Dear People Who Keep Company with God,

I have sought the Lord to give me a specific word for 2008 and He gave me the word “intentional”. I felt the Lord was clearly showing me a heart attitude that we would need in order to see some of the visions and assignments He has birthed in us raised up this year. Since this is the year 2008 I also did some research on the symbolic meaning of the number eight in the scriptures.

“Eight is the number specially associated with Resurrection and Regeneration, and the beginning of a new era or order. When the whole earth was covered with the flood, it was Noah ” the eighth person” (2 Peter 2:5) who stepped out on to a new earth to commence a new order of things. “Eight souls” (1 Peter 3:20) passed through it with him to the new or regenerated world. 

Hence, too, circumcision was to be performed on the eighth day (Gen 17:12), because it was the foreshadowing of the true circumcision of the heart, that which was to be ” made without hands,” even ” the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ” (Col 2:11). This is connected with the new creation.

The first-born was to be given to Jehovah on the eighth day (Exodus 22:29-30). But Resurrection is the great truth which is signified. Christ rose from the dead on “the first day of the week,” that was of necessity the eighth day.” Andrew Harris 

I believe we are in the beginning of a new spiritual era and each of us has an opportunity for a fresh start and a repositioning. Two days after the Lord gave me the word intentional I was browsing in a bookstore and ran across a book entitled “Reposition Yourself” by T.D. Jakes. As I thought about the title of the book I began to think over my life and all the opportunities I have had for a new beginning or repositioning. Whether we realize it or not, this is something we do often in life; high school graduation, college, marriage, the birth of a child, changing careers, becoming an empty nester, grandchildren, retirements, etc. are all new beginnings or repositioning moments in life.

Dr. Phil wrote the foreword in the book and he stated, “It is an undeniable truth that one year from now your life will be better or it will be worse, but it won’t be the same.”

I have spent most of my Christian life with a wilderness wandering mindset; however after spending over a year immersed in the Father’s love I am being set free to live a promised land lifestyle. The wilderness mindset tends to wait for God to do everything; give you manna every morning, give you water from a rock, and lead you with a cloud in the daytime and a fire ball in the evening. When Israel crossed over into the promised land they lived in houses they did not build with gardens and vineyards they did not plant. The point being God expected them to take what existed, cultivate it and prosper. In the wilderness the miracles were for one purpose: to sustain the people.

In the promised land the miracles were not simply to sustain the people, but to prosper and advance them. The promise land mindset that we are to cultivate is clearly seen in some of Jesus’ miracles. He took something that existed such as water and turned it into wine or five loaves and two fish and fed a multitude. He instructed a blind man to go and wash himself in a pool to receive his sight. It is the natural working with the supernatural to bring about God’s intended purpose.

God has placed in our lives gifts and talents; however it is up to us to use them (Matthew 25:14-30). That is where the word intentional becomes so important. I am a pastor today not only because the Lord told me while I was fully occupied as a husband and father of three children with a demanding engineering career that He had a calling and a new assignment for me. Along with this were years of work and some very difficult decisions that I intentionally chose in order to see this calling come forth.

The Apostle Paul said it like this,

1 Corinthians 15:10
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. 

We all have the grace of God to be something new or to reposition ourselves, but I am not so sure we all have the heart attitude to do the work it will require. It was the grace of God with Paul doing the labor, but at the end of the day guess who was tired from all the work?

Many Blessings, BW

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