As Always, I Stand in Utter Awe and Amazement!
Regular visitors to the site and the FAM Fellowship members know that God’s UNFAILING FAITHFULNESS to ALWAYS CONFIRM EVERYTHING HE WANTS US TO GET never ceases to amaze me! Yet, I just can’t even believe it myself sometimes! So I want to share how God has worked to do that once again in our midst this past week.
As everyone can see from the Seeds Of Faith post, God is SO High in His Heavens and Moving Mightily!, which I posted last Saturday; the Lord has truly been doing amazing things in the lives of FAM Fellowship members over the past few weeks. But the devil can’t stand that and as Jesus warned; he ALWAYS comes to steal, kill and destroy. And the one thing he wants most to steal, kill and destroy is anything and everything that gives God the praise, honor and glory He so richly deserves. Therefore, he ALWAYS comes against us as Christians (the body of Christ) to steal, kill and destroy our testimonies; quite understandably since Revelation 12:10-11 declares that he is defeated and overcome by the blood of the Lamb AND BY THE WORD OF OUR TESTIMONY. So when we see the hand of God moving so mightily in our lives and the “word of our testimony” is bringing the Lord so much glory, we can be sure that the devil will come calling…AND HE DID!!!
Early last Monday morning, even though I had reservations about it because I know how the devil works, I published a praise testimony from one of the FAM members about how she had “struggled with the enemy” the day before and how the Lord had worked through several sources to bring and confirm the same message to her, which was that she had authority over the devil; using the same verse each time, which was Luke 10:19. Even though it actually occurred to me that JUST mentioning the devil and that she had struggled with him (also stating “You know he always TRIES to deceive us.”) could be a problem, I was (as always) amazed by God’s faithfulness to IMMEDIATELY answer her prayer and then to give her further confirmation the next morning. And it really was a great praise report; because we’ll ALWAYS have to deal with the devil, but God ends up getting the glory when we DO as His Word instructs when Satan comes calling. I fully intended to respond to her post to point that out, BUT due to something else which required my immediate attention pretty much all day and much of this week, I didn’t get back to the site until late Monday night. And by then, I couldn’t believe how many responses referred to how the “enemy” was “attacking” and how members were “struggling!” AND they were coming from some of the same people whose praises I had JUST shared here! And since some of the editors who would normally call to alert me to something like that were also unavailable that day, it seems that just as the Bible tells us, God must have had a good purpose for even that! Even though many members were posting positive responses, obviously trying to keep things on the positive side; it just takes a few negative words and thoughts to bring everything down and then the praises come to a halt. It’s like someone stuck a pin in a balloon and popped it. And quite honestly, if I said I was “hot”…that would be an understatement! Since one of the editors had published the positive responses and left the “negative” ones to be moderated (edited and approved), that’s all I kept reading and by the time I got through them, I was on the warpath and posted a much stronger version of Thursday’s SOF post! In fact, one of the FAM members told me that when she read it, she was reminded of when Jesus went into the temple with a whip and drove out the money changers! Yes, I was angry; though not with the FAM members. I was upset with myself for publishing the post in the first place or for not editing it more than I had; but my anger was with the devil! And I was determined to set the record straight and remind everyone that he does NOT have power and authority in our lives unless we give it to him. I was also disappointed that that post got a lot more attention than the first praise report ever posted on the private site by a child, which was also posted by her mother that morning! It was a heart warming message from Jeni’s daughter (who posted a praise testimony of her own in response to the above referenced and linked SOF post), who wanted to praise the Lord and give thanks for the changes in her home and family since her mother made the decision to drop the divorce. And she declared that she knew her family would be back together again soon. Normally something like that would have brought a huge response, but that day it was virtually ignored; which particularly upset me.
Well, after posting something so strong on the site, which I’ve never done before, I was second guessing the wisdom of doing that by the next morning, but I claimed Romans 8:28 and gave it to the Lord. As I mentioned earlier, I had something else that really demanded my immediate attention. FAMM is in the process of changing to a new program for our websites, as well as moving to a new server to handle the increased traffic to the sites not to mention making some of the changes we’ve wanted to make for some time now. So I’ve been working on that for a few weeks as well. But we weren’t anywhere near ready for the site to be picked up by the search engines and had it set up so it wouldn’t be. However, because I had posted a link several months ago to our first attempt to upgrade the sites using the same program we’re using now, in a forum asking for assistance because the newest version is no longer accessible to the visually impaired (meaning that I could no longer fully administer the sites), our new site was indexed by at least Google, and I was beginning to get email concerning information on the “new” site! When I called our programmer, he told me there wasn’t anything we could do about that now; that we just had to do our best to make the site as presentable and functional as we could, while continuing to work on it! Needless to say, that’s been a huge project and it’s taken the majority of my time and attention this past week. You can actually find the new site by doing just about any of the searches that brought most of you to FAMM in the first place, so besides lighting a fire under our need to get the new site up and running, it is exciting to see how much favor the Lord is showing the ministry! New websites normally struggle to get picked up by the search engines, so it’s really funny now to think that I ever wasted my time even thinking about that, because God had already made provision for that as well! But we sure would appreciate your prayers to help speed that process up, because there’s some of it that we can’t do on our own, which means that our programmer will have to find the time to do what only he can do to finish the sites for us. And I appreciate your patience with me as well, because doing what I need to on the new site makes it very difficult to do some of the other things that need my attention as well; such as writing Seeds Of Faith posts, as you can obviously see. But we’re very excited about our new websites and the improvements we’re making, as well as many other things that are under way in the ministry; such as a new section on the sites featuring Keepsakes, Treasures & Gifts (where we’ll be selling items created by FAM members among other things), FAMM’s affiliation with the movie Fireproof, the anticipated completion of my long awaited book and so much more! God is definitely moving to bring the world’s attention to His Holy covenant of marriage and we’re just so honored, thrilled and excited to be a part of it all!
Getting back to how God was working this past week and the AMAZING CONFIRMATION that even getting upset and writing the posts I did about the devil fit right into God’s perfect plan; just check out the last three messages from Joyce Meyer, which I didn’t know anything about until one of the FAM members sent me a link to her broadcast this past Thursday! The following messages are very powerful and confirm so much of what I hoped to get across about our authority over the devil; which ALL started in FAM as the result of the original post last Monday morning!!! What proof that what the devil indeed intends for harm; God ALWAYS intends for good (Genesis 50:20)! There’s no doubt that many people have learned a very valuable lesson this past week, and one they won’t soon forget; THE DEVIL HAS NO AUTHORITY AND POWER IN OUR LIVES OTHER THAN WHAT WE GIVE HIM! And despite his best efforts, the devil is just a loser and everything he means for his own glory and purpose will just end up glorifying the Lord and working to our good; the promise we have in Romans 8:28! So watch the following messages from Joyce Meyer for the last three days and take notes!
Dealing with the Devil – VIEWERS’ CHOICE #3
12 Ways to Defeat the Devil – Pt 1 – VIEWERS’ CHOICE #3
12 Ways to Defeat the Devil – Pt 2 – VIEWERS’ CHOICE #3
And just to make REALLY sure we get the point, the Lord put it on Lorraine Ezell’s heart to make yesterday’s Coffee Break devotional about Satan being a Defeated Devil too! Just be blessed and encouraged to know that God loves us so much that He goes to such lengths to confirm these things to us the way He does; and no one BUT GOD could do that the way He does!