The only way out is not possible in myself, so I have to be transformed into a different creature. How many of you understand that if you are in the water, being an eagle can’t save you? You have to become a fish to swim. And if you’re on the ground, being a fish can’t help you. You better have legs and if you’re in the sky, you cannot say, ‘I want to swim,’ because you better have wings. So you need to operate in a spiritual atmosphere that cannot overwhelm you. And to do so, you’re going to have to call upon Him.

If I take on Christ’s nature, then I become transformed. I become different and then what the enemy thought he had, is a different person now – one that he cannot overcome.                          - Apostle Anthony Nelson. Taken from the Apostolic Training Center, Sun. Jul. 18, 2010

 There is one truth that has been pivotal to my walk with the Lord over the years, that keeps coming back into focus every time I seek to advance in His will for my life. This truth is simply this: everyone who intends go to further in God’s plan must be willing to pay the cost.

 As I write this message to you, Huntsville & Toronto, Ontario are preparing to host the G8 & G20 summits with  the cost for security presently over $1 billion. The debate rages on about the validity of this and is it worth paying that alone just for the security and infrastructure to host this event.

Life costs and if we as believers are going to advance in God’s plan for our lives, then we must be willing to pay the price. I know some of you believe that Christ paid it all for you and that everything in your life should be easy - just bind the devil, give your tithe and and call forth the blessing of the Lord. I wish it was always that easy. But King David knew that if we are going to deal with our sins and win victory in our lives, then we must have the mind to do whatever it takes.

In the above passage, King David knew he had sins and wanted to offer sacrifices to the Lord at the place where grace and mercy were extended to him and his people. Araunah, an honorable man, was willing to give David the land for free. But if King David had accepted it, then the sacrifice would have been Araunah’s not David’s.

Beloved, you have got to catch this principle in your life right now. I believe many of God’s people are in places where God is dealing with them as a Father with His children. He desires for us to advance in His plan for our lives. But are we willing to pay the cost.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—  lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’?(Luke 14:28-30)

We cannot become Christ’s disciples without walking the way of the cross and embracing the price for our own call. Jesus had a way of separating His followers from His disciples –  by telling them the cost. He said they would have to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Right there He would have lost most of North Americans Christians. He knew that most people were out to see what they could get.

 I am hearing too much of broken marriages, split churches, and suicides among our youth. We think we are full, but we are empty. Someone said that never in history has a generation received so much and given so little.

 I believe it’s time for us to seek the Lord and look seriously at the cost of walking with the Lord. I believe it’s worth it. I believe walking away from Him will cost me more than walking with Him. Let’s rise up and ask the Lord for His strength to give everything for what lies ahead in our lives.

 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but [this] one thing [I do], forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.  Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.  (Philippians 3:13-16)

My prayer for you during this season is that the Lord will begin impress upon your heart His treasures that are yours in Christ Jesus, that your appetite for the things of the kingdom will increase and His desires will become yours as you reach towards His plan for your life in Christ’s name. Amen.  - Apostle Anthony Nelson

If you are living in North America with even a few square yards of ground you call your property, I am pretty sure you are in the same battle I am in. I mean the battle against weeds, grubs, Dandelions, you name it. They come out at this time of year, ready to invade and possess your life (I mean lawn).

Some of you can’t relate to what I am saying and others might think that I am taking it a bit too far. Well, I don’t know what you call it, but it frustrates me when I have cut my lawn, spend hours fighting weeds and other stuff, just to see my next door neighbour’s lawn absolutely filled with my enemy.

There was a time when I naively believed that the weeds would stay hedged into their own lawn and just stay there and coexist with my property without any problem. That, I quickly found out, does not work. They live to reproduce and spread themselves over the whole planet as quickly as they can without any regard for your efforts and time.

It’s so sad that many believers don’t realize that their inheritance in Christ is under attack everyday. Most of us don’t get the truth that we have an enemy who loves us to give up the battle for our inheritance and resign ourselves to his weeds of discouragement, fatigue, depression and hopelessness.

He would love you to let that negative thought just stay there and multiply across your mind until you are no longer walking in joy and peace, then your body begins to take on cancers, ulcers and a host of new diseases that I can’t even call.

But when David became king over Israel, the Bible says the land was at peace. After his enemies met him in his stronghold, they were never again able to rise up aginst him. He was a warrior who kept his inheritance and subdued his foes.

In your personal journey with the Lord, you must remember some divine truths that will help you not only win, but keep God’s hedge of protection around you.

1. There is a season in your life when your enemy is most active (Ps. 138:7-8).
2. The word of God is your most powerful weapon against your enemy (Ps. 119:97-104).
3. The only hedge that keep your enemy out is God’s angelic host.
4. If your closest companions have weeds in their lives, it’s just a matter of time before your life begins to feel the effects. (Prov. 27:17).

David’s passion for the Lord and his desire to meditate on God’s Word kept him strong and victorious all though his life. The same God who loves you, has a plan to hedge your life around with His love and protection.

My prayer for you in this season is for the Father’s grace to rest strongly on you, for His good, so that you may be able to overcome all your temptations and walk in the power of His might through Christ Jesus. Be blessed! – Apostle Anthony Nelson

This is the time of year when we North Americans declare war on the weeds and other creatures in our backyard. It’s the time when we open our garages, sharpen those lawn mower blades, spray those lawns and generally get quite physical with the enemies in our own backyards.

Now I know some of you like dandelions in your lawns and don’t care for green spaces and some nice tomatoes, growing in your yards. But perhaps like me, you would like to see something you planted there grow up rather than things whose identity you don’t even know, claiming your green space and spreading like wildfire across your yard.

I also find my neighbours have this desire to go to war too. They don’t like anything in their yard that grows without their effort and run rampantly in every direction, stifling the “good seed.” We exchange tips on how to win the battle and take a dim view of those who let their weeds spread over the line into our yards.

There is also this unspoken credit we give to those of us who have won the battle and we hold each other in high esteem, based on the yards of victory we have successfully won and kept from our enemy Mr. Weed (the Amorites) or Mr. Crab Grass (the Philistines).

You see I give them names to remind me that the Christian life is a life of conflict and war. We win some battles and we lose some, but God has given us His promises that no weapon formed against us can prosper (Isa. 54:17).

It has also surprised me how many of God’s children still don’t get the point that God has given each of us an inheritance in Christ that starts right here, right now in the physical and also in the spiritual. We have a set position in Christ - a relationship restored to us by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

It saddens my heart every day to see how much of our blessings have been overrun by the enemy. We come to God with our complaints, weariness and hopelessness to invade our hearts and eventually we become prisoners in our own bodies.

Well, I say, “No,” in Jesus’ name! It’s time for you and I to mark out our inheritance. No matter what God has given you, make a determined effort by His Spirit to go to war with your enemy.

There are seeds of our old nature, waiting to blossom and spread in our lives like Cain, ready for our brothers and sisters to do something we find offensive and then jealousy and resentment begins to grow in our hearts.

I want to encourage you with all my heart (that’s what I do, I can’t help myself) to get up out of your place of rest. Put on the joy of the Lord and begin to spray your atmosphere with praise and thanksgiving. The little head of an insect that you see hiding in your soil indicates that there is more of him where he came from. Don’t just say, “I can’t do anything about it. It’s too much for me or I will leave that alone because tomorrow brother or sister so and so might come around and pray for me.” No! You are able to get out there and shout, “NOT ON MY LAWN!”

It’s amazing what people will put up with when they don’t know the consequences or the end result of allowing the weeds to win the war. Let me give you some examples.

• If Adam knew that the stranger talking to Eve in his garden was his worst nightmare, I bet he would have reacted differently.
•  If Cain had known that his life after the death of Abel would be one of endless wandering and looking over his shoulder, he would never have opened his heart to that spirit of the devil. 
• If David had known that allowing his desire for strange flesh to go unhindered would have opened the door to Solomon and all his children to sexual deviation in the family, he would never have allowed that seed in his garden.

I could go on and on telling you of so many men down through the years. But I’m crying out to God to help us win the victory over temptations because someone else before allowed the weeds to grow and the insects to devour the land.

 Your enemy’s plan is to keep you bunkered down by life so that you can’t rise up. He wants you to feel so overwhelmed by circumstances that you just can’t get up. He tells you that you don’t have the provision. He tells you that there are too many weeds. He says why bother; they are going to come back anyway.

 But I’ve come to tell you that God has given you are warring Spirit of might (Isa. 11: 1-3) so get up! Rise up in the Lord to know what is yours. Make up your mind to clear your heart and live in victory not just in church, but  every day of your life.

 So I call you today to the battle lines. I call you to strength and honor. I call you to your destiny and power and to take your land back in Jesus’ name. You can and must!

- Apostle Anthony Nelson

The week before last, Iceland rose prominently in the news when a volcano erupted sending up ominous ash clouds in the atmosphere. This clouds of ash, effectively grounded air traffic all over Europe and forced travelers to sit in airport terminals and hotels, waiting to see what will happen with the cloud that hovered over them.

Life can be like that sometimes for the best of us. We start our days with our plans and great excitement as we anticipate the future. Then suddenly a seemingly random event, like the loss of a job or the negative result on a blood test, the pain of losing a loved one or even a quarrel with a spouse.

These eruptions in our lives can produce clouds laden with debris that linger for days sometimes months that lead into years. They settle over our lives and don’t want to leave us. They can be relentless sometimes, causing others around us to feel the effects of our saddened hearts. We no longer speak like we used to, dream like we once did. The days are endless, waiting at the airport of our lives hoping that someone will come and help us reach our destination.

Have you ever noticed that its when you are depressed you meet more people who are depressed? The unemployed man who’s drinking his pain away will always find someone in the same condition that is waiting for their cloud to go away. We feel helpless and frustrated. No one seems to be able to help and everyone seems to have theories, but no answers to your problems.

Let me remind you today that just in case you forgot:  God used clouds by day to speak to His children and to remind them of His presence in their lives. In the book of Exodus, God used a cloud to lead the children of Israel by day and a pillar of fire by night.

The children of Israel would wake up in the morning and depending upon the movement of the cloud, they moved. God was teaching them a valuable lesson that our generation seems to have lost. He taught them that man does not live nor direct his life based on His plans. God can and does interrupt our lives to get our attention. Like the children of Israel, we must learn the ways of our Father, so that His voice becomes easy for us to hear and understand.

How we respond to disruptions in our lives speaks of who governs our desires and the deep motivations of our heart. If one volcano, suddenly erupting can cause many countries in Europe to ground their planes, what is God saying to you in this fast-paced world of ours? 

• I think He is saying slow down.  Seek Me first before you make your plans for the ways of man can be stopped by Me anytime and anywhere.
• I believe He is saying I can lift your cloud and cause you to fly again to higher places and deeper depths than you have every done before.
• I believe He is saying to you that it’s been a long time since you and I have stopped and talked together as you hop form plane to plane and place to place.
• I believe He is reminding you and I that there is more to your life than getting to where you want to go. He wants us to enjoy the journey with Him and those around you.

O my soul, why are you cast down and moan within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet thank Him for the salvation of His presence.  O my God, my soul is cast down within me; on account of this I remember You from the land of Jordan, and from the Hermonites, from Mount Mizar. 

Deep calls to deep through the voice of Your waterfalls; all Your waves and Your billows have passed over me.  Psalms 42:5-7

It is our earnest prayer that this form of teaching will always be a blessing to you and help you grow and make a difference in your generation.

- Apostle Anthony Nelson

Did it every occur to you that the writer of this psalm had days like you and I have – that he and many of God’s great servants walked through days of fatigue and dryness of soul and body; when you just can’t take another sermon, news report of death and mayhem; when the financial demands and the emotional strain just gets a bit too much?
 
Now maybe you have felt that way or maybe you are feeling that way right now. Before you call for prayer or reach for your normal way of coping with life, just stop and ask your self this question: if God is God does He not know that you and I are built to have days when we will feel not only spiritual fatigue but also physical and mental?

If your answer is yes, then let us diagnose what fatigue is and find out how God wants you and I to respond to this common challenge and His provision for this. Fatigue is a common health complaint. It is, however, one of the hardest terms to define, and a symptom of many different conditions.

Fatigue, also known as weariness, tiredness, exhaustion, or lethargy, is generally defined as a feeling of lack of energy. Fatigue is not the same as drowsiness, but the desire to sleep may accompany fatigue. Apathy is a feeling of indifference that may accompany fatigue or exist independently. (Taken from an online encyclopaedia).

Fatigue is common. Around 20% of Americans claim to have fatigue intense enough to interfere with their having a normal life. Physical causes are estimated at 20-60%, and emotional causes are the other 40-80%.
 
a) King David was tired of war and he stayed home.
b) Samson the mighty judge of Israel was fatigued and found his solace in the arms of Delilah.

History is full of great men and women of God who had to overcome the very thing that you and I have to face in our generation. So let’s ask the Lord for His natural wisdom to help us deal with this all too common challenge.

I say this because many Christians believe that fatigue is the devil’s weapon against them and they instantly break out in fasting and put their bodies under more stress when a good night’s sleep might be just what they needed. Here are a few suggestions in a very practical way to help us all cope with fatigue.

Ways to help overcome fatigue     

1.      Get some rest. I don’t mean sleep I mean rest. That means lie down in bed turn off the interruptions, pull the blanket over your body and just let your body rest. It might take you a time to do this seeing that we are so accustomed to activity, but try doing this outside of your bed time and experience the results.

2.      Rest in the Lord. Many times we are weary in our minds because too much information is coming to us to tune it out. Spend sometime not listening to the news, answering emails and watching the tv.

3.      Find a place of quietness. I am learning to practice this place of rest in the quietness. Try not to respond to anything that really has not got your name attached to it and is marked urgent.

4.      Connect with friends who can make you laugh and they help recharge your batteries. Listening to good music that lifts you up can help do this too.

5.      Go for walks in nature if you can or just spend some time outside enjoying the movement of life around you.

I know most of us are getting ready for busier days as the spring and summer schedules begin to lengthen and we forget how easy it is to over do it. It is my prayer today, dear friends, that you would take the advice of the Lord through His servant Isaiah and have a restful week ahead.

For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)

Thank you all again for your prayers and kind feedback as we seek to be a blessing to the Body of Christ. – Apostle Anthony Nelson

I love spring! In my opinion, it’s the best time of the year. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate summer, fall and winter. But there is something about the spring to me that speaks of a new beginning, of hope and strength. I love to see the trees begin to bud, buds opening and the soil begin to thaw as winter’s cold gives way to spring. 

God, in His infinite wisdom, knows our need to look forward to a change in our lives from cold days – when the pain of losing our loved ones to death or the pain of a broken relationship, like frost, tightens around our hearts and joy drains from our lives. 

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will rest in hope.(Psalms 16:9) 

There is something about spring that reminds me of our hope in God’s grace and power as a Father to empower us to overcome the greatest situation facing our lives. The greater the winter the more the earth looks forward to and receives the warming rain and sunshine of the spring.  

Those who have lived with the cold of winter and fruits of sin in their lives are more hungry for and receptive to the grace of God that comes to them through Christ. The greater the sinner, the more amazing to him the grace of God.  

That’s what God has for us today. It’s not what’s happening around you right now that should speak to you. It’s this promise that He has given to us in His Word that should speak to our hearts today… 

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,  (Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39) 

The seed of greatness is deep on the inside of us, waiting for the appropriate time for it to come forth and manifest itself to this world. We are God’s sons and daughters, planted in Christ and we will not defeated or discouraged by the coldness of this world, the cares of this life, nor the weakness of our own flesh. 

By God’s love and grace, you are alive and He is preparing you for your new beginning. It might seem long and the days seem unending, but dear friends, do not give up! Just as Christ overcame, you and I have the seed of an Overcomer in our hearts, beating fervently until our Lord calls us to manifest to this world His Word deep from the inside of us. 

For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. ²³ Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. ²⁴ For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.  (Romans 8:22-25)

 It’s so important for us to understand that no experience is wasted and no season is unimportant to the child of God. If we can learn from our pain, embrace the sadness, and grow through our disappointments, then we can become stronger than ever as we wait patiently for His timing in our lives.

For remember this spiritual truth in your life: Patience is a part of the fruit of the Spirit; it’s not a gift. We do not learn patience in the summer or fall. We learn it in our winter season.

For in You, O LORD, I hope; You will hear, O Lord my God. (Psalms 38:15)

It’s my prayer for you today that  you may stay strong  through your seasons, that you may rejoice no matter what you are going through for your life is in the hand of the Master Gardener and He knows your end from the beginning. I  pray strength over you today, favor in your season and a heart of thankfulness, knowing that God is preparing you for a new season in your life. – Apostle Anthony Nelson