Born in Norway into non-Christian family. All Lutherans, no persoanl relationship with Christ. Loved nature--not God, a fertile field for the seeds of paganims (or nature-worship) that are being sown all around the world.
Missionary God-mother who prayed (anyone here grandomothers? pray for grandchildren!)
(end with Gerd's prayers for family)
God walked with me, and I learned to talk with Him, work with him, but couldn't read Bible. (See testimony--start with King and warfare. He has won the war!)
Questions:
1. Why do Christians suffer and non-Christians seemingly not? Ps. 73 and John 16:33 He has overcome the world.
2. Why is the resurrection significant? Isn't the Spirit in everybody (pantheism)? Won't everyone have eternal life? (pantheistic views of paganism in the church)
Pagan lies: 1. Spirit in all. Pantheism
2. All are one. Monism and globalism. (Must believe in this oneness to
transform world and create global harmony)
3. All are good. False salvation. Idolatry. Worship creation.
4. Believe in your imagination, not God. Faith in idols and images.
Only through grace can man be justified (Gal. 3:4). Faith in God and Word, not faith in our creative imagination.
Warfare in the mind. Our King reigns. My King in Norway.
My King in Norway.
The rest is elsewhere
MY HEART, HIS THRONE -- I like this title. I was an open invittion to talk about my King. For if there is a throne--there has to be a King--Right? And if this throne is in my heart--that means that He lives and reigns in me. And nothing could be more exciting! The KING OF THE UNIVERSE LIVING WITH ME!
Ever since I became a Chrsitian I have loved that name for God. The words of Psalm 84 took root in me long ago, and keep flowing through my mine: my King and my God....??? But not everyone can relate to the concept of a King. When I was writing my latest book, Under the Spell of Mother Earth, some friends critiquted the manuscript for me, and found several references to King. "Take those out" they suggested. "Call Him Lord or God instead". Since we don't have a king in America, that title isn't relevant to us."
Some people react more strongly against the idea of a king. To a lot of women today--even in churches--the idea of a male God is bad enough--but a King! That means dictatorship, dominance, and all kinds of oppressive relationships that are totally outdated and absolutely not politically correct.
The problem is, they don't know my King. He isn't the way they describe Him at all. He reigns in heaven and on earth--whether we know Him or not--and whether people believe it or like it or not. But He has given us free will, and will not dominate us. Instead, He longs to be our Shepherd who leads us to peace and genuine freedom. He knows every day ahead, therefore only He knows what we need today to be prepared for tomorrow's challenges. If we make room for His throne in our hearts, He will lead us and work out His perfect plan for our lives.
Of course, most people don't want to trust Him as their King unless they know what that means. Which is why I want to help you know Him just a little bit better.
I was born in Norway the year Hitler's armies invaded our country. The war ended when I was only five, yet I remember well how everyond adored our king. In His name was Hakon 7, and he was a woncerful king--wise, kind, gentle and brave. I would run into the streets in Oslo with my friends, and we would use white chalk to write his insignia--H with 7--on walls and fences anywhere the Nazi soldiers would see it. We were telling them that we wanted our king to ule us--not their fuehrer, Hitler.
King Hakon loved us too. Immediately after the invasion, the Norwegioan parliament told him leave Norway and take refuge in England. But our king didn't want to leave us. For weeks, enemy bombers pursued him as he fled north from Oslo, hiding in forests and farms. Finally he was persuaded that Norway would be better off with a living king in England than a dead king in a cemetary, and he agreed to stay with our airforce in Little Norway--and fight for freedom from the British Isles.
Still this wonderful king was nothing like our heavenly king. King Haakon never knew MY name, nor did he ever come to visit my home. My hevenly King, whose power and sovereignty is far greater--whose kingdom stretches not only around the globe but into the farthest parts of the universe--knows MY NAME, and loves ME. He is with me all the time. He hears all my thoughts and sees my every action, and continues to care for me. Daily He shares His thoughts and plans with me, counsels me and encourages me.
He has always wanted this kind of relationship with His people. He created us for fellowship with Himself. He wanted to provide for us. But from the beginning, He watches the children He loved turn away from Him for other kinds of helps. This grieved Him. You who are parents of teenagers probably understand. You have invested your time, resources and heart in your children, but suddenly they prefer todo their own thing--and would rather not have you around. They don't want to go camping or bicycling with you anymore. One father was telling me that it felt as though he had lost his best friend. It hurst.
I hurt my heavenly Father that way.. I didn't grow up in a christian family--but every child learns something about God in school since we have a state church. I also had a missionary godmother in Madagascar, who proayed for me. Once home on fulough, she taught me the Lord's prayer. She told me to pray it every night--and I did. I would get on my knees, pray the words, and if I forgot one night, I said it twice the next. But that was as far as I grew spiritually.
We moved to America when I was a teenager, Each highschool year, I attended a new school. Since I was very shy, I didn't make friends easily, but Jesus was my best friend. I talked with Him all the time. I didn't know the Bible very well, I tried to read it once in a while, but it seemed dry and lifeless to me. Yet I knew that He loved me and was with me.
Met my husband who was a christian--fell in love with him partly becaue he could answer my questions about God. But after we were married I became increasingly critical both of his denomination and church--which seemed hypocritical to me. I would say things like, "Why do you ask God to bless the food," It doen't need it. Soon my husband realized that I wasn't a christian at all--and started to pray that God would change me.
As I pulled away from the God of my childhood, life became increasingly depressing. At first I thought I could control my life--I didn't need a King. I thorugh I was pretty fearless, after all I wasn't afraid of flying through a storm, or being out on the deck of ship when the waves washed across the deck. I loved skijumpingin Norway and took pride in doing all kinds of daring things. But now I found that I was paralyzed by fear of people. God has his ways of drawing people back to Himself. In my life, He did three things.
I. Living each day with Jesus. (Knowing the Truth: "the Lord is my Shepherd")
Ps. 3:3 (calendar)
Welcome
But first let me tell you about my first retreat: 5 minutes. In a crowd this large, I am sure some of you feel as intimidated as I did the first time I left home to spend a weekend with a large group of strange women. Can any of you identify?
You know God has made His people with all kinds of personalites, strengths and weaknesses. He has given us spiritual gifts that we may never discover until He fills us with His Spritit. In fact, sometimes He equips and send us out on missions we would never choose. He asks us to do the hardest things – the things we fear the most. But in the midst of it, He proves His faithfulness, love, wisdom, and all sufficient strength. That’s actually how we learn to know Him, isn’t it.
He never makes mistakes. Psalm 139: Even when He doesn’t open our eyes to know Him until late in life has passed.
When I was a new Christian, I wanted nothing more than to know Him. Know what? He can use even the early years without His spirit to show Himself to us. For example,
My father almost did. For his part in the Norwegian underground, he was tortured and kept in three different concentration camps.
These gifts of understanding is important to our main topic, because they help us put on the first part of the armor: TRUTH – especially Jesus Christ who is Himself “the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
But first, look at the whole armor:
Ephesians 6:10-12 (read together)
Angel cover
Orders of Angelic Beings
Our enemy: Satan
Armor chart
Truth – the first part of the armor has two parts.
2 Tim 4:3-4
Mythology
That’s why it’s so important for us to know truth, meditate on truth, our minds and hearts with His truth – the written Word which takes life in us and reveals to us the living Word, Jesus Himself.
Father: Godmother taught the Lord’s prayer. Stalin
Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Savior: Disillusionment, receive Christ
Shepherd: Ps 23 VA hospital: started the next day visiting veterans in hospital and psychiatric wing. It was a lot easier to have a specific purpose and message among strangers than to mindle with a group of women. Many were into the occult, others simply doubted or mocked Christianity. They would call out their questions and challenges they had planned as soon as I walked into the ward. And countless times I had to promise – I’ll look that up and give you the answer next time. So I read and studied the Bible and began to memorize the passages I needed all the time..
In fact, before I left for that horrible retreat, God had prompted me to learn my very first Scripture. It was Joshua 1:9, and it took me whole week to learn it. I carried a little 3x5 card in my pocket and looked at it whenever I stopped for a red light, stood in line, even playing tennis. I have a terrible memory for facts and names. But it became an advantage in learning Scriptures. Because I was forced to repeat it to myself so many times that the message became part of my thinking.
My Shepherd led me to a local meeting one day. It had something to do with a strange conference called Basic Youth Conflicts. Never heard of it, can’t even remember how I happened to be there. The speaker was… guess who! Ena Moody. She said things I had never heard, and I wanted desperately to understand and follow those guidelines. Prayed She was standing at the door, alone. Counseling. We continued to meet and study together.
Not the first time He demonstated His love as a Shepherd, nor the last, but one of those wonderful encounters that helped me see and know Him..
My Armor: Among the Scriptures He impressed on my mind in those early days was Ephesians 6:10-12. Because I needed Him so much and could get so discouraged with myself and my weaknesses, I wanted to understand everything He offered me.
He showed me that when I gird my loins or put on the belt of truth I am putting on Jesus Christ (clothed with Christ and hidden in Christ).
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ….” Rom13:14
You are my hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble;
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.” (Psalm 32:7)
My Shield: Polarity
Blessed be the Lord my Rock…
My lovingkindness and my fortress,
My high tower and my deliverer,
My shield and the One in whom I take refuge,
Who subdues my people under me….”
2. An everlasting relationship with Jesus.
(His Righteousness and Peace in me)
Theme: His righteousness for my failure and sin
Breastplate of Righteousness;
It’s so easy to think all is well, then put aside discernment and guardedness. The armor is God’s wonderful protection, but it would be foolish to presume it will do
David – Beetlejuice
Our enemy
1 Samuel 11:1-5 Read one of saddest passages:
“It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him…. and they … besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.
Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king’s house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold.
So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”
Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her… and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, “I am with child.” 1 Sam 11:1-5
How could David do such a thing? Is this the person God commended as “a man after my own heart who does all my will.”
David had been faithful to God through all the hard years. Alert to danger all those years when he
guarded his father’s sheep,
· fought a lion and a bear singlehandedly
· spent nights alone under dark and stormy skies
· sang to the jeaoulous and tormented King Saul
· fled from Saul’s armies
· waited for God to fulfill his covenant promise that he indeed would rule God’s people.
Now he was king. Instead of drawing on the strength God had taught him through the hard years, he put down his guard. He took off his armor and stayed home. He stopped fighting the battles God called him to fight.
In other words, he couldn’t handle the prosperity.
Must be alert to potential spiritual dangers, and one of them is simply to put our mind on “cruise control” and ignore the assaults that come when we least expect it.
1 Cor. 10:12
“Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” 1 Cor. 10:12
Calvin & Hobbes: “I’m getting nervous about Christmas” x2
1 John 5:19
“be sober, be vigilant”
Fine line between being devasted by something we have done or minimizing sin as insignificant
The big dangers are not the big obvious temptations, but all the little ones that we don’t even notice. Like black ice in the winter. The kind that leaves a thin invisible buildup of ice on pavements during frosty mornings and after sundown in late fall. (See Eureka retreat)
You know the rest of the story. Having yielded to the first two temptations, he sent for Uriah, who refused to enjoy his wife while his friends fought on the battlefield. That should have shamed David, but instead he tried to get him drunk to break down his principled convictions.
When that didn’t work, he sent Uriah back to the battlefield carrying his own death warrant. Sin had made David desperate. He would do anything to cover it up.
Afterwards he seemed oblivious to what he had done. So God, in His mercy, sent the prophet Nathan, brought conviction to David’s mind, and broke his heart.
Psalm 51:1-4, 10
Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight—
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
God forgave. There is always forgiveness with God for those who repent and confess. He takes our weak and stumbling lives and gives us His wonderful triumphant life. He takes our sins and fairlures and fills us His holy and righteous life.
church board “constant crusading…”
chart – spread of earthcentered spirituality
solidarity
sin of separatism – Gore
Bush: “Nations that stick to….”
Gorbachev: consensus
Isaiah 5:20
Jer. 2:13
Is 30:15
1 John 1:9
John 14:20-21
Hudson Taylor – spiritual secrets.
Prayer
_______________________________________
Armor: Put on the Breastplate of Righteousness
What does it really mean? How can a piece of armor me clean on the inside?
Actually it works the other way: We ask Him to clean the inside, and when He does, He replaces our sin with His holy life on the inside, even as He covers us.
3. Through the dark valleys with Jesus. ( Faith and Salvation both for today and eternity)
Ps 23:4 “Valley of Death I will fear no evil”
Does that sound like faith? A place we almost go.
“called not just to believe but to suffer…” Phil 1:29?
Shield of faith --- what I know is that
The Lord is my Shepherd – whole psalm (look for armor)
Ps. 62:5-6 Have you ever felt that way? I have. Becoming a member of God’s family not as good as I thought it would be from what God showed me in His Word
Personal: speaking, aloneness,
Isiah 45:3
Word – a reminder
Treasures from 1 Cor. 1
2 Corinthians 1
2 Cor. 1:3-4 “Praise be to… the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 3-4
Thornton Wilder
· Lead the women at PBC
· My third son - a lot of struggles
· Bible study leader
· Fourth year: headaches, fatigue, confusion, depression,
“We do not want you to be uninformed… about the hardships we suffered in Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life…. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God…. 8-9
“Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet, And He will make me walk on my high hills.” Hab 3:17-19
o Linda S., betrayal, cancel conferences….end of ministry? Never met them, but they hated me (Australia). Tried to call to reconcile, but used my words against me. Asked other to pray for peace , but they said impossible. She vehemently believes that I am an evil person.
Jerem. 1:19
A Table before me
.
On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.” 10-11
2 Cor. 4:7-10
Phil. 4:19
Ps. 27:1, 4
4. Victory through oneness with Jesus. (The power and comfort of His Word)
2 Cor 2:14:17
Armor – Lord’s Prayer (meditation for Twist – chpt. 10)
Gifts that do good
Sun-moon winter solstice
Sun-moon symbol
Is 42:5, 8
“Basis for faith” chart & quotes: “A God that Looks like me”
Consensus process
No longer teaching facts
Matt
Declaration of Religion
What will take the place…?
Planetary Anthem
Rom 1:20
Muir Woods
Starhawk & Star Wars
Harry Potter
Deut. 18
Ps. 40:8
3 Paradigm chart
Alberta quests for animal spirits
Deut. 8:10-20
Eloise Anderson
2 tim 3:1-5
Cycles
America’s Spiritual Slide
2 Tim 3:12
2 Chron 20
Rom. 8:35-39
Beneath the cross