FireSide Chat II

Last week, we talked about how sometimes the enemy of our souls comes in to kill, steal, destroy and otherwise oppose the prophetic words that God has released over our lives. I want to flesh that out a bit this week by sharing inspiring stories of people who received promises from God and held on to them against overwhelming odds, and finally received the promise that God gave them.

This concept of warring for your word is very Scriptural. The Bible gives us a lot of examples of people having to war to possess God's promises. For example, the children of Israel had to war to possess their promised land. In their case, the first generation that Moses led out of Egypt was unwilling to do that, so they did not get to enter the promised land. Likewise there are times when we have to war to possess God's prophetic word to us. If we war, we will possess it; but if we are unwilling to fight, we won't see the promises come to pass in our life.

Nehemiah is another example of someone who had to war for his word. God commissioned him to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, but the task was not as easy as it sounded. It was not just a matter of obtaining the king's permission and then delivering building supplies to the city. He did not just say, "Ok guys, here are the materials. Get started."

Nehemiah faced a great deal of opposition to this task, and he had to battle through one obstacle after another. Every time he turned around, someone else was opposing him. First he faced ridicule from the existing city officials: Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab (Nehemiah 2:19). Then when Nehemiah finally got people to work on the wall, his opponents went to the Samarian army to organize an attack on the builders (Nehemiah 3:2,7-8). Nehemiah had to station armed guards to protect the workers, and the workers themselves had to carry weapons. Look at Nehemiah 3:16-18:

16 From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah 17 who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, 18 and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.

God promised Nehemiah that he would rebuild the wall, but it was not an easy task. Nehemiah had to battle obstacle after obstacle, and at times he and his workers literally had to engage in armed combat against their foes. If Nehemiah was weak-hearted, he would have given up and failed. If he just wanted for God to fulfill His word without actively engaging in the process, the walls would not have been built. But Nehemiah rose up in faith, stood on his word and warred for it, and he saw it come to pass.

There are many stories like this in the Bible. The pattern has been around for a long time: God releases a promise, the enemy moves in to resist that promise, and the people of God have to engage in warfare to possess the promise that God made to them. And that pattern still holds true today.

I would like to share a few examples of people who warred for their word in order to receive it.

You probably already know the first story that I am going to share in a lot of detail, so I will just share the highlights. There was a worn out missionary named Heidi Baker. Heidi had been on the mission field for years and was discouraged and ready to give up. She came home on a sabbatical and did not expect to return. She went to some meetings in Toronto where Randy Clark was ministering. He prophesied several things to her, including that God would give her the Nation of Mozambique and that that she would pray for blind eyes and see them open.

After receiving that word, Heidi started praying for blind people. Each time she prayed, she fully expected the person to get their sight, but nothing happened. Many people would have given up after 3 or 4 tries, but not Heidi. Every time she ran into someone who was blind, she prayed for them. If she saw a blind person on the other side of the street, she would run across the street to the person and ask if they would allow her to pray for them. A whole year went by like that, and she had not seen a single result. By this point, most people would have given up and they would have written off that prophetic word. But not Heidi--she kept on believing her word and she kept on praying for blind people. Then one day, the person she prayed for was healed. After that, she started seeing an amazing number of supernatural miracles and signs and wonders when she prayed for the sick.

I heard her speak at a meeting, and she said to the congregation, "Do you know what the difference is between me and most of you? It's not that I got prophecies and you didn't. It is that believed mine and latched on to them and pressed into them until I was walking in the promises God gave me. So, what are you going to do with your words?"

In short, Heidi warred for her word and did not give up until it was fulfilled in her life. At times, the Lord wants us to do the same.

Let me relate another well-known story about the pastor in Nigeria who was raised from the dead. Before he died, he and his wife were given several prophesies about how God would use them together in ministry. Shortly after those words were given, the pastor was in a car accident and died. He was brought to the local mortuary.

If you stopped the story at that point and looked at the prophecies, it would have obviously been impossible for them to be fulfilled because the man was dead. Most people would have judged those prophecies as a "false word." But the wife had another take on it.

His wife refused to accept his death, because they had received a prophecy about how they would minister together as a couple. She refused to let him be buried because she deemed the prophetic words to be true. In essence, she said, "God made these promises that haven't been fulfilled yet, so it is not his time to die."

She put his body in the car. By then, it was so stiff that they could not bend him at the waist to seat him in the car--they had to roll down the windows of the back seat and have his head stick out one side of the care, and his feet stick out the other side. They drove for hours and hours to a Reinhard Bonnke meeting. She tried to her husband's body into the meeting, but the ushers would not let her. She told them, "There are unfulfilled prophecies about my husband and I ministering together, so God has to raise him from the dead. I brought him here for Reinhart to pray for him and raise him."

The ushers told her to put him in the cellar and they'd tell Mr. Bonnke about it after service and ask him to come pray. But word got out before the meeting was over, and several intercessors came to the cellar where the body was. They began praying for him and he ended up coming to life before Reinhard Bonnke had a chance to pray for him. (This resurrection was documented and the Reinhard Bonnke released a video about it that has widely circulated through the body of Christ.)

In short, the wife would not accept his death because there were unfulfilled prophecies over them as a couple. She believed the prophecies and would not give up. She did whatever she needed to do to go get him prayed for until he did, in fact, raise from the dead. If she had not warred for her words, she would have buried her husband and the words of that prophecy would have been unfulfilled.

A similar thing happened in the USA. I just heard the story in a sermon the other night, and I don't remember the specific details, (like people's names), but I can relate the jest of the story.

A man was in a meeting where Kim Clement prophesied over him. The word said that he would have a son named Caleb and his son would follow in his footsteps in politics. This man had filed the paperwork to register as a candidate for State Senator just before he went to the meeting, and no one know about it yet. He focused on the part about God calling him to politics and was encouraged by the word. His wife was excited about the word for a different reason--they'd been wanting a child but so far she hadn't conceived.

Before the election, the man was hit by a car and was rushed to the emergency room. His wife arrived at the emergency room about 15 minutes later, clutching a piece of paper that held the transcribed word from the Kim Clement meeting. The security guards tried to keep her out of the room, but she pushed her way in. She stood at the foot of the table where the doctors were trying to resuscitate her husband, and kept waving the paper over his feet. She also kept saying over and over, "This word promises you will win the election and get into politics. It promises that we will have a son named Caleb. You can't die, because those things haven't happened yet."

After 27 minutes, the doctors stopped trying to resuscitate him and pronounced him dead. While they were in the process of filling out the death certificate, the young wife changed her tactic. She threw the prophesy paper down on her dead husband's body and said, "In the name of Jesus, I command you to come back into your body right now!" And as soon as she did that, her dead husband started breathing and came back to life.

She believed God's prophetic word (for a son named Caleb, and for her husband to be in politics) more than she believed the circumstances that had pronounced her husband dead. She stood on that word and would not let go of it. I.e., she warred for her word--and her husband was raised from the dead. By the way, He won the election and became a state senator, and she eventually conceived and bore their son.

There are times when God makes promises to us and circumstances seem to shout that these promises cannot come to pass. That is because the enemy of your soul is waging spiritual warfare against your word. If you give up without a fight, then you let the enemy steal your promise. But if stand in faith and war for your word, then you will see it come to pass.

In short, there are times when we have to war for our word, just like Heidi Baker did, just like the Nigerian pastor's wife did, and like the senator's wife did.