The past several weeks the Lord has been surrounding us with words “BREAKTHROUGH” and “SPEEDILY” (and SUDDENLY). He gave me the passage I posted Tuesday (from Luke 8 – pasted below for those w/o FB) last week right after I asked him to confirm whether He was truly giving us the word “SPEEDILY.”
(FB post from May 20)
DON’T GIVE UP!
Also [Jesus] told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not to turn coward (faint, lose heart, and give up).
He said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither reverenced and feared God nor respected or considered man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Protect and defend and give me justice against my adversary. And for a time he would not; but later he said to himself, Though I have neither reverence or fear for God nor respect or consideration for man, Yet because this widow continues to bother me, I will defend and protect and avenge her, lest she give me intolerable annoyance and wear me out by her continual coming or at the last she come and rail on me or assault me or strangle me.
Then the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says! And will not [our just] God defend and protect and avenge His elect (His chosen ones), who cry to Him day and night? Will He defer them and delay help on their behalf? I tell you, He will defend and protect and avenge them SPEEDILY.
However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [persistence in] faith on the earth? Luke 18:1-8
(We do not cry out for judgment and vengeance to be executed speedily on people, but on the enemies in the spiritual realm who are deceiving them so the people can be set free.)
Earlier this week, I sent out a message to the healing/faith email group, that talked, in part, about how God was really speaking to us about “PERSEVERANCE” and “PERSISTENCE” in this season through the recurring Matthew 7 and Luke 11 passages to ASK and KEEP ON ASKING; SEEK and KEEP ON SEEKING; KNOCK and KEEP ON KNOCKING, as well as the parable of the PERSISTENT widow (Luke 8) that He gave us. Right after I sent that message, He took me back to one of the KEY passages He gave us as a prayer focus for this season leading up to Pentecost, and showed me that this passage also contained a message of PERSISTENCE and of refusing to be dissuaded by man (people) from wholeheartedly crying out for and going after everything God has for you. The word PERSISTENT/PERSISTENCE came up a couple of times again yesterday. God is applying this PERSISTENCE to the approach He’s calling us to take in SEEKING HIM in this season as well as to the approach He’s calling us to take in carrying out our assignments.
Believing for us all that as we press in to seek Him, to be filled to all the measure of the fullness of Him, and to fulfill His call with PERSISTENCE in this season ~ growing in confident, cheerful, eager expectation of all He’s promised and professing/proclaiming the victory in advance (as He’s relentlessly telling us to do) ~ that we will see His BREAKTHROUGH appear SPEEDILY!
