With Hands Upraised

Unfortunately, many denominations have taught against lifting our hands to the Lord, saying that it's just an emotional trip people get into. But according to the Bible, hands are an EXTREMELY POWERFUL weapon in spiritual warfare, in addition to worship and praise unto the Lord. There are literally hundreds of scriptures that teach us the importance of our hands and the different ways to use them in our spiritual exercises. Currently though, we will focus on the lifting of our hands up or outward in praise, worship, adoration, and prayer to the Lord.

  One scripture I did not list, but is really more of a biblical story to read found in Exodus17:8-13, is the time when Moses had to lift his hand (& staff, the staff represents the Holy Spirit) until the Israelites enemies were defeated, but Moses was getting tired, and when his hand would fall downward, the Israelites would begin to get defeated, so Aaron & Hur came and helped Moses by holding his hand (w/his staff in it), higher up into the air, as a result, Joshua and his troops were able to crush the army of Amalek.

   I have heard it explained that when we lift our hands to the Lord, it can be an act of surrender to Him and His will for our lives. When the police arrest someone, right when they first catch them, what do they tell them to do? “Put your hands up! Higher!” Granted, that is for them to make sure they are free from weapons in their hands, but when you lift your hands, you are signaling to them that you are not going to fight them, you are surrendering to be in their captivity. This totally relates so well to our relationship to this holy God that is worth all that we can possibly give. This is an act of humility, showing that we are giving up our prideful ways that cause us to fight against God, instead of allowing Him to be Lord of our lives and show us His WAY.

   Next, the lifting of our hands has been related to the fact that God is our Daddy, scripture has called Him our “Abba”—which is a Greek term that is slang for “Father” but meaning a more endearing type of word than that, which relates to our English word, “Daddy”. Jesus said that we are to have the faith of a child, concerning our relationship to Him. So when you were a small child, how do you think you showed your daddy when you needed him, & your desire for him to hold you in his arms? You most likely raised up your hands high for him to pick you up! Likewise, we NEED God, we need His protection, His grace, His love, His peace, His healing, His intervention in our lives, His vision, His wisdom, His patience and understanding, His strength, and His discipline and correction. Let’s face it, we NEED Him BIG TIME! Let’s worship Him w/ ALL of our heart, soul, mind, body and strength, and demonstrate how much we want and need His help and love in our lives.

  The last one I will mention, though there are many more examples, is that when we are lifting our hands are to heaven. We are physically demonstrating our stretching forth our hands to touch the throne of God and receive His love, power and grace into our spirits. Like a car needs gas refilled regularly to keep going, we need to be filled with His Word, His power and all that He knows we need often. Or we will get spiritually pooped and give up the fight against the enemy of our souls.

Since the Word of God is our instruction book for life, let’s now look at the verses below to support the belief that it IS indeed God’s will for us to lift our hands toward Him in our times of praise & worship.

 Psalm 134:2~ Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord.

1^st Timothy 2:8~ I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.

 1^st Kings 8:22, 38:54~ (basically a repeat of 2^nd Chronicles below)

2^nd Chronicles 6:12,13,29~ Then Solomon stood with his hands spread out before the altar of the Lord in front of the entire community of Israel. 13 He had made a bronze platform 7 & half feet long, 7 & half feet wide, and 4 & half feet high and had placed it at the center of the Temple’s outer courtyard. He stood on the platform before the entire assembly and then he knelt down and lifted his hands toward heaven. 29 ……and if your people offer a prayer concerning their troubles or sorrow, raising their hands toward this Temple,…..

 Habakkuk 3:10~ The mountains watched and trembled. Onward swept the raging waters. The mighty deep cried out, lifting its hands to the Lord.

 Luke 24:50~ Then Jesus led them to Bethany, and lifting His hands to heaven, He blessed them.

 Psalm 28:2~ Listen to my prayer for mercy as I cry out to You for help, as I lift my hands toward Your holy sanctuary.

Psalm 63:4~ I will honor You as long as I live, lifting up my hands to You in prayer.

 Psalm 88:9~ My eyes are blinded by my tears.

Each day I call upon You, I lift up my hands to You for Your mercy.

 Psalm 119:48~ My hands also will I lift up unto Your commandments, which I have loved; and I will meditate on Your principles.

 Psalm 141:2~ Accept my prayer as incense offered to You, and my upraised hands as an evening sacrifice.

Psalm 143: 6~ I stretch forth my hands unto You; my soul thirsts after You, as a dry and thirsty land. Selah.

His Amazing Grace Still Rescues Today

This is my testimony presented to you with the intention of encouraging anyone who is in the middle of life’s difficulties. Ultimately, for the purpose and plan of Almighty God, to draw all men & women to Jesus~ our source of all we need. This story of God’s grace has been shortened for your benefit. Also, to show love and respect to my family members I have chosen to leave out portions of the horrid fire I came through.  

Shortly after I was conceived out of wedlock, I was almost aborted. Thank God, my mom backed out on the day of her appointment for fear of the risks involved. Since it was illegal then, abortions were a very risky procedure. By the time I was eight years old, I had been almost aborted, almost murdered, abused physically, emotionally, mentally and sexually by various members of my family. Up to that time, I had never attended a church on any regular basis, only periodically. Whenever I went to church it was with various friends that God put in my life. I never met my biological father, he committed suicide when I was two before he even got to see me. When I was four, I found out the guy I had been calling “Daddy” was not my dad. Little by little, it began to soak in though. My “daddy” was a violent alcoholic. He was only violent when he drank, but that was most of the time. My mom married and divorced him twice. We had moved fourteen times by the time I was fourteen years of age. I remember choosing to receive salvation and getting baptized at the age of twelve, which was the only time my mother and I actually went to church regularly for two years. Yet around that time I had already begun believing that I couldn’t be happy until I had a steady boyfriend. So the dreams began and the motives behind all I did. My mind was headed in its own direction and receiving Jesus and getting baptized wasn’t going to stop it, YET anyway.

As my mother began to get distracted in her commitment to Christ, she married a man who actually turned out to be an alcoholic and a liar. I was about thirteen at this time. Mom thought this guy could take care of us well, because appeared to be wealthy, which apparently was all a deception.

Things got a little better for me when I made cheerleader at age 15. I began to feel a little more accepted and confident about myself. But my achievements would not keep me for long. After making some very naive decisions, I was date-raped by a guy whom I wanted to be my boyfriend. I had previously agreed to go all the way with him because he made promises that I believed he would keep. When the time came to keep my part of the deal, I backed out for fear of the pain and the unknown. I really didn’t even know the guy, but I wanted to know and love him. Though I made myself clear, he forcefully proceeded on. Afterwards, I assumed it was my entire fault and my choice, so I decided to go on with the previous plan as usual. I began my search for true love through promiscuity, just wanting SOMEONE to love and want me. But I was willing to exchange the physical part for the closeness and affection I so desired. Although the physical part was quite painful because I never enjoyed it in a sexual way, I was still willing to endure the pain for the little closeness I felt. I eventually tried to commit suicide at sixteen because of my self-hatred.

At around age seventeen, I meet the man who is my husband today. Our meeting, dating and all was probably the best experience I had ever had, especially compared to the other guys I had encountered by this time. He treated me much better. Yet both of us were serving ourselves – living our lives according to what seemed right to us. He also had deep wounds of rejection that hadn’t healed. I was pregnant after about three months of dating him. I was a senior in high school and education was very important to him for me. So we both decided on an abortion. Yet just four months later, the protection failed and I was pregnant again. This time we chose to have this baby, I just couldn’t even contemplate the turmoil of terminating another baby.

We moved into together while I was pregnant and all the resentments towards each other began, blaming each other for the situation we were in. I was nineteen when I had Brittany and she had so many problems, a heart defect and Down’s syndrome. She was extremely hard to feed and tube feeding her caused her to vomit up most of the food she had just received. I became very frustrated and began to believe that she didn’t like me, because I wasn’t able to meet her needs properly. I felt I wasn’t a good mom since she was always crying and hungry. Right after she was born and had to stay in the hospital for 6 weeks, the doctors constantly told me that she would die at anytime and they didn’t expect her to live. So I began to also expect her to die and wanted the process to hurry up and relieve us all of the pain. I began seeing visions of her dying and was tempted to hurt her in the midst of my frustration and anger. Eventually, I accidentally got myself turned in to the child protective services. But I did fear truly harming her and strongly desired to be rescued from that temptation. Brittany was placed in foster care for seven months. This did not help our relationship, it greatly hurt Brittany’s daddy. Just know that he wasn’t too fond of me. I eventually left and moved a hundred miles away.

I had begun working a job I enjoyed before I had left, and then transferred to the big city to live with my mom who had previously come through another divorce. I stayed with her until I found a roommate. I got Brittany back and our relationship began to flourish. She had gotten fat, healthy and was as cute as a button. I basically lived the party life, drinking, going to clubs and so forth. Once again, I began looking for someone who would love me no matter how messed up I was. I can’t tell you how many people would approach me and ask me if I knew Jesus. My answer was always yes. But I only knew Him as someone I would cry out and complain to about my life. Yet if things were going fine, I could have cared less about Him. I didn’t see all He had done for me and was doing, nor did I even care to understand anything about Him, though I did ask Him a lot what I was supposed to do with my life.

My husband (today) and I were separated from living together for about one year. Without going into all the details, we got back together and I moved back in with him. During this time, the arguments and fights began again, and I tried again to commit suicide trying to make him acknowledge my cry for help. Shortly afterward, we finally got married, thinking that maybe the Lord would bless our relationship if we stopped living in sin and did the right thing. Let’s just say, it was going to take more than that. Several months after getting married, I was pregnant with our first son. My husband got laid off and had to look for a job in the big city. After the job was supplied there, we moved there.

My husband and I continued to live with the problem of selfish, conditional love. He wasn’t treating me right, so I wouldn’t treat him right. Therefore, we thought we had the right to disrespect and hurt each other deeply. Still the Lord continued to put people in my path that would invite me to church or just talk to me about the Lord. I wasn’t interested really. There was one man in particular, he was a courtesy clerk at the local grocery story I visited regularly. He was an older Hispanic man who began talking to me about Jesus. He was say things that were just unfathomable to me, literally impossible. He had told me that someday people would ask me why my life was so great and I was so happy and I would tell them about Jesus. Seriously, I looked at him like he was out of his mind, wondering if maybe he was nuts. I thought, “Didn’t you hear ANYTHING I just said? My life is JACKED up!” I would tell him all the horrid details and about all the misery I was in. He would tell me how to pray and sometimes he would pray with me and have me repeat what he said. At the time, I really didn’t consider myself to be listening nor did I really want to hear it, but something inside me knew he was right in all he was doing and saying, so I never blew him off. I let him speak to me, over and over for more than two years. At that time, I had continually believed that the grass was actually greener on the other side.

So I finally reached ultimate emptiness, I had nothing left to give to my family I was numb and was going through the motions. I had no “care” left in me. I decided to leave my husband and children. He had already warned me that he would sue me for the kids if I ever left. So I rationalized that he was a better dad than I was a mom- they’d be better off without me. I noticed something very different this time about myself, I didn’t even feel sad about the decision I was about to carry out. It wasn’t even bothering me to leave my children, yet I was about to do the exact same thing that had hurt me so deeply and had literally ruined my start in life. Divorce…. leaving your children without their natural parent and putting a huge hindrance on their lives before they could really even get a good start, how could I get to this place?

The man from the grocery store, his name is Manuel. Thank God he was still praying for me. And from time to time I would pray something he taught me. So I came to God in prayer, and I basically gave Him an ultimatum telling him how my husband despised me and I despised him, and if God wanted me to stay with him then he would have to work a miracle Himself, otherwise, I was leaving.

Easter came around and for some strange reason I wanted to go to this church that a friend of mine was a member of, a church I had visited once but had decided that it was a good church IF I was ready for that lifestyle. I knew then I had a lot of plans that didn’t include God or His ways. This church was multi-cultural and inter-denominational; the name of this church is Covenant Church in Carrollton, TX. So I decided to go for Easter and told my husband that I was going with the children and he was welcome to go with me. He refused, because he expected a fashion show. Since I had always been a follower, the fact that I went to church anyway without him was miraculous.

In March of 95 at the old church building, I watched a dramatization of Jesus enduring the beatings, mocking, blood dripping, obvious turmoil he felt from being rejected, then the cross itself and of course, the resurrection.  Then Pastor Hayes came up and gave an awesome message of God’s love for me. Before Pastor Hayes even came up there to speak, I was already in awe of what Jesus endured for me. All the years of seeing it before never made any sense. For the first time, I was getting it and I began to feel so sorry for the selfish life I lived. I am not sure when in the service I decided this, but I decided that no matter what it took I was going to lay down my life for Him and live the way He commands. Compared to what He had done for me, the idea of staying and working on our marriage and living for Jesus was extremely easy to do. For the first time, I actually did what we should ALL do, I compared myself to Jesus.

I decided that even if I had to miserable for the rest of my life serving Him (which I originally thought I would be) ~ that it would be nothing compared to all He endured for me. So at the very moment of that decision, I felt Him release me from all the guilt and shame, the need for a physical man to love me and all the sin I committed in trying to get what I wanted. I felt truly alive for the first time in my life, I felt joy in a way I never knew existed and finally knew that I had found the place I belonged and it was with Him. That empty numb feeling left me like a flash. I felt like I was floating on air and I could’ve screamed at the top of my lungs, “Thank YOU Jesus!” I discovered that this was the Man I had been looking for all along- Jesus was the only ONE that could give me the love I desperately needed.

All of my years growing up, I never fit in any group, people my age rarely accepted me. There were some that acted like they accepted me but they weren’t being real, they were just using me for convenience sake, and I knew it. I finally found the One Who loved and accepted me completely, even with all my awful flaws. I was delivered in such a mighty way; I knew that God had truly shown up in my life~ there was NO mistake about it. Suddenly, I could see and understand things about Him and the Bible that had never made sense to me before. The next Sunday, my husband went to church with me and Pastor Hayes (it seemed) read his mind. He spoke exactly about the very issues that he had been contemplating and wondering. Within a week or two, I remember my husband saying while we were sitting in the pew, “we’re home.” Within that year, we became members.

God changed us forever from that day forward and is still changing us to this day, from faith to faith, strength to strength and glory to glory. Jesus and I had a wonderful and miraculous courtship, marriage and honeymoon—blessing me with so many miracles, love, acceptance, continual forgiveness (all needs met) and overflow of revelation knowledge. That all began in March of 1995. Had the Lord not intervened, I know I would’ve ended up in a horrid place of destruction, possibly homeless and addicted to drugs. Over the past decade we have been learning that love is a commitment and a choice, not a feeling. The feelings will wear off and we eventually have to grow and learn to walk by faith in His Word and not sight (or feelings). It hasn’t always been easy. But I know as long as I continue to return to Him and receive His love, forgiveness and acceptance. He will accomplish His will in me. I KNOW I belong to Him now and there is nothing better than having that assurance that I am safe in His arms and He will never leave or forsake me. Even when I don’t feel like I’ve changed a bit, I can rest in His Word that never returns void that He will complete the work He has begun in me. I can definitely testify that if the Son sets you free, then you ARE free indeed. All glory to Jesus for this testimony and any good I will ever do, I can never take the glory for what GOD has done in my life.

God bless all who read this with a deeply softened heart towards the Holy Spirit, His Way and His love. In Jesus’ Name, Amen~ so be it. THANKS BE TO THE LORD!!!

Bless the Lord, OH my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy Name. Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. For He is great and His mercy endures forever. Hallelujah!!!

Jesus is the solution to every problem.

And He never wastes a hurt. Make Him Your Shepherd and Lord today. The Lord is your Shepherd, to feed guide and shield you, you shall not lack.