| Freise Ministry Newsletter |
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| (Deborah) Have you had any things that didn't go as you planned this year? Any unexpected setbacks or irritations? About a year and a half ago I received a prophetic word from a friend, "Orient Express, you're going to China..." Until then we had no ministry plans for China but in the month of October we found ourselves there! While preparing for the trip I was pondering the prophetic word we'd gotten. I decided to look up "Orient" in my dicitonary and was greatly impacted by the revelation God gave me! Orient meant the east, quality that determines a pearl's value, pearl of great price, and it's second meaning is to adjust. I remembered that the whole process of a pearls formation starts with an irritation! Some foreign matter (usually sand) finds it's way inside the mollusk which causes the mollusk to release a substance called nacre or mother of pearl and layer by layer the irritation is covered until a beautiful pearl is formed. All at once it hit me - when we let Holy Spirit wrap around every irritating circumstance (all those things in our lives that excite us to impatience or anger) beautiful pearls can be made!! Every interruption can make way for God's intervention if we keep our eyes on Him in the middle of it all. Every irritation can actually bring acceleration in our preparation! Consider the church in China - so much persecution and irritation and yet the church of Jesus there is growing faster than any other evangelical population on the planet. God said to me that China is His pearl of great price! All the opposition has actually accelerated the growth and beauty of the Bride of Christ there! All of the difficult situations in our lives can cause us to go deeper into Gods loving presence and in that place we too are transformed into the beautiful bride Jesus is coming back for - You too are His pearl of great price you know!!! (Ron)"Count it all joy my friends when you find yourselves going through difficult tests, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." So says the writer of James. If patience is something I have to come up with, I would just as soon pass on the whole experience! But it isn't! Put in the word "rest" for patience. That is what it really means. The testing of our faith will drive us, compel us, into a place of emotional rest. It is the place of settledness in the midst of my situation. It comes as I surrender to Him. When I am at rest, God goes to work. Rest is a description of faith. In the Amplified Bible it says of Matthew 11:28, "Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls." Jesus gives me rest. My opportunity to receive it comes in the midst of the trials and testings that come to "My Space". (Deborah)I don't know what you are going through but I do know this, situations and circumstances may seem to be disorienting you but rejoice because God is in the process of reorienting you! God is going to show up right in the big thick middle of your irritation! He is going to maximize everything the enemy is throwing at you to adjust you to "on earth as it is in heaven" starting with your mind, will and emotions!! One final scripture in Jude 1 and 2 in the Message Bible, "I, Jude, am a slave to Jesus Christ and brother to James, writing to those loved by God the Father (that would be you!), called and kept safe by Jesus Christ. RELAX, everything's going to be all right: REST, everything's coming together; open your hearts, love is on the way!" We can rest patiently in the Lord because everything's coming together. He's working while we're resting - love is on the way and a beautiful pearl is forming and we the Bride are being prepared! Learning the rest of faith, Deborah and Ron PS If you would like to receive this newsletter to your own email address, click on subscribe at the top of this page. |