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| The Salem Witch trials are an example of mass hysteria. |
How we see ourself effets what we will do with our lives. If we believe we are without value we will compromise to fill the needs in our lives. Those things don't really fill the need they simply numb the pain and perhaps calm the fear.
Beautiful and smart women of God have been trampled upon by the church and society for countless generations. We have been the pearl that has been too often cast to the swine. The message we often receive is that we are not to speak in church. We are to remain hidden and covered away from the view of weak men lest we make some holy man stumble. We have believed the lies and we have thought we were created to be servants and helpers to men who supposedly have the true calling of God.
It was a woman who was last at the cross and first at the tomb. It is a woman who reached out with great faith and touched the hem of Jesus garment and was healed. It was woman outcast at the well who heard Jesus and went on to evangelize her entire community. It was a woman who gave birth to our savior. It was a woman who poured a year worth of wages of a costly perfume called nard over Jesus. It is a woman who washed his feet with her tears. It is a woman who was commended for sitting at his feet to hear him teach rather than engaging in the busyness of the meal preparations. It is a woman prophetess who recognizes the savior come in the garb of a wee babe. It was a woman who built a church with a sewing needle and who's work with the widows and the poor was so vital that God caused her to rise from the dead. It was several wealthy women who believed so fully in Jesus that they took their resources and supported Jesus and the disciples. It is time to shake off the mantle of second class citizen of the kingdom and to begin to walk as one who is called by God to be part of a kingdom of priests and kings. To be ambassadors for His glorious kingdom.
You were not created to be a door mat. You were created from the rib of Adam to walk at his side as his equal not his subordinate property. The Holy Spirit moving in you is the same Holy Spirit that moves in men. The one who saves you is the same one who saves men. We both, men and women possess the treasure of God in earthen vessels.
So W is for Women and women have been called some pretty bad things, like witch and whore. Some actually are those things but sometimes we throw out slanderous labels for those who are different from us. That old woman down the street is called a witch because she is a bit eccentric. The girl who dumped you is a whore because maybe because you are jealous and hope to hurt her with name calling. Well and then there are the goddesses who practice temple prostitution. Can you be a goddess if you are homely? To many of us have tried to look like Barbie dolls and think there is something wrong if we don't look like one.
There is one witch in the bible in 1 Samuel 28 - King Saul consults her because he can no longer hear from God. This is a great story and there is a lot we can learn from it. King Saul has had the prophet Samuel with him for years, who has been his intermediary with God. What do you do when the people you have trusted to hear from God and discern his will are dead. King Saul is a tormented person. He has spent years chasing David all over the country side. God has taken his hand off of King Sauls reign because he got impatient waiting for Samuel and do the before battle sacrifice. He decided he didn't need a preist and could roast the sacrifice as well as the next guy. Problem was that kings were not appointed to offer the sacrifice and he overstepped the boundaries of his calling and God given authority. At this point he is a seriously troubled man who is desperate to know God's will for the issuing battle. He has an idea - he could get a medium to conger up the prophet Samuel and he could ask him from beyond the grave what he should do.
Here's the problem you can't conger up those who have gone to their rest in the Lord. So he gets a familiar spirit that plays the part of departed Samuel. He pretty much tells him he and his son will die and battle and the kingdom will be ripped from his hands and given to David. Terror seizes him and he falls to the ground. He has been fasting because he is anxious about the battle and does not know what to do. The witch makes him dinner from her fatted cow, probably for fear that the king might die in her home, which would be pretty bad for business, especially since Saul had put to death or driven away most in her line of work.
Saul accepts the words of the ghost of Samuel and does not repent or turn to God for help. He has resigned himself that God has departed for him. So rather than question the words of the apparition, he sets of to see them fulfilled. Quite often when people consult familiar spirits they think they are seeing results but they have set themselves on a course of self destruct and the familiars are all to happy to orchestrate things to give themselves credibility.
So let me stop and say if you are having trouble hearing from God here are a few things to check.
1. Does your life belong to Him. (My sheep hear my voice... John 10:27)
2. Your life belongs to Him but you have walked away to do your own will, your own way. Its kind of hard to hear the still small voice of God if you are heading away from him.
3. God has given you an answer but you don't like it and you are trying to wrangle a different answer then the one you have been given.
4. Have you stopped to listen or do you just bring a long list of stuff in your prayer time.
5. Or you have not followed his previous instructions. Quite often that is where people get stuck. They think they can follow God in a smorgasbord kind of way. Picking and choosing what is convenient rather than doing what God has given you to do. ( This one was one of the reasons Saul could not hear God. He had not done what he had been told to do. He was supposed to utterly destroy the Amalekites. Instead he keeps the sheep and cattle to sacrifice to the Lord as spoils of the war. Oh and he brought back the Amalekite king whom he was supposed to have destroyed. Even so he feels he has obeyed the Lord. This story is in 1 Samuel 15.
"Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,
And to heed than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,
And stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
Because you have rejected the word of the Lord,He also has rejected you from being king.”
So enough on witches. Consulting them is a bad plan. I think you can go look for the whores found in the Bible on your own if you so choose. I thought this video was eye opening and most women struggle with self esteem issues and generally feel less than beautiful. We have been so programed by our cultural stereotypes of the classic beauty. Each and every person that God has made is unique and wonderful. We need to help each other see God's wonderful design most of the time we can see it in others but not in ourselves.
If you did not get the video - click on the post title to go back to the blog site and you can see the video there.
Very nice
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