The most wonderful time of the year; Christmas Series Part 1
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year
With the kids jingle belling
And everyone telling you ‘Be of good cheer’
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”
By Edward Pola and George Wyle, © 1963.
Nothing captures the mood of the season quite like this song made famous by Andy Williams. There’s just something about the wonder and anticipation of Christmas that hangs in the atmosphere, draped across homes, offices, schools, and stores like garlands bedecked with twinkling lights. Even though several poor souls have attempted to Grinch the season away from the rest of us with a twisted form of righteous indignation and lawsuits, nevertheless, this is still the most wonderful time of the year. And the majority of us know it—the child within each one of us can’t help but hope for snow as we gaze out at the red and green, silver and gold fantasy of ornaments and lights, trees and glitter, sparkling on every corner of every street.
Many hearts open a bit wider at this time of year. Many—even those who don’t know the Lord intimately—hope for the promised cheer of the season to wrap them like a blanket and transport their heavy hearts to a brighter, kinder, more welcoming place. They’ve been disappointed so many times before; maybe this year will be different. Maybe this year they’ll be able to capture the joy and the essence of peace on earth, good will toward men. Maybe, just maybe…
My prayer is that you and I will be empowered by the One who is the reason for the season, not only to enjoy His presence and peace ourselves this season, but to be carriers of the message of His warm kindness and life-changing cheer to others as well. Despite the attacks against Christmas, I believe that the majority of those who do not know Jesus as Lord recognize that there’s something very special about this Man who was born to a virgin, wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed in a manger, and visited by shepherds and wise men.
I believe most people long for the Christmas story to be true; you need not be intimidated by the fact that you know it is true. Agree with me that both you and I will be directed by the Spirit of God throughout the season as we go about our daily lives. Pray that each of us have divine appointments ornamenting our days as we carry the message of the cheer of Christ in our hearts, eyes, smiles, and words.
And as you carry His presence with you like a light shining in a dark place, He will most certainly direct your steps.
Be of good cheer during this most wonderful time of the year!
Dorothy
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. Isaiah 9:2
© 2015, Dorothy Frick
Read MoreBarbara’s got all the blankets
It’s Thanksgiving time again, and like many of you, my mind goes back to the kinder, gentler times of my childhood.
Our family usually traveled to Oklahoma City to spend the holiday weekend with Grandma and Granddaddy Bollinger. They had a small three bedroom house, so my sister and I shared Grandma’s double bed while she sacrificed and slept in Granddaddy’s bedroom with him.
Well, despite the quieter days of the early 60’s, when Barbara and I had to share a bed…WW3 was soon to follow.
That first night we arrived, the night before Thanksgiving, Mom tucked Barbara and me into bed and then joined the other grown ups as they sat and talked and finished up all of the Thanksgiving preparations.
Let me tell you. Barbara is four and a half years older than me, and I was extremely suspicious of her privileged position as the oldest girl in the family. She was vicious in my opinion, as she was known at times to pin me down and tickle me until I nearly wet my pants…OK…I did wet my pants. She was a true foe of the highest order.
On the other hand, she was equally leery of me. I was the baby of the family, and she knew I was the privileged one. To her way of thinking, I got away with murder as I screamed “MOMMMMMY!!!” every time she even looked at me.
Yes, war was brewing as soon as Mom turned out the light…
“Give me the cover!” I cried as I grabbed hold of a wad of blanket.
“Let go! It’s MINE!” she demanded as she pulled the cover back.
Soon we were kicking, yanking, screaming like little wildcats, pulling blankets in every direction. Flashes of static electricity snapped like enemy fire in the darkened Oklahoma bedroom…
The noise of our warfare soon reached the kitchen where Mom and Grandma were taking the last pie out of the oven.
And then we heard it…the unmistakable sound of Mom’s feet, walking across the living room, into the hall, her hand upon the doorknob…
“GIRLS!” she whisper-yelled. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING???!!”
I felt vindicated. I, the victim, the baby, and the innocent recipient of the oppression of that older person of privilege–my enemy and my sister, who lay over there in this very bed–I would revel in the justice only Mom and Dad could meet upon her.
I yelped out in my very best “poor-me-I’m-the-victim” voice, “BARBARA’S GOT ALL THE BLANKETS!!!!!!!”
As Mom cracked the door open and switched on the light…there, before God and all the turkeys of a million Thanksgiving dinners, lay the truth….
Barbara, entirely exposed to the cold in her little cotton flannel pajamas, lay shivering….and I, yes I, the victim of her privilege, had the entire pile of blankets heaped up on me and spilling over my side of the bed to the floor.
I may or may not have gotten spanked…but as I crawled back under the re-spread blankets, a new thought began forming in my little girl brain that late Thanksgiving eve: Maybe I’m not ALWAYS the victim here. And MAYBE…just MAYBE…my supposed people of privilege don’t ALWAYS have the advantage…
And if you ever watch the news with me nowadays, you may hear me whisper this little saying under my breath as I watch the conflict of our time: “Barbara’s got all the blankets.”
Happy Thanksgiving,
Dorothy
Read MoreFresh water
Every morning I call out to my three cats, “Who wants to go potty?” and like clockwork, all three without hesitation trot down to the basement where I keep the litter pans. I do this because one—Gideon—was having issues with not using the litter box. The Lord directed me to make litter pan time as pleasurable as possible, and for cats, that means not only clean litter, but also treats, strokes, and congratulatory baby talk for proper litter pan use. Don’t knock it; it works for us.
I also keep a water bowl downstairs, up on a counter. After litter pan scooping and treats, I call out, “Who wants fresh water?” and rinse out the bowl and refill it. This is a big deal for Gideon who likes to drink the water off of his paw, similar to the way three hundred men did who were chosen for his namesake’s army, the biblical Gideon.
One morning Cammie beat him to the water bowl. I must have been extra groggy, because evidently I didn’t announce the fresh water for his highness, Gideon. Cammie daintily lapped up some of it, and then Gideon noticed that she was in “his spot”. Shoving her out of the way, he sat. And sat. And sat. He looked at me as if to say, “Have you lost your mind, woman? Where’s my fresh water?”
Have you ever tried reasoning with an animal? I tried; it didn’t work. There Gideon sat, on his throne, staring at me, waiting for his fresh water.
Grumbling, I poured the perfectly fresh water into the sink and made a show of refilling the bowl. Gideon was meowing up a storm as I set Fresh Water 2.0 in front of him. Happy, he pawed it and drank his fill.
And then as soon as Gideon shut up, the Lord began talking. He showed me that even though the cat had already been given fresh water, he didn’t believe it. Gideon expected his water to arrive a certain way every day or he’d have nothing to do with it; he expected a showy presentation.
We believers have a tendency to be like Gideon if we aren’t careful. We have fresh, life-giving water available 24/7 in the pages of God’s Word, ready for the drinking, and yet so often we search here and there to “get a fresh word”. Like Gideon, we want to sit at the water bowl, refusing to drink until we get some showy presentation. Instead of majoring on drinking from the Word ourselves, we want to know “But what does Brother or Sister So and So have to say about it?” In other words, we wait for someone else to serve our water; all too often we don’t trust that the Bible water we get on our own is “fresh”.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s imperative to join regularly in fellowship with others to hear the Word. But what about in between these “pit stops”?
If the only water you drink is from another person’s hand once or twice a week, be careful—you’re in grave danger of dehydration. And by the same token, if your primary source for spiritual edification is random “words” from various people, you may not be getting true water at all! There is only one “sure word of prophecy” and that’s the Bible, sitting right there on your table or desk. Don’t be afraid to open it on your own and drink long and often. It’s guaranteed fresh, 24/7.
It’s sort of cute when Gideon the cat expects a showy presentation before he’s willing to drink his fresh water. But for grown Christians to search for a “word from God” everywhere except their own Bible? That’s not cute. That’s dangerous.
Dorothy
So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. 2 Peter 1:19
Read MoreA Word from God Received June 29, 2008
The following revelation came to me on June 29, 2008, while meditating on Scriptures as I was drinking coffee at Panera Bread Company after my church’s 9:30 Sunday morning service. (You can hear from God anytime, anywhere.)
“I’ve made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with two edges. You’ll thresh the mountains and beat them small and shall make the hills as chaff.” Isaiah 41:15 (my paraphrase)
“For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
As I studied that morning, I was picturing that one job of the Isaiah 41 threshing sledge is to separate wheat from chaff. The word of God, which is also two-edged and of the sharpest substance known to man, is likewise used to separate, this time to the division of soul and spirit. This is the sword of the Spirit we are to wield as we embark on our new, sharp threshing sledge with two edges.
At this point of my study, the revelation began.
As we yield to the Spirit of God and abide in the Word, we will be directed in the job of threshing mountains of opposition and intimidation and “beat them small”. We will do this under the direction of the Lord and will possibly be unaware of the effectiveness of our act of threshing, beating, and pulverizing. Telltale signs will emerge, however; strongholds will start to lose both their “strong” and their “hold”; institutions and systems set up to mock, block, or defrock justice, just laws, and the righteous will start to totter, falter, and fail, and men and women who have exalted themselves and agendas not of God will be challenged, exposed, and will flounder and fall, seemingly out of nowhere.
Those who know their God will find their places and their parts in this new economy. To the world, the bulk of the vibrant, vivid vigil of victory energizing these folks will be unseen as believers take their stand in this hour.
God will move in churches and in meetings and will visit these gatherings in sweet and unusual manifestation.
However, He will also move in the pastor’s quiet study; He will move on the young mother as she returns from seeing her children off at the bus stop; He will move on the grocer and the shelver, the checker and the bagger. He will move on the gristly retiree as he sits on his porch with his coffee. He will move on the rush hour commuter as he breathes a quiet prayer. He will move on the working woman pumping gas into her car. Wherever humanity lifts its face or bows its knee in humble faith, God will move.
We—believing humans—are far more potent and powerful than we have ever imagined.
“In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.” Psalm 5:3
In the midst of an orchestrated assault on the values and advantages of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, men and women of worldly privilege and power plot and plan to gain leverage over those they deem small-minded, narrow-minded, and shallow. Webs are woven, snares are set, and global corralling of capital and thought is being brokered. Wonderful inroads, to their way of thinking, are being paved into the lives, livelihoods, and loves of this current generation. The confident expectation emitted by these celebrity candidates and their power-partners seems to sweep through the nation like a flood with one aim: the capitulation and conformity of the American Dream to a new paradigm, their paradigm, “Land of our Greed, Home of our Slaves”.
Climbing in confidence, conquest, and coverage, the elite prepare for their ascendency and establishment upon the summit of our time. The bases are covered, they think; the stage is set. Those who offer resistance are growing weary, losing support, and fading in appeal. With time, even these voices will be silenced and forgotten, so they believe.
However, God has reserved for Himself a weapon, a secret weapon—hidden, trained, held in the wings for such a time as this.
“In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch.” Psalm 5:3
In the morning.
In the quiet, private personal time of the day, men and women of faith have met with their Father, the Lover of their souls, for years. Quietly, faithfully, nearly daily, verses of scripture here, whispers of prayer there, the army of God has seemed scattered, disjointed, incongruous, ineffective in the eyes of the world. Yet one Master, one General, has trained them all, daily, morning by morning (or evening by evening), verse by verse, prayer by prayer…the small and the great, the mighty and the weak. And such training, although intensely personal and private, has been coordinated and orchestrated from above, from the Headquarters of the Ancient of Days Himself. And the time has arrived and now is that a corporate anointing will rest upon the many in their individual quiet times, bringing forth a multitude of pieces to the puzzle to unite the Body of Christ as never before in binding and loosing, confronting and confounding, exposing and expelling the designs of the wicked. Impenetrable plans will be toppled and forces of darkness will be held back and stymied in the fulfillment of their schemes.
In other lands and other times, during seasons of persecution and distress, the Holy Spirit has, on more than one occasion, gathered a body of believers from the North, South, East, and West to one place for assembling without one word uttered or published by human agency.
Thus we ourselves will become participants in the greatest series of “corporate” gatherings this side of Eternity—and each one of us—each one—will have a part—a key part—to play!
The very depths of darkness will be shaken to its core; men and women who insist upon their sponsorship and establishment of this new slavery will cry and gnash their teeth in fury as this quiet, unseen force wreaks havoc on their carefully calculated constructions. Indeed, throughout the earth where plots of wickedness are being devised, they will be revealed to men or women of faith and be thwarted. More than a few times will the evil engineers be enraged as was the king of Aram in Elisha’s day when he discovered that “…Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom.” (2 Kings 6:12)
Supernatural knowings, Holy Spirit-directed thwartings, reworkings, and recoveries will be the rule of the day, not the exception, in the time of the end.
Wickedness may, indeed, pour forth as a flood, but the righteous God will lift up a standard—His people and His Body—against it! We are witnesses and participants in this day of confrontation between the consolidated forces of darkness and the supernatural, almighty workings of God which He is orchestrating and directing through the prayers of His people!
[The above entry can also be found in the back of my book First of All Pray: Prescription for a Nation in Crisis (© 2013 by Dorothy Frick). It can be viewed or purchased at https://www.amazon.com/First-All-Pray-Dorothy-Frick/dp/0985756438/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1471536193&sr=1-1&keywords=first+of+all+pray ]
Read MoreMy guy won. What now?
I posted this on my Facebook page today, the day after the presidential election. I wrote:
Like many of you who stayed up most of the night last night, I am operating on fumes. I know many of you are rejoicing in this outcome, but today my heart has returned often to those—and they are many—who voted for Mrs. Clinton, for Gary Johnson, for Jill Stein…or who left the “president” section of their ballots blank.
I’ve been praying for them. I know they feel hurt, devastated, even broken, and I don’t revel in their pain. They are part of this wonderful American experiment and we NEED them.
If you are so inclined, join me in praying for those who now feel like some of us felt in past post-election days. God has NEVER called us to gloat or mock the pain of others, but rather to love, to minister to, and to pray for them.
Friends don’t always see eye to eye; families may experience strong disagreement among themselves; but we are called to peace as we pursue our future with confidence and an eye to Him who cares for the sparrow.
Remember this: “A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish” (Isaiah 42:3). If God doesn’t crush someone when they are down, then we have NO right to do so, either.
May God bless and bring His peace to us all.
Dorothy
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