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Shalom from
Jerusalem!
Kingdom
Pruning
I have
been busy this past week doing a lot of pruning
and clean-up in our garden, preparing it for a
new season of growth, flowers and
fruit.
Nearly
every permanent plant in our garden has
thorns of some kind and tries to
resist the pruning or at least strike
back at me when I do what is good for it!
Sound familiar? We tend to
resist God's pruning seasons, but when we
yield, the result is growth, blossoms
and fruit for His Kingdom!
New
Foundations for Access Ramp to Temple
Mount
I went to the Western Wall Plaza over
a week ago to check out the progress of the work
to repair the access ramp to the Temple
Mount. These pictures were taken from the
overlook near the Aish HaTorah facility. You can
see that the excavation is totally outside of
the Temple Mount compound!
The archaeological
dig in this picture is part of the one you
can see at the bottom of the top
picture.
For an explanation
of the findings from the Israeli Antiquities
Authority, click
here.
It is very prophetic
to me that the access ramp to the place of God's
manifest Presence needs to be dug up to enable
strong foundations to be laid!
The Lord
has been busy telling us to work on our spiritual
foundations in order to experience the fullness of His
Presence!
New Sermon Posted
Since our
last update, I have posted a new sermon preached by
Pastor Shelley entitled Defined by the
Kingdom. It was inspired by the
first two chapters of the Book of
Ezra. You can access it by the following
link:
Here are
some excerpts from
this timely
and important anointed message . .
.
Defined by the Kingdom
You see, God wants to remove all of
the mixture in our lives. Amen.
There is mixture.
And how many of you
know that God is not a God about
mixture. He’s not a God about mixing
stuff. He, in fact, tells us throughout the entire
Bible, specifically in the five Books of Moses in the
Old Testament, He is a God of
separation. He is a God of very
distinct lines and
boundaries.
Something
defines you. You have a definition.
There’s only
one thing that we must be defined by and that is the
Kingdom of God.
Every
decision that we make, every
direction that we choose, every
road that we walk down - we must base
everything about our lives not on this world, not on
popular society, not on what the majority is doing, not
following in the crowd . . .
I want to say that
we are the original culture and everybody else is the
counterculture. But the counterculture is
defined not by the majority, but by the
minority.
Isn’t that
amazing? The people of God have become the
counterculture, the one that’s going
counter-clockwise, so to speak, against the
flow. And we have defined that by where
we go.
And you know, there
are some worldly things out there that
we stay away from because we
understand the influence. There’s filth
and garbage on the television that we don’t need in our
homes and we don’t need in our lives.
I
am not embarrassed and I’m not ashamed of the way I’ve
lived and the way I want to continue to live.
But I desire to be defined by something much
greater than Pentecostal or Holiness or Message
follower. I want to be defined by one thing.
I want my definition to be the Kingdom of
God.
I want
to talk like somebody ought to talk who
is a part of the Kingdom of God. I want
to walk like somebody ought to walk who
is a part of the Kingdom of God. I want to
dress like somebody ought to dress who
is a part of the Kingdom of God.
Listen, if I can
just live the Sermon on the Mount . . .
If I can just embrace more heartily the Sermon on
the Mount . . . I don’t mean throw away all the
rest. I mean just take a second
look at the Sermon on the
Mount.
[Picture taken from the
Mount of the Beatitudes]
You see, we
Pentecostals, we know the
gifts. We can teach on the gifts.
We can almost give somebody the gifts, we’ve had
them and moved in them and operated in them so
long.
But be honest with
yourselves. I’ve been honest with myself.
We Pentecostal people have never really done so
good with the fruits of the
Spirit.
I want to be
defined by the fruits of the Spirit. I want to be
defined by the Sermon on the
Mount.
All of a sudden it
jumped out at me and almost knocked me out of my chair.
It doesn’t say,
"Blessed are the peace-keepers."
It says, "Blessed are the peace-
makers."
Did you know that
you can sit around and say nothing and do nothing, and
be a peace-keeper? But you can’t sit
around and say nothing and do nothing, and be a
peace-maker.
Hallelujah.
To make
peace, it's an action. It requires an
effort. It requires
discipline. It requires
behavior. It requires the
investing of yourself into a
situation.
You want to be a
peace-maker? Talk about those things,
promote those things, publish those things that bring
the Presence of God in the
room.
I
wanted you to know there’s another way to bring peace in
the room, bring Jesus in the room, and
that’s to talk what He talked, to
speak His Word, to declare
Truth. Because He is the way, the Truth
and the Life.
And what I believe
that God is about to unleash in our lives is going to
become very, very visible. And
people are going to want to see - not what you’re doing
or what I’m doing, but what Jesus is
doing. I want to be right in the middle
of what Jesus is doing.
And one of the
things that I see God doing - He wants to bring His
people out of Babylon. He wants
to bring His people out of religious
confusion. He wants you to hear
His Voice and separate yourself from the
mixture - from the light and the darkness
that’s mixed together, the clay that has come as a
mixture of moisture and dirt, the compromise . .
.
And when I say
compromise, I don’t just mean on the outward standards
and physical appearances. I mean the
compromises of our heart. And do
you know, one of the ways that you can make compromise
in your heart is by being a peace- keeper
instead of being a
peace-maker.
And only 16
percent of the priests believed the prophet,
believed the vision, and decided it was worth pulling up
their roots and going back to Jerusalem to see
if the Temple could be
restored.
What could be a
greater prophetic picture of
2007? And so the message of Ezra
1 is what? "Come out of religious
confusion. Come out of
Babylon."
And the message of
Ezra 2 is what? "You’d better
know who you are."
I want to be one of
those Temple builders. I want to
be one of the 16 percent of preachers who hears
and recognizes and knows. And I’m
willing to leave behind the more comfortable
life of Babylon to go home to where Jerusalem, the heart
of God, is.
Build a
temple. And you may not be a preacher,
but God’s calling you for Kingdom
purposes. And I’m so tired of seeing
people sit on the fence. I’m so tired of that kind
of stuff. It’s such an hour, such an hour . . .
It’s such an hour as this that we need to
do more.
You can know
who you are. You can know what your destiny
is. You can know what your calling
is.
Being
Peacefully Militant
When I was recently in Alabama, I was
able to read a copy of the new book,
Generation, Remembering the Life of a
Prophet, put together by Angela
Smith, one of the granddaughters of Brother
William Branham.
It is a beautiful coffee table style
hardcover book that consists of wonderful
testimonies by people who knew Bro. Branham and
were touched in extraordinary ways by his life
and ministry.
This book really touched my heart
because it testifies about the way Bro. Branham
lived his everyday life - like
Y'shua would. Bro. Branham was a
first fruit of what the Bride of
Y'shua is becoming!
I felt inspired, because
of Pastor Shelley's sermon highlighted in this
update, to share these
excerpts from one of the
testimonies with you. This is from the
testimony of a brother who often went on
hunting trips with Bro. Branham.
One thing I learned
about being around Brother Branham was how to be
militant for the Word of God, without
fighting. When Brother Branham prayed
over me as a young man, he asked the Lord to make me
like Irenaeus, then he prayed that I'd be a
peacemaker. I never could put it
together. Irenaeus was militant for the Word of
the Lord. But how could you be a
peacemaker and yet be
militant?
I got my answer
after all those years. Be peacefully militant for the Word of
God. You don't have to be
angry. I saw Brother Branham do that with
Brother Leo and Brother Gene, but I just never put it
together until years later. But Brother
Branham was a very peaceful person, yet he was militant
for the Word of God, and he had such a special way of
doing it.
Another time while
we were out there, one of our trucks overheated, and we
pulled into a hunting camp to try and get some
water. Brother Branham got out with the rest of
us, and the man that came to ask us what we wanted was
just swearing a blue streak, the most
terrible words I've ever heard in my life. He
wasn't mad at us, but it was simply his way of
talking.
We hardly knew what
to say. Brother Branham was just standing there,
looking around. Then he said, "Boy, the
Lord God sure did drop a lot of rocks here in
Arizona, didn't He?" And when he mentioned
the Lord's Name, that man never said another swear word
the entire time we were
there.
I learned a great
lesson that day, how you
could be polite, yet bring God's
Presence and make someone aware of His
Presence with just a few simple words. He
made that man conscious of God, and he quit
cursing.
[The
Generation book can be ordered
from Believers International by
clicking
here.]
"God
Is With You, Isn't He?"
I was touched by a short testimony
that Pastor Shelley just shared with us recently.
As he was talking to the Jewish
owner of a business, the man suddenly said,
"God is with you, isn't
He? I feel Him whenever you come
in!"
That's the kind of testimony I
want!
(Exo
33:15) And he said unto him, If thy presence go
not with me, carry us not up
hence.
(Exo
33:16) For wherein shall it be known here that I and
thy people have found grace in thy sight?
is it not in that thou
goest with us? so shall we be
separated, I and thy people, from all the people that
are upon the face of the
earth.
In
Closing
We do not yet have all the
finances we need to pay for the quarterly rent
of our apartment and the Jerusalem taxes for the
end of the month. Our due date for the rent was
the 15th and our Jewish landlord has been gracious, but
we want to have a good testimony and pay our
bills on time.
I have sensed the Lord saying
that the answer to our prayers for finances is
on the way. Perhaps you are one of the ones who holds
the answer in your hand. I
am believing that your help is on the
way!
Thank you
for your obedience to the
Lord's Voice!
(Mat
5:9) Blessed
are the peacemakers:
for they shall be called the children of God.
May we be
increasingly defined by the Kingdom in everything we
think and say and do!
Blessings from
Jerusalem!
Nancy Bergen
Jerusalem Revival Center
PO Box
1402
Jerusalem 91013, Israel
Tel. & Fax:
972-2-5825301
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