LIFTING UP OUR HANDS IN VICTORY

 LIFTING UP OUR HANDS IN VICTORY

A few years ago, when I was working on a special finish for a hotel in California, I had to match an existing piece. I worked at it, but it was difficult. I started to feel the pressure, and I was getting more and more fearful as the day went on. The deadline was growing bigger than the possibility of a solution.

 

Finally, I had to get both of my bosses outside to take a look at the pieces I’d done and get some suggestions. All the suggestions included mixing more paint, starting from scratch, and going through all the steps again. Yikes!

 

But at least I was going to have help. We all went our separate ways for lunch, and I took the opportunity to pray. I prayed for Jesus to help me. I really needed Him, and I told Him so. His first direction to me was to look at the story of Ruth in the Bible. As I was soaking in her story, the scripture came into my head: “Lift up the hands that hang down,” from Hebrews 12:12.

 

That scripture coming to my mind was evidence to me of the love of Jesus and the mercy of God to answer my cry for help.

 

I remembered a TED talk I saw on the internet. It was about nonverbal communication, and they did a test to show how nonverbal communication could affect a good outcome. The challenge was to lift your hands in a show of victory. You had to keep your hands up for two minutes. As it turned out, when the people did it, their blood levels of testosterone went up, and their level of the stress hormone of cortisol went down and they felt more confident.

 

 I decided now was the time to try it.

 

I went into the restroom. I laid down my cell phone on the sink and looked at the time. I lifted my arms above my head as if I’d just won a race, and I said out loud: “I have the victory through Jesus Christ, I have the victory through Jesus.” I snuck a look at my phone, and I’d only done it for one minute, so I stretched out my arms a little more and said it a few more times till 2 minutes were up. I left the restroom and doggone it if I didn’t feel more confident. I really did! I felt invigorated and even a little carefree.

 

It worked! I lifted my hands like it says in the Bible. And the experiment shown on the TED talk showed me how to do it for two minutes straight.

 

When my one boss came back from lunch, he started working on the pieces with me, and we had some good laughs as we both came up with almost the same exact colors. We took them outside to see how they looked against the sample; they were way off! We both looked at each other with wrinkled brows. We shrugged our shoulders, and off we went to try again.

 

The goofy thing is that the piece we were looking at appeared to have mustard color in it when we saw it outside, and the same color appeared reddish when we had it inside! We got out a fan deck of colors and took the piece outside to match it up. We were sure we’d do better the next day. At least, I knew I’d have a better attitude, and I’d start with my hands lifted in victory.

 

As well as lifting my hands, I prayed for God’s mercy and kindness to me. I knew He would help me come up with a solution to our problem. “With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer” (Is. 54:8).

 

Sometimes it’s difficult to keep working on something that seems so hard. God knows this, and speaks plainly to us. He says in Hebrews 12:11-12: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands.” We can do it, and we are victorious!

 

I finished the sample; it was approved and now decorates the outer walls of a major hotel in Southern California.

 

That was the past and now it’s time once again to employ this 2-minute victory pose to some new situations. I hope you will try this out too. The victories we see in our own lives will help us to teach a victorious life to others as well.

 

Love, Carolyn

TAKING TIME TO CELEBRATE

(Photo is “Warrior Carolyn” on the rooftop with Branch and Sword J)

TAKING TIME TO CELEBRATE

I took my saw and clippers up the ladder and onto the roof. My pyracantha bush, which produces lots of red berries for the birds, was starting to send branches out over my roof. For about two months I’ve been looking at the branches grow and knew I had to get up there and cut them before the stems got too thick. I was thinking it would be kind of a hard job and really a hot one too.

Like so many things in life, once I got started I had a great time and when I was done it looked awesome and I was feeling pretty great about my accomplishment.

Ecclesiastes 3:13 says, “Every man should enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.”

Even if we have a job where we get a paycheck, we all have other things we work at where our payment is something other than money. We can get paid with so many different things and we need to take a look at those things and appreciate ourselves. God appreciates us.

We aren’t supposed to just work and work and work until we exhaust ourselves. Most of us need to celebrate more. God says we’re supposed to ENJOY THE GOOD OF ALL OUR LABOR, not just the good from the paycheck we get from our day jobs, but the good we get from anything we work at. Do we get a good feeling of accomplishment? The satisfaction of a small victory? Do we get a thank you from someone? A pride in a new skill learned? Do we feel good about doing something we’ve been putting off for a while? There are many good results from our labors and lots of reasons to celebrate because we work at a variety of tasks.

Just think of some things you work at: Do you work at exercising? Eating well? Going to bed on time? Do you work at not gossiping? At paying your bills on time? Do you work at saying something kind every day? Do you work at spending more time with your kids? Do you work at learning new things?

Whatever we labor at, God says we need to take the time to CELEBRATE. It’s His gift to us.

“Hey, (fill in your name), great job! You did it!”

Love, Carolyn

I’m offering free printable PDF files of any of my WINGS Sample books. There’s some great ones including MIRACLES, COMFORT, WORKS OF FAITH, BIBLE STUDIES, and SUPERNATURAL POWERS. Each book has 6 or 7 chapters.  Find the one you want on this link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Wings+Carolyn+Molica

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DEVIL GOT PUT DOWN WHEN CHRIST WENT UP

I heard a story where a brother and his sister were riding in the back seat of the family car when all of a sudden the little girl blurted out, “Shut up devil!” Mom turned around and asked, “Why did you say that?” The little girl answered, “Because the devil told me I should break John's leg.”

We all need to do more of what that little girl did and tell the devil to shut up and go back down where he belongs.

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, Matthew tells us Jesus responded with: “Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matt 4:10). Notice that Jesus didn't pray about it. He didn't ask God to get Satan away from him. He spoke directly to the spirit and “then the devil leaveth him” (vs.11). Throughout Jesus' walk on the earth we see that He speaks directly to that which is destructive and tells it to stop or depart. We can do the same.

I looked up the Greek translation for “get thee hence” from Matthew 4:10. It is hupago which comes from ago, which is to go, and hupo which is under, beneath, below, to an inferior position. So hupago is to go below. Jesus commanded Satan to back down.

Before I came to this revelation of sending evil deeply under and beneath, I would cast out devil spirits, but I only cast them away, not under. Demanding that evil take itself below is a much stronger image and agrees with many other passages we find in the Bible. For example there is the record of when Jesus cast the devil spirits out of the man of the Gadarenes. The evil spirits went into the pigs. And then what did they do? They jumped from a higher position on the cliffs to the water below and drowned:

And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand) and were choked in the sea. (Mark 5:12-13 AMP)

When Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, He allowed for every evil that possibly could be inflicted on a man or woman to be inflicted upon himself. That would include any sickness, disease, oppression, worry, guilt, lack, and anything you or I can possibly think of that is destructive to the body, soul, or spirit. Jesus took it all upon Himself. He also was buried with it. And all of that evil and sickness was taken to Hell with Him.

It took tremendous power for God to raise Jesus up out of that filth, every bit of slimy, clawing, insidious evil wanting to pull him back down, or hitch a ride up. The Devil thought he'd destroyed Jesus; he certainly would fight to keep him down there, but he couldn't. When God raised Jesus, all evil was left behind, dropped away, and Jesus was raised as the victorious Christ.

Without oppression, there could be freedom. Without sickness and disease, there could be health. Without the wretchedness of poverty, there could be abundance and generous overflow. Without the claw of addiction there could be the joy of liberty. Without the strain of jealousy, there could be the comfort of love. Jesus took all evil to Hell, left it there and was raised all the way up to Heaven to enjoy the full, unimpaired blessing of God.

The rightful position of believers is above with Christ, and without any of things Jesus took with Him to the grave and to Hell.

Because of “his great love wherewith he loved us,” God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:4 and 6), “far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named” (Eph 1: 21).

Romans 6:4 tells us “that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Truthfully, any of the things that Jesus took to the grave and left deep in Hell, should not be in our lives. If they have deceitfully become a part of our lives, we have the perfect right to send them right back down to where they came from. We can walk in the new freedom we have.

God's given us victory and authority in Christ. If devil spirits try to talk us into things that are not the best for us, we can say, like the little girl in the back seat, “Shut up devil!” Or we can say, like Jesus, “Go back below, where you belong! You don't have any right to be here with me!”

Love, Carolyn

Look for the next free download on Thursday: Sample book E – Bible Studies – more exciting than you might think, it includes chapters such as “The Missing Manual,” “Why the Devil Has No Authority,” and “History told in the Heavenlies.” Also a good one on what we can gain from knowing about the O.T. festivals in the chapter on Father’s Day. Available from Amazon.