The Lord Has Decreed
September 9, 2004

A few nights ago I lay on my bed crying out to the Lord. Last week I returned from an intensive ministry trip in Asia. During the last few days of the trip, I had started to feel an attack of dizziness coming on me. When I returned home, I was immediately laid out flat on my back for 2 days, with such bad vertigo I literally couldn’t stand up.

Over those days, I had time just to think and evaluate my life. So as I lay praying, I heard a little voice inside of me begin to reason, “You’re just pushing yourself too hard, you can’t keep up this pace.”

“That’s right,” I said out loud to the Lord, “maybe I just need to slow down, rest more, I need to take better care of myself”.

And after some more time in prayer, I fell asleep with this resolve: I would take it easier and rest more. I wouldn’t keep pushing so hard.

A few hours later, I was jolted from my rest by the sound of my 6-year old son crying. By the time I got across the hall to his room, he was sitting up in bed, covered in vomit. We spent the next few hours cleaning him up and settling him down until he could go back to sleep.

As this was happening I felt an anger rising deep within me.

I had been duped.

The “voice of reason” I had been listening to had nothing to do with reason – it was my enemy trying to plant a very subtle lie. And I had bought it, hook, line and sinker. I had decided I would back off, I would rest. But did he back off? No, instead he kept going full force, attacking my son and keeping me up all night anyway.

Right away I felt the Lord began to speak to my spirit. “David,” he said, “this isn’t the time to rest or to pull back. This is the time to rise up. You’re in the middle of a ferocious battle with an enemy who will fight with all his might, because he knows his time is short. And he is hoping he can convince you otherwise.”

“David,“ he continued, “if I have decreed something, who can say no?"

Who Can Speak?
Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Lam 3:37

When the Lord spoke these words to me, immediately I was taken back to a time, over 20 years ago, when He first spoke this verse over a situation in my life.

I was in my last year of medical school in Egypt. Egypt is a Moslem country and all the universities are run by Moslems. So in the university, there is terrible persecution and discrimination against anyone who is a Christian. Christians can never do well in the class – the marks are rigged to ensure that.

Earlier that year, my locker had been raided by school authorities, who found Christian tracts in there. Evangelizing Moslems is against the law in Egypt, so I was brought up before the dean of my school, who was a fanatic Moslem. He looked at me and he said, “David, as long as I am dean, you will never graduate”. As he said this, I felt a boldness of the Lord come on me and I said to him, “If this is the will of the Lord I will accept it. But if not, you cannot stop me from graduating if the Lord has decreed it.”

Throughout the last year of medical studies, we have a series of oral exams which we must pass in order to graduate. And we have the same oral examiner for all the exams. Of course, the dean had ensured that the examiner I was given was a fanatic Moslem, who, no matter what answer I gave, failed me. I had failed the first two exams and now this was a third and final makeup exam. If I failed again, I would not graduate and would have to repeat the course.

Because I knew this course very well, I had decided I would just study the last 3 days to brush up on the subject. But 3 days before the exam I became so ill I could literally not even read. I lay in bed crying out to God to help me. In the midst of this, one of my Christian leaders came to me and told me the Lord had given him a verse for me. It was the verse from Lamentations.

The night before my exam, I was still laying in bed too sick and weak to study. But I had a visit from a classmate, one of my very close friends. He had just finished his exam that day and proceeded to explain in detail to me the difficult case he had been given. It was a rare disease, that we were not accustomed to seeing. I listened with interest as he shared.

The next day I went into the exam. I was assigned a case (patient) who I went to examine. To my surprise, as I began looking at the charts I suddenly realized that this was the very case my friend had just described to me in such detail the night before! I knew all the right answers. Then my examiner approached. Suddenly, in this examining room full of patients, professors and students, he began to scream – “No, no, it’s not possible!!” I was shocked. “How could this happen?” he said, "you are not on my examination list!”

Somehow a “mix-up” had happened and I had been assigned to an outside examiner, a professor from another medical school, who knew nothing about me or my history. He examined me, and was so shocked that I could answer all the questions correctly that he even showed me my mark, although it was supposed to be a secret. He had given me full marks!

I moved on to the last two stages of the test, which involved examining disease specimens in jars. I went to the first jar and I knew very well what this was. I answered correctly and moved on to the final stage.

When I got to the final specimen though, I got confused. I was in a completely different part of the room and yet, the specimen sitting in front of me was the exact same one I had just looked at! I knew this was impossible because the examiners made sure that we were tested on two different specimens. What made it even more shocking was I knew for a fact that we only had one jar of this particular specimen in the whole school!

I was so confused I just sat and stared at the jar. The examiner asked me my diagnosis, but I didn’t know what to say. Finally, with much hesitation I answered. “That’s right my son,” he said, “You got it right. Don’t worry. You did very well; I am going to give you a good mark”.

As I hurried out of the examination room I went immediately to the man who takes care of all the lab specimens. “How many of these specimens do we have?” I asked him.

“One,” he answered.

“Well I was just examined on the same specimen twice in different places”.

“David, he said, “you must be mistaken. We only have one of those specimens”.

I left the school still trying to understand what had just happened. Did I dream all of this? Was I hallucinating? Did this really just happen?

And suddenly a clear voice came from my spirit, interrupting my thoughts.

“I moved the jar.”

"What?" I was stunned by what I had just heard.

“David,” the Lord continued, “when I decree a thing, who can stop it? I told you that you will graduate. And no man can stop what I have decreed.”

A few weeks later, I graduated from medical school.

The Battle is in our Minds and our Mouths
I believe the Lord brought this story back to my mind at this time because it is a reflection of the season into which we have entered. God desires to restore His government, the government that we saw operating in the early church of Acts 2, into His church. And He is taking the Canadian church on a journey to come to this kind of authority, the authority that will address principalities and powers and see them broken over a nation. But the key to that level of corporate authority is corporate unity. God is looking for a seed of that John 17 unity and that's why He is bringing us to this covenantal unity between French-speaking and English- speaking Canadians (of all ethnos). This is His strategy that we call the Wedding.

I believe that now we have entered into a season of deep contending and pushing for the fullness of this unity to take place. The battle is intensifying and I believe it will get stronger and stronger as we get closer to the wedding.

I see that there are two primary tactics the enemy is focusing on at this time.

1. A spirit of division – The enemy will do anything he can to sow division between people – to separate people. I'm not speaking here only of offense but even subtle differences of viewpoints. The enemy wants to keep us from coming into the one accord - the one mind, one heart, one passion.
2. Clouding the vision. The enemy wants to attack our clarity and sharpness in the spirit. He wants to bring clouds of confusion around our minds because he knows that when we don’t see a vision clearly, it is impossible for us to commit and lay down our lives for it. I believe part of this tactic as well is to busy us with many of our own issues and agendas, preventing us from realizing that we are losing His focus on His priorities.

This warfare is not about you or anything you have done. It is something that has been unleashed in the air because of the season of contending into which we have entered in Canada. You need to not look at yourself or the people around you, but focus on the vision of what the Lord wants to do in Canada. The day will come when the church in Canada will issue a decree from the mouth of the Lord to the principalities and powers over this nation. Like Moses said to Pharaoh, we will speak to this principality that has been binding the First Nations peoples and holding them captive in death and destruction and we will say “Let my people go to worship Him!” And because of the authority of the Lord backing it up, our enemy will have no choice.

This is a dirty, bloody war. Our enemy is pulling out all the stops. If you give him an inch, he will take a mile. The battlefield now is in your mind and your mouth. The enemy will attempt to abort the strategy of the Lord by any means possible. He will come to you with subtle lies, just like he did with me – “oh you’re working too hard, it’s time to slow down”. Or he might use attacks on your finances, your emotions, your health, your family in attempt to discourage or distract you. What he is looking for you to do is come into agreement with his tactics and stop fighting.

But no matter what you cannot stop.

It’s Time to Prophesy Life!
Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.'" Ezek 37:4-6

It’s time for us to prophesy life, to decree what the Lord is decreeing over Canada at this time. To help in this, we have compiled over one hour of prophetic words, prayers, exhortations and messages that came while the Cluster and Shield met together at the end of the Homecoming gathering to seek the Lord as to his next steps. From this meeting the vision for the Rise Up gathering was birthed. I want to encourage you to listen to these words, read these words and decree what the Lord is decreeing over our nation at this time. To access these audio files and written transcripts please go to http://www.watchmen.org/gathering/riseup

And let us continue to contend with all our hearts for the full release of all God is wanting to birth in unity in the Canadian church in this hour. What God has decreed will happen - the Lord will save by many or by few. (1 Samuel 14:6). May we please His heart by the many who will walk with Him in this hour to see His purposes for corporate unity in the Canadian church fulfilled.