PUSH: Persevere Until Success Happens Through Prayer (4 page)

It is God who determines nativity, God who draws us to Him and turns our hearts. He will cause you to hear His voice and walk in His ways if you but open your heart to Him. God will strategically place you in the optimum place to birth His seed and accomplish His will. He carefully provides challenges and problems that will cause you to press down and tap into your greatest potential. At the same time He is always with you, helping you protect and grow the seed He has caused to be sown in your heart. He is a Husbandman and Master Gardner who never fails to make
“everything beautiful in its time”
(Ecclesiastes 3:11).

By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.
—H
EBREWS
11:11

If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?
—G. K. C
HESTERTON

G
od is raising up the next generation of giant slayers who will champion the cause of the King and His kingdom, those whose agenda is linked to God’s overall redemptive plan for His creation. The Body of Christ is pregnant with the leaders and visionaries who will bring God’s purposes to pass in the earth. The Church must be diligent to labor in prayer on behalf of the young captains coming forth from her ranks and mindful not to miscarry or prematurely deliver the future heroes of the faith.

Who are the heroes and giant slayers who will take down the leviathans opposing God’s kingdom? David was the youngest and scrawniest of all his brothers and, as a result, was given the lowliest task of wandering the hills with his father’s sheep. Yet it was there he learned to kill a lion and a bear. No one paid any attention to him as he sat out there with the sheep. But God was with him, preparing him for greatness. God had planted a seed of greatness deep within him, a seed that sprouted and grew as he fellowshipped with the Lord.

God has planted a seed of greatness within you as well. There is an assignment He prepared for you to accomplish before you were even born:
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart”
(Jeremiah 1:5 NIV). You have been endowed with a unique gift that only the Christ revealed through you can deliver. You have been placed on the earth at this time in history, in this generation,
“for such a time as this”
(Esther 4:14). You are not a mistake; you are in the right place at just the right time, having been chosen and called by God
“just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”
(Ephesians 1:4). You are God’s champion in whatever arena He has placed you.

Like David, however, there is a season when your potential is hidden, another when it is called out, another of preparation, another when it is tested, and still another season when it is revealed and refined. David was not even considered a candidate when the prophet Samuel came looking to anoint one of Jesse’s sons to be the next king of Israel. After Samuel discovered David, there was a season when he lived in King Saul’s palace as an armor bearer. It was during this time he proved his valor by slaying Goliath, and when he showed he had greatness beyond that of Saul, he was cast out, chased down, and had to hide out in a cave just to stay alive. It was there David grew close to God and surrounded himself with faithful men who would become the leaders of his mighty army. He became the captain of that group of leaders, and through great trials and battles was at last crowned king. He carried the potential God placed within him to full term.

Just as Paul instructed the Thessalonians, we must not
“become weary or lose heart in doing right [but continue in well-doing without weakening]”
(2 Thessalonians 3:13 AMP). For Solomon wisely stated,
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven”
(Ecclesiastes 3:1). We must learn to be patient, to
“let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing”
(James 1:4).

One of the most difficult mental and emotional challenges during pregnancy is
waiting
. Especially in the last trimester, when the potential is no longer hidden, it is felt on every level—the weight of it is almost unbearable—and still there is nothing to do but wait.

I am reminded of the parable of the sower recorded in Luke 8:5-8, and the myriad of ways the seed of God’s Word is lost: it isn’t watered, the enemy steals it, and the world’s distractions choke it out. It is easy to be deceived by what seem like other priorities or pressing issues. We can be shortsighted, or rather nearsighted, focusing only on short-term concerns rather than long-term goals. James left us with a good piece of advice, however:
“Be patient, brethren…. See how the farmer waits expectantly for the precious harvest from the land. [See how] he keeps up his patient [vigil] over it until it receives the early and late rains”
(James 5:7 AMP). We must learn to be patient and faithfully carry the seeds of promise we are given to full term; we must patiently wait for the fruit to mature before we look for a harvest.

A large part of carrying the Word of God to full term in your life is surrounding yourself with the right kind of support. Too often within your relationship constellation you are exposed to people who have what I call an “abortive spirit”—they have a way of killing your vision, destroying your passion, undermining your sense of direction and identity, or simply dampening your expectations. These individuals might be family members who are verbally or physically abusive, parents who compromised your innocence during childhood, or a spouse or employer who demoralizes you. These are methods the enemy uses to cause you to miscarry the seed of greatness God has planted in your heart—they are abortive in nature.

Some of the world’s problems have gone unsolved because individuals who were carrying the assignment to provide the answer were aborted. Leaders, scientists, entrepreneurs, and so on were either aborted or somehow miscarried the assignment. Nations are asking, “Where is the moral leadership in our land today?” Could it be that some of these leaders fell victim to the abortive spirit at work in the earth?

Think about what almost happened to Moses in the Book of Exodus. Pharaoh had all of the Hebrew male infants killed because he feared that a deliverer would rise up from among their ranks. The same thing happened under the rule of King Herod after the birth of Jesus. Sometimes there is a satanic knowledge that a certain generation will birth a leader, and because the enemy doesn’t know who in particular that leader will be he will attempt to annihilate the entire generation. We see this happening in our own day throughout the world where the atrocity of genocide is taking place. This is the abortive spirit that we see at work—not only as a cultural norm that permits individuals to legally abort their babies, but also where entire villages are wiped out. Could it be that there is an expected deliverer who was to be born within that particular village or within that particular generation?

The important thing to remember is that every person has been endowed with a seed of greatness. Each person holds the seeds of an answer, a solution, a message, or a gift—a special assignment involving some kind of delivery. God created each person to be a deliverer on some level in whatever arena or sphere of influence God has positioned him or her. Whatever God has graced you with, value it, nurture it, and bring it to fruition. Paul told Timothy,
“Do not neglect the gift that is in you”
(1 Timothy 4:14). In the words of author and television host Rev. Faisal Malick, “If you are pregnant with a baby, with a ministry, with a task, you have to give birth to it. If you have not felt new life stir within you for a while, allow the presence and the glory of God to revive it, and then pray for wisdom to carry it.”
⁴

I exhort you to be faithful with the seed God has given you. It contains the assignment He has commissioned you to carry out in this earth. Carry that seed in good soil, water it, protect it, make it a priority, and allow it to grow and mature to full term. Bring to fullness the champion that you are and fulfill the divine mission that only you can accomplish.

“Sing, barren woman, who has never had a baby. Fill the air with song, you who’ve never experienced childbirth! You’re ending up with far more children than all those childbearing women.” God says so! “Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big!”
—I
SAIAH
54:1-3 MSG

Pregnant women! They had that preciousness which they imposed wherever they went, compelling attention, constantly reminding you that they carried the future inside, its contours already drawn, but veiled, private, an inner secret.
—R
UTH
M
ORGAN

Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just open up and bloom at the first kiss of the sun but you wouldn’t dream of pulling open the petals of the tightly closed buds and forcing them to blossom to your time line.
—G
LORIA
L
EMAY

T
here is a time for conceiving and
receiving seed
, a time for faithfully carrying the seed with expectation, and a time for bringing the seed you are carrying forth, both delivering and being delivered. Giving birth is a process that does not begin in the birthing room but in the intimacy of a private chamber where an invisible germ of potential is given and received. The birth of new life begins at conception. Godly plans and purposes begin in the prayer closet.

The seed of God’s promise for you is planted in your spirit when you receive His Word in the inner sanctum of your heart. It is carried to term through your faith and expectation. And it is delivered through trial and tribulation, or
travail
. We not only travail in prayer but also in life.
Travail
is both defined as “work, especially work that involves hard physical effort over a long period” and “to be in labor” as a woman during childbirth.
⁶

We deliver the promise we carry both through travailing experiences as well as travailing prayer. According to Mark 4:17, we undergo
“persecution…for the word’s sake.”
The enemy strives to stir up persecution against the word of promise about to be birthed through you, the seed you carry in the womb of your spirit containing the life and deliverance God has created you to bring forth. The Rev. Faisal Malick states, “The wisdom hidden within you will bring about persecution and affliction because you are pregnant with something that is not just about you. When you give birth to that word it will bring life to everyone around you.”
⁷

When you are about to birth your assignment—your prophetic destiny—you will go through a period that can be compared to the dark before the dawn. It is always darkest just before the sun is about to rise. St. John of the Cross called this time “the dark night of the soul.” In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” And to quote St. John, “The soul perceives itself to be so unclean and miserable that it seems as if God had set Himself against it.”

But we read in Isaiah that God Himself went through this very same thing before the Sun of Righteousness arose in the earth:
“I have long been silent; yes, I have restrained Myself. But now, like a woman in labor, I will cry and groan and pant”
(Isaiah 42:14 NLT). And just before the Son fulfilled His destiny as the Redeemer of humankind,
“He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. Then He said, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death’”
(Mark 14:33-34). Seven hundred years earlier Isaiah had already prophesied,
“He shall see [the fruit] of the travail of His soul and be satisfied”
(Isaiah 53:11 AMP).

We bring forth from our spirit the life God has birthed into our innermost being. When Jesus made the statement,
“From his innermost being shall flow…springs and rivers of living water”
(John 7:38 AMP), what was translated as “innermost being” here is the Greek word
koilia,
which, according to
Vine’s Expository Dictionary
, means “womb.”
⁸
Dutch Sheets, in his watershed book
Intercessory Prayer,
writes, “We are not the source of life, but we are carriers of the source of life. We do not generate life, but we release, through prayer, Him who does.”
⁹
Sheets goes on to define spiritual travail as “releasing the creative power or energy of the Holy Spirit into a situation to produce, create, or give birth to something.”
¹⁰