Dana and Judy Prieto Scott and Ellen Redmond
Did you ever notice that some people attract trouble? There are people that have more than their fair share of problems. There are several reasons why.
Fear-driven; a headache in the middle of the night turns into a brain tumor in their mind. Fear is a motivating force in their life. They act out of that fear and actually attract problems. In the morning, they are calling the doctor to schedule an MRI.
“The devil goes about AS a roaring lion SEEKING whom he may devour.” Can he devour you? Well, yes, if you let him. God gave you authority to “trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the work of the enemy.”
When things go wrong, they get attention from people. For some, negative attention is better than no attention. For some, there is an element of pride attached to it. Look at all that has gone wrong for me!
Stacking it up; they tend to add together all of the things that go wrong.
The bottom line is this; you can’t have it two ways. Either you are going to stand against the wiles of the enemy or he is going to eat your lunch. And it ain’t going to be pretty.
The rest of that scripture is “whom RESIST, steadfast in the Lord.”
Whatever you allow, God will allow. So, the trick is to stop allowing it. You stop allowing it in several ways;
Coming into God’s presence is vital for our spiritual walk. Our spiritual life is more than just reading the Word of God. It is experiencing his presence for yourself. In his presence- that is where his wisdom is. That is where you will find everything you need.
The story of the prodigal son is about three people’s attitude about money. The waster, the hoarder and the generous.
The next generation is important to Jesus. We need to value what he values.
In my last blog, I wrote about our financial struggles when we first married. We soldiered on; speaking the Word, giving what we could and slowly growing in our faith. I confessed the Word of God regularly. Yet, like so many others, prosperity continued to elude us. We experienced financial miracles more than once and witnessed the delivering hand of God over and over, but we never broke through to consistent prosperity. Over the years, as I observed the Body of Christ, I noticed that most people I knew were in the same situation, living with just enough to get by.
For many years, we confessed prosperity scriptures consistently. We knew and believed what the Bible said about prosperity, but our habits were hit and miss. Sometimes we confessed and believed, and sometimes we forgot. It is only now I understand that we were laying down the spiritual tracks. We were doing many of the right things. What I didn’t know was the rest of the story or have any idea what was ahead.
I’m going to digress a bit and explain a little more about where we were spiritually. Our circumstances intensified in 2017 when my husband ran for political office, but it was not a financial pressure that was upon us.
We soon learned that running for public office is not for babies. It is intense pressure. (That story is for another time.) We hired a campaign manager in within a few weeks we knew it was a mistake. But, it took several months to correct that mistake. In the meantime, the Holy Spirit spoke to me to quit my job and become Dana’s campaign manager.
He said he would be my employer. Suddenly, I was responsible to hear from heaven for a political campaign! I was completely unqualified. My response to that pressure was to pray more. I prayed a lot more. I had faced hardship before, but not like this. When the pressure is on, we learn a lot about ourselves. I found myself praying for 2-3 hours at a day in tongues. The pressure was intense. The attacks were continuous. The devil does not want the righteous in public office. My husband didn’t win that election, but we were changed forever!
During that time, I taped into a vein of gold in prayer. I had been a person of prayer for many years already and I was accustomed to leading prayer groups. But, I was hearing his voice at a whole new level. It wasn’t a chore for me to pray that long. I usually woke up around 4 am and couldn’t go back to sleep. So, I just laid in bed and prayed in tongues. Then I would listen to faith messages on YouTube. It sustained me. That was my morning habit. When the race was over, I continued in the new level of prayer that I stepped into.
Remember that old saying, “One word from God can change your life?” In January 2018, I was praying in tongues as is my morning habit and the Holy Spirit spoke a word to me that would change my life.
In early January of 2018, the Holy Spirit began to open my eyes and show me how my perceptions were hindering our prosperity. In a moment of time, he revealed where my thinking did not line up with his. It was to be just the beginning…
“Your mind is always going over your mistakes and years of failures. It is a constant stream of negativity. The devil focuses on the years. Then he reminds you of how old you are. The constant barrage of negativity: it’s called buffeting. It’s relentless. It never quits.”
You turn his voice down and my voice up by intention. The voice of faith, the voice of hope, the voice of love must be louder. It takes a certain amount of my word just to balance the scale. That’s where you have been for several years. But, now it’s time to tip the scales. (That explained a lot!)
“The Word, the Word, the Word on prosperity. Don’t just double up, but I’m telling you, triple up on the Word on prosperity. 2018 is the year to make spiritual financial deposits into your spirit and follow the inward witness concerning giving and investments.”
IF, IF, IF you are diligent to follow my instructions, 2019 will bring an incredible breakthrough. I don’t look back and count time against you. I look ahead into the brightness of everyman’s future.”
Wow! I had very specific directions. We set out to immediately obey his instructions. I started my usual speed reading with Gloria Copeland’sbook God’s Will is Prosperity. Wrong!
Journey to Prosperity- The Early Years
My husband grew up in that kind of house. While his father made enough money, his mother always found ways to spend more than what he made. Consequently, they never had enough. They got saved later in life and were lovely people, but they died broke, living on social security. It was certainly not Gods best.
My parents, on the other hand, were planners. They had a plan for everything. But, my father was stingy and full of reasoning and logic and was always lecturing somebody about something. They were able to leave a small inheritance to their children when they passed.
When we married, we were recently born again. We are first generation Christians from unsaved homes and had no Biblical teaching to guide us. Neither set of middle-class parents taught us anything about the Bible or money. We never learned about budgeting, saving, or preparing for old age. We both had educated parents, but like so many others, we came to into our marriage with a financial learning deficit that we didn’t know we had.
We always struggled with money. The beginning was really tough on us. We carried the silent, yet weighty baggage of our childhood into our marriage. I married young and without an education and I always beat myself up for that, feeling my early marriage was the reason we struggled so much financially.
But, after a few years of Biblical teaching, we developed enough in our faith and spending habits to pay our bills and buy a home. We continued to grow in our faith, and after 14 years of marriage, theLord led us to Oklahoma to attend Bible school. It was the best decision we could have ever made. We immersed ourselves in the Word of God and grew rapidly in so many ways.
We were faithful students and practiced what we learned to the best of our ability. Year after year, we gave and confessed what the Bible says about money. There were a few years where the finances were great. But, even during those good years, we still never had enough. We never had enough to follow our ministerial dreams and definitely not enough to give much away. We wanted to give, and save, and plan for retirement, but it seemed like we always hit the wall of “not enough.” Our visions were stymied and stopped. But, we kept on because we knew the plan of God for his children was prosperity.
This is not the first time in the history of the United States or the world that social unrest has risen up. One needs only to look back just a few years to see it in American history, and look vertically to see it happening in other countries simultaneously. But that doesn’t really make it any easier for us.
Think for a moment how Egyptians oppressed the Hebrews when they were enslaved in Egypt; The Egyptians took away the straw they used to make bricks and still demanded the same quota be produced each day. They beat the Hebrews and treated them ruthlessly. It was a tremendous hardship on the Hebrews. Finally, when they had enough, they began to pray. We get a glimpse into the heart of God in Exodus 3:7: 7 . Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings.” God knows and understands suffering. It is not his will, plan or idea for men to suffer at the hands of one another.
But God, but God! God knew long ago that nations made of all kinds of people would have trying times, so he made a plan for it, a provision for it, so to speak long ago.
Look at 2 Chronicles 7:14- If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and restore their land.
So, what can and should we be doing? If you call yourself a Christian; (called by his name), then you can do something;
