The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love!

THANK YOU to all of you who were praying because God ANSWERED, and poured out the breakthrough I was so desperately in need of!

I am completely overwhelmed by the mercy and grace of our God... His unconditional love and the depth of His compassion just totally undoes me.

Since my last post, He has been so faithful to continue His work in me, and MAN, I was in a desperate place! Have you ever found yourself saying, "Lord, I don't know how to move but I CANNOT STAY here"? That cry was just burning, burning, burning my heart... it was one of those "Lord, we do not know what to do, but our eyes are set on You" moments (like from 2 Chronicles). So last Thursday was the first step toward breakthrough because like never before, the Lord hit me with the revelation that He has already given me EVERYTHING I need to walk out His Kingdom in my life, and the pivot point is simply for me to go. So I went! For a couple of hours that afternoon, I just walked down to our local Coffee Bean and grocery store, and said "God, whatever You want to do, I'll do it. Just show me who you want to touch." Gosh, when You ask Him that way, He is SO faithful to answer because sure enough, the very first person I see is a man in a wheelchair who hangs out at the coffee shop all the time. So determining in myself not to give fear even a second to settle in, I just went for it, sat down at his table, introduced myself, and told him that God had sent me there for him to know that He loved him and cared about him. He was pretty stunned but God opened up 45 minutes of being able to talk with him and bless him and even share the Gospel! (which btw, used to be a completely terrifying thought to me!) And before I left, he let me pray for him, and I got to bless him and invite the Lord to invade his life and reveal His love and power to him. It was AWESOME, and I left just totally overwhelmed by God's goodness and how EASY it was to walk with Him! I mean, GOSH, after that moment, I couldn't imagine why I'd been so hesitant and fearful before because NOTHING is impossible when He is WITH me. And it is such a joy and a pleasure and an honor to walk alongside Him... He is so worthy.

So that adventure was just the start! Saturday was an even bigger step out for me because, following God's lead, I've actually started outreach team at my home church (Horizon Foursquare, Ventura). While I was up at Bethel this year, He set some very specific things burning inside of me for my church. One, that He has blessed us SO much, and that we are called to be stewards of everything He has poured into our lives. Anything that we hold back within our four walls is bound to die, so we MUST release His blessings of power and love into our community. And hand in hand with that, He put a fresh passion inside of me for Jesus. Just purely and simply, that bringing our realm of influence, our community, our city, our county, into an encounter with Jesus is our call as believers and as a Church. Jesus is the answer to everything. When the sinners cried out "Forgive us!", God sent Jesus. When the broken cried out "Heal us!", the Father sent Jesus. When the dying and downcast and homeless and hopeless cried out "Save us!", He sent Jesus. When the world cried out, the answer that came was JESUS, our Savior, Redeemer, Healer, Restorer, and Deliverer. HE is the one we must reveal to the world, to all those that God has brought into our sphere of influence.

So that's the vision He set burning in my heart for the outreach team, and our first time together last Saturday was mostly spent introducing those who came to those powerful truths and revelations about Jesus, and allowing God to stir in all of our hearts what His desires are for our community. It was AWESOME. Plus, I got to teach them how to do Treasure Hunts, and we even got to go out and do a short one :). Haha, but that's not even the end of the breakthrough God was bringing forth in me! You know those times when you just think, "God, You are being SO good and gracious toward me, it's almost too much!" But then He goes and pours out more still! What manner of love is this??

Sunday was the crux of it all, from start to finish. Through my pastor's message, He spoke right into my heart, into all the fears and self-criticisms I had been wrestling over for so long...Out of the book of Haggai, he was talking about the 16-year saga of the Israelites disobedience in rebuilding the temple, the problems and curses that had come upon them as a result, and then here comes the Lord, full of mercy and love toward them... Despite their history of disobedience and dishonor toward Him, He saw that their hearts were beginning to turn back to Him, so He said, though you have been cursed, "from this day forward, I will bless you." Right then, those words just echoed in my spirit. It's my (unfortunate) tendency to remember all the mistakes I've made in the past, and to allow those things to stir up shame and fear and condemnation in me BUT Sunday morning, the Lord revealed to me His grace and mercy poured out over my weeks of disobedience and struggle, and said "Your past is forgotten and from this day forward, My heart is set to bless you." And there was even so much more that He said through other verses, "the glory of the latter house shall be greater than the former", "Be strong... for I am with you", and so many other things He knew I needed to hear! And His hand upon me that day just continued as He opened up an incredible opportunity for me to talk with and bless a homeless girl who was seeking help from our church, and then to impart some truth and revelation to a man from the outreach team. It was one divine setup after another, and as I sat in my car in the parking lot, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of co-laboring with Him... what an honor... what a blessing to walk in His presence...

SO, as you can tell, there has been ALOT going on, and my deepest desire is for this work to continue! I don't know about any of you, but I'm hungry for the fullness of Christ... And all that God has been doing thus far just leaves me asking, What manner of love is this?

Wow, what manner of love is this, that we should be called sons and daughters of the Most High God, King of Glory, One so worthy....


Blessings,

Melissa