Tag Archives: prayer

Living in the “Now”–Having the Mind of Christ

Now is the only sliver of time we have to actually live the life God wants us to live.  Right now is when we really live in the Spirit.

Yesterday is but a memory of a “now” long past, an aging “now” that was already lived. The “past” is a fruitless tree for the hungry pilgrim today.

And tomorrow is a hoped for “now.” It is a dream of what a future “now” might be. But tomorrow’s promise is empty for most, for it rarely delivers our desire of what we would have the future hold. It usually does not work out as anticipated. So when “tomorrow” finally comes, it becomes “today.” It becomes a “now’ that is disappointing, for it rarely measures up to our imaginations of what it should be.

And so today’s “now” does not satisfy individuals who ponder their pasts and futures. Their “now” becomes blah. And because their present moment is not fulfilling, their minds race yet again to the past and future.

Monitor your mind for thirty minutes, and you will see it jump to thoughts of things and situations that have already occurred or things that might occur in the future.

So there is only one thing to do. Right now we should open our eyes and see the sun’s rays reflect light off of the trembling leafy mirrors of the pear tree. We must inhale the song of the boisterous blue jay clothed in myriad shades of azure. We should listen to the bubbling of a toddler’s joy, reaching down to hold their trusting hand. In a word, we should experience our own “now” with its accompanying sights and sounds and tastes and smells and touch.

It is this “now,” which is free from the fears, frustrations, regrets, and anxieties of our pasts and futures, that is the only environment in which we may hear that “still small voice” of God. He will not try to compete with the cacophony of nonsense our thoughts portray. They will drown His voice out every time. It is only the quiet mind, listening in the “now,” that He will speak to.

For prayer is not just us speaking to God, but it is a conversation. He would like to speak a word to us, too. He wants to speak to us right now, but we can’t hear Him if we are thinking about our pasts and futures.

Radio Noise

Our minds are like a radio, receiving thought-signals constantly. If we are listening to the trivial worldly signals, our lives become a worldly broadcast. If we train our minds to block the thoughts of our pasts and futures, then we quiet our minds to live in this very moment. And it is in this very moment, that God can speak to us.

Other voices speak out of our pasts and futures. When we listen to these interior monologues, we cannot hear clearly God’s transmission to us. We cannot hear the “still small voice,” nor can we hear the “voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD (Yahweh).”

As Christians, we are to “let this mind be in you that was in Christ.” He was not thinking about our pasts and futures.” We are to “arm ourselves with the same mind” as His.

Gaining the knowledge of what was in His mind is half the battle. The other half is arming ourselves with His very thoughts about His plan and purpose, free from worldly imaginations and “old leaven.” This is putting “on the whole armor of God.” And this starts with the purging of our old thoughts and replacing them with Christ’s thoughts, which can only be added in the “now.”    Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under armour of God, eternal purpose, knowledge, old leaven, prayer, Spirit of God

Simplifying Worship–Offering the “Calves of Our Lips”

How does God want us to worship Him?  The biblical answer is really very simple, but humans lean to their own understanding and make it extremely complicated.

They put worshipers in the bondage of certain conditions and offerings and meetings three times a week where you have to come to the ‘house of the Lord’ because no other place will do and money, money, money and pilgrimages and forced prayer times and hocus pocus rituals and incense and holy water and fastings and observances and physical sprinklings and beads and prayercloths and sundayschool and bar mitzvahs and idols and images that ooze and gotta-read the Bible everyday and giving our children to be brainwashed into another man made religion  and, and…

Is that what God wants us to do to worship Him?  To blindly follow what others have imagined that we should do? To throw every conceivable ritual against the wall and hope that something sticks?

God does not need us to give Him or His “ministry” money; He owns the whole earth and everything in it.  The only thing that He does not have is our grateful heart.  And that is all He wants.  He wants us to just sincerely thank Him and praise Him for all that He has done for us.

Why do we not thank Him?  It is because we do not believe that He has delivered us and saved us from a disastrous and futile existence.  He has already done this; all we must do is believe it.  He has delivered us from sin and from sinning.  All we need do is walk in His grace and mercy.  Those who do this will thank Him, for they know what a deep pit they have been lifted out of.  And they are thankful to Him for His love to them.

And so they continue to call upon Him in “the day of trouble,” and He delivers them, and they thank Him, and in so doing, together they create a circle of glorification of God.  God is glorified through us thanking Him (Psalm 50: 15).

We are admonished to “offer unto God thanksgiving” (v. 14) and to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually..the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13: 15).

The thanksgiving and praise we give to God are the sacrifices we give to Him now in this present age.  Our offerings should not be money but thanks and praise.  We now should offer “the calves of our lips” instead of the animal sacrifices under the old testament (Hosea 14: 2).

We simply thank Him now, sincerely from a “broken and contrite heart.”  And He hears us and has compassion on us and is near to us.  This is worshiping Him in Spirit and in truth.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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The Father’s Name Guards Us from the Evil–Do We Know It?

In Christ’s prayer recorded in John 17, the Father’s name takes center stage as to our relationship with the Father.

He said, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world…” (v. 6).  I have shown clearly thy name; I have made it apparent; I have made it known to them.  And they have believed that You have sent Me; they have kept My word, and they believe that it is You, Father, who is doing the works.  And they know that I came out of You, and that it is You who has sent Me (vs. 6-8).

Christ goes on to say that it is His followers that He is praying for and not the world because they are the Father’s, who has given them to Christ.  And the time has come, He is saying, for Him to depart out of the earth, leaving His followers.  So how will they remain in one mind and one accord with the Savior.  How will God keep them spiritually safe and sound after Christ departs?

The answer is through the knowledge of the Father’s name.  “Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given Me…” There is keeping power in the name of Yahweh.  The Greek word for “keep” means “to attend to carefully, to attend, to guard,” and is translated in other places as “to preserve.”  So, He is guarding us from the evil for this purpose—“that they may be one, as we are one” (vs. 9-11).  One could then say that we are never be fully one with God without knowing His name.

He goes on to say that while He was walking with them here on earth, He “kept them in thy name,” and none of them is lost except Judas Iscariot.  He “kept” them; He guarded them.  How?  By teaching them and showing them and revealing to them the Father’s name.  For in His name is the whole plan of God (v. 12).

Christ goes on to ask the Father to not give them an escape hatch “out of the world,” but rather guard and keep them from the evil.  “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one” (v. 15, NKJV) {Side note: That speaks against the rapture theory}.

Now some will say that this prayer is only for His twelve disciples, His  followers of that era.  But it is for all of us down through the ages.  “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word” (v. 20).  That’s us.  He was praying for you and me, so we can take these concepts to heart.

Consequently, if Christ is going “keep” and guard you and me from the evil by manifesting the Father’s name to us that we all may be one with Him, then how can that happen when very few Christians know that the Father’s name is Yahweh?

Christ’s desire is that all of us His followers “would be with Me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which You have given Me” (vs. 24).  He desires that we all “may be made perfect in one” (v. 23).  But we have to ask ourselves, How can this happen if a Christian doesn’t know the Father’s name Yahweh, which God uses to guard us from the evil?

And lastly in this prayer in John 17, Christ repeats, “And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it…”  For this specific reason: “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”  Let’s savor this.  He is saying, I have made known, shown clearly, Your name, Father, and I will continue to make it known, for this reason: That the same love You have loved Me with may be in My followers.  And that My very essence and Spirit of love may be in them!

Here the very love and presence of God is tied into the knowledge of God’s name.  His name means “The Self-Existent One” and Yahweh is the Savior, which is what the Son of God’s Hebrew name means—Yahshua.

Inside, God’s name contains and reveals the very nature of Himself.  God is Love.  Him being the Savior of His creation reveals or unveils His essence, which is Love.  For “greater love hath no man than this than to lay down his life for his friends.”  This essence of the greatest love on earth, giving your life to save someone else is implicit in the name of the Savior.  This is the reason that our hearts are touched and moved when we hear of someone giving up their own lives to save someone else.  It touches us because it is the heart of God and shows us what He has done, whether we realize it or not.

He guards us from the selfishness of the evil one, when we think on His name and how He gave His life for us.

For the great invisible Spirit Yahweh poured Himself into a human form so that He could express fully the love that is His essence.  It is through realizing this knowledge of His love contained in His name that we can receive that same love—that God, who is Love, may dwell in our hearts, and that He and His love would thrive and grow in our hearts, so that  we could make known who God is by the love exhibited through us to others.

And thus fulfill Christ’s prayer.  “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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Filed under agape, elect, eternal purpose, God's desire, knowledge, love, Love from Above, Sacred Names, Yahshua, Yahweh

On Fasting–Conversations with the Seer

The Seer was speaking unto us about fasting.

“Right now you are basking in the light of Christ’s words flowing through the one who He has sent to call out and instruct a people for His name. And that is well and good and is as it should be.  As Christ said unto His followers, The time will come when I will be taken from your midst; then you shall fast.”

“Why didn’t His disciples fast like John the Baptist and his disciples?” one of the brothers asked.

The Seer replied, “That is a very good question. The answer is instructive as to why fasting is even on God’s docket at all.  As long as the Master Teacher is personally with you, you do not feel a need to fast, Christ was saying.  But when He is gone and no longer is physically there to hand feed you the milk and meat of the Word, then the need to fast will become apparent.  This should reveal to us how God uses fasting in our lives. For fasting is reserved for that time that will come for the elect.”

“What time are you talking about?” I asked.

“There is coming a time in all of your lives in God when I will no longer be here with you, serving as your teacher and guide. There is coming a time when you all sitting here will be dispersed to the four winds for one reason or another, and you will look out the window at the leafless trees and the brown grass and the grey sky, and you will remember this day when I told you about fasting.

“For, you see, fasting is not necessary in God’s plan when His teachings are fed to you by another. It is when you are alone and hungry for God’s truth, and you turn around and finally realize that there is no other human being to take your hand and comfort you and feed you in your lonely hunger. You realize that you will have to seek the Spirit within you for sustenance found only in the spiritual bread of truth. Then you will fast, successfully and meaningfully fast, and not before.”

“We fasted a very long fast two months ago,” another brother said.

“Yes, you all did, and God is not forgetful and appreciates your intent to join me in the fasting I must undertake. But the real reason to fast hinges on doing it not as just the thing to do. But rather we are to fast for specific reasons. The prophet Isaiah expounded on it in the 58th chapter where the Spirit through him tells his readers and listeners that the fast that God has ordained is one to accomplish His purposes in the earth. And that includes helping to deliver His people from the clutches of the evil world system that still has them in bondage. This is the only food that will sustain His sons and daughters. Being a part of His magnificent plan to ‘loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke.’”

“Who are the oppressed that need to go free?” someone asked.

“The fast that God has chosen is to do these things. Like Daniel in the ninth chapter when he prayed ‘with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.’ He was confessing the sins of God’s people, how they had failed Him, and how they had fallen into great bondage under the heavy yoke of the Babylonians and were in slavery to them, carried down into Babylonia, and how they had lost their homes and were completely desolate. Read all of that chapter and you will see Isaiah 58 in it.

“Daniel was laying it all out for God’s sake. Nothing was in it for himself. He finally could only ask God for His mercy to come for one reason: ‘for thine own sake and for thy city and thy people are called by thy name.’  Do you see? Daniel fasted and prayed, yes, for the people, but the people did not earn or deserved to be delivered and saved. Daniel honored his Creator God and asked God to deliver them for God’s own sake! That is the kind of heart that God wants in his sons and daughters! A heart that loves Him!

“And that is the kind of fast that Yahweh has chosen for us His sons. We should fast with His will in mind, and His will is His plan and purpose to deliver those in bondage. And this is what should be in our minds, to have the mind of Christ, which was, Not my will but thine be done, Father.

“It is this type of supplication that God will hear. This is the coming together of love of God and love of your neighbor. We are loving God when we pray and fast for our people–that they would be delivered from the slavery to sin and sinning. That they would be free from this devilish economic system based on debt, ruled by the rich men and bankers. That they would be delivered from hopelessness and despair and superstition and pervasive darkness.

“For make no mistake. The current inhabitants of the world are in the chains of darkness of the god of this world. They are enslaved in a faithless sunken pool of quicksand that is slowly taking them under. Their institutions have failed them and have even furthered their demise.  Those dark days are here now. For BABYLON THE GREAT, the world system, has the people in its clutches, and it is strangling them.

“And you young men, perhaps many years hence, will peer out your window at some grey horizon, and you will remember these words about fasting.  And the meaning of it will dawn upon you.  And you will bring that burden for those lost in darkness into your spirit, and you will wish you had your teacher there again to help you to know just what to do next.

“At that time, remember that your teacher is still  there with you. For He is the same Spirit that has taught you through me.  He is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit within your very heart, and He will bring all things back to your remembrance. Even to the point that you will no longer need a man to teach you, for you will have the Spirit of truth to teach you and guide you and help you.   Then you shall fast, even as Christ said we all would. And then you will pray for the oppressed as Daniel did.

“And to confirm that what happened to Daniel flies on down through the centuries and has relevance for us today, consider this.  At the end of  Daniel’s fasting and prayer and supplication, Gabriel, the arch-angel appeared to him and expounded many secrets of the coming of the kingdom of God to this earth, even foreseeing the crucifixion of Christ and the coming of Christ’s counterfeit, the Anti-Christ, the man of sin, which is for our day.”     KWH

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YAHWEH IS SAVIOR: THE ROAD TO IMMORTALITY CHAPTER 3

Chapter 3

  How to Receive Wisdom 

But as we saw in James 1:5-7, the obtaining of this awe and reverence and respect is tied to our asking Him for it in faith, in full assurance that He will answer our prayer.

Here we have three extremely important concepts inextricably intertwined: wisdom, faith, and prayer.  Wisdom is the main thing.  And because we all start out lacking it, we need to ask Him for it.  Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.  But we must ask for wisdom in faith, in full assurance in our hearts that God not only hears our request, but also grants our request and gives us awe and respect of him.  That is prayer.  And it is a lovely circle because when He gives us a bit of awe of Him, then that is a direct answer to our prayer of faith, which in turn gives us more awe (wisdom) of Him.  This is a beautiful circle.

James outlines for us in the first chapter some necessary knowledge about wisdom, faith and prayer.  First, he is writing to the 12 tribes which are  scattered  abroad.   He  then  says  that  it  is  a necessary thing that our faith be tried (1:2).  It will be tried by temptations that come.  But we are to look at these temptations as a source of joy because it brings patience into our lives.  Patience is that part of His nature (2 Peter 1:4-7) that helps perfect us. She performs a perfect work, if we let her (v.4). Then in the very next verse the apostle says that if any of us lack wisdom or, in other words, if any of you are not letting patience do the work of perfection in you through a lack of  awe and respect of Him, then, by all means, ask Him for wisdom in faith, and He will give it to you.

In v.14 we learn that every person is tempted when we are drawn away from that guiding awe of the Supreme Being by some desire that we allow ourselves to go after.  And when that lust or desire has conceived it brings forth sin.  There was a seed, a thought, a word of desire of something contrary to the Ten Commandments that conceived, and it brings forth the evil fruit of sin, the breaking of the 10 Commandment law of God.  And death is the final result of sin.

In verse 16:  Don’t err.  Don’t make a mistake in what I’m about to write to you, James is saying to us:  Every good and perfect gift comes down from above from the Father of lights.  We cannot manufacture what it takes to become perfect; we cannot in our own thoughts and work and effort here on earth accomplish the great work that He wants done through each of us who are called with His heavenly calling.  It will come down from heaven through prayer, through fearing and being in awe of such a majestically powerful and loving God.

And then, through moving with fear, we can do the deeds that show that we have the faith and assurance that He is living in us and through us.

We need to get wisdom; it is the principal thing.  Without it we will not get anywhere on the road to immortality.  We must realize that wisdom is to be in awe of the Great One, the One who created billions of galaxies.  We realize our need for wisdom, and then simply ask Him as a little child asks his loving parent.  The child fully expects the mother or dad to give him what he is asking for.  We need to ask our spiritual Father the same way for wisdom.  Father, help me to be in awe of You, You who have created all things in this profound universe.  Help me to realize just how powerful You are and to respect your ways.  Father, will You give me wisdom?

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My Mother’s Prayer and Testimony of Her Vision of One God

God, our Father, please help me write this.  I love You and want to be a good  witness for you.  I thank you for keeping me all these 84 years.

Times have been hard, but I never wanted to give up.  I loved the feeling of your reminding me to hold on.  I am so sorry for the times I was not waiting for your reminders of what you had done for me.

I realized I was in need of more of your truth to be taught to me.  But the others around me were in the same shape as I, and they were not able to teach me more of your truth. 

Through all the dark days and hangups, I finally realized I couldn’t depend on anyone but You.  I realized finally that all of us need those rough times in our lives in order to feel a greater need for You.  Thank You.

As I look back over the past six decades, I’m glad that I kept in your word, for therein is the only true help we can find. 

In the beginning of my journey here on earth with You, times were really hard.  It was the Great Depression.  My mother died when I was two, and without her to guide me, it was difficult.  My dad tried to raise us three little girls.  We were so poor that we had to live in tents in a graveyard at times, living on mostly gravey and bread made by hand.  But we survived.  And we were not the only sharecropper families there in East Texas. 

It was a struggle for our father, but being young children, we didn’t notice it much.  We just knew we were poor.  Later on in life after I came to know You, poor didn’t seem too bad, since Your word taught that we do not “live by bread alone, but by every word” of Your mouth.

As I got older, I wanted to work, but jobs were hard to find.  I got my first job at 15.  That would have been in 1941.  It was working in a laundry in Corsicana, Texas for 22 cents an hour.

Time went on, and I became of age to wed.  So after the War was over in 1945, I married, not knowing what true love was, but willing to learn to be a good wife and mother.  Then you gave me the greatest joy of my life.  You blessed me with a firstborn son.  Right out of your best mold.  Created in your image.  Thank You! 

My son brought great joy to my heart.  When he was five weeks old, we were lying down in the sun, and I was reading to him.  I did not know You or have your word at the time.  My neighbor across the path came over to visit us.  And she spoke to me of You.  I had never heard much about You at 21 years old. 

But You had prepared me to receive Your word from her because of the wonderful thing that happened five weeks earlier at childbirth.  I was under the sleep that the doctor had put me under, and I had this dream.  There was a kind of swinging ladder to heaven, and people were going up this ladder two together, but I was going up alone.  When I reached the top, there was ONE of You holding your hand out to help me get off the ladder.  I then woke up. 

That gave me the truth about there being just one God.  Ever since that day, when I read Your word, I can see one God–even when it reads “and Jesus Christ.”  Once you get the revelation, you can see it.

Well, the great son you gave me also has the truth about one God.  He has a wonderful brain, Father, and I am so happy to serve You with him.

As time went by, I longed for a baby girl.  I so wanted the two children to be not so far apart.  By then I had read about  Hannah and how she prayed for a child, a boy baby.  And God answered her prayer.    So after waiting a year and a half, I knelt by the bed, and I reminded You, Father, that You had given her a boy child, Samuel.  Now I am asking You for a baby girl.  And the very next month she was on the way. 

At that time I was very shy and had never talked to any one about You.  I had studied and gone to church, but I was so shy.  I remember that while I was in the middle of giving birth to her, You stopped everything and asked me if I had witnessed to anyone about You.  And, of course, I said no.  You very distinctly told me that if I was not going to be a witness for You that the baby would not finish coming.  So I started saying, “Yes, Lord.  Yes, Lord, I will.”  And suddenly, I was wide awake, and I asked Dr. Mamulia if he knew You.  He thought for a minute that I was out of my head.  And I said, “But do you really know Him?”

And he said, “No, Louise, I don’t really know Him.”  The nurse was very angry with me, but I was really not afraid anymore to speak out about You. 

The next morning the doctor asked me, “Louise, do you remember what you said to me last night?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Oh, she was just out of her head,” the nurse interrupted.

And then the doctor said, “Oh, no, she wasn’t.”

The night before, after I asked him if he knew You, I crawled off the table with no help.  You made me so strong at the  time.  You gave me a beautiful son and daughter, and I thank you.    [Written by my mother, Louise Billups, last week.  I am so blessed to still have her and be able to talk to her everyday.  Love your mothers while you still can…]

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A Simple, Sincere Prayer Away from “The Answer”

This world is in trouble.  America is bankrupt.  It is all teetering on the brink of destruction.  Families and homes are being wrecked through unemployment, brought on by insidious, covert forces.  And yet, all of us earth-dwellers are a whisper away from receiving real answers to our problems.

Humankind is one simple sincere prayer away from contacting The Answer, who is the Author of the Book of Life.  One simple, sincere communique to the Great One.  Just one prayer, one humble request based in true knowledge would yield a release from the stresses and fears plaguing us.

But which god?  “For there are gods many.”  We need to ask the one true God.  But we are to “ask in faith–nothing wavering…Ask, believe, and you shall receive.”  That is the scriptural Rx for answers.  But the catch is that we cannot ask God for things for our self, “to consume it upon our on lusts (desires).”  He doesn’t hear the prayers of the selfish or prideful.

The Renunciation of Self

First, then, there must be a renunciation of our own selfish desires, and then we are to ask the Father and petition Him with our “simple, sincere prayer.”

But man is so full of himself that one of two things happen as he stands so close to receiving The Answer to Life’s Problems.  He either is consumed with his own ego (old self), or he would pray to another god or another concept of the true God, which cannot give him The Answer.

Only One Religion Gets Rid of the Old Self

Only true Christianity–not Churchianity, not the watered-down pablum of Christendom–provides a way for a person to get rid of the old selfish heart we are all born with.  It is done at the cross, which is not taught anymore in denominational churches like it once was 100-200 years ago.

At the cross, we surrender up to God in revelation our old self, identifying its sinful ways with Christ, who took our sins upon Him and actually died as a lost man that day at Calvary.  When He died, our old self died; when He was buried, our old life was buried; when the Spirit entered into Him and raised Him from the dead, we, too, were “raised to walk in a newness of life” by His faith now entered into our new heart.

Now It Is All About Him

And now, after this experience, we communicate with that God, who walked fully in the man Christ.  We call on Him with a simple, sincere prayer, asking for more light that He may reveal to us how better we may serve Him, how better we may be of help to Him as He fashions His earth and the people in it.

We then in our simple, sincere prayer seek to help Him bring in His government  into this old earth.  His soon-coming kingdom–this is His plan and purpose, which is contained in His book, that He, the Author, has already written.

We, then, are a simple, sincere prayer away from touching the heart of the very Creator of this entire universe!  He knows our “frame is dust.”  He knows we are weak and have great needs that only He can fill.  And He is only a simple, sincere whisper away from us.  We need only to take that first step.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

See also:

“He Who Commits Sin Is a Slave to Sin”

Q: What Is Sin? A: The Transgression of the Law

“But Deliver Us From Evil”–From the Evil Within the Heart


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Filed under cross, crucified with Christ, death of self, repentance

Asking in His Name–His Hebrew Name Yahshua (Conversations with the Seer)

      “Nothing happened when I prayed in Jesus’ name,” I said to the wise man, who was sitting under a white oak tree.  He motioned for me to sit down, and I did.

     The sage looked at me, peering into my eyes as if searching for the bottom of a water well.  “Yes, Christ has promised that if we ask anything in His name, He would grant it.  It is obvious that since you did not receive, you did not ask in His name.”

      “But I did ask in His name.  At the end of my prayer I said, In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

      “You are trying, my son, but you are asking without knowledge of what His name is and what His name means.  That is the key to answered prayers.”

      “His name is Jesus, isn’t it?”  Confusion was starting to set in.

      “We in the English speaking world know Him as Jesus.  But He was not known in the days of His earthly sojourn by the sound of that name spoken.”

     “What do you mean?”

      “The arch-angel Gabriel appeared to the virgin, known to most people as Mary.  He told her that she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit and that the child would be called by the Hebrew name Yahshua.

      “You mean His name is not Jesus?”

      He smiled at me knowing that I was having trouble believing Him.  “Millions know Him by Jesus, but that is the name given to Him in the English versions of the scriptures.  ‘Jesus’ is not, however, a Hebrew name.  Gabriel did not speak English because English did not exist 2,000 years ago.  He spoke in the timeless language of heaven, telling her  that the Messiah’s name would be Yahshua. Christ did say that He came in His Father’s name.  Biblical scholars confirm that the Father’s name is YHWH, pronounced Yahweh, or Yah.”

     The sage saw that my mouth was agape with no sound issuing forth, so he continued.   “The English name Joshua is taken almost verbatim from the Hebrew name Yahshua.      Joshua the patriarch who took Moses’ place, whose book of Joshua we have today—that patriarch had the very same name as the Savior who came 2,000 years ago. You may read and confirm all this by the study of books.  The point is that if we ask in His Hebrew name Yahshua, He will answer our prayers.”

     “But they taught us to say at the end of our prayers,  ‘In Jesus’ name.'”

     “Yes, we were young children of God.  And as all children believe in magic, we took the words ‘in Jesus’ name’ to possess a magical promise of getting what we want.  Then we thought as children, but now He commands us to be young men and women in Him, where we put away those concepts of the past and strive for more of His understanding on ‘asking in His name.

      “So how do we ask in His name?”    

        “If we ask anything that agrees with what His name means, then He will grant it.  If we ask anything that comes under what His name means, then He will grant it.  If we ask anything that glorifies His name…If we ask anything that trusts in the promises contained in the meaning of His name…If we ask anything that can be seen as having to do with what’s in His name…If we ask anything that honors the meaning of His name—then, He will grant it.”

     “So, what does His name mean?”

     “His Hebrew name Yahshua means  ‘Yah is Savior.’  Yah means ‘the Self-Existent One’ and shua means ‘Savior.’  This means that the Father Yahweh is the Savior and the Father dwelt bodily in the Son and was and is the Savior.  Christ confirmed this when He said, Believe me that the Father is in me, and when He said, I and my Father are one. Christ was called Immanuel, meaning ‘God with us.’  If you ask Him with all this in mind, giving honor to His name, which glorifies the Father, then you will get God’s attention.  He will answer your prayers if you ask in His name this way.”

     I thanked the wise man for his help and went my way.  I did not understand it then, for it was a lot to take in.  But I studied it out, and now I see confirmation all the time of what he told me.  One example:  In Mt. 1: 21 there is a footnote on the word “JESUS” in my King James Version published by World Bible Publishers.  The footnote in the column says, “SAVIOR.”  There it is.  The translators and publishers knew that His original name meant SAVIOR.  “You shall call His name YAHSHUA (which means ‘Yah is Savior’), for He shall save His people from their sins.”     Kenneth Wayne Hancock  [See my book at the top of the website Yah Is Savior: The Road to Immortality]

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Let No Errant Bullet Find My Son–A Poem and a Prayer

Let no errant bullet find my son.

Let no screaming shrapnel shred his limbs

And mar a life that’s just begun.

Nor let the carboned dead curled in the sand

Begin to stir his mind into a bitter brew

Of fear, disgust, contempt for humankind.

Let his desert march through death’s shadow

Reveal to him not just what man to man can do,

But let him see the need for him to trust in You.

 

 

Kenneth Wayne Hancock

For his son, Joby,

A sargeant in Iraq,

3rd Infantry Division,

March 21, 2003

 

 

These words rushed into and out of a heart feeling vacant, lonely, and helpless that day.  War has a way of doing that to a man.  It puts things into a new perspective, far away from the bravado of foolish ego.  Being close to death does that to you–makes you come down off your high horse.  That this is good for the soul is one of life’s mysteriously sad ironies.  I felt this first hand in Vietnam and was feeling it again vicariously with my son that morning.

 

And so my only recourse was to call upon the Giver of life to become the Sustainer of life, the life of my son.  And He did answer this prayer.  KWH

 

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“Thine Is the Kingdom, Power, Glory”–Surrendering to God

     It is all His, and we’ll surrender to Him when we believe it.  Because in the end, it will be all Him.  It is the Father’s kingdom rule that will hold sway to the furthest speck of the universe. 

     His power will permit what He desires and will permeate the will of mankind.  He will share His glory with the humble, with those who have abdicated and renounced themselves unworthy to rule their own lives, and have surrendered to His majesty for ever.

     Here lies a paradox.  There is nothing in the plan of God for us humans, and yet, if we surrender to Him, we inherit all things!  How can this be?

     Christ is teaching us His disciples in this closing line of the blueprint prayer to realize that it is all about the Father.  In the end, after our fitful demands and childish schemes, all of us humans will fall into one of two categories: vessels surrendered to Him or unsurrendered to Him.

     “Surrender” implies a fight that has taken place.  We see in the natural a little child throwing a fit, fighting the will of his parents.  It is his will versus his parents’ will.  And so it is spiritually with us adults.  We have our own will initially that fights against God’s will for our lives.  And His will is for us to see that His way is best and surrender to it.

     For He, of course, already knows “the end from the beginning,” and in the end, it will be all Christ.  The Spirit of Christ will be all, and will fill all (Colossians 3:11). 

     When we surrender to Him, we receive His Spirit into our hearts (“that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith”–Ephesians 3:17).  He begins to make His abode in us; He takes up residence in our hearts, and His Spirit in us grows as we water the Seed through study and prayer.  He actually fills us with His goodness.

     He in His surrendered vessels is how He multiplies Himself.  This is the role that we His followers play.  For we become more than just followers.  We become His dwelling place, His temple, His body.

     The “Father of glory” glorified Christ, who is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15).  The Father unleashed His power and glory to be channeled through Christ.  And He has opened it up to the likes of us.  To us, who were so far removed morally from His purity, has He provided a way “to partake of His divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). 

     If we surrender to Him.  And those who do will become His body, His very dwelling place, which is “the fulness of Him that fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23).  Full of His power, full of His glory, and full of His regal aspect.  Wow.  That is all I can say right now.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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