A Gleaming Rainbow Burst through the Darkness

 

 

We stayed a month at an economy hotel in the suburbs, but our reservation there was almost over and we also hit a dead end. The hotel’s in that city had a law that no one could stay in a hotel more than 28 days, and our check-out was on the exact 28th day. 

 

After all we had been through since God called us out into this “living on promise” journey, I found myself plagued with fears of the past happening, like when we were stranded in a car for a day with nowhere to go, or when I had lost my cars, or almost ran out of food. 

 

The traumatic memories of the past started to get so bad, that I was getting bombarded with fears of those painful times recurring. One night, God started to tell me that I had to choose one or the other…abundance or poverty…and that I needed to throw away the painful memories from my earlier days of learning to change my thoughts to align with His promises. 

 

I was in the fire all of a sudden, because I didn’t have the money that I needed to move, and I was so scared of ending up with no place to go. God had promised that He would be our home through this journey and that we wouldn’t be hungry or stranded, but those promises were being attacked with fears from the past times of learning and growing my faith to believe. 

 

I realized that I needed to shut off the past in order to move forward. I could tell that if I did not let go of the past, that I was on a dangerous slope that could cause me to fall into a bad outcome, because God honors what we put our trust in…whether that is fear or faith. We can grow anything in our garden, and there is a choice to be made…

 

We were almost out of time and I didn’t know where we would go. Except that God had given me some hints of what was ahead. He showed me the name of a town, and also another tour of downtown that He had for us to follow. 

 

God always has taught me during this journey, to lean into my hopes, and to trust Him to bless the outcomes of my hopes. Hope is like the seed that we plant in the ground to grow a flower, and faith is the flower that emerges from out of the grainy soil and opens into tangible beauty. Faith starts out small, but it grows and eventually becomes the home where we can find a brand-new life, and it starts out with a child-like hope. 

 

 Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]. For by this [kind of] faith the men of old gained [divine] approval. Hebrews 11:1-2

 

I decided to make a firm choice then and there, and I set off to “walk out my faith” to see my hopes come true. Every night, for days, I would go outside at dusk and I would pray to God a two part-prayer and then enter into a faith activation. 

 

I would start the prayer off by unloading all the weight that I was carrying, my needs, the fear of the past happening again, and all the other worries that troubled my heart and mind. 

 

After I felt light and free from the weight of those burdens and worries, I made a clear request to God in prayer. I decided to “go big or go home” as they say, and to believe in God to honor His promise of Ephesians 3:20

 

 Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us. 

 

The Ephesians 3:20 promise is a promise from God to do far more than we can hope, think, dream, or pray, but it must be partnered with concentrated faith. It is like plugging an electrical device into the socket on the wall. There needs to be a connection between both of our active faith and God’s power to deliver the fulfillment. 

 

I really wanted to go back to an Airbnb, but God had been promising me $2000 and giving me signs of the fulfillment nearly every day. So I asked God to have someone cover us in an Airbnb for a month, AND to deliver the $2000 promise, so that I could pay the urgent bills I had coming up, like my car, which would be put out for repo (again) if I didn’t pay them $1000. 

 

Because I have lost and recovered my car so many times this year, they have set the bar really high. But I never get attached to the car, I rather just see it as renting a car for the time. God promised me a car with no payments, and this is just a temporary solution to get us by. 

 

After I prayed that “Double Blessing” prayer to God, I engaged into that prayer with child-like faith and I would imagine both scenarios coming true with my faith. Another promise that God has always said to me was from Mark 11:24, that if we believe that we have already received what we ask for in prayer, then it is ours and will be done. 

 

The only way I knew how to truly believe that I had already received, was to engage my faith to imagine that it had already happened. By doing that, it opened my heart with tears of gratitude as I saw both prayers coming true. 

 

When we believe the point that we are crying gratitude of relief, that is like opening our heart to “conceive” the promise and position ourselves to see the birth of the baby come into our world. 

 

Opening our heart is the biggest part of entering a promise fulfillment, or a fulfilled hope. But we cannot truly open our heart to believe in a way that we feel the joy of it as already done, unless we unload the bitter pain of the worries, fears and heavy burdens that are heavy on the heart. 

 

We have to let go of the past in order to receive the new, otherwise we find ourselves going through the same thing over and over again. I did this faith prayer every night for several nights, as I walked through the dimly lit side walks. Like feeling a growing baby kick inside the womb, I would often see signs from God that the fulfillment (birth of the baby) was coming soon. 

 

The moment of giving birth can often come as a surprise. Suddenly out of nowhere, the contractions will come, or the water will break. It is a moment of thrill and excitement as the mom and dad to be rush off to the hospital to meet the new bundle of joy. 

 

I was just sitting in the room, doing my blog stuff, when I got an email to say that the Airbnb that I prayed to have was being paid for us to stay in for an entire month! It was the moment of birth that I had been eagerly waiting for. 

 

God took us out of the grimy little hotel room where He gave us refuge for 28 days, and into a fully paid for Airbnb in the cutest little section of Chicago that I have ever seen. 

 

Instead of sleeping on the couch, we both have our own beds, and a REAL kitchen to prepare meals. God has always told me to put my faith in His promises (which is His word) and not to put my trust in money or anything else. 

 

He told me to be at rest in whatever room He puts us in, whether it is lowly, or rich with comfort. He told me to trust in His promise of love support, whether we have a lot, or only just what is needed to get by. He gave me the promise from Hebrews 13, 

 

 Let your character [your moral essence, your inner nature] be free from the love of money [shun greed—be financially ethical], being content with what you have; for He has said, “I will never [under any circumstances] desert you [nor give you up nor leave you without support, nor will I in any degree leave you helpless], nor will I forsake or let you down or relax My hold on you [assuredly not]!”

 

Yet, God also gave me a promise through this journey, that He was opening up a constant, and endless abundance to us, so that we could fulfill the calling and very large ministry project that He planned for us to do. He promised financial freedom, but He said that we would go through a continuous time of “great highs and low lows”, like a roller coaster, unto the fullness of the promise is fulfilled. 

 

My promise is not just my own, but it is shared with my promised future husband too, so there is a reason that we have had to take such a long winding path of seemingly endless ups and downs. 

 

Both myself, and my promised husband (someday to be) are walking through a similar type of faith story from God and when our paths finally come together for good, then the “baby” of that promise will be born. 

 

Just as storms sometimes are found before a rainbow bursts through the dark clouds, there has been so many storms to get through, before we find ourselves “over the Rainbow” and into that rich permanent promised land from God. 

 

It has been a year since God called us to Chicago with no money of our own, but only a promise from God of support, and I have experience dmore storms against my promise than I have ever known, or even thought could come. However, after every storm, there has been a radiantly bright rainbow of fulfilled promise that would shine through the darkness. 

 

After we got the Airbnb blessing, I remembered that I had asked God for a double prayer, of also the $2000 that He promised me so that I could pay my bills and help others in need, and get our food cupboards stocked to plenty. As I sat there, remembering that I had asked God for the double blessing prayer, a random notification popped up with a message. I opened the message and found out that God had put it on this person’s heart to send us $3000! 

 

God had answered the prayer and fulfilled the Ephesians 3:20 promise. God told me to let go of what I had to and to trust Him to refill me like a waterfall that endlessly flows. So I paid my car for the month, like paying for a rental car, and I paid all my bills, and then I gave to those that God specifically told me to help. 

 

Not only did God help me let go of the trauma of the past, but He made the bitterness so very sweet as well. Throughout this entire journey, I live on God’s promises, as the foundation for everything. 

 

That is why the love letters have been such a rescue and blessing to me, because there are made with the love of God’s promises. I have found, that the only secure thing that does not blow away when the tempest winds beat against this “home” promise from God is by finding refuge in His promises. 

 

 It was a promise fulfilled—a double fulfillment–of so much more than I imagined or hoped. His promises are full of power and when we press into them with the sheer determination of faith and hope, miracles show up like a multicolored rainbow shining through even the darkest, most threatening clouds. 

 

The tears, fears, and anguish that I had of repeating the past was replaced with the brilliantly glorious rainbows of fulfillment gleaming through, to make the darkness of fears into something beautiful and so gloriously new. 

I love you,

Dannette

 

 

My “Baby” of Comfort Fulfillment from God for this month at the new place of Refuge from God