By: General Deborah Green
PRAISE GOD! Today we are marching forward, literally, marching forward in the Lord. Praise God! In the meeting before I gave this message, the Lord demonstrated in our midst by the march. You know, a lot of times God wants His people to march because we are meant to be a mighty ARMY. We are meant to be a conquering force-THE conquering force. We are meant to be the ones who prevail through Jesus Christ our God. And so, because we are able to obey Him in Spirit, we see that the truth does go forward and prevail. So yes, indeed, we are meant to be a marching people, marching forward at the commands of our King.
This is part four in a series entitled “The Necks of Our Enemies”. And God has desired that we would have the necks of our enemies. Our text is Psalms 18: our specific major text is verse 40. But in this message we will read through verses 32-40.
We found out that the psalmist was recognizing that in every area where He was able to defeat the enemy, that it was God who gave him that strength and that power. Hallelujah! And it’s important that we give the glory to God, whether we be young in the Lord or whether we be old in the Lord; it is important that we realize that it is the Lord who is our conquering King, that it is the Lord who is our strength, that it is the Lord who shall cause us to prevail.
A lot of times God will raise up foolish things to confound the wise. God will raise up foolish things to confound the wise to show that He is able.
Now we’re going to get into our series, and we’re on a series where we’re recalling a missionary trip that General Jim and I took at the command of God many years ago, whereby we saw God do many miracles, we saw God open many doors, we saw God keep us in His safety, keep us in His peace in many circumstances where it seemed impossible, our God made the way. Now we were foolish things, and still are in the sense that we choose to follow God and believe God that He is able!
When we trust in our God, we’ll see Him do great and wondrous things for us that He would not do if we were trusting in the arm of flesh. “Churchianity” teaches dependency upon the arm of flesh. It does not teach dependency upon God. And we learned this lesson very well when we took this journey.
We took that journey, I would say, approximately 25 years ago [now, about 28 years ago]. And when we were on that journey, we learned that if you say that you’re sent by God, people immediately think you’re a nut. And what I mean by a “nut” is they think you are some kind of religious weirdo that’s hearing voices and is not willing to come under the order of man, and is some kind of fool, etc. If you say that the Lord sent you, you’re not accepted. We had more than one missionary ask us, “Who are you with? Who sent you?” In fact, we faced this in every country that we went through where we met up with other missionaries or we met up with churches. They would always want to know, “Who sent you? Who are you with?” And when you say, “Jesus,” immediately you are despised. It says, “He came unto His own, but His own received Him not. If another will come in his name, him they will receive.” So, if you say you come with so-and-so, okay, you’re accepted. If you say you come with this church out of Indiana, or you come with this missionary society, or with this alliance, or whatever, you’re accepted. If you say you come with Jesus, you’re rejected. And every place that we went, the Lord had something to prove to the so-called Christians.
Now there was one instance where we landed in a city, and all the missionaries there were in a big quibble because the government had gotten strict on the missionaries for some reason (you know, the devils in that area rose up). The government had gotten strict on the missionaries and the missionaries were only able to get something like three-month visas. So the missionaries would go down there and in three months they would have to go through all the hassle to renew their paperwork and get another visa, and back and forth and back and forth. And for some of them who weren’t stationed in the city, that was quite a disruptive affair, because they would have to go through a big ordeal to get into the city, to go through the paperwork, and then have the possibility that their visa would be rejected.
Of course these missionaries were all talking about the difficulty of the visas, and they told us, “Well, you better get a visa just to pass through, because they’re so strict now, they’ll never give you any time to stay here.” Well they (the missionaries) didn’t want us to stay there because we were sent by Jesus.
So we went down to get the visa. Somebody took my husband down there and he turned in all the paperwork. I had it all ready, he turned it in, and lo and behold… WE GOT A VISA FOR SIXTY MONTHS! Okay, sixty months-that’s FIVE YEARS! We really were only passing through. We knew we weren’t supposed to stay there, but the missionaries were afraid we would, and they didn’t want us there because we’d been sent by Jesus. But you know what? God made a fool of them, because they were trusting in the arm of flesh, they were trusting in their missionary societies, they were trusting in their good works, they were trusting in the fact that they were sent by this one or that one or the other one, and they weren’t trusting God. We were foolish things trusting in God. And did you know when you trust in God, people are literally afraid of you? I don’t know why. When you are trusting God, people become afraid of you.
I’ve got people now that are so afraid of me, they’re always threatening me. They’re always harassing and trying to get me to renege, because I trust God. And they think that’s just a horrible thing (that I trust God). And they’ll try all kinds of subtle assaults or even frontal assaults to get me to stop trusting God, and I think, “Well, you’re the one that’s vexed. Why don’t you just believe God and you won’t have that vexation?” But people actually become fearful when you trust the Lord. But you know, God doesn’t want us to trust in the arm of flesh. God wants us to trust in Him and to know that He is able.
So anyway, after we got that visa and it was noised abroad in the missionary community, they were totally and thoroughly disgusted. Why were they disgusted? Because they were the ones who were under the continual harassment, and here we were, these foolish things, these things they would label as “fly-by-nights”, these no-accounts that were trusting Jesus, and we got what they couldn’t get. Why did we get it? Because the Lord wanted to show them who He was with. Did you hear me? I said the Lord wanted to show whom He was with.
Now as I was telling in the last message, we went through a war-torn country down there. It was in civil war and everything was in great upheaval, and the border-crossing was extremely difficult, and many people were losing everything at the crossing, and many people were being arrested and thrown in prison. Many people were being robbed of their material goods, their money, etc. When we got beyond that crossing and we stopped in another city, we were again, by other missionaries, informed of all the calamity that had befallen those who had attempted to make that same border-crossing. Now this is the truth. I told in the last message how God sent us an angel instead of a devil, to search our belongings, and the man let us pass through with the wave of a hand when he found out we had Bibles, instead of going through all of our belongings, searching everything, stealing what he wanted, and you know, taking money from us and bribes and all kinds of things (because they’re great for bribes in those countries-you know, you have to bribe your way through). But of course, we didn’t pay bribes either. We just prayed.
Anyway, when we got to the next city, all the talk was of the border-crossing and what they were putting people through, and how many people had been arrested. These are missionaries and other Christians who had been arrested, thrown in jail, and nobody had heard from them. Some of them had lost all of their belongings, some of them had lost all of their money, and the stories were terrible. And all we could do was marvel at the goodness of our God! And again, God showed to the other missionaries the fools that He was with. Because when they heard that we got through, that our belongings were not rifled, that they were not ransacked, that they were not stolen, that we were not arrested, that we were not molested, but that we got through all of that, again they were confounded, because we didn’t have a big church praying for us, we didn’t have an organization behind us, we didn’t have anybody with us except the Lord.
Did you know that we can get so involved in the works of men that we forget God? And sometimes God will choose the most foolish thing to remind those who are professing that they are His people, “Why don’t you look to me? Why don’t you trust me? Why don’t you believe me?” Now literally, we were not seasoned missionaries, and we were not seasoned at what God had asked us to do. But we were little fools following God. And God was so sweet to honor us again and again and again. And as I said before, we slept out where the robbers and the thieves and the murderers were supposedly stalking every day, and every day and every night, God kept us. He kept us in peace. We used to put the Blood over us as we laid down to sleep and prayed for God to protect us, and we slept peacefully. Truthfully, those countries are full of demonic spirits by the paganism that’s been there for generations, and we were not even tormented in our sleep. God was so good to us to keep us in His perfect peace. And you know, you think, “Well, you’ve got to go to a fancy hotel, or you’ve got to go to this motel to get a good night’s rest.” We got many good night’s rests-right there in the midst of danger, in the midst of our enemies. Praise God!
Now another factor that you face in the situation such as we were in was the procurement of food, because oftentimes there is literally miles and miles and miles where there is no food available. Well, we had packed some food with us, and we were just trusting the Lord to provide. And many times we couldn’t find food that we were used to. But you know what, God will always provide you something, if you are willing to take what He provides.
Now there has been more than one instance when God would say, “Go over there and get what’s there.” And I know we tried a lot of times to stick to eating bread, because it was something that the children would eat without being disturbed by the strangeness of the food. So, many times, if you get into a place, and the Lord says, “That’s the place,” you go buy what is there because you know if you don’t get that, you’re not going to get any more. So oftentimes, we would buy some bread and the bread would have rat hairs, flies, and ants all cooked into the bread. “What did you do?” you ask. “Did you get American and throw it away?” No, you just picked out the visitors, cast them aside, and ate on. Because you know why? God does provide. And I’ve learned from doing, shall we say, “national style” mission work, that you learn to live with what the provision is.
A lot of missionaries, they go to the foreign fields and they’re expecting a $70,000 a year salary. Why? So they could live as Americans in some other place, so they could live as kings and queens and have the peasants or the nationals look at them and think, “Oh, my dear! Oh, my god! Will we ever be this rich?” But you know, the Lord never allowed us to live like that.
I remember in one place that we stopped, we were there and this night the Lord said get this little room because we had so much laundry we had to do, and we couldn’t find a river to do laundry in. So He said, “Do your laundry, and do all of these things because you need the rest for what’s ahead of you.” Well, we didn’t know what was ahead of us, but He did. So we were there, and this young man came around and he was talking to us, and he said, “Where are you from?” And I said, “We’re Americans.” He said, “No, you’re not!” And I said, “Oh yeah, we are. We’re from America. We’re from the United States.” So we bantered back and forth and he kept telling me, “No, you’re not!” And I said, “Why is it that you are saying that?” He said, “Because you are not rich.” And I said, “What makes you think Americans are rich?” He said, “Because Hollywood says so.” So, because they’d seen movies, they thought every American was rich, that every American had a lovely, luxurious vehicle, and every American had dollars to pass out. So when he found out that we weren’t rich, in his mind, we couldn’t be Americans. Now this was coming from a national, but we faced the same thing from other Christians.
In this trip, we found out that many of those that you think are your brothers and sisters in Christ will be the ones who are the most discouraging when it comes to the will of God. Because over and over and over again, we were told that we could not proceed on our journey, that we could not go into the next country, that we could not do the will of God unless we got more money and we got a better vehicle and we got more well-equipped. Well, the Lord told us more than once, “This is the vehicle I’ve given you.” He told us more than once, “The money that you have is the money I’ve provided and it’s not any man that has sent you, but I have sent you.”
You know, it’s crazy that those who oppose the will of God are the ones who call themselves Christians! Did you hear me? THE ONES WHO CALL THEMSELVES CHRISTIANS OPPOSE THE TRUE BELIEVERS! They do, again and again and again. And God magnified that to us, and I know why.
Because He raised us up to be His voice, He raised us up to be a prophetic ministry where we could not look for the friendship of the Babylonians and the acceptance of the same, but we had to stand in the truth of the Lord and what God declared. So God was giving us a good scourging on that journey to let us see, “Don’t look to the Christians, look to me. Don’t look to the Christians because they will end up being your worst enemies. They don’t like the foolish things, they like the proud things.” And in more than one instance, as I said before, when they found out that we were sent by Jesus, we were treated as though we were lunatics, and probably, if they would have had the authority (for they were in foreign countries and they didn’t), indeed, if they would have had the authority, they would have probably had the authorities after us to investigate whether we needed to be locked up for our “mental incapacity”. Now why is it that God’s professing people are so unbelieving?
That’s one thing that God taught us through this-the unbelief of those who professed that they are His. The UNBELIEF. Did you know that many people say, “Oh yes, I’ll follow the Lord,” and they don’t follow the Lord at all! And if you follow the Lord, they literally end up hating you, or they say, “I’m a Christian.” But you know what? They’re a Christian only on their condition, only on their terms. They’re not a true believer because a true believer will follow the Lamb withersoever He leads. Praise God!
So as we were involved in all of this journeying, God was giving us many lessons that would give us the necks of our enemies. Now a lot of times we see ourselves in a defeated state, and yet all the time God is bringing great victory. Because you know, when you move out in obedience unto the Lord, or when you stay put in obedience unto the Lord, or when you obey the command of the King that He gives you, it has far reaching effects. See, so often we think we live unto ourselves. People, we do not live unto ourselves! If God desires to teach us lessons, those lessons are not for ourselves alone, but those lessons are meant to be bread that is dispersed, that is given out to the hungry.
The original calling that God gave us before we went on that journey was, “I have called thee to feed my bread to the hungry, and to take my light to the blind.” Well, you know, before you grind the wheat, you can’t make the bread. You don’t make bread by just dumping a bunch of wheat in a bowl, stirring it with water, and sticking it in the oven. That would be some really interesting bread, and you might end up toothless if you tried to eat it. First the flour has to be ground down. And how does the flour get ground down except to go through the stones? And that is a pressing. If you’ve ever watched a grinder, you’ll understand. We used to have a little grinder and it had stones in there, and that wheat would fly into there, and those stones would be going so fast and so fast, and out would come this powder that was flour. But I used to think to myself when I’d see that wheat go into that thing, “I wonder what that feels like… what that feels like to be ground down like that?” Well, God, in order to make you bread to feed to others, will grind you into powder, grind you into flour so that what you are is nothing anymore.
Did you know that when wheat goes into a grinding mill it loses its identity? It’s just like what we learned about how the kernel falls into the ground and dies and the outer exterior of that kernel of wheat rots away in order that the embryo can come forth and bring forth life. So it is, when God is making us into flour to make into bread to disperse to the nations, that what we are is ground down. And pretty soon we’re just powder, we’re flour to be mixed by God, to be used by God for what God desires. But a lot of people will not go through that process of being ground down, and because of that refusal, they never are really used for the purpose of God.
Did you know there are a lot of people doing religious works, and they are laboring in vain? That was another thing that God showed us along the way. We would stop here, stop there, stop here, stop there … and the Lord would say, “They’re not obeying me. They’re not doing what I’ve called them to do. They’re doing their own works.” He said, “They labor in vain.” You think about that-the hardship that some people go through, the estrangement they endure by having to be in a foreign country, the loneliness, etc.; the normal human emotions they go through… AND THEY LABOR IN VAIN because they are not doing what the Father has ordained.
You know, God literally is very particular about what He wants us to do. And man has taken the reigns away from God and thought, “Well, I can do this, and I can do that. It’s all building up the Kingdom!” No, it’s not building up the Kingdom. It’s building up carnality if it’s not under the ordination of God! It’s a vain work. And did you know, those who are the most frightened when you say Jesus sent you are the ones who are doing vain works? That’s the truth. I don’t know, maybe they just don’t want the eyes of the Lord to see what they’re doing because the minute you say, “Jesus sent me,” they want to throw you in prison, they want to get rid of you, and it’s because the works they are doing are in vain. You know, we need to labor according to the will of the Father.
Before we even took that journey, the Lord took me into deep travailing prayer, and in that He made me put my own life on the altar, my children, my husband everything on the altar-that if He desired to take us through death that we would be willing to be taken. Amen! And so when the Lord did that, He did a deep surrender in my heart, because He spoke to me and He said, “When you have fulfilled the will of the Father, then you are ready to be offered.” Now this is another principle that is very, very important, that when we fulfill the will of the Father then we are ready to be offered back to the Father. That’s exactly what Jesus came to do: He came to fulfill the will of the Father!
Now it wasn’t the Father’s intention that Jesus had some big 25-year ministry, or that Jesus had people that said, “Oh, this is evangelist Jesus,” or that Jesus had a great following, or that Jesus was Mr. Popular and had a T.V. show. Jesus did not come for any of those things, but Jesus came to fulfill the will of His Father. And for every Christian, true Christian, that is their only calling-to fulfill the will of the Father! That’s it! And when you are at peace with that, you do not fear what men can do to you, because you know that you are in the will of God and the fulfillment of the will of the Father will be accomplished because of your surrender; and whether your life be short or whether your life be long, that it is the Father who will be glorified.
Now that may seem like a mouthful, but believe me, because I had made that surrender, it kept me in perfect peace. And I didn’t live in continual fear about what would happen to my children if someone murdered me along the way. And I was really well equipped to walk in the midst of dangerous situations, to walk in the midst of drunken men carrying guns, to walk in the midst of all kinds of perils, simply because I had made that surrender to the will of the Father.
It is so important that we find and fulfill the will of the Father, because that is really the only thing that we are brought forth for. We are not brought forth that we can live a happy life in Jesus or that we can grow prosperous or that we can have people speak well of us and say, “Oh, they’re good Christians!” No, we are not brought forth for that. We are brought forth for God’s will. Amen! And that’s it! Nothing else! I’m not brought forth that I can get a bunch of degrees after my name and have people say, “That’s Dr. Deborah. That’s Dr. Deborah Green and she’s a great theologian. She’s done her dissertation on how to disbelieve God.” No, but I am brought forth for the will of the Father! NOW LISTEN! If we are brought forth in the will of the Father, we will be hated, we will be despised, we will be rejected, we will be persecuted, we will fellowship His sufferings. Why? Because that’s in the will of the Father.
It says that “it pleased the Father to bruise His own Son.” So why do we think that we’re going to just have everybody with their bands welcoming us, “Oh, the Greens are in town! Hurrah! Hurrah! The Greens are in town! Hurrah! Hurrah!” Well, we learned on that journey especially, when the Greens were in town, nobody wanted them around. Rejected of men, accepted of God! And again and again and again, God used us as a witness against those who were highly religious; not because we went in and said, “Ichabod!” but merely by our lives, by the humility state that we were in, by the fact that we were so vulnerable and had no defenses at all, except for the invisible God, who is the best defense of all. But we had nothing in the realm of the arm of flesh that we could rely upon. And again and again and again, God used that as a witness, a testimony against the unbelieving Christians. Why? Because God will choose those foolish things to confound the wise to fulfill His will. Amen!
Now we would think if we would study the life of Jesus, that Jesus would have been a Master Pharisee, a great theologian; or He would have been a King who had great physical power. That’s what the Jews wanted. They wanted a King who would come in and enter Jerusalem with all of these beautiful stallion horses and these chariots and these soldiers all marching in, and they’d say, “This is our conquering King that we’ve waited for all this time. This is our Messiah.” But instead, He was just a lowly, lowly man. Just a man! And not only was He just a man, but He was just a common man. He wasn’t even a high-born man. And He didn’t have any great doctorate degrees behind His name. He was just a simple, obedient messenger, fulfilling the will of the Father.
You know, for too long, Babylon has spread out like a great whorish cancer over the earth and frightened God’s true people and intimidated God’s true people and made them think that if they don’t do this and they don’t do that the way that Babylon says, that they (God’s true people) cannot be the messengers of God. But you know, I can tell you that that good lesson that God gave us 25 [now about 28] years ago, has stayed with us. YOU DON’T NEED THE TRAPPINGS OF THE WHORE TO BE THE MESSENGER OF GOD. What you need is the truth and the will of the Father in your life and the courage to obey the same. Praise God! And even if you lack the courage, if you pray to God, He can give you courage.
I tell you one thing that I have learned in my life: I have learned that God loves the fact that I am weak, that I am feeble, that I am foolish, because then He is made strong. Not that I seek to be a fool, but I mean I am a fool for God. And when we seek the Lord out of that kind of a humility sense, crying out in our neediness, God will always make the way. Because why? Because God is glorified.
We found out something that was a stench in God’s nostrils. All the way through Central America, again and again and again, we ran into a certain denomination, the largest Pentecostal denomination in the world, and it was such a stench to God. They would immediately ask you, “Are you such and such?” You say, “No.” They say, “Well, what are you doing here?” In other words, if you even went to their church and you didn’t have their stamp on you, they wondered, “What are you doing here?” Well, whatever happened to the fellowship of the saints? Whatever happened to God’s people being able to meet together and fellowship together and be taught together, just because they are God’s people?
You find out that in the missions it’s worse than the homefront. You find out that so many people have the “stamp” in them, that if you don’t meet up to their stamp, you are immediately rejected, and you are immediately marked as an enemy, you are marked as a fool, you are marked as someone to stay away from. So we got a good baptism in the rejection of men. And you know, you have a human side that says, “Oh, if only we could just find a little place and stop for a few days where we would be welcome.”
One time we were so hungry for Christian fellowship and to know there were other believers, we went to a church; they stopped us at the door. They said to my husband, “Do you speak in tongues?” My husband said, “Yes.” They said, “Out, OUT!” They wouldn’t even allow us to enter the church. We didn’t go in there speaking in tongues. All we wanted to do was be around other people of God to get strengthened in the Lord. Thank God they turned us away-we would have gotten demonized! Yes, praise God!
But you know, it’s one thing to start out to follow God, it’s another thing to see God lead you into the areas where later on you will have great victory and you will prevail, because God desires to give us the necks of our enemies. Praise God!
