Empowered Consecrated Women

We need to ask for answers to questions the world has yet to ask. We need to look into the future and ask the Lord for creative solutions and inventions. We need to look at ways to create entrepreneurial businesses to create jobs for those in low-income areas and help boost economies. We need to ask for houses and look for ones that can be salvaged, repaired, and used for places of recovery or rescue. How about a marriage of compassion with the prophetic? How about building relationships with our police, finding out the needs of our cities, and developing prophetic intercessory teams who will pray and ask for specific answers? We need to see what we can do to rescue and create a net to catch the women and children who have been trapped in sex trade businesses and prostitution and are looking for a way out. We need to develop water filtration systems that are inexpensive and easy to set up and establish in third world countries, and we need to develop supply lines so ministries learn to work together and serve each other. We need to bring help in such a way that it releases blessing to whole areas. We need to cross over boundary lines of denominations and affiliations, reaching into areas that just plain need help. We need to move forward in Kingdom understandings and applications and build relationally and, most importantly, in love. We need to care for the poor and needy, the widow and orphan, not only within our own regions, but we need to have an international expression as well. Africa is dying right now! Our help is needed right now. They need simple things—beans and rice—by the trailer loads. Whole families are being lost. Here in the United States, most major cities are full of kids who have run away from home; they are living on the streets and taking drugs. These are our kids—these are our people. Jesus, open our eyes and hearts! Being raised in rural Missouri from birth until James and I were married, I have a great appreciation for the parabolic language regarding nature and agriculture that is used in the Bible. I spent many, many hours in the hot sun with an ever-aching back and sunburned arms weeding our huge vegetable garden, harvesting those vegetables, and preparing and storing them. We kept the kitchen stove running for days at a time, canning beans, tomatoes, and various fruits. We processed countless chickens, cutting them up and freezing them. We processed cherries, peaches, apples, pears, raspberries, and plums. We spent whole days at my grandmother’s house fighting our way through endless blackberry thickets, actually creating tunnels through the tangled maze of thorny canes, and coming home with tubs and tubs full to put in the freezer. I’ve worked out in the hayfields with my brothers, running the tractor so they could pick up the bales and stack them on the wagon. That hay was necessary for our cattle to make it through the winter. I’ve known the necessity and value of tending plants, gardens, and fields. And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field to its very corners, neither shall you gather the fallen ears or gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not glean your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather its fallen grapes; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19:9-10). I believe the Lord is issuing a challenge to us, for we all have “fields” that we are laboring in—fields the Lord has given to us. It’s in these fields that we must plant the seeds that will bring forth a bountiful harvest. Everyone has a sphere of influence—it may be your workplace, it may be your home, it may be the school you attend, it may be your ethnic background or the region where you live. We must prepare our fields in such a way that we allow the poor and the strangers to benefit from the harvest. The times in which we live make this a very urgent matter, for we see a great increase in natural disasters, terrorism, war, and disease around the globe. Plant good seed in your field and be sure to plant what God tells you to plant. While you do so, make certain that you leave some fruit in your field so that the poor can reap some from your harvest too.

As we get to know the heart of God, we need to get our lives in line with His calendar. The seventh year represents perfection and completion, a fulfillment of the will of God, which demands that the land should lie fallow so the poor can reap a benefit and so the land can rest. The seventh year was a year of breakthrough and blessing both for the landowners and the poor. Everyone shared in the good things God had provided for them. In the Book of Esther we read: As the days on which the Jews got rest from their enemies, and as the month which was turned for them from sorrow to gladness and from mourning into a holiday—that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days of sending choice portions to one another and gifts to the poor (Esther 9:22, emphasis mine). We need to enlarge our hearts to include the poor as part of our times of celebration. Remember too that when deliverance, in whatever form it may take, comes to your house, that as you enter into celebration God’s heart is that you remember the poor. Let your deliverance spill over to those who are still waiting for their own deliverance to be released. We have looked at compassion and the heart of God from many different angles. We have now come to the culmination of these many pages. Now is the moment of decision. Time is an intriguing element. We have a past, and we speak of a future. But where both become a reality is right now. In reality, now is all that we have. We can do nothing about our past, but if we act now, we can establish what will become our past. We can talk about the future, but the problem is the future is always ahead of us—we can never live in the future. We must live in the now. If we try to live in the future, we’re always dreaming and never realizing. We need to take our dreams and make practical steps today to see them come to pass. We need to move out of any remorse over past mistakes or missed opportunities and make a decision to get up and act now! Taking action means accepting the power God gives you to work His righteousness in the world. Become empowered today…and each day that you obey His perfect plan for your life.

Empowerment Encounters

1. Of the suggestions given at the beginning of the Reflection section, which ones pricked at your heart when you read them? Are you prepared to become empowered by empowering others? Will you start today?
2. What are the five stumbling blocks that have kept you from taking action to reach out to others? Allowing God to empower you will cause you to step easily over those blocks. Start walking today.
3. What does the “seventh year” mean to you? Write a paragraph about making this year one you anticipate with joy.
4. What will you do now to fulfill your God-given destiny, knowing that He has empowered you to accomplish all that He designed especially for you to lead an abundant and victorious life?

Dear Lord Jesus,

I come to You this day, volunteering myself to be Your arms, Your feet, Your hands to hurting and needy people. I want to embrace Your heart for the poor, the orphan and the widow. I want to offer to You the field You have given me, that You would show me how to help provide for those who are less fortunate. Lord, I ask You to speak to me, lead me into the avenues of service that I am to engage in. Lord, according to James 1:5, give me the wisdom I need to move forward, connect with the people I need to network with. Today I make a commitment in my heart, with my mouth, to show You and the world my faith, by my works—because I love You, and I know that You so love me!

In Jesus’ name, amen!

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