Received December 3, 2009

Received during a time of worship at work 12/3/09

I am the Lord your God and I love you.
I am the Lord your God, seek My face.
I am the Lord God, your Beloved, and I have created you for purpose.
Seek My face, seek My face, seek My face.
I have plans and desires for you.
Will you come and sit in my presence and speak face to Face with Me?
Come and tell Me your desires as I tell you what I long to see.
Seek My face, not as a lofty, unfeeling god, but as a loving Father,
For that is what I long to be, that is what I desire you to allow Me to be.
Come and walk with Me.
Be My hands, My mouth, My feet.
Be My children, going forth with My authority and My annointing,
Walking in the power of My Holy Spirit.
That is what I desire, for I am the Lord,
Your Abba Father,
Your God.

Word from the Lord received 11/08/09

I received this word during the evening worship service in Bloomfield on 11/08/09

Will you not sit in My presence? Will you not enter into My glory? Come and sit with Me, for I am your Abba Father. I knew you and saw you before conception. I knew that you would be in this place on this night. Will you not abandon yourself to Me? Let Me have all of you, for I long to give you more of Me. Blessed are those who hunger, those who are starved for Me, for I will fill them. Empty yourselves and I will fill you to overfloing, that wherever you step, My love would pour out of you, that the stream of My living water would flow out from you to water the dry and thirsty land.

Received September 28th 2009

Be still and know that I am God. 
Be still and hear My voice.
Quiet yourself and listen to the command I have given you.
Love.
Without thought, without question,
For I am Love.
Yes, I am Love, and I long for My people to turn themselves towards My Love for them, to turn the affections of thier hearts back towards Me.
Turn back to Me, my children.
Renew in your hearts the Love that you first knew when you found Me.
That Love, that flame of holy fire that even now still smolders within you.
Turn back to Me and watch as I set you ablaze once more.
Watch as I rekindle My holy fire within you yet again and send you forth to the nations with the command that I have given you...
Love.
--------------

Edit: Its really kind of funny... I recieved this word the other day, and it really blessed me... After all, this was my year, right? This was the year that God was going to send me my wife. Then I started looking at it beyond that. Then at the motivational seminar I went to, several of the speakers talked about just loving people because they were people. Today, it was really laid clear. God told me at the beginning of the year that He would never remove His mantle of love from my life if I would never stop worshiping Him. Somehow or another I got out of that the idea that he was sending me my wife. I'm not saying He isn't, but I realized today that He didn't mean that by it. He told me this year that I would know love... Not that I would find the love of my life. As I looked back over the year, I realized, more than ever before, I have known love. Through a deeper relationship with Him, through my every day relationships, I have truly been blessed to really know and understand what love is. And I'm cool with that. It blows me away to know that He has chosen me to place this gift of not just love itself, but the knowledge of love itself. Am I saying that I'm giving up up hope, no, not ever... I'm still waiting for her, just staying focused on Him, because it's only when He says it's time that it will be right. Anything that I do without Him is all vanity. It really is all about Him, and when you see that, and see Him for who He is, then you'll see and truly understand that He is love, and you will know love. Not just know about love or know how to love, but you will have a deep and intimate realtionship with the very one who created love in and through Himself, and on that foundation, there is nothing in this life that can shake you.

God Bless,
Eric

In His Presence

So normally I don't post these to Facebook, but the Lord really dealt with me about reaching out to people I don't usually reach for and about overcoming my fear of others. Today, I spent nearly the entire day soaking in His presence. Its the first time in quite a while that I've just rested in Him and let Him lead and direct me. Throughout the course of the day, He spoke directly to me twice. The first item below was something He placed in my heart between worship times today. The second one He spoke to me as I was worshipping, between every line of the song I was singing, He spoke a line of it to me.

1)

In the sweetness of Your presence
I will call upon Your Name
Father God in the highest
Your love will never change
Before birth You knew me
Before conception You planned
The destiny that lies ahead of me
If I hold fast to Your Hand
So Daddy God I ask of You
Show to me Your ways
That in Your presence I might dwell
And bring glory to Your Name.
(c) August 31, 2009
Eric C. Henry

2)
He is coming to raise up a new generation
A people that is holy and unashamed of Him
A mighty army, laid down in love for their Saviour
A people that will carry His Glory
A people that will not back down
Are you this generation?
Are you this army?
Rise and take your place
Rise and walk in His power
Declare His majesty throughout the earth
Be the people He has called you to be
Do not be afraid
He is with you always
His word is true
He will never leave you
Will you answer His call?
Again I say, arise, and stand tall
(c) August 31, 2009
Eric C. Henry

A Word from God

The Lord spoke to me today while I was at work, and gave me the following message. I do not claim to walk in the office of the prophet, however, when He speaks, I write what I hear Him say, and if He tells me to share it, I share it, otherwise, I keep it until He tells me to reveal it.

The presence of the Lord has come upon me, and He has anointed me to write the words that procede from His lips. Words of correction, words of blessing, words of guidance and instruction. "Take up your tablet," He says, "Take up your tablet and etch on it the things that you hear in the secret place. Etch upon the tablet of your life the things that are revealed to you by My Holy Spirit. Inscribe it in bold letters so that wherever you go, it may be read by those whom you come in contact with. Let My Light shine through and illuminate the darkness in which you live, the darkness that shrouds the earthly realm that I have placed you in as an ambassador from My heavenly kingdom. Go forth in the Name of My Son in the mission set forth by Him. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons, and cleanse the leper. The harvest of souls that is approaching is bountiful beyond measure, and I am calling to My children to raise up co-laborers enough to usher in the great things that I am about to do."

God bless, and may His peace and joy rest upon you.

Love always,
Eric

User Account Control: Allow or Deny?

Sooo, I meant to blog this back last week, but it slipped my mind. Anyways, on topic, it really amuses me sometimes how God will use the least little thing to make us think, and a lot of times will use something we really don't like. Warning: I am a geek... if you know me, you know that already. Back to story... I've been using Windows Vista at work for about 6 months now, and if you've used Vista before, you know about this annoying little window that pops up almost every time you try to do something called the User Account Control. If you haven't used Vista, what it does is, anytime you perform an action that makes any sort of changes to your computer, it asks you if you really meant to do it, and you have to click on either allow or deny. Long story short there.... I turned it off. A lot of the stuff I do is all stuff that is flagged by it. Jump to last week, and I installed the new Windows 7 on my laptop... lo and behold, it came with (albeit a somewhat more lenient version) of the UAC. I decided, since it's still basically in testing, I'd leave it on and just deal with it. Enter God and his amazing (and sometimes amusing) way of making us think. So, I'm taking the Freedom in Christ classes, and one of the things we talked about was taking captive every thought. My mind wanders a bit, and it's been really hard for me to keep focused on things I should be focused on, just due to my natural randomness. So, I'm clicking through some stuff on my computer, and I have this thought that was completely off the wall... I mean, not something I would have normally thought on my own, and roughly at the same time, I get the blasted UAC warning... Then God speaks (not verbatim ;-) ) "Your brain is attempting to process a thought that is not of heavenly origin, Allow or Deny?" Completely threw me off guard... I always here about how our brains are like these supercomputers, but it never really seriously occured to me that we *do* have control over whether or not, and how our brain will process any given thought... Add on top of that the fact that our words have power, and life and death are in our tongue... I start doing something that sounds really goofy... if I have a thought, and I know it's not from God, my mind kicks in it's UAC, and I verbally tell the thought it is denied access to finish processing itself... You know what... it works. I've had a lot of thoughts try and slip through that I normally would have just thought and (tried to) dismiss, but then they've left their mark on my mind. Now I just deny them as soon as I realize they are there... Resist the devil, and he will flee... Take control over your mind. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, but (in my experience) the mind likes to bully the heart around... The heart doesn't become bitter, the mind does... the heart still wants to love, but the mind says 'no'. That's why we need to renew our minds daily. If not, the mind will poison the rest of the body and drag it down. Soooooo... anyways, that turned into a whole lot more than what I intended, but as always, I hope it means something to someone out there. God bless :-)

Love you all,
Eric

The Love Revolution

A revolution has been birthed
That will change the face of this whole Earth
With shining smiles and open arms
We welcome each and every one
To come and feel the perfect love
Sent down to us from God above
Yes, He who sent His Son to die
In the place of you and I
Has redeemed us so that we might
Defeat the darkness with His light
As we live, we seek His face
So that we can show the world His grace
For it was He who loved us first
And gave that love to break the curse
Of sin and death, of fear and shame
We have our freedom in His Name
We must show the world we care
About their pain and their despair
And show them that there is a way
That will make tomorrow a better day
It's an agape relationship with His Son,
The Love Revolution has begun.

(c) April 19, 2009
Eric Christopher Henry

Who is my mother, and who are my brothers...

New Vision Ministry Center. It's not just a church to me. It's not somewhere I go to hang out with friends. There are times, more frequent than not, that the people within our walls are more of my family than my real family. I've laughed with you, I've cried with you. I've seen God move in ways that I can't fathom even today. I've watched so many of us grow in and through God to new levels of our walks with Him and every time something new happens, for ill or for good, I look at is as something going on in my family. When our people are hurt, I hurt, when they rejoice, I rejoice with them. I've been in a few different churches before, while I never felt out of place, they weren't the same. I had friends at them and it was fun to go hang out and talk after church and stuff, but they were never as close as I am with the people of New Vision. I truly love every member. There is such an acceptance and love in the place that it blows my mind. I have watched God use me in ways that I would have never thought of, and truthfully, sometimes have a hard time believing that He would care enough about me to use me. Looking back at what I've been through in my past, it was very hard at first to believe that any church would let someone with my track record operate in any kind of leadership or ministry at all, and yet, everywhere I turn, people are encouraging me to go in higher, to seek Him stronger, to go out and fulfill His destiny for my life. Similar to what my dear friend Michelle says, New Vision was truly a new start for me. Everything that I ever was or wanted to be has been laid out on the table and I have had to give Him my secret hurts and pains, but He has taken those and used them to create a testament to His glory. I heard a preacher once say something that God told him, an it soooo resonated within me. God told him (not an 'exact' quote, but close enough) "I will not remove the scars from your life, but rather, I will rearrange them so that they have the appearance of carving on fine crystal". I really feel that God has been doing that with me since I first step foot in New Vision. I was mad at my previous church, and didn't really want to go back to a church, and only went cause my dad made me, but once I stepped in there and saw the lights and music and everything, I knew I was home... I just didn't realize how much of a 'home' it would become. I could not live my life if I had to go a week without seeing all of you. Every one of you mean so much to me. I know that God's not finished with me yet either... I know that he has bigger and better things for me. He's just starting to open up my ministries to me. There are two promises that He gave me that have pretty much defined my life, and I believe that both of them will come out of New Vision. All of that being said, today was more than life changing... I was excited before I ever got down to service after class. I haven't sang in the choir, but something (God) told me I needed to sing this morning. I knew something big was going to happen, I knew God had something in store for us, but I had absolutely no idea that it would be on the scale it was on. When the video played at the end of service, I jumped, I cried... no, I bawled like a little baby... I've only cried that hard since coming to NVMC 3 times; when I got set free, when my friend got saved, and during a vision God gave me while Eddie James was here. The whole time, all I could think of, outside of how incredibly amazing God is, was, "Now my family has a home... We have a place that is ours". It made me wonder if the Israelites felt the same way crossing into their Promised Land. Today has been very emotional for me, and I've had to choke back the tears every time I think of everything that we've been through, and where God has brought us; my sisters, my brothers, my fathers, and my mothers, as He led us through desolate seasons and shaky times, to bring us out into His glorious plan for us.

Caffeine & (Spiritual) Pregnancy

Hmmm... which to ponder first. I think we'll go with the caffeine. I can say it's not an addiction, but really is. I don't function in the mornings without a cup of coffee, energy drink, or at the very least, a Mountain Dew, so by textbook definition, it's an addiction. Anyway, that aside, I got ready to leave for work this morning and kept having this feeling that God was telling me to fast today. I have a hard time with fasting because I keep getting this idea that it's not a fast unless it's nothing but water for a week... God is teaching me that there are other types of fasts, and today happened to be one of those tests. I grabbed my lunch and a pepsi out of the fridge, and I kept hearing "fast". I told the Lord that if He was truly calling me to a fast, then I needed Him to show me how I was supposed to fast. I saw myself putting the pepsi back in the fridge, so I did. On the way to work I realized I was supposed to be fasting caffeine today. No bueno... didn't get to sleep until late. I decided that I was going to do it though. I made it through the first part of the day fine. Around 11am I started getting sluggish, by noon/noon-thirty I was out of it... At one point my head snapped back from dozing off so hard that it hurt my neck. I got a little energy after eating lunch at 1, but it faded quickly... There was no way I could keep going without something to keep me awake. I grabbed one of my emergency energy drinks and drank it down, feeling bad because I had broken yet another fast. As soon as I put the can down though, God spoke to me. He told me that just like I couldn't get through today without caffeine (not because it's impossible, cause I know He can break it off of me, but because I make poor choices and have to deal with the consequences), I need to rely on and be so desperately addicted to Him that I cannot make it one day without Him and His presence... that was a pretty startling revelation... We all know we can't go a day without Him, but for Him to put it into a perspective I could relate to like that was amazing.
Dreams... visions... things birthed in your spirit by His Spirit. What do you do with them? The Lord showed me in a dream a few nights back that there are pretty much three things that can happen when something is birthed in you. When He puts something in your spirit, the first thing you can do is reject it, thereby aborting it and everything that may have transpired through it. Secondly, you can entertain it for a while, pursue it for a bit, then grow tired of it once the newness has worn off or the costs start to be more than you anticipated. This is akin to neglecting the thing being birthed, since it is no longer worth your time, you forget about it. The third thing you can do, is ride it full term and actually bring into fruition the thing that was birthed. In the dream I had, I saw a boxing ring. In the ring was a very small version of myself, no bigger than a doll or a newborn baby, and in the other corner, a gargantuan monstrosity. I can't even begin to describe beyond it being overwhelmingly intimidating and truly monstrous. The fight started and the thing pummelled the mini-me badly. There was nothing it could do to stop the defeat, and began to turn blue like it was out of oxygen, but no matter how badly it was hurt, nor how little breath it had, it wouldn't quit fighting the thing, until it's whole body was blue and it looked dead. I woke up terrified and as I did, I heard the Lord ask me if I was going to abort the thing He had placed in me, or if I was going to fight and stand through whatever came against me while He did His work in me. He has placed in me something I don't fully understand, nor do I know if I ever will in this lifetime, all I know is, if He's placed it there, there's a reason for it. I will fight for it, I will stand by it, I will protect it, and I will, with His help, see it full term to it's delivery here on earth... I will not abort my dream.

"I'm calling you up higher"

Today was not a good day. I sinned today... a lot. Go figure, I'm human. I'm not proud of it at all. In fact, I am ashamed at some of my outbursts, losing my temper, etc... God decided to use one of my most stressful days in a while to really reach out and whack me back into His plan for my life. I was listening to the song "Yes" that Anna did a mime to, and singing along with it, and I caught the meaning of one of the lines in it... "I'm calling you up higher". When I've heard this before, I've alway heard it as "get your act together, there's things I want to do with you. I want to take you to higher places than you are now." This time was different... this time I heard it as "I am calling you to a higher place of holiness with Me. I am holding you to a higher standard than those who do not hear My voice" It literally shook me... I laid in my kitchen floor and shook as I prayed for Him to restore my mind and my heart... I thought back to the young man giving his testimony while Eddie James was at New Vision, saying how every time he sinned, it was like he spat on Jesus and drove another nail into His hands, another stripe on His back... Every sin he committed was a slap in the face of the One who loved us so much that He gave up His spotless life for our filthy exisitence. (My paraphrase, not his actual words) When you come back to that thought, it makes you realize that it really is all about Him, and how we live our lives and present ourselves to society at large is how they see Him, and if we don't hold ourselves to that higher standard, then how can we expect the world to live up to them... it makes us no better than the Pharisees. Speaking of which, they, being the priests of their time, though they practiced more of their own traditions then it, still had a reverence for what God had commanded. Think about the priests of old, specifically the High Priest. Every year on the Day of Atonement, he would go into the Holy of Holies, knowing full well, even as he tied the rope around his ankle before walking in, that he may not walk back out. If there was any un-atoned for sin in his life, he was not walking out of that room. His corpse would be pulled out by the priests on the other side of the veil. They were serious when it came to being right before God, especially when going into His presence. The veil has been torn now, and we have the priveledge of always being before God and in His presence, so why should we treat it with any less seriousness than they did?

Once more again...

So I've tried this blogging thing several times, and never been any good at it. I keep up with it for a few weeks, then decide I don't want anyone to know what's going on with me, and quit using it. I really don't want to write this now, or start blogging period, but the Lord keeps telling me that I can't live in a bubble where I pretend everything's alright... Masks can only carry you so far. Not that there's anything drastic that I'm hiding, not as of late anyway.
So... I've been reading and doing a lot of studying lately, going over Jesus' miracles He performed in His time here on earth, and His comission to the disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, free the demon-possessed... I long with the very essence and fiber of my being to see these things... They to me moved beyond the realm of what could happen, to what should be happening, and if I'm not seeing them, I'm not walking with God like I should be. The book of Acts does not end with an 'Amen'... we should still be writing it. It is the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and should have no ending until He returns in His Second Coming. It is coming to a point that it physically pains me to not see His miraculous works. This city is long overdue for an outpouring like it has not seen since the early 1900's. His presence is becoming so much more than just a 'feel good' thing to me... Going a day without spending time in His Glory pains me, like a piece of me has been cut out. I say all of this to wrestle with one point of contention I have had (or not had, technically) for many, many years... a wife. I know all things are in God's perfect timing, and this isn't a loneliness rant, but I came to a realization tonight. There is a girl at a restaurant I go to occasionally that is fairly cute. I watched her for a little bit tonight in the giddy way I do when I start crushing on someone... Then when I got into my car, I started thinking... I am finally beginning to get a place with God where I feel like I am being more than a sideline Christian... I am finally finding boldness to step out and share His Gospel with people. I am praying for people and *expecting* the miraculous to happen. I am hearing His voice clearer than I ever have before... I cannot afford a relationship right now with anyone but Him... He is my everything. He is the very air I breathe. A long time ago He asked me what I would do to follow Him. I told Him I would give up all that I was and all that I had if He would use me for His Glory. I didn't understand what was going on at the time, and this isn't a defeatist statement saying I'll never get married, because it has been prophesied by *many* people that I trust, but I told Him at that time that if I had to give up any and every opportunity to ever marry or raise a family, if that was what it would take for me to follow Him, then I would...

I still would. Him and His presence are all I truly want.

God Bless you all,
Eric