The Prayers Of The Saints

 I'm back folks. I haven't written anything in a very long time. But, now I am compelled, inspired and joyful to be able to write again. I have been in a dark depression for over a year. The enemy of my soul was trying to take me out of this world but, he is a liar and a trouble-maker and he did not get his way. God has plans for me to prosper me and not to harm me and give me a hope and a future according to Jeremiah29:11 and I will walk in that promise of God.

For some reason I have noticed that folks with prophetic gifts tend to lean towards depression. Elijah was one of those people. One day he was on Mt. Carmel slaying the prophets of bail and calling fire down from Heaven and the next day he was depressed and wanted to die but, God didn't rebuke him, he sent an angel to minister to him with food and was instructed to get some rest.

I tend to keep things to myself concerning my mental health. I have suffered greatly over the years with panic attacks and depression. I am on meds for those things now and am going to get a counselor to help me be able to talk about the things that are bothering me. Also I am back in women's ministry and have started to cook again. I hadn't cooked anything worthy of mention in the last 5 months. But, in the last few days after I finally admitted I was having a struggle and was in a major battle, the saints of God prayed and I experienced a total breakthrough. I feel better than I have in years and years. Glory and praise belong to our great God. According to the word of God He uses his saints to pray things into this eartJames 5:16

King James Version

16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. In other words the effective, hot prayer of a person in right standing with God gets the job done and let me tell you right now these prayer warriors immediately went to battle for me and I experienced immediate deliverance. God is faithful to His word and to His saints. I just want to humbly say a BIG thank you to all that prayed for me during this time of intense warfare. God is good all the time and I am grateful.

And it isn't a fake smile to hide the depression, it is a smile of deliverance and the joy of the Lord. All glory to our great God for His faithfulness.

 

AWord42Day: The Firefly Advocate

AWord42Day: The Firefly Advocate: When I was little girl I used to love it when the fireflies would come out at night and light up the backyard sky. Oh my goodness! I can&#...

The Firefly Advocate

When I was little girl I used to love it when the fireflies would come out at night and light up the backyard sky. Oh my goodness! I can't even relay here what joy that brought to me. I thought it was the most
magnificent thing I had ever seen with my lil' girl eyes, at the time. I would just sit there on the grass and watch them blink off and on and I thought it was such a wonder. We had recently moved from the North in Illinois to the South in Alabama. Needless to say
it was quite a change for the entire family but I think it impacted me most of all because I had never really been up close and personal with animals before or nature in general really.

 My Southern male cousins loved to scare me or upset me enough to make me cry
and tonight I recall one of those times. We had gone to visit my aunt who lived way out in the countryside in Tennessee. She had a farm there and for the first time in my little girl life I saw cows and horses and chickens and pigs and ducks all up close and personal. I was absolutely amazed.


One night when darkness had just begun to fall, the fireflies or,lightning bugs, as my cousins called them appeared in the backyard near the porch. I was thrilled to pieces. My girl cousins got some mason jars from the kitchen and they began to catch the lightning bugs and say see it makes it like
a lantern for you to see by. I really didn't like putting the lighting bugs in there because I thought it was kind of mean to keep them captured in the jar.,although my girl cousins assured me that it didn't hurt them. "You can let them loose later, one of them said so I agreed to capture one in a jar and look at it
up close and personal. I remember releasing it right away because it bothered me to have it in a jar. I just knew that the lightning bug would much rather be free to shine it's light without being captured in a jar. Then some of my male cousins that had been playing on the side yards and in the front came running around

all in a loud bluster and took some of the lightning bugs that they had caught and said watch this and they smeared the lightning bugs on the posts of the porch and at first I didn't realize what had really happened. I thought that they had just released them and that they were just all lined up there on the post and then I went closer
and even though it was quite dark I could then see that the lightning bugs were dead and their light was still shining and it literally just broke my heart. I remember crying and running into the house to tell my mother. She came with me out onto the back porch and hollered at the boys and said now yall don't be killing those lightning bugs that's ugly.
and that was that and she went back in and I just stood there looking at the dead bugs and watching until the light was gone. No sign was left of their once beautiful light. That bothered me more than I can tell you because you see, I am what they call an empath. I feel things very deeply. I feel the pain of others, I mourn over the least little thing and my heart
was surely broken. I remember crying that night after I went to bed and my mother asked me what was wrong and I told her it was the lightning bugs and how they had killed them for no reason and she said well Priscilla, it was only a bug. Now they shouldn't have done that but it was only a bug.

No matter how much I tried to forget about the little bugs, I just couldn't put it out of my mind that the little lighting bugs had been killed in such a brutal way and still left their light behind. Of course over the years I have seen and felt more hurt than that of the loss of the lightning bugs but I can't think of anything now more profound than the fact that some people only want to shine
and it seems that no matter how high they fly or how much they shine to light the sky of others, in the end they just die and all that remains is a little light that will soon fade away. Some will read this story and think it completely foolish and irrelevant in this modern world of technology. But I, the firefly advocate still remember the sweet little lights, how they shined and what it meant to me.
If you feel insignificant tonight and feel like your light is no bigger than that of a tiny firefly, let me assure you, that light no matter how small is a very BIG deal to someone somewhere. Please keep on shining until the very end.

Being A Cave Dweller

Today is the first day in a very long while that I have written a blog. I don't know why, other than procrastination which seems to be my constant companion these days. Without a boss to crack the whip on a deadline of a project, I tend to just muddle along unless I really enjoy doing something or feel pressed to do it. I have been going down, down, down into a spiral of depression for quite some few weeks now and am finally coming up out of the dark hole. I don't talk about it much to folks because I don't want to depress them or feel their pity either.

I do want to blog about it now because I know that if I force myself to do so, in the process, it will help someone else who may be going through the same thing and not know how to express their feelings. I am a writer, a speaker a loud mouth of sorts but that is only a tiny fraction of the who that I really am. I am actually not that good at making friends and so therefore I have but a few. Sometimes it seems to me that, although they may not mean to, folks make things worse for those of us who tend towards depression. By this I mean that they say really foolish and even asinine things that are hurtful and completely unhelpful. The things I am referring to are things like, "How can you be a Christian and still be this depressed?" or "I thought you were a Christian." those statements and ones like them are so counterproductive to say the very least and can actually prolong the time that is spent in the "cave", as I call it from time to time.

Being in the cave can be productive if spent reading, writing, learning something new or just catching up on projects or even starting new ones but if a stent in the cave has been like this one of mine, it is not productive and seems to be an endless and bottomless pit of despair, depression, and a sense of hopelessness, hence the reason folks made the aforementioned remarks. People seem to think that if you are a follower of Christ that you should never be depressed,or feel hopeless or hapless as some might say. I completely disagree and will try to explain it as best I can in this blog.

Being a follower of Christ means just that, that you do your fair-level best to follow after His teachings, His will and His ways. This does not however mean that once you have become a follower that your emotions, feelings and hurts are stripped from you and left at the door of entrance into this vast kingdom of God. Quite the contrary as a matter of fact, in some ways, I feel that because I am a Christ follower, a child of God, that it makes me even more emotional at times and more likely to get my feelings hurt or feel altogether hopeless at times because I realize how great God is and how powerful He is and when things don't work out as I have been praying for them to and I fully realize that He could have made them to work out, it then leaves me momentarily with that feeling of why? why God why? and then the depression, anxiety, human emotions take over and they just run away with me to the cave.

I absolutely don't expect many people to understand what I write here and that is ok. Everyone has to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling and this is mine and I am daily working it out with my God. I am on the mend and I am coming up out of this cave, out of this dark time and the joy of the Lord that is my strength is returning. To those of you that have or do suffer in this way fully understand of what I speak and those that don't will be scratching your heads trying to figure out what I am talking about.

That's ok too cause every person is different and deals with things in their own way. I tend to go internal and steer clear of folks until I can work it out with the Lord. I call this the Elijah cave-dwelling moment. You know where you have a miniature pity party and ask God a thousand questions and just feel sorry for yourself for a bit and then move on well...that's me and that is how I do it and I have heard over the years many different ways that people deal with depression.

 Some folks deny it altogether and just push on, others sleep a whole lot, others surround themselves with even more people in hopes that the depression is fearful of crowds and will leave, I suppose. However you deal with it, hoorah for you and in the doing, I pray that you receive the strength from the Lord to move onwards and upwards towards the high calling which is in Christ Jesus. I am still learning daily to cast my cares upon Him because He truly cares for me and wants what is best in my life.

Tending To My Heart

As a young girl I was taught so so much about how to dress, how to act, how to behave around grown folks, how to speak when I was supposed to speak and how to remain silent when I was supposed to be quiet and with all of the learning how to do this or how to do that, I didn't learn one thing about how to take care of ME. You know the real person, the inside person, the person that cries to sleep at night and doesn't even know why. The person that is depressed and needs an outlet to speak about what has happened and try to understand why. The person that is broken and in dire need of repair. The person that is showing you outwardly with shyness, backwardness and clumsiness what is truly going on on the inside.

I look back on those days and realize just how off the rails my emotions were but I didn't have an outlet to express them. I had suffered from childhood depression and was considered in early grade school to be "mentally retarded", by my very aggressive teacher, because I didn't speak much and if I did speak it was in a muffled mutter. I was painfully shy and didn't want anyone speaking to me directly and I surely wasn't going to speak to anyone I didn't know or care for. I was easily frightened and usually just wanted to be alone. ALONE, ALONE, ALONE but yet did I really want to be alone? or did I want to be cared for and left alone? there is a difference here. There was always so much activity at our house. So many people milling in and out that I kind of got lost in the process and fell through the cracks of depression somewhere along the way. No one fully realizing what had happened to me or how to make it any better. The motto of the house was, "Get over it!"

I learned how to make folks laugh and how to serve people and how to be so so pretty but I never ever learned how to guard my heart and mind because at that time I had not been taught any of those important things. All my Aunts ever seemed to think was important was to catch a man, catch a man, catch a man and I thought well how hard can that be? Which to me wasn't very hard because apparently I wasn't fishing in a really good spot and caught the first fish that nibbled and boy was that a horrible tragedy! I learned all about jealousy and anger and fits of rage and just CRAZINESS in general but I still hadn't learned how to guard my heart and my mind. I learned really well how to walk on eggshells.....and to say just the right thing at the right time but I didn't learn how to take care of myself. So..I continued allowing everyone to just run rough shod over me and do as I was told and my heart became more bruised and torn and the depression got deeper and deeper.

You see I had not yet learned what the word of God says about guarding your heart and your mind with all diligence because out of it flow the issues of life. I had not learned that. Oh I am sure at some point I had heard a sermon on it. Lord knows by that time I had heard thousands of sermons on just about any subject you could pull from the Mad Hatter's hat and still didn't understand or know how to take care of me. Not take care of everything and everyone else, but to take care of me. Not the outward appearance but the inside. My broken heart, my crushed spirit needed help and needed it desperately. Many more years of trying to catch that fish (man) different fish, same fishing hole. Until I finally gave up on all of it and just checked out of it all. I literally had a mental breakdown! It was so bad, in fact, that the doctor didn't expect me to ever recover from it. But, slowly I did recover. No, I was never the same and that is ok cause look what I was working with. I learned to stand up for myself, I learned to say NO!!!! and most importantly I learned to turn to the God that made me and say hey, you are the manufacturer if you don't fix me, I won't be fixed! I had to learn that I was important. I was worth loving, I was worth saving and that God loved me with an everlasting love and it really didn't matter what anyone else thought or said about me.

This has been a life-long process people. This did not happen overnight. I have only a few paragraphs here to sum up a lifetime of pain, sorrow, regret, mistreatment, discouragement, then help, joy, love and the oil of the Holy Spirit that heals, protects, guards, mends. I am still a work in progress but I am progressing. I don't know who will actually take the time to read all of these early morning ramblings but I needed to write it out for me. If any hurting broken woman will take the time to read it, it will help her too. So win/win. Don't allow the enemy of your soul to keep you so wrapped up in doing that you forget that you are a human being. God loves you, He created you in His likeness and in His image and you are very important to Him. YOU, just you, not how you look, how talented you are, how many clubs you belong to, how many Pinterest projects you get done today, YOU just you and YOU are enough! Tend to your precious heart. Learn to meditate on the word of God. Learn to allow the Holy Spirit to minister to those deep and wounded places and be healed in Jesus name.

Fear Not! only believe!

Has Your Miracle Been Timed-Out? Do you feel like everyone else is getting their miracle all the while you are praying and seeking God and you feel like the windows of Heaven are closed, the BIG office in Heaven has put your call on hold and you just can't seem to get through?  Do you feel like you are walking through an endless maze to get to your miracle? Well...in today's daily Bible reading, as I began to read Matthew 9, the Lord began to give me this writing and so here it is.........

Today as I was doing my daily Bible reading, I began to read about the woman with the issue of blood, which is found in Matthew 9, the whole chapter is full of Jesus healing people. This healing with the woman of the issue of blood is usually the go-to sermon preached from this chapter but today I want to deal with the other guy, the one that was put on hold as Jesus took notice of the woman that had touched the hem of His garment, this man's miracle was already in progress: In Matthew's gospel the man is listed as a ruler that came to Jesus and said my daughter is already dead but if you will come, you can heal her, that is good but if you really want to get a fuller description of what happened let's go into another account, another perspective from the gospel of Mark and in the fifth chapter we get a fuller and richer account of this story. As it happened the ruler's name was Jairus and his daughter was near death, he was coming to Jesus to get Jesus so He could come and heal her. His faith level was high obviously or he wouldn't have even came to get Jesus in the first place. He told Jesus what he needed and Jesus and His followers started along behind Jairus but right in the middle of the making of the miracle, if you will, the woman with the issue of blood knowing that if she could just touch the hem of His garment that she would be made whole, she had already purposed in her heart and mind to do this very thing and she had already pressed through the crowd to get there and when she did get there she did exactly as she had purposed in her heart to do, she reached out and touched the hem of His garment and when she did.....................she stopped everything because Jesus could feel the anointing, the virtue coming out of Him. Wow!! Isn't that amazing that we can touch Him in such a way that it stops everything and He focuses in on you and your need, your problem, your anxiety, your need for a MIRACLE!

But.......what about the "other guy" Jairus, what about him? right in the middle of him getting to Jesus to get Him to come and heal his daughter his miracle get's timed out by Jesus so He could speak a word of healing into this woman's life. I can only imagine how Jairus felt that day. He probably felt like this woman had just interrupted to a point where he was going to miss his miracle. But, it was not so, Jesus was and is well able and willing to heal and save and deliver anyone that comes to Him in simple child-like faith. To make matters even worse for Jairus as he was waiting for Jesus to finish with the woman and to come with him to his house to heal his daughter, one of his servants approaches him and says, "Don't bother the Master any further, your daughter is dead." Oh my! what hear-breaking, gut-wrenching news that must have been! and as the enemy was trying to take his faith and cause him to no longer believe in Jesus, Jesus turns to Jairus and says, "Fear not, only believe." and believe he did and Jesus came to his house and raised his daughter up and said she is only sleeping. Can you imagine the jubilant joy in this household? Oh my gracious! The joy of restoration, the joy of just experiencing a life-changing miracle. His daughter was raised from the dead!

I have often thought, "What if Jairus hadn't continued to believe Jesus? What if he had listened to his servant and just went on his way? He would have missed his miracle! He would have gone home to a dead child, a broken heart, an unrealized dream but no! HE BELIEVED! and received his miracle! Don't give up today! Don't stop believing that God is well able and willing to heal you, save your child, fix your finances, restore your marriage! He is well able! He is more than willing! Your miracle is on the way!

Aren't we sometimes fearful that God has abandoned us? That He isn't listening to our needs? That He isn't willing to work a miracle in our lives, that He isn't willing to restore all and to focus just on us. Listen..I have been through seasons with the Lord where I thought surely I had been put on hold and that Jesus was just too busy to deal with me, I'm sure we have all felt that way at one time or another in our lives. But, He is the Great I am, He is the Alpha and the Omega, The Beginning and the end, He knows everything and is everywhere at the same time and is well able and willing to bring restoration, healing, deliverance, salvation, mercy, grace, whatever is needed right to our house. No matter how many other people have already received their healing, no matter how many other people you have seen that have received restoration in their marriage, no matter how many people have seen their children saved, healed and delivered, FEAR NOT, ONLY BELIEVE! YOUR MIRACLE MAY BE TIMED OUT BUT IT IS ON THE WAY!!!

The Bible reading that I do everyday is Daily B.R.E.A.D.. Here is the link to the group that I am a part of. Great group, accountability to daily Bible reading, lots of commentary on what is read and just a great group of folks that love Jesus and love His word.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1810761232523159/?ref=bookmarks

I hope you all have a great day and just remember your miracle is in the making!
Priscilla Hinds
Blogger/Writer AWord42Day
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Beautiful In His Time

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 the word tells us that He has made everything beautiful in it's time. Did you get that? He has done it, not us and in it's time. Not in our time, not in our friend's time, but in the appointed time for that person, place or thing. God is not ruled by time. He works in and out of time. He walks the time line and is at the beginning and the end simultaneously. We want things to happen right now and that's all there is to it. Right now God! I want everything to just work out just like it should and yesterday please? But, we must realize that just like the autumn leaves that were once green have to slowly turn into their new season and before they release their fully spent selves to God and fall down to the ground, it is a waiting process. I have been walking today and as I walked, I could hear the rustle of the leaves around me and I began to think about leaves and how I have seen green leaves with just one little spot of gold or red and they were still pliable and mostly green and yet they were lying on the ground. I thought to myself isn't this just like us? Don't we turn loose before our time? Don't we jump the gun and say Lord I can see the vision of what you have for me? I see what you are calling me to and let me just turn loose and take that leap and then like that leaf that still was mostly green all we do is fall to the ground before He was finished with that beautiful coloring process that only time can bring. I want to stay on the tree until He is completely finished with His beautiful artwork. I want to do exactly what He wants me to do and not what I want. What I want, although it might be good, in theory, if not His perfect will, will land me on the sidewalk looking up just like that mostly green leaf.

I know I look at things differently than most people and I see things in a different light but, He truly spoke to me today through the leaves and through all of the beautiful colorations on each and every one of them. Only a loving and awesome God could grow a tree and each leaf be completely different and yet strangely, the same. Only God can color each leaf and  make each one beautiful in it's time. Only God can take people and allow their color and brightness to come from within and reflect His perfect glory, all the while allowing for that perfect work of His to continue. I have said for years, anyone can count the seeds in an apple but only God can count the apples in a single seed. When we consider how majestic all of God's handiwork is, we will realize our significance through our insignificance. The Psalmist David said it best when he penned these words in Psalm 8: When I consider the heavens, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mindful of him? I totally understand that feeling of awe. I have many times looked at the beauty in creation and just cried like a baby and said oh God why do you love me so? I am amazed at the beauty that He has created and at times feel so insignificant and small but in my weakness, He is made strong. In my imperfections, His perfect glory is manifested. When people see Him in me, I am so happy and humbled and still shocked and amazed that He would bother with me.

He has brought me from such a very low place and I am in awe of His goodness and His mercy towards me. I never cease to be completely dumbfounded that He would just keep calling and reaching out and calling and reaching out time and time again to a stiff-necked, stubborn willed girl that wanted her own way. Today if you feel like a green leaf hanging on a tree among all the beautiful colors just waiting for your chance to fulfill your destiny, know and realize that He has truly made everything beautiful in it's own time and He has not forgotten about you. If He called you to it, He will bring you to it and then through it for His glory and honor. Just hang on little green leaf, your bright and colorful days are just ahead and as your season moves forward you will begin to see His timing and reasoning in each and every step of your journey.