Stay Positive 111- How to Stay Strong in Challenging Times Part 2

0:00 You pray it and he can answer it. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. God will put the prayer in your heart to pray so that he can answer it. Goes into the hearts of the people, doesn't return void, it produces results. Be strong, create stability in your heart and in your life, not only that, but in your family, in your home, in your church and in your ministry. Now practically speaking, and I think sometimes as leaders, we need to be practical. How do we put the word of God first so that we can stay strong? Number one, read the Bible.

0:43 Okay, read the word of God. A Bible app, or I strongly, to be honest, I know this might be old fashioned, I strongly encourage you to have a Bible, to have a physical paper Bible because we're always on our phones. How about make it a devotional time with God and we open up our Bible and we read one of the books of the New Testament and then underline it and make it real and make it personal. So how do we put the word of God first in our lives? Number one, read your Bible. So Margie, I read my Bible and I just don't understand what it says or what it means.

1:25 Well, I have a remedy for that because in the word of God, there's always the answer. You start praying Ephesians chapter one verse 18 over your life. It's a simple prayer. Pray that the eyes of your heart, the eyes of your understanding would be opened and enlightened. Pray that prayer every time you open up your Bible to read the scriptures. Pray that prayer for yourself. It's Ephesians chapter one verse 18 and you will see that the eyes of your spirit, the eyes of your heart will begin to be opened and enlightened and you'll be able to understand the scriptures like you've never understood them before or it would seem kind of like lifeless, it's going to come alive because the Holy Spirit is the great illuminator and when you begin to pray, it opens up the door for God to work and so the Holy Spirit gets active and engaged and he begins to open up the eyes of your heart.

2:23 Number two, how do you put the word of God first? Study the Bible. So you have 15 minutes out of your day, take those 15 minutes, get a great devotional book and study the word of God or just get a commentary. Take one scripture and just meditate on it and think about it and study it and study it. What happens when you do that is it starts to build something inside of you because what we're doing is we're building something on the inside of you. So you build the word of God within you and it causes you to stay strong. Number three, we already said it but I'll say it again, meditate on it.

3:05 Meditate on the word of God, Joshua 1,8. God told Joshua, listen, you want to be successful, I'm going to give you a key and he said to Joshua, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth but meditate on it, how often? Once a week, meditate on it day and night, day and night. What I would encourage you to do is take one scripture. Take a scripture for example that meets your need, your need for the day or your need for the week. For example, let's say you're anxious, you have a problem with anxiety. Well, find a scripture that meets your need.

3:46 So the Bible says, don't be anxious for anything but by everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your heart and mind through Jesus. So if you have anxiety, take that one scripture and meditate on it. What does it mean to meditate on it? It means to think about it, to ponder it, to think on it, visualize it. Visualize yourself allowing the peace of God to rule in your heart. Visualize yourself doing what the Bible says. I think it's Isaiah 26, three.

4:27 Visualize yourself being still and knowing if he is God. If God said be still and know that I am God, well then he means what he says. What he wants us to do is he wants us to come into agreement what he already said about us because it's not his will that you be anxious or worried or fretful about anything. He wants his peace to rule as an umpire in your heart. So when you begin to meditate on these scriptures, meditate on the word of God that meets your need, it's going to change you and change your life. The word of God will change your life. How else do we put the word of God in us? Listen to it online.

5:08 What I do is, and I sometimes just put scripture tapes in and I listen to it while I'm doing dishes or I listen to it while I'm walking my dog or I listen to it when I'm driving in my car. I listen to it sometimes, not even necessarily with my head, but that scripture, that word is going into my heart. It's not returning void. That which is flesh is flesh. That which is spirit is spirit. That spirit word, that seed is going into my heart whether I comprehend it or not, whether I'm listening wholeheartedly or not. The word is spirit and life and it's going into my heart. It doesn't return void. And then when I need something in a circumstance that I come up against, the Holy Spirit will draw it out and bring all things to your remembrance.

5:54 You can listen to scriptures on tape. I produce multiple scriptures on subjects. Freedom from anxiety, worry and fear, the heart of the Father, prayer scriptures, so on and so on and so forth. And I just listen to them over and over and over and over again and it produces faith in my life, okay? How else are we to be able to stand strong in these challenging times? I would encourage you to cultivate an active and a simple prayer life. The Bible says in Psalm 16, 11, in His presence is fullness of joy.

6:35 And the Bible says in Nehemiah 8, 10, that the joy of the Lord is our strength. How are we gonna stay strong in these challenging times? We need to spend time in the presence of God, cultivate an active and simple prayer life. There's different ways we could do it. That we could do it in a quiet place, Matthew 6, 6. If you wanna just find a room in your apartment or in your house and just go into like that little quiet area and cultivate some time with God in your prayer life, then do that. You can also pray, this is one of my favorite things to do. You can also pray in your bed.

7:16 I told my son recently, cause he was asking me some questions about prayer and he's like, I'm just work so much and I have so much going on in my life. I just, it's just hard for me sometimes to just stop, go in a quiet room and focus my attention on Jesus. I said, Jonathan, I said, you can lay in your bed at night or you can lay in your bed in the morning or even if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can lay in your bed and you can spend time with Jesus. You see my friends, you are the house of prayer. You don't have to go to a building, you don't have to go to a spot. You are the house of prayer.

7:56 God lives on the inside of you. So you can cultivate an inward prayer life without even having an outward posture of being in a particular place. So I would encourage you, this is one of my favorite things to do, lay in your bed and cultivate your prayer life. Here's a scripture, it says here, in Psalm 63, six, on my bed, I remember you. I think of you through all the watches of the night. So when you're laying in your bed, just meditate on the Lord and pray to him and talk to him. How else can we develop a simple prayer life? Pray as you go, just pray as you go.

8:37 First Thessalonians 517 says, pray without ceasing and praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watching there onto. But people say, well, how do you pray all the time and pray always? Well, you could do it by just thinking about God, talking to God about everything. I talk to God about everything. If he said to me, and if he says to you, I will never leave you, I will never forsake you, well then I'm just gonna act like he's always with me, he's always here with me, he walks with me on the temple of the Holy Ghost, God dwells in me, he walks with me. He's not only available when I'm in my prayer closet or in a prayer room, no, he's with me always.

9:19 He said, I will be with you always, even unto the ends of this age. So I like to call it, pray as you go. So if I walk into the grocery store, I just be like, Lord, you know, what do you think about, da da da da da da da da, I just talk to him like I would talk to a friend. You know, the Bible says, God, Moses knew God face to face and talked to him as a man speaks to his friend. You could develop intimacy and friendship with Jesus by just praying as you go, talking to him. I made a joke recently on one of my Facebook posts about, you know, now we have to wear all these masks and it's so funny because I was in Target the other day and I was trying to find something for my backyard because you know, we're all doing gardening right now and planting things and I wanted to get some things for my garden and my chair.

10:05 And I was literally talking to myself out loud under my mask and I was talking to God. And I thought, you know, this is the funniest thing. And you know, normally I just talk to him in my heart so people don't think I'm nuts. But I was just literally talking out loud in my mask and I thought it was funny because nobody could see that my mouth was moving, amen. But you could pray as you go. Don't put God in a box and get condemned because you don't spend an hour in a prayer or you don't go into a closet or into a room. You can pray as you go. Let's talk about worship-based prayer. This is how I fight my battles.

10:45 I have learned something during this whole challenging time that you and I are living in right now. I have learned that the battle is the Lord. We interceded, we spoke the word, we've been believing God, we've been cursing the virus, we've been taking authority. And one day, because I'm on multiple prayer calls, multiple things online, Zoom calls, prayer calls, I have my own team, we pray, we have prayer calls, so on and so forth. One day the Lord just said to me, you just start worshiping me. You have bound, you have loosed, you have believed, you have stood, you have decreed and you have declared. He says, I want you to worship me. Spend time worshiping me with clean hands and a pure heart.

11:27 And I've just been letting him fight my battle. This is how I fight my battles. There's a really good song, if you've never heard, it's called Surrounded. And the other part of that title is, this is how I fight my battles. Like the song said that our brother and sister were playing earlier, this is how I fight my battles. Worship God in spirit and in truth. When you worship God, it takes your eyes, your spirit eyes, off of the circumstances and the challenging times, and it puts your eyes back on him who alone is worthy. Him who conquered hell, death and the grave. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. You're looking unto him, the author and the finisher and the perfecter of your faith, and you're looking away from all the circumstances.

12:14 And praise, listen, steals the avenger. Praise steals the avenger. Not only that, but prayer, I mean praise and worship is the voice of faith. So when you're worshiping him and you're praising him and you're thanking him, you have that positive flow going up before the throne of grace, Hebrews 416. He hears from heaven and he pours out more grace on you for you to be able to stand strong in these challenging times. This is one major lesson that I've learned and it's prayer and worship. Worshiping him in spirit and in truth. My daughter, not recently, but she had a situation with her eye when she was in college.

12:59 Well I'm not gonna get into the whole detail because I wanna close soon. But she had a cornea ulcer from a contact that was stuck in her eye. Believe it or not, she even went to a hospital and they didn't even see the contact in her eye. Long story short, when I got there and got to her college dorm, took her to a specialist and the doctor said he had never seen such an ulcerated cornea in his practice. He was very serious, she could have lost her sight. We went to an eye specialist for the cornea and I had to literally, for two days, put drops in her eyes every 15 minutes for two straight days. What does that mean?

13:39 That means we do what we do in the natural. Got it? We do what we do in the natural. We're gonna put those drops in her eyes every 15 minutes for two days, two and a half days. And we'd have to set my phone, set the alarm and we kept waking up and waking up to put those drops in her and we'd go back to sleep. And not only that, I not only did something in the natural, listen my friends, and this is what God is wanting you to understand. I did something in the spirit. This is how I fight my battles. I thank you Lord Jesus. I laid hands on her like you said in your word and I thank you that you lay hands on the sick and they recover and I'm standing on your word. And I got that song by Chris Tomlum, God's Great Dance Floor.

14:25 And in the morning when we would get up during the day, I kept playing that song, God's Great Dance Floor. This is how I fight my battles, how about you? I'm not the healer, Jesus is the healer, right? So when she'd be in the shower, she didn't know it at the time, but I'd put that song on and I'd dance all around the hotel room. Thank you Lord God, Great Dance Floor, I was worshiping him, thanking him for her healing, thanking that by the stripes you bore in your body, Lord she's healed. Long story short, when she went back to the cornea specialist, her eye was 100% completely healed. How do you fight your battles in these challenging times?

15:05 My friends, lift up the hands that hang down, strengthen the feeble knees, begin to worship him, begin to look unto him and look away from the distractions. The Bible says in Psalms 34 and 19, many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord what? Delivers him out of them all. If he said it, he will do it, just believe it and worship him for the answer. Lastly, how do we stay strong in challenging times? We have to, listen we have to, and I practice what I preach. We have to stay filled with the Spirit. This Pentecost Sunday, we have to stay filled with the Spirit.

15:47 Ephesians 5, 18 through 20 says, do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. The Greek for that particular part of the verse, filled, means be being filled with the Spirit. It's not just a one time thing. Stay filled with the Spirit. How do you stay filled with the Spirit? Speaking to yourselves like the scripture says, in Psalms and hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing and making melody in your, where? In your heart, there's the inward life again.

16:28 In your heart to the Lord. So the way you stay strong in these challenging times, lastly is to stay filled with the Spirit. By inwardly singing a song, singing a hymn. That's why it's important that you watch your ear gate, what you put into your heart. Because like the word, it doesn't return void. So if you listen to worship songs, and hill song songs, Jesus culture songs, and some of these other bands that are rising up in this day and it's all, you listen to those songs, when you need it, that song, listen, is gonna stir on the inside of you, and you'll find that unconsciously, your spirit is communing with God, even though your head may be thinking about someone else, or something else.

17:11 How many of you ever experienced that? You look on the inside, you go, wow, I've had that song going off in me for about two hours, the same song, over and over and over. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. That is the Holy Spirit working in you, keeping your relationship with Jesus fresh, and helping you to stay strong, and be filled with the Spirit. Stay filled with the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 14, four. He who speaks in an unknown tongue edifies himself. You stay filled with the Spirit by speaking in tongues and stirring up your prayer language. Some of you have that, some of you don't. If you have not released your prayer language, we can pray for you today for you to receive your prayer language.

17:57 I'm gonna be honest with you. I've had some very challenging times in my life, and what I've learned is, I am a spirit, I have a soul, Margie has a soul, Margie is a person, Margie is female. I have a soul and I live in a body, okay? Sometimes my soul is grieved, my soul is upset, my soul is fighting battles, my soul is hurt, my soul is upset, my soul is confused, but I've learned in the times when I'm confused, I've learned in the times when I'm weak that there is someone on the inside of me that is gonna take a hold of my affliction and my infirmity and my inability to make myself strong.

18:38 And when I begin to pray in the Holy Ghost, because that's what I do, because I don't know what else to do. I just begin to walk the floors, I just begin to pray in the Holy Ghost and pray in the Spirit, and the more I pray in the Holy Ghost, the more I notice that something on the inside is charging up, rising up, getting strong, and being strengthened with might. By what? By the Holy Spirit. Where? In my head? No, in my inner man. And then I just get stronger and stronger and stronger. And the word of God confirms that because the Bible says, he that speaks in an unknown tongue edifies himself. Nobody can edify you but you. You're responsible for your own walk with God.

19:20 That word edify means to build yourself up, to charge yourself up like a battery. And you know how it works. These phones, I gotta tell ya, when you first get them, they work really well. The batteries stay charged for a long period of time. But the more you use your phone, oh, that's my dog by the way, that's my screen saver. You know I had to say something about him, of course. But the more you use the phone, the longer this phone is around, the more you talk on it, the more you text on it, the battery just gets lower and lower and lower, and then you gotta plug that phone in. You gotta charge that phone up. It's on one bar and then you put that plug into the wall.

20:03 You plug it into the power source with that plug. And then the more you plug it in and keep it plugged in, the more the bars go from one to two to three to four. God wants you at bar level number four. He wants you to be strong in these challenging times. And you have everything that you need to stay strong. And one of the greatest gifts we ever received was the baptism of the Holy Spirit according to Acts chapter two, verse one through four, with evidence of speaking with other tongues. Jesus talked so much about the Holy Spirit and promised that he wouldn't leave us orphans and promised us that he wouldn't leave us alone.

20:44 And he said, listen, get ready, get ready, get ready. The Holy Ghost is coming. I have a gift for you. I'm gonna bring the Holy Ghost and he's gonna teach you, guide you to be everything that I've been to you. And we find in the scripture that when the Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, the very first thing that happened in that upper room, that rushing mighty wind came into that room and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Then the very first thing that happened after Jesus talked so much about the Holy Ghost, he didn't say anything about tongues. He talked about the person of the Holy Spirit coming. But when it happened and the Holy Ghost came into the earth and at the birth of the church age, the very first thing that happened, you read your Bible, find out for yourself if this is in the word of God.

21:33 The very first thing that happened is they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and what? They spoke with other tongues. So my friends, if you need more strength, I want to encourage you, if you're not ready today, find out what the Bible says about the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking with other tongues. Personally, I have many teachings on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and why tongues. I do line upon line upon line upon line and make it very clear on my YouTube channel. So if you want to know more about it, check out my YouTube channel. I think if you just Google Margie Florent YouTube, it comes up.

22:15 But the Bible says these signs will follow them that believe. They will speak with new tongues. So are you a believer? Have you ever been baptized in the Holy Spirit? You know, the apostles came to a group of believers and asked, I don't know the exact verse. And he said to this group of believers, he said, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believed? They were believers. They knew Jesus. Are you listening? But they probably sensed, like I sensed when I first got there, that there was something missing. There was something more. And then they said to him, well, we've not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. And then the Bible says they laid hands on him and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

22:59 So before we close and before we close this time together, I just want to pray for you. We had a meeting like this. I did a Facebook Live a few weeks ago. We had so many people baptized in the Holy Spirit just in their own homes. OK, you don't have to go to church to be filled with the Holy Ghost. OK, but if you would like to be filled with the Holy Ghost, why don't we just pull back a little bit and just get quiet? And I'm going to lead you in a prayer. Are you ready? OK, thank you, Jesus. Say this with me. Say, Heavenly Father, I come to you today, Pentecost Sunday.

23:39 And I desire to be close to you. Jesus Christ, I ask you to come into my heart. I ask you to make yourself real to me like never before. And today, I make a decision to go in a deeper level of commitment with you. Jesus Christ, I make you my Lord. And now, Jesus, I've heard about this baptism in the Holy Spirit.

24:24 I am asking you to baptize me today on Pentecost Sunday with the Holy Spirit, just like in the Book of Acts when you were poured out. Holy Spirit, come upon me. Holy Spirit, rise up in me. And I will, I will begin to speak with other tongues as you give me utterance. OK, now just lift your hands and just yield to Him. O rabah shakateh dalabah so rabah hasheke dalabah hasah.

25:05 That's it, that's it. Just yield to Him. The Bible says, He that speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not unto men, but unto God. God hears you. He understands you. Elabah shokon dalabah hasikid dalabah shon delebehase. Asa sattoramah hasikid delebehasekeh. Father, I also thank you for my listeners. And those that are listening live, those that are listening in the replay, I pray for them, Lord, that the eyes of their understanding would be opened and enlightened, that you would reveal yourself in a deeper way and in a deeper measure in their hearts and in their lives in Jesus' name.

25:48 Amen. God bless you and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's podcast. It has been such a joy sharing this time with you. For more inspiration and resources on today's topic, please visit our website at margiefleuron.org.