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Shalom from
Jerusalem!
Summertime has almost fully arrived here
in Jerusalem. The markets are full of
luscious summer fruits and vegetables, and the high
school students are finished for the summer with
the lower grades finishing at the end of the month.
There are no more holidays to be observed here until the
Fall feasts, with the exception of Tisha B'Av, the
commemoration of the destruction of the Temples. Many of
the expatriate believers in Y'shua go to their
home countries during the summer, causing the size
of congregations here to dwindle.
I
can almost hear Jerusalem breathe a long sigh as she
rests and regroups in preparation for the Fall
and the next onslaught of pilgrims and tourists. I
have always enjoyed this time because it allows me to
have more time to give greater focus to the things
that God has laid on my heart to do since there are
fewer interruptions.
Pastor Shelley's
Sermons
Several of
Pastor Shelley's recent sermons have made
it through all of the stages of
transcription and editing, both in Alabama and
in Jerusalem. These are the ones that have been
uploaded since my last update to you:
Prophets & Seers - Part 1
(2006-5-20 PM)
Prophets & Seers -
Part 2 (2006-5-21
AM)
Prophets & Seers -
Part 3 (2006-5-28
AM)
The Ministry of Angels in the End
Time - Part 1 (2006-6-01
PM)
The Ministry of Angels in the End
Time - Part 2 (2006-6-02
PM)
The Ministry of Angels in the End
Time - Part 3 (2006-6-04
AM)
Just go to
www.revival.org,
put the arrow of the cursor over the
Sermons link, click on
2006 and choose these sermons
which are currently at the end of the
list.
Each one
of these messages is a great blessing! I know it
takes time to read them, but I believe the Lord
will really minister to you through
them!
The Sovereignty of
God
Beginning
June 10th, Pastor Shelley preached a wonderful series of
messages on The Sovereignty of
God, sharing revelation that He
received before the Throne and backing it up
with research from the
Scriptures. Below are some quotes from
the first three of those sermons. You
will want to read the complete messages to get a
full understanding. They should be available
relatively soon.
I can
testify that these messages, inspired from the Throne,
have brought a great sense of contentment to my spirit
and soul. They contain balancing truths
about the nature and authority of God - issues
that theologians have been arguing about for
centuries. God wants His Bride to have a fuller
revelation of Himself and His Word.
God has Control of
Everything
God is sovereign. He's really in
charge. There are no accidents
with God.
Satan was made to be a tool in the
hand of God to perfect the
saints.
God is in charge. He
has all knowledge and has known everything that
would ever happen before it actually
happened.
The Bible clearly says that
God created evil.
God allowed Hitler to
go wild, without restraint, constantly breaking
the will of His beloved Israel. He did it because
He had raised up prophet after prophet after prophet who
had tried to turn them back to their
Creator.
It seems cruel, but
it's all about fellowship, oneness and
intimacy.
Two
Wills in
Contact
If He was ever
going to fail us, let us down or give up on us,
it would have been in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Throughout His life on earth,
He had won the conflict between His will and the will of
His Father that was in Him.
He didn't have full
dominion over the Spirit of the Father that was in
Him.
Even though He was very much God
in the flesh, there were still things that He
did not know until it was revealed to Him by
the Father.
He was constantly having to
push down His will so that the will of the Father could
rule His life.
Our
Lord Jesus, because He was both God and man,
because both wills operated in Him at
the same time, He was in this constant
conflict.
We know the struggle because
in us are two wills, the will of our flesh and
the will of our Father. We constantly
have to lay hold on the will of our flesh and push it
down so that the will of our Father can
reign.
When the will of God was in
conflict with the will of King Saul and pride was
getting the best of him, God sent an evil spirit to
torment him. Then God sent David to play for him
and comfort him. God did both of
these.
Nothing
happens in our lives unless God brings it to
us. He is in charge. Some of us are about
to cease from our labors and come to a
revelation that has fallen upon us from His Throne.
This revelation will let us realize that
God is in charge of everything.
So
we start drawing ourselves to the Lord and then He
starts guiding our decisions and working on our
will.
He
Can't Lose Us
He formed our choice,
but He didn't force our choice. Paul said
that by what God knew about us, He
predestinated us – gave us a prefixed
destiny.
What
He thought about us in the beginning is what He thinks
about us now, even though a whole lot has
happened between our beginning and now.
It arrests us to know that
He knows everything about us and still loves
us.
We're going to
come to the revelation that we don't have to be good
enough and we don't have to work harder.
If we are ever going to be saved,
we ARE saved and God loves us. Now
that's not Universalism (believing that everybody in the
world is saved).
Knowing what he was
going to do, God strategically placed Judas
there as a make-believer, right in the middle of the
believers and the unbelievers. The believer
represents that which is righteous, the make-believer
that which is unrighteous, and the unbeliever that
which is wicked. That is determined
by what God knew about them and by what He knows about
us.
None
of us are manifesting our full adoption, but we
will.
God's Desire for
Fellowship
There was a time when God
wasn't God because He had no one to worship Him.
But there was in Him a need to be loved and to
be held in esteem.
We can go all through the
Scripture and see that God gives us our will and
then molds and changes our will, causing us to want to
serve Him deeper and deeper.
He's working on us now, and we're
going to find out that only when we start
letting God really have His way over our will are we
going to be satisfied.
Although He allows things
to come into our lives to bring us to our
knees, nothing can
separate us from the love of God.
God is just,
and nobody is in Hell who didn't have an
opportunity to be saved.
When the Spirit of God gets
through teaching us, we're going to be freer
than we've ever been in our life.
We'll realize He even
created evil so He could have fellowship with
us.
He wants to bring us into oneness
with Him - the Word becoming flesh again, the will
of God rising above our will. It becomes
God willing through us.
He'll
reveal to us how we're more like Jesus than we
realize because we have the same conflict that He
had.
We are coming to greater
manifestation and maturity because we have yielded
ourselves to the Holy Ghost and He has
brought us revelation and changed our
thinking.
If we
belong to God and He saw us in His foreknowledge, we are
not going to miss it. We can't.
It's impossible. "All that the Father hath given Me
will come. Not one will be lost."
The Shift in
Authority
When God says there's
going to be a shift in the levels of authority, there's
only one Person that can institute that shift. He
alone can speak a Word and give authority to those who
don't have authority because He is the Supreme
Authority, One like unto the Son of Man
who has united together with the Judge of all judges,
the Ancient of
Days.
In
Daniel 10:7 there was a multitude ministering to Him
(His Bride) and there was a multitude that stood before
Him in the resurrection unto judgment. No
wonder there will be a shifting of authority for the
Bride now. It's a preparation, because
the Scripture says that we are going to judge
angels.
Many
are called, but few are chosen.
Only the chosen can respond to
the call and faithfully walk in obedience to God's
Word.
Even
though He was God in flesh, there was some
authority that was excluded from Him by the One
who put all things under His
feet.
He was only eternal in that
His very essence was given to Him by eternal God. There
was a part of Him that was not eternal.
Neither His body nor His position was
eternal, but His Spirit, His essence, who He was as God,
was eternal.
We have fulfilled the will and
purpose of our Father and we didn't even know
it.
God didn't force us to
live a wild life, but He allowed it. He
didn't inspire us to be a sinner for the first part of
our life. It was not His
anointing or His highest purpose for us, but it was a
part of His
will.
If we're merely
called, we might reject that call. But if
we were called because we were chosen, we could never
reject that
call.
The things we once loved, we
now hate. When He turned our heart, it
changed our desires. It was always God
seeking man.
We didn't find the Lord.
He wasn't lost. He knew where He was all the
time. He found us - not to
lose us or fail us or let us
down.
This is
life to us, not because we smartened up, but because He
enlarged our heart, He touched us. It motivated us
to want to run in the way of His Commandments.
He did it. He's in charge.
So what are we worried
about? He's not
going to let us fall.
In
Closing
Please be praying for Pastor
Shelley while he is in Iceland until the
end of next week to make more programs that can be
broadcast on The Eagle's Cry via the
Gospel Channel (http://www.revival.org/eagles_cry.jsp).
He will also be appearing on the Gospel Channel's own
live interview program during many of the nights that he
will be there.
He is really depending
on our prayer support for God to grant
him the strength, stamina and anointing for this
potentially exhausting schedule. His
greatest desire is that God would greatly touch
the lives of the people who watch the program in
the over 80 nations that it reaches - many of them Arab
nations.
God has
just enabled the Alabama ministry to purchase the proper
digital cameras and switcher that were needed so that
Pastor Shelley could produce programs for the broadcast
from his own church in the future. Then
he will be able to have a visible congregation to
preach to in his familiar holy sanctuary which will
increase the anointing to touch lives. It
was a great miracle and a wonderful sign that God is up
to something
big!
Here in Jerusalem, we have just paid
this month's city taxes, thanks to your kind and
faithful support! In Israel it is the
responsibility of those who live in a house or apartment
(not the owners, necessarily) to pay the
high municipality taxes. And I think
Jerusalem probably has the highest tax rate of any city
in Israel!
It is
very important for us to be saving up money for
our next large quarterly rent payment which
will be in less than two months time. Some of you
have been sending offerings designated for our Jerusalem
rent. Thank you so, so much! Also, at the end of
July, we will need to pay the yearly
compulsory insurance on our only vehicle -
a 1995 GMC Vendura van. Your help and prayers are most
appreciated!
(We now
have a new online donation system. If you have any
problems with it, please send me an e-mail!
Thanks! Also, the online webstore from
the New Hope Revival Ministries is currently
under construction and should be ready
soon.)
Finally, rest in the
ability of your sovereign God, who has called and chosen
you, to accomplish His purposes in your
life!
(Phi
1:6)
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath
begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus
Christ:
Blessings from Jerusalem!
Nancy
Bergen
Jerusalem Revival Center
PO Box
1402
Jerusalem 91013, Israel
Tel. & Fax:
972-2-5825301
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