Letter 4 to kings: Circle of Hope đź’– March 9, 2025
The other day I stood outside the room of a demoniac woman. She was
screaming profanities and murder at the top of her voice. It was said
by the nurses that she had been screaming like that all night. It was
hard to think of that little lady even as a human being. I paced back
and forth, feeling helpless because I knew of the torment she was
facing. I was praying and rebuking the enemy of her soul. All the
while a little man and woman down the hall who possess the gifting
and experience to take on those demons, face to face and send them to
the place where demons should go, who themselves are currently in
such bondage to a disease that they are incapable of acting on behalf
of the woman. Then there is my dad with such compassion for people,
and the passion to pray, so I got him to roll down in front of her door
and pray with me for the woman. The door was shut, so the sight of
us would not get her worked up more, and/or disturb all the other poor
folks in the place any more than what could be helped. Although I am
quite sure the demons were keenly aware of our presence and prayers.
Afterwards, I went back to the table with my dad to visit a bit more,
before I had to leave him. As I sat there next to another gentle giant, a
precious man with such a sweet demeanor and watched his head droop
on the table into his food, after refusing to eat. He just could not
understand that he needed to eat. I tried to entice him several times to
eat some, but he got a bit flustered and told me not to ask him again,
so I honored his wishes. In that moment it was all too much for me. I
could not contain the tears, they pushed through and ran down,
regardless of my efforts to hide them, I took a walk back down the
hall just to compose myself a bit.
Two lyrics lines from a song come to my heart about that moment,
both are from the song “I’m so lonesome I could cry”. The first lyric,
“the moon just went behind the clouds to hide it’s face and cry”. (This
line because my sister Gloria shared a song with me not long ago
titled “Be the Moon” by Chris Tomlin, which is a beautiful song of
how we are like the moon because we reflect the light of Jesus.) The
other lyric is the last line of the song, “and as I wonder where You are,
I’m so lonesome I could cry”. I ask myself, where is He in me, what
am I missing? The important part is that I KNOW something is
missing. The way the church, the bride of Christ, has been operating
is not the way Jesus intended. I honestly don’t know how this letter
changes any of it, but I will be obedient to share my journey of
repentance, humbling myself, and doing all I can possibly do to be
obsessed with purity.
Link for Song: I want to be the Moon by Chris Tomlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sejv8a-vCyc
Link for a version of I’m so lonesome I could cry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOQCgCubXJw
This morning, I was reading in Lamentations 1, which I believe was
divinely orchestrated. It was the lament of the people of Judah after
the time period above. It says things like “How lonely sits the city
that was full of people!”…”She who was a princess among the
provinces has become a slave”…”She weeps bitterly in the night with
tears on her cheeks”… “she has none to comfort her”…”her foes have
become the head; her enemies prosper”… “her children have gone
away, captives before the foe”. All of this seems peculiarly familiar.
Why did that moment bring me to tears, why was it too much for me
to handle? Because I know, that I know, that I know, the God I serve is
bigger than ALL of this! All He would need to do is walk into the
room, and I know He wants to walk into the room inside of me, and
through me to affect change. His Kingdom come; His Will be done on
earth as it is in Heaven. I have FAITH in the power of my God, the
maker of the heavens, in whom all things consist. As Psalm 96:5
says “for all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord
made the heavens.” I have LOVE for people, even when it is hard to
separate the demons from the person. Here I find myself asking, what
am I missing. Some would say, and I have said before, “it’s just the
way it is”, but I say there is something missing, lack yes, this is why
I cried that day. The Holy Spirit has been speaking to me lately
about Hope. A few weeks ago, He spoke to me that Hope is a
Command. FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE, THESE THREE.
Just a question to myself, is it Hope that is lacking? Today, March
9th, is such a special day to me. It is the birthday of my precious
mother. She has been celebrating in heaven for 24 years on this day,
if I do the calculations right. Regrettably, I am not so sure that Hope
did not die in me on the day that she passed. I had believed, she had
believed, we all had believed God for a miracle, that she would live.
And as I remember back to the one last thing she never told me, there
was something she was trying so hard to tell me on one of those last
days, but she was weak and could not form the words, so I comforted
her and said don’t worry about it, I know. But for all these years I
didn’t know. Now in this moment on this day, I am almost certain I
now know what that one thing was. She would have said “Sonnie,
please, please do not lose your Hope in God.” During the last days of
her life around my birthday, I remember sitting with her in the
hospital as she shared with me a dream that she had. She had a
dream of a sheaf of wheat that was standing up in a field (the way
they used to bunch up the wheat stalks in the field to dry after they
harvested it, before more modern ways of harvesting). She shared
with me that when she woke up she prayed about it and she said the
verse that Holy Spirit brought to her was John 12:24 “Truly, truly I
say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it
remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Without
verbalizing my disagreement, I listened as she shared what the Holy
Spirit was saying to her about her own life. It was rejected it in my
own heart because I did not even consider, in my own understanding
that there was any way that God could, or would, use her death for a
harvest. (By the way this was not a demonstration of love on my
part, I was only seeking my own comfort, my own wants.) Also, I
remember it being around the same period of time that my dad spoke
to me on an elevator, at the hospital. He told me that I needed to give
her into God’s hands. Admittedly to my own shame now, I somehow
slightly interpreted that as a lack of faith on his part, but I did what I
thought he was telling me to do to comply with his wishes and stopped
speaking of “having faith for healing”, etc. To me it felt like I “gave
up”. He never asked me to give up, he asked me to give it to God, he
did not “give up”. He was simply trusting God.
(You may get lost in the following paragraph, but this is where the
Holy Spirit takes me deep in the Word to cleanse me of deep-rooted
things and bring me to repentance and humility.)
When I was reading in 2 Kings 23-25 about King Josiah verse 23:25
says, “Before him (Josiah) there was no King like him, who turned to
the Lord with all his heart and with all his might, according to all the
law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.” A more detailed
story of Josiah is told in 2 Chronicles 35 of his death when he went
intercept Pharoah Neco of Egypt, who was going to fight at
Carchemish on the Euphrates. In my thinking I wondered, of all the
kings who were so evil and yet lived much longer than Josiah, why
would he die at such a young age being so zealous for God’s law?
Pharoah Neco warned Josiah that the Lord Himself had directed him to
go quickly and fight and that this was not his fight. But what was
it that caused Josiah to think that he was the only one who could hear
from God. Was it pride that caused Josiah to be brought down? An
attitude of heart that God only spoke to him and no one else? Another
intriguing part of this passage in Chronicles is that the place Pharoah
Neco put Josiah’s son, Jehoahaz in bondage was at Riblah (the name
Riblah means fruitful woman, giver of life), and it was also the place
where Zedekiah later watched his sons be put to death and then his
eyes were put out by the Assyrian king, all these events were the end
of the Kingdom of Judah. (2 Kings 25:6). Was the pride of Josiah the
end of fruitfulness in Judah, the death of fruitfulness? May God
cleanse me of all pride, that I may not be any part in the death of the
fruitfulness that others have sown.
One thing I know and understand today is that my mother was at
complete peace with going home, the Holy Spirit did show her, and she
faithfully believed that it would somehow, in some way, result in a
harvest that might not otherwise come about. Namely a harvest of all
her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, this was her
heart. She heard from God and though it has been a long road, I will
not let my pride be a death of fruitfulness. It makes me think of the
verse in Psalm 131, “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are
not raised too high, I do not occupy myself with things too great and
too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a
weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within
me. O Israel, HOPE in the Lord from this time forth and forevermore.”
Today HOPE commences, hope for all things in the world that are not
right, for all things on the earth that are not as they are in heaven.
FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE, these three.
Romans 5 says “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we
have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand,
and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice
in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope
does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our
hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
The circle of overcoming both begins and ends with HOPE! We hope
in the glory of God, the Kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.
Through rejoicing in suffering we learn to endure, through endurance
we gain character, and character causes us to hope. Hope in God does
not put us to shame.
I don’t know all the answers, but what I do know is that I must have
Hope to go along with Faith and Love, regardless of the past. Though
neither of these have already been perfected in me, by any stretch of
the imagination. May our King use us as an instrument to bring
about hope in others. Hope in God’s word, every promise. Hoping
heaven, as it is on earth for all. John Piper says of Hope, “Biblical hope
not only desires something good for the future- it expects it to
happen”. To recognize every discouragement, every trial, every
sickness, every misunderstanding, as an opportunity to HOPE in
God. Like Psalm 42:11 says “Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God, for I shall
again praise Him, my salvation.”
Zechariah 9:12 “Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.”
My prayer for all of us today is that we will be prisoners of hope, and
more than us not letting go of hope, but that hope will not let us go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzq2xjJEDuw