The following is by an intercessor in northern Israel who must remain anonymous. The person is a congregant of the Carmel congregation that I have had email contact with for over a decade.
6/14/20 (A congregant at Kehilat HaCamel ) Houses of Beauty ministry on Mt Carmel, Israel
at theriverofgod@gmail.com An IRS non-profit organization. You can donate through Paypal. The email link for Paypal is beittiferet@gmail.com. But if you don’t use Paypal, you can use this link
at theriverofgod@gmail.com An IRS non-profit organization. You can donate through Paypal. The email link for Paypal is beittiferet@gmail.com. But if you don’t use Paypal, you can use this link
Dear friends, the Lord woke me up recently with a strongly highlighted thought. Every time I've needed to heal something that involved other people or situations, with challenges that seemed out of my control, or problems that escalated on top of each other, when I healed the related issues of my heart, giving them over to Christ, letting Him restore His kingdom within me, all the associated external problems immediately dissolved. On that recent morning, when the Lord shocked me awake into alertness, I wondered what He was cooking. I'd seen this truth so many times it was like the law of gravity to me. It always worked, often miraculously. But it took all my guts to accomplish it. Why was He highlighting it now?
He asked some questions that took my thoughts to the next level: "What is the connection between your personal repentance and the health of My nation? Can your personal repentance transform the life of My country?" I knew the answer was yes, because God was making the proposition. But how? What was the connection between the health of my spiritual/emotional heart and the quality of life in Israel? In the United States?
I thought of Israel under the Judges. Each judge, anointed and chosen by God, turned Israel back to God. I thought of Daniel, repenting for his people, preparing the way for their return home. I thought of Yeshua on the cross. Me??? Did I have enough zeal to turn God's nation around? That sounded like hubris! Was God anointing me for that? He reminded me, "You are part of My Body, a kingdom of priests. Repeatedly, kings turned Israel and Judea back to me. Priests, by offering sacrifices, repented for themselves, on behalf of the people. I repented for all mankind and my sacrifice was accepted. You are a priest, you are the sacrifice, and you are part of Me, so yes, you are commissioned and anointed for this."
God had taken my thoughts to the next level. He turned my attention to Israel's land sovereignty issue, one of the many current global spiritual war zones. The land is YHVH's, not Allah's, our first covenant is to God Himself, many Palestinians who live in the territories would prefer to be under our government, and not under the Palestinian Authority, a number of them have privately confided this to me, and it is also documented ... but ... but ... We could start a major war. We could create terrible relations with our neighbors. We could alienate the world. Should we? Was this the time to act? Had we asked God what we should do, and when, with an open heart and mind? Or were we switching between different human agendas, locked into a rat's maze without God's wisdom of choice?
Further ... how did the model I described in the first paragraph apply to this issue? What was God highlighting? If I forgive, if I find and release underlying issues, problems disappear. Satan's influence is eliminated, because his hold on me, removed at the cross, is repudiated by me. When I come under the cross's blessing through my agreement with Yeshua's Victory, Yeshua shows me the specifics of what I need to do, and following His instructions, I have the victory. But how does this apply to Israel? The mess in the Middle East and our role in it is unfathomably deep and murky. What can I see? Of what can I be responsible? Can I really stand in the gap for Israel in this situation? How?
The crux of the issue, as we all know, is a war between Satan and God, initiated by Satan, but allowed by God. It is fully manifested, in a war that has been ongoing, between Allah and God. We are not primarily looking at a racial issue, or a tribal issue, because much of Palestinian blood is Jewish blood, but we are looking at a spiritual issue, a war being conducted at the highest spritual levels. What can I do? The Lord took me back in history to 1967 and then, further, to the Gibeonites, in the Book of Joshua. In 1967, in six days, in a war that God miraculously won for us, punctuated by miracle after miracle after miracle, we gained the Sinai Peninsula, and regained the Jordan Valley, the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. The war could not have been more spectacular. Every nation on earth either stood against us or remained neutral. Nobody but God helped us, and His help was extraordinary. The war ended almost before it began, because God prepared the victory before it commenced.
Then we lost our headship, our victory, and signed an agreement, in exchange for peace, to give back the land we had conquered, to give back the Land that belonged to God. Putting our tail between our legs, we became the rump instead of the head. It should have been obvious to us that our enemies did not want peace, but nobody can see well when their heads are in the wrong place... We responded to international pressure, and perhaps our own desire to believe in peace. We did not fear man on the battleground, but we did fear him around the negotiating table. God fought for us on the battleground, but He did not seem to fight for us around the negotiating table. Why? I believe He wanted us to honor Him, to choose Him above all else. I believe He sought our loyalty. He did not get it. I cannot imagine He agreed with our choices, especially since neither side was speaking the truth.
Later, in 1993, the agreement was clarified through the Oslo Accord. However, in Netanyahu's secretly recorded statement, in 2001, he explained how He circumvented the Oslo Accord, because he was not required to give up "military land," and he considered all of the Jordan Valley military land. Thus he privately considered the Oslo Accord null and void. Currently, he wants to legitimize Israel's ownership of the Jordan Valley. Many of us agree. But when we count the cost, is it the best bang for our buck? Possibly...
Let's reconsider the first paragraph. When I remove all the spiritually negative influences in a situation, claiming Yeshua's blood as my protection, repenting of my sins, forgiving and releasing the other party completely, and choosing to die to myself, the problem dissolves. (Rev. 12:11) Can I apply that formula to Israel in this situation? Can I change the current scenario for the better? Is that a better bang for our buck?
As I pray, God takes me back to the treaty Israel made with the Gibeonites in the book of Joshua. The Gibeonites lied to us, deceived us, and we signed a protective agreement with them, based upon their lies. We thought they were a people group from far away, but they actually lived close to us, only three days journey away, by foot. This treaty went directly against God's commandment that we kill all our neighbors. But God required Joshua to honor it, despite the deception, and Joshua even went to war to defend the Gibeonites. Then, over 200 years later, King Saul, perhaps unaware of this treaty, tried to annihilate them. In the latter days of King David's reign, there was a three-year drought in the land, and the Lord explained to David it was caused by King Saul's choice to break the Israelite treaty with the Gibeonites, and that he, King David, needed to make restitution to the Gibeonites in whatever manner they chose. When that happened, the drought ended.
What's the point? | Starting in 1967 we signed several peace treaties with people who deceived us, because they had no desire for peace. We also deceived them, because we had no intention of giving them all the land we conquered. Since then, we have discovered the disastrous results of giving back anything. Breaking a covenant with God has serious consequences. This land is not ours, it is God's. Now, in this time of shaking, with God advancing, and the enemy trying to counter that advance, is God holding all of us accountable to this covenant of lies? Can we just break this covenant, because it breaks our previous covenant with God, because God gave this land to us to steward, and because we trust in His support? Maybe ... but I am haunted by thoughts of the Gibeonites.
I approach God with Numbers 30. There, a daughter's vows can be canceled by her father, and a wife's vows can be canceled by her husband, if he disagrees with her decisions. I ask God if He is willing to cancel our vows. This is what I hear in response, "Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemy as yourself. Care for those who abuse you and take care of the widows and the orphans. Then I will hear your request for the land." I am reminded of how many times he has responded to my questions about the land by suggesting that we build hospitals, schools and places of employment in the occupied territories to serve as meeting grounds between ourselves and the Palestinians. He wants us to love those who have hurt us in the same way we love ourselves, making room for them in our hearts, minds, souls, spirits, and in our practical actions.
This is not the same thing as buying into the lie that if we give them land there will be peace. That is nonsense. We suffer everytime we try that. No, this is something different. Something outside of the box, outside of the maze. This is God's Love. I know we have tried similar things before and they have not worked, or they have only worked marginally. But God is highlighting this now, and I have seen the Lord bring about implausible blessings when I have trusted him. When He is ready to move, when I align with him, the results are amazing. I am beginning to see what the Master Chef is cooking for dinner. Expensive Grace. I pray it is followed by Radical Reciprocated Love for dessert. But in any case, I will follow our Master Chef's scriptural recipe of love. I will honor my covenant with Him, and I will follow His love directives for handling my covenant with my neighbors.
I start to pray | On Israel's behalf, I repent of breaking our covenant with Him around the negotiating table. I repent of dishonoring Him. I ask for His forgiveness and healing power to fall upon me and upon all Israel. I feel it descend upon me like a dove ... I surrender the current situation to God, in humility and faith, the way King David did, regarding the drought with the Gibeonites. I pray for Israel's government to do the same. I renew my personal commitment to love the Palestinians as myself and I ask the same for Israelis in general. I surrender all the land of Israel to God, in exchange for His Shalom, for His Glory. I repent of my fear of man, and my unwillingness to honor God when people stand against me. I pray the same prayers for Israel. I repent of lying, of practicing subterfuge and deception to make life easier, and I pray the same for Israel. I repent of any limitations in my love towards the Palestinians and the nations that surround us, and I repent of anything that stops me from hearing God's perfect solution to our problems. I pray for our people and our government to be filled with the same desires.
I choose to fully forgive the Palestinians and the nations that surround us. I repent of taking any of their rejection of myself, as a Jewish Israeli, to heart. I hand my pain to God, so I can meet them with an open heart, mind, soul and spirit. I repent of practicing false hope, of expecting others to behave well towards me who still hate me, but I focus on my godly hope that YHVH will renew all our hearts in His Love. I pray for salvation for all of us. We need it desperately!
I can feel the pain, anger, resentment, hurts, even hatred, on both sides. I pray about how to help heal with my prayers, how to accept these very difficult emotions, in love, and hand them to God with my prayers. Do God's terms support divorce? Or re-engagement? Can we repent so deeply and align ourselves with God's truth so highly, can we love so fully and reach out so compassionately, that Satan is dismissed and can't return? I think so. I believe so. With our prayers, through spiritual warfare, according to God's terms, the enemy can be defeated, this time, before he even strikes. Let's apply ourselves to this battle for God's Glory and His Namesake. Hallelujah.
Much of this letter is a prayer. Please join your prayers to mine. Let's watch God have the victory here and undo the intended course of history. It has happened before. It happened when Moses refused to continue through the wilderness without God. It happened when Jonah went to Nineveh. It can happen now. The truth of love can undo the evil that is about to commence. Please join me.
Lord God, O King of Peace, the One who brought us Perfect Peace, the One who is Peace, I submit to you that we are helpless in this. If we wait upon you, You will show us what to do. Please, stop us from creating a worse hell-on-earth through our impudence. Help us to learn our lessons about only being frightened of You, an eternally powerful God. I pray that you give us this victory of heart, will, emotion, mind and spirit before we proceed.
Lord, I acknowledge the difficulty in working things through with people who only want to reject us, who are influenced or controlled by spirits that hate You in us. But I also know that You are greater than that, and when You heal the wounds evil has caused, we can react from Your wholeness. Then, miracles happen, change happens, wholeness happens, and healing happens. I ask for this between Israel, the Palestinians, and our neighbors. I ask that you would miraculously help us to move our hearts forward in grace, in the same way you helped us with military victories. We can't do this on our own, but with your help, we can.
I know Israel as a whole is not repenting before you for her worldliness, but some of us are, and we are standing in the gap. I ask for Israel to be a truth telling, neighbor loving nation, regardless of how others treat us, and to reflect Your love and Your strength to the people groups who contend with us.
I believe, Lord God, that it is your perfect will that there would not be a natural war, but that the battle would be won in the spirit, and that peace would be restored on earth. God help us to position ourselves for that. I ask you to puncture our boils completely, so that all the infection can gush out, and the healing balm of your peace can be established here, for Your Kingdom. Let the war finish before it begins. Let it be your war, and not our war. Help us ... amen.
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