Category Archives: General

“End of construction – thank you for your patience.”

Recently, we were in Charlotte, North Carolina where we visited the Billy Graham library and placed flowers on Ruth Bell Graham’s grave.  As most of you know, Ruth and Billy Graham were valley-walking friends with Jim when he went through some very tough trials.

Billy Graham visited Jim in prison several times, and Franklin sponsored him when he was released.  The very first week Jim was released from prison, Ruth made it possible for Jim to attend her church and sat with him in a very public display of love and support.

To say that the Graham family has been a friend to us is an understatement.

The Bible says that the spiritual people restore others when they have fallen:  “Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking to thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”  Galatians 6:1 ASV

Jim and I attended Ruth Bell Graham’s 80th birthday celebration and the program that evening presented her life through music and drama, using her own writings, and it was very moving.  PBS was there filming a documentary on her life.

That evening, when Jim introduced us, Ruth Graham reached up from her wheel chair and cradled my face in her hands.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said. “God hand-picked you for Jim.”

I was so touched by her words, I nearly cried.  I managed to thank her for what she had done for my husband and for being such a great example of a woman of God.

Ruth Graham had much to be proud of in her accomplishments in life, but instead of pride, Ruth exhibited the ultimate humility by recognizing her life as a work in progress all the way to her home-going, her meekness engraved in her self-chosen epitaph:

“End of construction – thank you for your patience.”

 

“I Pray and I Obey”

Sometimes it’s hard to get our priorities straight but it doesn’t have to be.  One of the greatest leaders of our times, Paul Youngi Cho of South Korea who has a church of over one million members, simplified the way he conducts his days by doing two things FIRST.

Every morning, Cho prays for five hours before starting any other work. Many have asked him how he can find time to pray that much. He answers, “You don’t understand. If I don’t pray for five hours, I don’t have enough time to do everything. But when I do, then God does everything I need.”

What a simple, yet profound TRUTH in this statement! Jesus’ life was one of constant PRAYER!  We can read in the Bible where many times that Jesus went up into the mountain to PRAY – Matthew 14:23 & Mark 6:46 & Mark 1:35 & Luke 6:12.   Jesus removed all distractions and focused on communion with God. Even though He was God, Jesus prayed and so should we!

Since Jesus, who is the Son of God, understood the need to be in constant prayer, we should do the same. Jesus heard the Voice of the Father, and then He obeyed exactly what He heard the Father say!

This is a time like never before in the history of the world.  This is a time that we should be in constant communication with the throne room of God so that we can hear His voice and DO what He tells us to do!

Lord, remind me to PRAY and OBEY every day so that I can be sure that what I am about to do is what You have said to do with my day!

Amen!

Clay in the Potter’s Hands (Pt. 4)

STEP 2: THE POTTER’S WHEEL –

The Lord then scoops up the moistened clay with His mighty hands and places you on the Potter’s wheel.  You hear His promise: “I have measured you; I know your portion; I know what destiny I have for you. For even though the enemy would want to kill you, I tell you, I have a mission and a calling for your life!”

He begins to center you on the wheel. Slowly, His gentle hands go down into the very depths of who you are and begins to pull up the walls of your new vessel. 

While you are on the Potter’s wheel, being shaped by the hands of the Master Potter, there is a wonderful mystery taking place within you.  You are growing! It is a time of great favor and blessing.

But as you go around and around, you begin to notice that other vessels are sitting on the shelves around the Potter’s house. You want to be like them!

“Lord, I love the closeness and intimacy of Your hands,” you cry.  “But I see all of these other vessels sitting on the shelf and I want to be a part of what they’re doing!”

STEP 3: THE POTTER’S SHELF

Suddenly the Lord comes with His cutting wire and pulls you off the wheel.  Then He places you on the shelf to dry.

What a change this is from being on the wheel, where you were joyfully spinning in the hands of God!

At first, you don’t mind it too much, but after a month or two, you say, “Uh…you know, Lord, I’ve been sitting on the shelf for a long time and I’m really dry. When is my ministry going to begin?”

You remind Him over and over again, “Lord, I’ve been praying to You!”  But you don’t feel His presence. In desperation you cry, “God, where are you?  I seem to be in a dry and lonely wilderness!”

“You’re right,” He answers. “You’ve been promoted!” Surprised, you respond, “But Lord, I thought promotion was getting to start my ministry!”

In His love and wisdom He explains, “Promotion is the wilderness!  I’ve called you here so you can learn to recognize My voice.  I’m testing your heart.  I’m testing your love for Me.  Will you continue to seek My face, or will you turn away?”

When you were on the wheel, there was great intimacy between you and the Lord.  Everybody said such wonderful things about your future!  But now that you’re on the shelf, everyone seems to have forgotten you.

“Does God really have a future for my life?” you begin to wonder.  “Did He really speak those things to me?” You’ve learned all the worship songs by heart, read all the books, been to all the conferences and seminars – yet there’s a dying in your heart because you feel the Lord has forsaken you.

The worst part is that other people don’t understand.  “Why don’t you have more faith?” they ask.  They don’t understand that God has taken you into the wilderness.  You see, the greater the calling on your life, the greater the persecutions from other people. This is the price behind the anointing.

“My child,” the Lord says, “as you seek My face you will find the hidden streams of living water beneath the desert floor.  For it is not the reputation and approval of man you need, it is to be so deeply rooted in Me so no matter what storms in life come, you will not be moved.”

While God works out His perfect plan, your soul is wrestling and dying in the wilderness. Finally, you stop struggling and quietly pray a prayer of resignation: “Lord, I’ll stay in the wilderness my whole life if I have to. I have found You in the desert and You are all I need!”

Clay in the Potter’s Hands (Pt. 3)

STEP 1: THE POTTER’S HOUSE –

 “This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down to the Potter’s house, and there I will give you My message.”  So I went down to the Potter’s house, and I saw Him working at the wheel. But the pot He was shaping from the clay was marred in His hands; so the Potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to Him” (Jeremiah 18:1 NIV).

Think back to the day Jesus saved you.  Remember the agony you felt as you cried out to Him from the shattered ash heap of your life.  You were just a broken clay vessel when the Lord, the Master Potter, first found you.

In biblical times, all the shattered vessels were thrown onto a garbage dump outside the village know as the ‘potter’s field.’ This field represents the world. It’s the place where broken lives are thrown after they’ve become worn out and abused; discarded and rejected by the world.

Even though you were a useless clay vessel and your hopes and dreams had been destroyed, He came for you.  Do you remember when He gently picked you up and carried you into the Potter’s house?

What wonder and awe filled your being when you first realized He loved you! How you longed to stay in His arms and bask in His presence. There was nothing you wouldn’t do for Him! Just a glance from His eyes ravished your heart.  “You have ravished my heart and given me courage, my sister, my [promised] bride; you have ravished my heart and given me courage with one look from your eyes …” (Song of Solomon 4:9 Amplified)

With great compassion, He tenderly said, “I know you. Your substance is not hidden from Me, for you were fearfully and wonderfully made.  When you were in your mother’s womb, you were My chosen instrument. And I have destiny and calling for you.” (see Psalm 139:14-16).

With His own scarred hands, He reached into the depths of your heart saying, “But first, I will remove all the rocks, thistles, thorns and foreign matter – all the debris you’ve picked up on the highway of life.”

Then He brought His stone of Unrelenting Love carefully down upon you – cracking open your vessel to a place where all you could do was lay in a heap of dust before Him. Perhaps you were confused because you thought there would be no more pain after you entered His house.  Surely if He loved you as much as He said He did, He wouldn’t allow any more pain to come your way!  After all, you’d been through so much already!

Next, He carefully placed your clay dust in a large bin and poured the clear living water that proceeds from the throne of God over you. (see Rev. 22:1)  Worship and the Word filled your life and brought soothing refreshing to your thirsty soul. He drenched you until you had absorbed this living water into every pore of your being.

After a while, spent in the hands of the Potter, you finally realized this crushing was not for your destruction as it had been in the past.  And you heard Him softly whisper, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11-12). Worship and praise flowed over you and you could say, “Lord, I can feel Your love like never before.”

The journey from salvation to transformation had begun!

The Cutting Edge Church

I believe the Church should be on the cutting edge. When you think about what that statement really means, it means to be razor-sharp and out front. The sharp edge is what goes first and cuts through obstructions so you can get to the vital target.

Sometimes the cutting edge is in revelatory teaching and preaching which we believe in doing here at Morningside. But more often the cutting edge is in action – you have to DO SOMETHING to complete the process! Faith without works is dead!

I have often said that we (the Church) should not be the victim in the end times. We know from the scriptures and from the signs we see in the earth and in the heavens that catastrophic things will occur and are occurring every day. We have the Word of God that illuminates (shines the light on) these things.

So, because we know what is coming, we should be proactive! The government should not be taking care of us – we should take care of each other! Pastors of local churches cannot take care of all the people. It will be too much for one man. You ALL will need to help one another! That is the definition of the Church being the Church.

Jesus said “you will know them by their love” for one another. Loving one another means doing the best we can to not only profess our faith, but to take action to first prepare, and then to protect and provide for the family of God. And not only should we take care of one another, but we should be able to give to others. I learned many years ago that you will never be able to minister to a person’s spirit until their hungry bodies are fed.

Jesus said the end of the age is the Harvest Time. When you think about the awesome plan of God to bring many people into the Kingdom at the end of the age, you have to marvel that we, as the Church, are entrusted to execute much of that plan. I don’t know about you, but that’s an awesome privilege and an even greater responsibility. One that requires a very sharp edge – a cutting edge.

“Thanks, Mom!”

There’s no better feeling in the world than to hear your own child say “thanks” for doing something that’s good for them – but they didn’t necessarily appreciate it in the beginning!  There are things you do for them, and things you make them do that they will resist with every ounce of immaturity in them!

Think about it; brush your teeth, eat your vegetables, do your homework, clean your room, etc.  Kids don’t really ‘get’ the benefits of such things until they’re older.  And until they do ‘get it,’ life can be a little, well, challenging.

It’s been that way with emergency preparation, too.  Jim and I live what we preach, so we have taught our children the importance of being prepared for emergencies – and we know they get tired of hearing it sometimes!  Emergency preparation is one of those ‘bummer’ topics kids would rather not think about. But, second only to teaching them how to love and serve Jesus, this is something we consider a loving parental responsibility.

Sometimes you wonder if you will ever have the satisfaction of hearing a ‘thank you’….in this life, anyway!

But I remember clearly some years ago, when Claire, my middle daughter, hugged me tightly and in a moment of exceptional maturity and contemplation said “thanks, Mom…. because you and Dad have prepared for emergencies and taught us how to prepare, I am not afraid of the future.”

Moments like that makes it all worth it.

Claire Bakker’s 20th Birthday

Our Prayers Live On

Prayer is an often misunderstood topic for a lot of people.  Some people think that for prayer to be effective, it has to be done a certain way.  There is much written and taught on the subject of prayer.

I’ve always taken the simple approach to prayer.  Heartfelt prayer can never be done wrong.  You won’t offend God by praying from your heart in the manner you choose.  Sometimes prayer can only be expressed in tears that flow from a broken place inside.

I know that there have been times when I have had no words for the things that  I took to God… but He knew.  There are times when I’ve seen women wail and cry out, indescribable grief and travail that only He could understand.

I also remember my Grandmother and Mother praying for me and not giving up – even when I ran from God for so many years.  Those prayers didn’t fall on the deaf ears of an uncaring God.  No, they were all saved as they rose up to God.

In the Book of Revelation, chapter 5, verse 8, John writes, “And as he took the scroll, the four living beings and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they held gold bowls filled with incense — the prayers of God’s people! (NLT)

David, in Psalm 56, verse 8, writes this of the Lord: “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” (NLT)

Tears in Scripture play a unique role in spiritual prayer.  This passage, along with numerous others in Scripture regarding a spirit of brokenness, pictures a variety of reasons and functions related to what might be termed “the ministry of tears,” a ministry Charles H. Spurgeon defined as “liquid prayer.”

Don’t ever think that your prayers are just here and gone and that God forgets.  Your prayers do, in fact, live on in the spirit realm.  If you have petitioned God for something that is in keeping with His will, your prayers rise as incense to a loving God, and He saves them until such time that He works all things together to accomplish His will and purposes for you and through you and your loved ones.

Even if your prayers are just tears – God hears and understands, and your prayers live on in Heaven.

Nighttime Rendezvous

Recently on one of the show tapings, the subject came up of Jim being inspired at all hours of the night to get up and get alone with God.  Early in our marriage, I would be alarmed by his strange nighttime habits of working in the wee hours and sometimes I would object loudly.  But it wasn’t long before I came to understand that when the demands of the day would cease, Jim could finally quiet his spirit and focus in on the God things.  I was then at ease about him working at night.

God often awakens His servants during the night for many reasons.  Sometimes, it’s a call to action.  Sometimes, it’s a revelation, etc.  Often, it’s just to commune with Him.  For Jim, it could be any of those things as well as other I’m not aware of.

I do know one thing… Jim carries a heavy burden for all of us.  He is the one whose message for the Revelation Days is going out to millions.  He is the one who understands the significance of being a Watchman, and feels its weightiness.  And he doesn’t take it lightly.

I remember a few weeks ago when he was preparing his message about the “Five Words” God had given him.  He spent untold hours researching and documenting that message.  In fact, I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw his sermon notes:  40 pages of notes.  Who studies hundreds of hours and then writes 40 pages of notes for anything?

I’ll tell you who… Jim Bakker, that’s who.

Now I’m not telling you this to pat Jim on the back.  Ok, so I am.  But the greater message I want you to hear is that it’s time to get alone with God.  It’s time to hear from God.  It’s time to obey God.

Jim has said that this year of 2012 may be the last chance we have to get our houses in order.  Make sure you don’t let the cares of life make you miss your greatest hour with God… even if it’s in the middle of the night!

Love,

Lori Signature

The Answer to Depression

One of the words the Lord gave to Jim for 2012 is “depression.”  There are so many people depressed in today’s world and the world doesn’t have the answers, only God does.  When you look at the way the world is going, it’s hard not to be depressed.  The economy is in turmoil, the governments of the world are fighting each other, everywhere you turn there is confusion… just like Jim says.

People run to and fro trying to get relief from depression.  They run to doctors (and sometimes doctors can help), they run to psychiatrists (some of those can help as well), and then  sometimes people run to anything else that will give even temporary relief like sex, drugs or partying.  The trouble with the latter is that it just compounds the problem of depression.

So, what are we to do about depression?  How are we, as Christians, supposed to deal with it when we are attacked in our minds with depressive thoughts?

Depression is a complicated issue with many root causes. I’m not going to try to deal with all of the reasons people may feel depressed because there is a wide range of issues that may contribute.  But, instead, I’m going to share with you what worked for me and many others.

There is one sure way to lessen, or completely get rid of depression that is so simple, it’s hard to receive.  Depressive issues often focus internally:  what are they saying about ME, why did this happen to ME, how will this affect ME, when am I ever going to be happy, when will I ever be loved like I want to be loved, how can I pay my bills… ME, ME, ME, I, I, I!

Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive.  When you give to others, you often find your focus is taken off of you and your problems, and your healing begins.

You want to get rid of depression?  Try finding someone to HELP!  Try giving away what YOU need!  Lend a hand, give a hug, encourage someone!  Volunteer at your church, babysit for someone, read the Bible to someone who can’t read or can’t see… FIND SOMEONE TO HELP!

As you get out of yourself and reach out to help others, your depression will ease and you will begin to understand a great mystery – that it is more blessed to give than to receive!

Invitation – Let’s Get Organized!

Hi ladies and any gentlemen who want to participate!

We have just turned the corner into 2012 and this year promises to be a huge challenge in getting ourselves as ready as humanly possible for anything that may come.  We can’t know for sure what exactly we will be dealing with, but I’m determined to do my best for my family and for the Church family here at Morningside.  So, I’m looking for ways to improve my own organization, and perhaps we can help others to get organized in the process.  For some people, this is a huge feat!  For others, it’s just a matter of putting your mind to it.

Jim has been doing a lot of teaching about the world’s CONFUSION in 2012.  CONFUSION is, of course, the exact opposite of organization.  Since 12 is the Biblical number for organization, and we’re entering a year that is prophesied to be chaotic, I find that a little ironic, don‘t you? 

So, I’m looking for practical suggestions for preparedness in case of disasters or any other event that might require us to function outside of our usual circumstances and without our usual conveniences.  Most of you know that I’m petrified that we’ll be without toilet tissue so I stock up!

No suggestion is too silly or too small, or too complicated or too difficult.  What you have to share will be needed by someone!  

Who knows?  Your suggestion might end up in a preparedness manual. 

Let’s help each other get ready!