Surrender to God!

Surrender to God!
by Katie Souza
(Taken from Katie’s Journal written in Prison 2001)

“Come near to God, and he will come near to you.”  James 4: 8 (NIV)

At 12:30 prayer meeting today I learned: Before you pray, try to take a moment to put yourself into the presence of God. Focus on God and it becomes a prayer. Then when the answers come, we know it’s from Him.  This affirms God is with us!

I found out that mom is at the Mayo Clinic with no hip!  She still has infection in it too!  Why Lord?

At choir practice, Miranda came in with a drawing of our triune being.

Then there was fighting in our room. God uses all things as a test…if we don’t pass, we will have the test again in the desert, instead of going forward into the promised land.  React as a dead man and win the victory. Rejoice in every trial, for it has been ordained by God for our learning.

Today, I went to choir practice and to church.  Rosie, Ms. L, Missy, and I prayed about and started a three day fast for mom.

On Monday morning I had this dream: Mom was balled up in a wooden chair, naked with only a sheet and had one leg missing from hip down. There was a man there massaging her. She twisted around in her chair, and got up easily on one leg (I was surprised at how much strength she had). She seemed a little bit angry and impatient, like she needed me to understand something so I could help her.  She grabbed a fountain pen and drew a picture for me. She drew quickly and easily. The black ink flowed smoothly out of the pen.  There was another picture like it on the table, but it was in blue.

I woke up and invited God to be with me when I started going over the dream.

Then I fell back to sleep. [In my dream], I was with Mr. M in the chapel.  He drew the outline of the picture with the outer lip on the circle, just like mom.  I told him, “You did it again.” We laughed.  I looked at his pen. it was a fountain pen just like moms, except lighter green.  I got ink on his grey or blue shirt with a black collar. It had a nice symbol or something on it in green ink. He was sort of mad.  Then, I saw a printed sentence, “Remove the image of the hospital,” and it looked like it was in the Bible.  So, in my sleep, I thought, “I need to remember that. It is important because it came from the word of God.”

“And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” 1 John 4:16 (NKJV)

I think God put that thought there so I would know how important it is.  He’s saying, “Don’t hold a negative image in your mind, and pray for the opposite. Remove those sick, poor, afflicted images and replace them with healed, lovely, positive images instead.” Hulda said that God the creator doesn’t see your mom sick when He sees her; He sees her well.  I felt God was giving me all the details.  He was the God of memory and information. Mr. M told me to talk to God about the dream and to picture my mom dancing in the sunset! At the end of Jesus class, I got that God is the God of continuous revelation.  Mr. M got that God loves me like my mom loved me, even while I was missing from her life for all those years.  Later, when I called mom, she had the answer to the colors green and black.  She agreed on the body, soul, and spirit.  Black meant we are dying to the flesh.  Green stands for healing.  Yeah!

Ms. L and I got three confirmations that God was saying that we are to “die to self” or “die to flesh”.  I got “die to self” when I read A.W. Tozer’s book, on the Azusa tape, and then in Romans 7:23-25 (NIV) “… but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Do you have a negative image of someone that is chronically ill?

Try doing what I learned to do while in prison. Use your God-given imagination to change the image that is in your mind.

Picture them well…decree them well!

Quit coming into agreement with the plan of the enemy! Try doing this right now. Think of them in your mind, and picture them up, happy, well, healthy, whole, joyful. Decree it over them. Do this daily, and share below, the change you see for them and for you.

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