of. Based upon your true colors and your personal design, you have been set into a section of My puzzle where you can snugly connect with others around you. You have only to reach out and explore those connections. Like interlocking tabs and slots, you are made to work with those around you, holding larger sections of the puzzle together. Start where you are locally and your reach will extend globally.”

It can be tempting to try to “fit in” somewhere that we don’t belong – somewhere He has not created us to be. Even more so when the gaps seem overwhelming and the needs pressing. By all means, meet the needs you can meet. Reach those within your reach. But don’t allow the enemy to use the perspective you gain to pull you out of your God-given position in His overall plan.

What, then, of all the gaps in ministry? Jesus recognized them, too. Even as a man like us, walking our timeline, He saw the big picture. The fields are white for harvest, He said. Pray for laborers to be sent out. (See John 4:35; Luke 10:2).

Perspective should be met with prayer. When we pray, the hand of God moves ever more swiftly to scoop up the next pieces of the puzzle, setting them carefully into place. The gaps will close, and the image will be clear. The picture we are completing is the image of His glory. And the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. (See Habakkuk 2:14).

c.DeborahPerkins / His Inscriptions

Deborah Perkins is passionate about connecting others with God. She writes about knowing God and hearing His voice at His Inscriptions. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook, or contact her directly here.

 
Sometimes God plants difficult people directly in our paths in order to help us grow. Like thorns in our flesh, these people prick and poke at us until they rub us raw. We learn, painfully, that we just can’t live with them. We have to forgive them. If we don’t, we find that same kind of person further on down our paths, ready to prick us yet again.

"The Blessed Life." How eagerly we seek it, and how elusive it can seem! Rare are the times when we actually reach those "ideal moments" we long for in life: sipping a piῆa colada on a tropical beach, taking a year's sabbatical to pursue a passion, or enjoying the luxury of an overflowing bank account! Far more common is the struggle to overcome, the sense that we are barely keeping up.

On the surface, Christianity seems pretty straightforward. Love God, and you’ll be blessed. Disobey God, and things will go wrong. And this is true, to a point. However, this kind of black-and-white thinking leads to a simplistic spirituality that limits faith to a two-dimensional God. He’s either angry or He’s loving. Maybe He’ll bless you or maybe He won’t. You just never know; in fact, you can’t possibly know, since like all human beings, you have blind spots. You can’t see where you might have missed something.

Last week I was given a precious gift by a friend in Tennessee, a reader of this blog and one of my strongest supporters. She gave me the gift of time spent with a dear friend relaxing, worshiping, and working together on some projects. What she didn't realize she'd given me was equally important: the gift of perspective. 

As a wife and mother, I don't travel nearly as much as I used to. Unlike my husband, I actually love the adventure of travel: visiting new places, interacting with different cultures, and experiencing the "flavors" of life lived in other places! So from the moment my plane began soaring above the clouds, my heart was rejuvenated as well. Here's what I discovered.

Tennessee, as a "Bible Belt" state, is still proclaiming the Word of God. Everywhere we went, from an inner-city high school graduation, to Walmart, to the Christian-owned Hobby Lobby store, what I noticed was the Word of God, expressed in amazing creativity.

The Word is literally "in your face" wherever you turn. Plaques and trendy chalkboard artwork with Bible verses line the shelves of even mainstream stores. A local family whose home I visited makes no effort to hide their faith; it is evident the moment you walk in the door. During a high school ceremony, I heard both ranking Tennessee politicians and local teachers and students pray and cite the Word as they spoke to the graduating class. The choral selection? A rendition of Numbers 6:24, which in case you haven't read lately, is the Aaronic blessing over Israel: 

It was beautiful. After several days of experiencing these constant public proclamations of the Word, I was feeling incredibly encouraged. How refreshing! It reminded me of Moses' instructions in Deuteronomy: 

Comparing Tennessee to my home state, where a simple prayer by a student is outlawed and transgender bathrooms might soon become the norm, I almost didn't want to return home! New England suddenly seemed very dark to me. I had gained some perspective.

I did, of course, return home to my wonderful family, and know that I am called to New England for ministry purposes. As I shared my news of the trip with a fellow New Englander, however, their reaction was to say: "Oh, all that public display of Christ down South is just a religious spirit. It doesn't mean anything." 

Well, apart from knocking the wind out of my sails and quickly deflating any joy I had experienced, this person missed a fundamental truth that Paul brings out in Philippians. Paul writes: "What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice." (Philippians 1:18; see also previous verses). 

It is true that some proclaim Christ insincerely or from selfish ambition, while others proclaim Him out of love. It is not our job to decide who is sincere and who is not. Our job, according to Jesus in Matthew 28, is to simply make Him known, and to keep the Word prominent in our lives. The perspective I gained in the South encouraged me to proclaim Him even more loudly in the North. 

A Southerner can just as easily say that New England is bound by an intellectual spirit which darkens the light of Christ in us. Rarely do I enter a New England home to find "PDA's" (Public Displays of Affection) for Christ!  We are more likely to boast about our impressive array of educational institutions or big-city job opportunities than about our Christianity. 

I became motivated to turn up the "dimmer switch" on my faith. Dial it up. Light up the room. Make a greater effort to inspire instead of retire. We sorely need more light here, lest the long, wintry days and spiritual darkness overwhelm us. As a local pastor often quips, "When you love something, it shows!"

The apostle Paul was also confined for a time, far from the sunny green pastures of Tennessee! Yet the letters written from his jail cell impacted more people than he ever dreamed of reaching in his freedom. The darkness of his situation did not hinder him from proclaiming Christ. His limitations became the source of  his greatest ministry.

It may be easier to be a Christian down South, where everyone agrees with you. It's certainly sunnier and warmer, and maybe that's why many New Englanders can't wait to go South! The truth is, though, that the light of God already in you is warm enough and sunny enough to radiate a significant amount of heat, no matter where you live. I'm choosing to pursue an assignment to bring His light into what seems like a much darker place at the moment. What will you do?

Prayer Challenge: 
Instead of being envious of others' situations, ask God to give you perspective on your situation. Are you hiding the light that is in you, for fear of offending someone?  Has being "politically correct" become more of the norm for you than being "biblically correct?"  Ask God to show you what you can do to put your love for Him on display! Will you be mocked or misinterpreted as "religious?" Maybe. But the wonderful thing is that you might just encourage somebody. I'll be praying for you, that your future shines more brightly than your past.

c. Deborah Perkins, 2015 

Deborah Perkins is passionate about helping people connect with God. She writes about knowing God and hearing His voice at His Inscriptions. To contact her directly, or to send a prayer request, click here.