Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 4:45 a.m. – I woke from a dream, but all I remembered of the dream was what looked like a loft with a ladder leading up to it. End. Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I read Revelation 2 and 3, which contains the letters to the seven churches. The Lord encouraged me with these words:
- Persevere with patience
- Endure hardships for My Name
- Do not grow weary
- Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer
- The devil will put some of you in prison to test you
- You will suffer persecution
- Be faithful, even to the point of death
- And, I (the Lord) will give you the crown of life
- Remain true to My Name
- Do not renounce your faith in me
- Hold on to what you have until I come
- Remember what you have received and heard; obey it; repent of any sin that I reveal to you
- “I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”
I prayed: “I thank you and praise you, Lord, for what you are teaching me. Order up my day for me today, I pray.” As soon as I prayed that, the Lord put this hymn in my mind (I don’t know all the words and I have been unable to locate it anywhere):
Oh, humbly may I serve Thee, Lord
With all that I possess.
I lay aside my sinful self
And claim Thy righteousness.
…
My only plea, to live for Thee
And magnify Thy Son.
May Christ be seen in me, O Lord,
Hear Thou my earnest plea;
O take me, fill me, use me, Lord,
Till Christ be seen in me.
DeHoff, (c)1941, Percy B. Crawford
That hymn is the prayer of my heart, and it was what the Lord had “ordered up for me” for today. I know the Lord has placed before me and my husband an “open door” in our community. We have received only one response so far to the Bible study invitations, yet I am not discouraged because I know it is the Lord who set this up and he is the one who will bring the people in his way and in his perfect timing.
