Red Alert America, Sound the Alarm! Chapter 7 – Wake Up Sleeper! excerpt

He Makes the Bitter Water Sweet

It was there at Marah that the Lord set before them the following decree as a standard to test their faithfulness to him. He said, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in his sight, obeying his commands and keeping all his decrees, then I will not make you suffer any of the diseases I sent on the Egyptians; for I am the Lord who heals you.” (Exodus 15:25-26)

The first stop on our path is healing from our bitter circumstances in life. We have baggage from our past that we try to carry into our future. We make doctrines out of it. We see the world through the eyes of our experience, which clouds our vision. Our view of life comes from our life experiences, such as our upbringing, our ethnic and cultural background, and our society. Most often, these experiences have caused our view of life to be somewhat or severely skewed, especially when it comes to our relationship with the Lord and our Christian way of living. Our thoughts and attitudes, our prejudices, and our past hurts all affect the way we see God and everything around us.

First Corinthians 13:11 says that when we were children that we thought, spoke, and reasoned like children, but that when we grew up, we put childish things aside. The problem is that many people have never grown up and become mature. The “growing up” has to do with maturity, not natural years. I have seen numerous people who function on the level of a child when it comes to their emotions, allowing negative emotions to control them. They haven’t been healed of things that have skewed their perceptions, and they see the world through a haze, believing that they see clearly.

For instance, have you ever known people who were abused and controlled as children, grew up without being healed, and now rebel against all authority? They are in rebellion to God, because they see all authority as abusive, and He represents authority. Of course, God is not abusive, but until they are healed they will not be able to see God any other way. How about people who are smart, funny, and likable but have a terrible view of themselves? Perhaps their family or their peers told them they were worthless, stupid, or something else that has stayed with them like a tape playing in their heads that they cannot get past. No matter what their friends tell them, they don’t believe the good report about themselves, because somewhere along the way they believed a lie about themselves. I know Christians who have turned to alcohol and drugs for comfort because they never grew past their childhood hurts and perceptions. Because of this, they haven’t learned how to fully trust God and take their pain to Him, which would enable them to walk in His wholeness.

Until we learn how to allow God to renew our mind, until we learn what God says about us and come into agreement with Him, we will always have unreal perceptions about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. For instance, if we had an abusive father we may view any kind of male authority as abusive. If we had a domineering or controlling mother we almost always see all strong women as controlling and will have problems dealing with women in any kind of authority or leadership capacity. There are many other examples of perceptions that came from childhood or other life experiences. For example, have you ever had someone dislike you before they ever had a chance to know you, only to find out that you reminded them of someone else who hurt them?

Some people, because of horrible abuse as children, have become abusers as adults, justifying it because it was the behavior they learned from childhood. These perceptions are not truth. Most sex offenders and child abusers were themselves abused and are acting out the horrible things done to them. These people never experienced the loving form of guidance, correction, and discipline that brings a child happily and safely into adulthood, so they repeat the pattern they grew up with.

Throughout our lives, most of us have had painful and bitter experiences. They cause us deep pain and grief. We also have bitter heart attitudes if we don’t forgive those responsible for hurting us. I think a lot of people believe that if they let go of their bitterness it will make them vulnerable to more hurt. When we are hurt we tend to judge those who hurt us, whether they did it deliberately or not. The Bible says that when we judge others we will be judged with equal measure, and the hurt is simply not worth holding on to. Only God is qualified to judge someone’s heart.

It is imperative that we let go and forgive those who hurt us. Allow the Holy Spirit to wash away all the pain. If we don’t let go of all the bitter experiences in our life and the bitterness that’s in our heart, we will be stuck, and our relationship with the Lord will stagnate.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Romans 12:2 NKJV)

 We cannot allow our past to dictate our future anymore. God gave the Israelites an opportunity to get rid of their bitter circumstances and bitterness of heart shortly after crossing the Red Sea. Exodus 15 tells us that the people of Israel were led three days across the desert without finding any water. Then they came to an oasis called Marah, which means “bitter water.” When they arrived, they were so thirsty they began to drink, but the water was too bitter to drink.

When they came to the Oasis of Marah, the water was too bitter to drink. So they called the place Marah (which means bitter). Then the people complained and turned against Moses. “What are we going to drink?” they demanded. So Moses cried out to the Lord for help, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. Moses threw it into the water and this made the water good to drink (Exodus 15:23-24).

Our painful circumstances and hurts can be too bitter to live with, but God gives us an opportunity to be healed and set free from the bitter experiences in our lives that have skewed our view of life and tainted our wells. We have to stop at the bitter oasis in life so that we can see what is in our heart. Jesus died for our sin and for our sorrow. He knows our pain because He suffered on the cross, and if we will allow Him to touch our bitterness with the cross, we will be free. The wood that Moses threw into the water represents the power of the cross to make our bitterness turn sweet. In this way, we truly allow Him to take whatever Satan meant for evil and turn it around for good, and this is how the apostle Paul could say that all he had gone through was nothing compared to knowing Christ. The key is surrender or letting go.

Monkeys are interesting animals who don’t like to let go. When I first heard about how hunters in the jungles catch monkeys, I was intrigued, and immediately I thought about how much we behave like monkeys when we don’t let go.

Hunters make a hole in a coconut large enough to put some kind of treat into that is appealing to monkeys. The hole is just large enough for a monkey to slip his hand into. They tie a rope to the coconut and wait for the curious monkeys to come and take the treat. The monkeys want this treat so much that when the rope is pulled, they will not let go of it. Their fist will not fit through the hole, yet rather than let go of the treat, they allow themselves to be taken into captivity, and they lose their freedom or even their lives. The monkeys become easy prey, when all they had to do was let go and they would have been free.

The message here is clear. We have to let go if we want to be free. If we do not let go, we will find ourselves taken into captivity. If we hold on to the familiar things that have kept us bound all of our life, then we will miss out on all the things that true freedom has to offer. Once we learn to trust God and let go of everything that hinders our healing, we will finally be able to see life as it is instead of as our perceptions dictate to us.

When I lived in Redding I used to love to sit by a river or a stream and pray. One beautiful afternoon I found a new stream and went there to pray. As I stood there looking at the water the Lord began speaking to me about His rest and told me to look at the water. He said, “It is deceptive because the water appears to be flowing one way, yet it is actually flowing in the opposite direction.” I wasn’t sure I was hearing Him correctly, because the water definitely looked as if it was flowing to my left. My instinct said that it was flowing to the right, but my eyes said it was flowing the other way.

Then He told me to go to another spot just a little bit farther to the right and look again. I did so, and in that spot there were rocks creating a little resistance with the flow of the water. I could clearly see that the water was actually flowing in the opposite direction from the way it appeared to flow.

Then the Lord spoke again and told me that in order to see which way the Holy Spirit is flowing, I had to see from His vantage point—not my own. When we see things from our own perspective, we will think we are seeing the truth, but once we come into alignment with His perspective, we will see the truth clearly and our perceptions will be accurate.

What bitter experiences or heart attitudes are you holding on to that are keeping you from being truly free? What perceptions do you have that are not real? Are you truly free, or do you need to take another look at the things in your life that you have become comfortable with?

Jesus came to set us free from bondage just as He set the Israelites free from their physical bondage. Unless we learn to let go of the bitter experiences that led us to be the way we are, we will never be truly free. We can and should be free of our childhood and lifetime hurts, no matter how great they were. We can learn how to release the sorrow and the pain to the Lord so He can set us free forever and teach us His way.

Are the things that are keeping you from true freedom worth holding on to? All we have to do is let go and trust God, and He will take us to a new level of maturity and holiness. He can use our bitter circumstances in life and turn them around for His glory when we surrender everything to Him. The most painful experiences in my life have now become my teacher and my anointing to touch lives, because I have learned to let go and allow God to turn my pain into His glory. He has loved us so we can love. He has healed us so we can carry His healing. He will restore us so we can bring restoration to others.

We have been given an opportunity to flush all the sin and pain out of our lives so we can be free in ways we haven’t even known we could be. Forgiveness and repentance are the keys to moving on to a place of refreshment where we will find rest on our journey.

I was pondering something the other day. America has been used by God to rescue nations from tyrants over and over again, not so we could stay in their country and make it ours, but so that we could see a nation become freer than it was before.

Now America is on a precipice, where we are on the verge of becoming subjects of a ruling tyrant. We are on the verge of totalitarianism taking over our nation.

What great nation will then come and rescue America? There is none. Only God can save this nation that is called to such a great destiny, and only we who claim to love Him can effect this change through humility, turning from our wicked ways, seeking His face, and earnestly interceding for our nation.

Now you can find Red Alert America, Sound the Alarm! in paperback and in the Kindle section of Amazon. Click on the picture of the book (also in paperback) to order. If you don’t have a Kindle device, you can click on one of the Kindle’s above and order one. If (more…)

In early February, we all saw Obama dip further into the dictator mentality, declaring he would force the issue of free birth control for every woman.

On Hannity, I heard a woman argue that this is about women’s health and the rights of women, etc. BALONY!

If women want birth control, that is their choice! No argument there. Preventing pregnancy is not a health issue for most women, it’s a choice not to have a baby. So, why should the rest of us pay for it? Just buy your pills with your own money. What a concept.

Not only is it not an inherent right for women to have free birth control, it is ludicrous for anyone to say the churches or the insurance companies don’t have a choice but to offer it free!

And while we’re talking about women’s health, women have been duped into thinking that birth control pills and other such drugs are safe, yet they contribute greatly to breast cancer and other serious health issues. Ironic and sad, isn’t it?

Planned Parenthood’s own literature calls abortion a form of birth control. So, the issue here is not really preventing pregnancy as much as it is a back door way to get abortions funded for anyone who wants one. So this bill would pay for abortion procedures, the morning after pill, IUD’s, (I think they have a new name for that now) which are nothing more than implanted abortion devices.

Are we Christians going to stand for this? We need to fight this battle on our knees, and write to our legislators, and say NO. After all, we have been taught to JUST SAY NO to drugs, right?

By the way, we also need to make sure we don’t vote for someone with a DICTATOR mentality, but one who supports the Christian values this nation was founded on.

To order your copy of Red Alert America, Sound the Alarm, click on the book picture above.

I received an email with this clip from a radio show, but I don’t know the name of the show. A neurosurgeon called in and told the host some very disturbing things about what will happen when people over 70 need brain surgury. Click on the link below to listen to the clip.

Phone_call_from_Neurosurgeon