Service on The Mount

Meir said that in the forty some years he has been leading tours, this was only the third time that his group was first on the Mount of Beatitudes. I love this place. Especially when it is empty. There is a peace that is thick in the air. Meir shared with us that the gentleman who built this church had built several all over the country. I almost imagine him as setting up watchtowers over or near places of significance that we read about daily in our Bibles.

We went into the church where each one took some time to pray. We asked the sweet nun if it would be ok to sing. I sang, “Ave Maria”. She came in smiling… and with cellphone in hand to video. Nuns are quite technologically advanced than one would suppose. When I walked out she was watching the video in her little gift shop, she looked up at me, smile and nodded. I returned her thank you.

We stepped out on to porch that has an unmatched view. I know I say this every time, but no wonder God chose this place to raise His Son. Simply exquisite!

We retreated to a small outside “chapel” area. We normally walk past this part of the garden. In fact, I had always ignored the building that stands at the top of the hill facing the church. Meir informed us that this was an Israeli Hospice. When people are sick and close to death, they come here for their last few days on earth. We couldn’t think of a better place to sit on the porch or look out the window at. That peace was for them too… to rest in.

It was on Pastor’s heart that we get before Him on this mountain and the service was on… We stayed in this place for an hour and a half. This, on most trips, is unheard of. We do our best to simply slow down when we hear him. We began:

“Lord, quench our thirst. Cleanse our hearts, we resist the enemy in Your name. Illuminate our hearts through just as these sunbeams rain down. Heaven come close.

I led in “Dwelling Places”:

Lovely are Your dwelling places

Thirsty, I come after You

Jesus, my joy, my reward, Your love's restoring my soul

Now I'm Yours and You are mine

and from my heart a song will rise

I love You, I love You, I love You

and my heart will follow wholly after You

Jesus there's none beside you

Righteous, ruler of the earth

Nations will come and bow down

Name after all names I sing You praises

and all I can say to you is...

I love You, I love You, I love You

and my heart will follow wholly after You

Then…

I sing praises to Your name oh Lord,

praises to Your name oh Lord


For Your name is great and greatly to be praised

As we began singing, “I Exalt Thee”, a very large green parrot, flew into the tree above us and joined us in praises to God. He sand along for only the one song.

Your Great Name:

Lost are saved; find their way; at the sound of your great name

All condemned; feel no shame, at the sound of your great name

Every fear; has no place; at the sound of your great name

The enemy; he has to leave; at the sound of your great name

Jesus, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain for us, Son of God and Man

You are high and lifted up; and all the world will praise your great name

(I turned to sing to the hospice building towering over us.)

All the weak; find their strength; at the sound of your great name

Hungry souls; receive grace; at the sound of your great name (Pastor said, “this touches me.”

The fatherless; they find their rest; at the sound of your great name

Sick are healed; and the dead are raised; at the sound of your great name

Redeemer, My Healer, Lord Almighty

My savior, Defender, You are My King

Mrs. Barbara stood up to share with us:

She said, “Singing these songs… Elizabeth didn’t know what was on my heart this morning?

The Beatitude that stood out to me this morning: ‘Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.’ I wondered why He said both hunger and thirst… is not one the same as the other? Well, a person can live without food, but you cannot last very long without water. So I wanted to look at those words more closely.

 To hunger: ‘is to crave ardently and seek with eager desire.’ I think of our various hungers. Power, fame, etc. We seek after it. So many times, what we seek does not quench that hunger.

To thirst: ‘it is painfully to feel their want. You eagerly long for those things by which the soul is refreshed, supported and strengthened.’ Wow! Does that not describe it? It refreshes you. It supports you! The thirsty man receives his strength from one drink. How much more is this true for our souls?

 To be filled and satisfied. It is not a temporary “filling”. When it comes to hungering and thirsting for righteousness: You shall be filled. We are not left with only being filled halfway. We are not left weakened, nor spiritually dehydrated. It fills is all the way up.

Shall be filled. It is to be filled to the brim.

Of course, we always say, blessed does mean happy, but when Jesus uses it here He is saying, “to be supremely blessed”. So many of the songs said hunger and thirst. ”

Mari spoke up, crying… “I, literally, just prayed those words in the church.”

“To be hungry and thirsty?”

“No, that I was… and needed to be filled. Then, Elizabeth began to sing those songs and Mom shared…”

Pastor Thomas responded, “That’s the beautiful thing that your mom just said… if you are hungry for it, you will be filled.” She nodded her head.

We paused for a moment to take that in and listen to the birds sing.

Pastor shared:

There is so much that should be… that God is calling into existence. We are living a mile below where we should live or more.

Rev. Helm once said, “The church is seven times more asleep than the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane.”

I’m not pointing outward on this. We need to awaken and really hunger and thirst. It’s not a matter of learning something new, but grasping out of the sing-song and the fog what we already know. Out of what we think and what we know to the revelation of what He’s really done for us. I’m grateful for days like this because we get to see a little clearer.

Pastor Jerry stood to speak:

Reflecting on the Beatitudes this morning… Mari what you said helped me… a single response.

I am no expert, but it seems to me Jesus was attaching His blessing on certain things. He was speaking eternal blessings. When He spoke those words on this mountain, it was with having Mari in mind on this day, blessing her… It is still here. He had this day in mind. There is great power in that. Thank God, He blesses!

The powers of hell, curse. They attach their spirit to our experiences and our wounds. They are cruel like that. It’s not enough that Pastor Thomas would experience rejection at some point in his life, but they want to attach a spirit of a curse. It’s there until Jesus heals us. He knows the when and the how that he wants to heal every person. God can heal.

I experience a certain type of abandonment from my father growing up. He never left the home, but it just seemed he had better things to do most of the time. In the darkest moments of my life that abandonment has tried to reattach itself. It’s not that I was feeling sorry for myself (I thought about it), but I had wondered when it would end... God took me to a low place to begin to heal.

I want to get into the flow of the blessing. If we could have seen into the spiritual realm on the day just brought forth the Beatitudes, we could have seen a river of blessing flowing out of Him moving through the generations. These rivers are still flowing from Him. We’ve intersected one today. Mari has intersected one. It brings healing and happiness. Fulfillment and freedom. That’s what Jesus did and what He can do.

Pastor Thomas mentioned that sliver of common ground we have. Most people will say they believe God speaks. I just don’t know how to hear it. How is it heard?

I don’t know what that sounds like. He’s helping us here. Bless you.

Mari: May I bless you back? The other day when we were out to eat, you were in Israel and your father was a vision of heaven, and very near to death. She came out the vision and asked where Jerry was. You were the one he needed to talk to. After he had seen Jesus… you were the one he wanted to talk to. He was thirsty to talk to you.”

Pastor Jerry, “yes that was a significant part of my healing.”

James stood: We were reviewing Pastor Thomas’s message on thorns last night.  Pastor had shared from Genesis that the thorns for our sake. It’s prickly things in your life to drive you to Jesus. The things that scream over us that aren’t ours.”

He began to pray for Pastor Jerry. “Jesus you apply your salve over this wound, extract the poison. Give him the power to speak over others, their hurts and situations. Do this for all who are here this morning.

Pastor Jerry: “Mari, your words were prophetic. For when this was broken from me, It went back and healed my father… reconciliation and reunion.”

Heather: Pastor Jerry as you were sharing. It reminded of when God was working with my thorn. God showed me I had been walking for many years in rejection. It distorted how I related to people. I want be thankful God healed me of that, but I want also to be faithful to say it still tries to come back. I do not receive. I am thankful for his healing and help and deliverance. I am thankful I do not have to live in reference to that.”

Heidi: May heart is pounding… I have been so thankful for this message in my life. I feel like someone here needs to hear that you are not used up. That was my thorn, being used, and its not true. I don’t receive those lies either. They keep trying to come back, but the Lord has healed me. Glory! I remember the message on guilt and condemnation. I was in the car with Elizabeth and she said you don’t have to live under guilt and condemnation. I was like, ‘Aww, that’s sweet…” That’s where I was, I couldn’t believe it could possibly be true for me. I am thankful for that word. I was living in it and I didn’t even realize until the revelation of it. You don’t have to live under the guilt of what you did today, yesterday, or 20 years ago. God can lift it out in a moment. I remember Elizabeth’s saying, I can’t wait till the morning when you wake up you see the condemnation and guilt are gone. I thought, ‘Aww… okay that will probably be 25 years from now.’ That’s where I was because it was hard for me to hear that in that moment. I got up the next morning and those voices started in on me… they were screaming condemnation. Instead of hiding my head back under the covers, I got in the Scripture. I spoke the opposite of what I heard for six weeks. Remember that Saturday morning when I woke up, I wanted to shout and run to Elizabeth’s house… in my pajamas, I didn’t care! ‘Elizabeth, those voices are no longer there! They are no longer speaking over me!’ Every single one were gone in that moment. They still tried to come back. I want to encourage you you don’t have to listen to those voices. They are not true. They are not from God.

Our God is not a god of condemning and fault finding and judging and criticizing. Say, no I am not receiving those. That’s not how God treats me. He treats us with that hug, that love and that fatherly embrace. I always want to be thankful for these life changing moments. Like the time on the couch, when God delivered from heart things from my childhood, in a moment. I thought I was going to have to go through therapy. Some things happened as a child that I thought I would never get over and that it would always be that way. When I was at the end of all, I said, ‘God you have got to take this out or I can’t take another step. Take me home or take me out of this. He came in power. I invited Him into those moments… the darkest times, he came in power and healing…  I said, “take this out of me,” and He did in 30 seconds… It’s not been there. Its no longer that shadow that follows me. So my prayer today is that God will reveal and lift those thorns and those voices in His time. Its for all of us! Those things that control our mind and where we go and what we say.

Lord, lift it in Jesus name…

The service was drawing to a close and  Pastor Thomas asked if all hearts were clear. Mari said she had something on her heart. God told her something needed to happen when we sat down for service, but it was to be the very last thing. So she said, “Speak up…”

That’s when Michelle spoke up, crying… On my last trip, Pastor Wright asked me if I would be returning to Israel. I began to pray about it and the Lord revealed to me that my next trip would be with Pastor Thomas and I was to bring my daughter Hannah.

For the last year God has been dealing with me about walking through the dark parts of my heart. Generational things… God told me that, “If you don’t deal with it your children will have to deal with it.” I didn’t want Hannah and Ben to have to deal with things. For the last two years, I have dealt with a lot of issues. When I heard about the trip in November, I thought this was the trip… God said, “No.” I couldn’t get clear about it, but then when I heard the trip was to be moved to June because of your surgery, I knew it was the right time. Praise God and it has been wonderful.

So, Hannah… I don’t want to embarrass you… But you have a lot of wonderful things in you. Be open on this trip to receive the seed God wants to plant. You have to know from Him. I want you to seek. Both you and Ben are called of the Lord. He has plans for you both. God told me to bring you here. I’m thankful for this trip and to be apart of it. I don’t know all that is to unfold in the next few days, but I am open to it. God’s timing amazes me. Just like you said things don’t happen overnight. The healing, the promise don’t come overnight, sometimes they take time. Those seeds are planted and they have to grow. They have to bloom in the right time.

When Michelle had finished, Mari said, “She needed to speak that before I requested this.. in fact all of you needed to. When I sat down God, told me that Pastor Jerry’s son Taylor needed prayer… but not till the very end. Pastor Jerry needed to share about his thorn. Michelle needed to say that she did not want for her children to deal with what she did. I believe we need to pray that this voice of abandonment not affect Taylor. Taylor and I aren’t even that close, but I believe we are to pray for him and his children. I don’t know who is supposed to pray… I wasn’t even cry-ee yet… It was the very first thing He said, but it has to be the last thing. It’s crazy how it matches.”

Pastor Thomas asked for Michelle to pray for Taylor like she prays for her own children. Pray that he spared from any taste of this abandonment specifically his children to come.

Michelle: Thank you that this is orchestrated by you! Your timing is beautiful. Today, is Father’s day… and you are the perfect father… (even when sometimes earthly fathers aren’t.) You want us to show our children that, just as well.

I thank you for Pastor Jerry and Mrs. Susan, their children and the generations to come. I pray you make their path straight and be their rear guard. That you will cover them with your armor. I pray against this spirit of abandonment be pulled up by the root and not find anywhere else to grow. That love peace comfort will surround them and flow to others. Lord, you know Taylor… every hair on his head. There are opportunities not known right now… reveal those and give him the strength to carry them out. I cover them in Jesus name amen.

I prayed for Molly. Lord, Jesus. Be her comforter. These places where she needs to shield herself from being hurt. Lord I ask in Your divine power in this river that we are talking about. That you would send a river to her today to her dear Jesus. To open up her heart to dare to trust. Lord, you have her best interest at heart. You guard her heart. Prepare her for these years ahead. Amen.

This ended our time on the Mountain… I’ll continue the day…. But now the bus awaits…