Christ Compels Update Nov 2010

Christ Compels Update

By Shirley Mitchell
I have something to share with you about Lifeway’s National Women’s Leadership Forum in Ridgecrest, North Carolina. At the forum, Lifeway set up this “share-fair” table for people to share the materials that their churches were used in ministry. God spoke to me a few days just prior to leaving that I was to take some Jesus Lives Bible Studies and 2 full sets of the DVD’s. At first, we laid 4 Bible studies and 1 DVD set on the table. My anxiety level tends to rise whenever I put Jesus Lives “out there.” There is always the struggle inside of me to guard against rejection. So I draw from my God-moments for strength to face my fear.
When I was writing the Jesus Lives Bible study, this precious, godly woman met with me and pray with me. Debra has the gift of prophecy and the Holy Spirit is evident in her life. One day we were praying together in a church parking lot, and she told me that God had given her a word. While we were praying, you could hear a gush of wind. She said that she believed that I was to release Jesus Lives to the wind of the Holy Spirit and let it take the Bible study where the Spirit wanted to take it. She told me to give it away for free to anyone who asked and see what the Spirit did.

A few days later my husband and I were out for dinner at restaurant for our anniversary. After our meal was halfway finished, I told him what she had said. By telling him in a public restaurant, he had to control his reaction. The cost of JL is one pretty price tag and it meant that we’d have to make sacrifices. I told him at first I had a hard time with her word, but the more I prayed about it the more I was impressed that the eleven disciples plus Paul not only did not receive payment for their writings – the Bible – it cost them their lives.

So back to what God said to me at the conference. Over the next three days, we put 3-4 Jesus Lives Bible studies on the table at a time and then watch then disappear in less than 10 seconds. I felt like Miriam who watched the Egyptian princess draw precious baby Moses out of the water. Just as she trusted the river to carry her brother to the right hands, so I was trusting God’s river of the right timing to carry the life-changing books into the right hands.

Later, I prayed over every woman who took a Jesus Lives Bible study home with her. Then, God spoke to me and this is what He said to my heart. With the money that Doug and I are spending to write, publish, videotape, and distribute the Jesus Lives Bible study, we could have built a home for children in Asia – or a few homes. However, God called Doug and me to pour our money somewhere else. He told us to invest the money in you – in women (and men) in the western world. He told us instead of building a physical home to meet physical needs of children that we were to build a spiritual home to meet spiritual needs of His precious children. Through the life-transformation that takes place in you all, more and more people of this earth will be reached than if we had built the mere orphanage alone. This just gives me chills! This means everything to me! I long to serve our God and to take care of your spiritual needs. May your eyes be forever awakened to who our precious Savior really is. Because you know Him, may your live your life fully and completely for Him!

Pray with me: Almighty God, Praise You for the work of Your Spirit! We give You freedom to operate and to be let loose in our lives. Blow, Holy Spirit! Breathe on us! Revive us! Empower us! Heal us! Teach us the deeper things of God. We lift up each one of the Bible studies that was release to Your Holy Spirit wind last week. We ask that the Bible study finds its way to the right hands. May the doer of the Bible study give it their hearts and minds. Through the teaching of Your Word, renew their minds and radically transform them. Give them a hunger for Your Word, an insatiable appetite. Unveil the mysterious things of the kingdom to them. Heal their wounds and mend their hearts. Help them to believe You. Take their worship to a new level with You. In the Name above all names, and the Name that makes the kingdom of darkness shudder and believers take courage and shout for joy, in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen