Today right after I checked out at the store I ran into a friend whom I don’t really talk to a lot. We have similar things that we have gone through and are going through right now. She walked up to me and said “Denise, will you let me bless you and David and the boys?” I wish my first response was always sure, but that little voice that says you don’t deserve or need anything popped up. She as if knowing what was going through my head said, “please will you let me do this?” I said yes. Well as I was walking to my car and sat down I thought, “Note to Self!” There have been some specific things that people have done for me personally and for our family while walking through this long trial. I want to do these same things for others that might be walking through a similar trial. So, I wanted to encourage others with what I was encouraged with today. Stop and think of what someone has done for you recently while you are, or were walking through a tough time. Find someone else that is in that boat and do the same for them.

Numbers 11:33

There has been a thought rolling around in my mind the last few days. Well if I want to be totally honest, Good Lord! There are way more than a few rolling around in there. I will stick to the few because the others probably need to be brought captive and made to obey Christ!

                I was reading in Numbers about the Lord’s provision and care for Israel. He led them with fire by night, a cloud by day. He caused their enemies to be scattered from before them, and yet the people grumbled and deplored their hardships. The Lord was angered and fire came and devoured those in the outlying parts of the camp. (Numbers 11:1) The people cried to Moses and when Moses prayed the fire subsided. The story goes on where they are remembering the dainties that they had eaten in Egypt, the fish, the bread, etc….

                They continued to cry out for more. They thought they knew what they wanted, what they needed. You keep reading and come to verse 33. The Lord had given them exactly what they were crying out for, but it says in verse 33, “while the meat was yet between their teeth”, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote them with a very great plague.

                Ok, so where in the world am I going with this? Well for one thing I remembered today that it helps me when I get to the tell the story. I am helped when I get to help someone else and process through instead of just being the one hearing all the time. The absolute majority of the time when I share something it is not from a place of having fully conquered it, but, from the “process” of conquering it! With that said, here I go back to my rolling thought. I think sometimes the things I am trying to obtain or hold onto are in my best interest.  I want them; my heart hurts because I don’t have them. I don’t understand what has changed in this relationship or that one. I don’t very often think, “Wow this could be part of the Lord’s master plan to work in my heart, or work something out of it.” I view it completely from a human perspective of why are they? Why aren’t they? Doing this that or the other? Well in the midst of my mental gymnastics I quietly began to think of this scripture in Numbers and quietly found this prayer rising up in my heart today. Oh Lord, I think I know what is best for me and I think I know what I want and need. Right now God I am not convinced otherwise that this isn’t the best for me even though I am praying this prayer. BUT, God would you be the good Father that you are and not let me push you over! Will you please not give in to my tantrums and my heart felt cries of what I think I need and want? If you tell a child no, or you don’t give into what they want because you know something more than they do, they do not understand that no! All they know is you said no, and they are going to cry and genuinely have heart ache about it. I just said Lord please I don’t want you to give me what I believe I need or want right now if you know it will destroy me. Please be the “Strong One” that I know You are.

                You see, in the very next verse Numbers 11:34, it says the place where they were destroyed with the meat between their teeth was called Kibrothhattaavah (the graves of sensuous desire), because there they buried the people who lusted, whose physical appetite caused them to sin. Sensuous desire and lust are not only to be viewed from a sexual standpoint but also anything that I desire to satisfy the longing only God can..If I have heard that one time, I have heard that a thousand in these last few years. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I fail miserably! I want to get it all the time but I have to allow the shakings of my soul to continue until He shakes everything that can be shaken. Maybe I will write a little more at another time on the shakings, and what that craziness can look like. I want to stick to the above thought for now. Thank you for allowing me to process with you! : )

Lord, be the strength of our life and the satisfier of our soul, in Jesus name.

The song that I kept hearing today as I thought through this is by Justin Rizzo, “The Weight and Glory”

The day after the Presidential elections I woke up with the most incredible sense of hope. This sense of hope was not due to the winner of the Presidency the night before. The sense of hope was in the God of all Hope! It was in a government that cannot be shaken. It was in a kingdom not made with human hands. I had such an incredible peace and confidence in the Lord. I do not think for one minute that God is winking or going to wink at our gross sin as a nation or as a Christian people. I do believe that in the midst of the storm He stands as a Door of Hope.

The first book of the Bible that the Lord ever spoke to me to read was Hosea. That is a beautiful story to me. I want to suggest to you to read it and to especially read Chapter 2 after you read this message.

The Word of God says that in the last days it will be as the days of Noah. What did God do in the days of Noah? He provided an Ark of safety and provision to a man that believed Him. Noah still had to weather the storm, but he was safe in the Ark. He still had to hear the screams of those outside and I am sure his heart ached that they did not listen to the warning. Are we to sit idly by at this time and sit in our safe arks or are we to warn those of the coming judgments? Are we to present this beautiful Door of Hope which is the Lord? Yes we are!

Recently I was at Morningstar and we were in a time of worship during the service. Bobby Hussey was leading worship and began to say, “Holy, Holy,” over and over again. The presence of the Lord rushed in an incredible way. The room was filled with the tangible presence of the Lord. As I worshipped with my brothers and sisters I began to see in the spirit a multitude of doors opening up. I wish I could have drawn what I was seeing. It was an invitation! The invitation was to come into His presence. A few minutes late Bobby began to say there were doors opening in worship. Doors were opening in Heaven.

I want to interject a side note right here. I had no earthly Father to give me a last name. Long story not to be shared here… I did not like the last name that I had. I couldn’t wait for the day that I would marry and lose the name that I had grown up with. The Lord blessed me with an incredible last name that my husband gave me on our wedding day. Our last name is LaPorte, which means in French, “The Door.” I love the prophetic significance of my name. I want my life to be that of a door that leads people straight to the Heart of the Father! Jesus is the ultimate door! Our lives can also be doors and gates. Where are people led through our lives? Are they led to the Lord or are they led to destruction? For all of those who listened to Noah they were led through a door of safety.

I have a question for all of us. Has the Lord placed His dreams in our hearts to accomplish? If He has, can He take care of the needs to see those things come to pass? My heart goes out to those in the business world right now. The entrepreneurs who have heard the voice of the Lord to start a bookstore, a coffee shop, a small business or a corporation. Do those dreams end now that the stock market is on a constant decline? Do those dreams end because of who is or isn’t in the White House and the seats of government in this nation? I do not believe these dreams die. The dreams only end if our trust in is those things or people I just listed. Our eyes have to be on the Lord right now. Our hearts have to be His, and fear has to be rooted out! Fears of all kinds are being rooted out of His body right now. He is making us perfect in His love. I believe the shakings that are coming have only just begun. I want to be found holding on to the Lord for dear life.

You can ask those who are close to me right now, how is she doing? They may say Denise has been a bit shaken lately. She doesn’t seem to have it all together. She is up one minute and down the next. I would answer for myself and say you are exactly right! I am being shaken to my very core in some things. Fears are being revealed in my heart that sends me over the deep end sometimes. I have one thing to say, “I am not quitting!” It is the process of the dealings of the Lord! He is looking at me and loving me in the middle of my wrestlings. He is looking at you and doing the same. If you are open to the Lord’s dealings right now, He is open to you- Full of Grace and mercy, not desiring that any of us should perish.
If your hope and faith was in a relationship, you can bet that the relationships in your life will be rocked! If it is a job, stock market, church, preacher – you name it – it will be rocked. When He comes back for His beautiful bride, she will not be crying out for the stuff or the people! She will be crying out, Come Lord Jesus, Come! I cannot live one more moment without You! You have to come to me, You are my everything! Take this world and all its lusts, just give me Jesus!

Can I tell you something? This is the Door of Hope in the Face of Fear. When Fear is surrounding us on every side, this confident love of the Bride and the Bridegroom will sustain us with peace! My longing heart to be united with the One my heart loves – Jesus, this is my cry! I cannot wait for the day that He holds me and you in His arms of Love and welcomes us into His Kingdom that has no end!

As One! Until He comes!
Denise LaPorte

I have pasted Hosea Chapter 2 here for you to read! Read it in the context of the message the Lord gave me.

Hos 2:1 Say to your brethren, ‘My people,’ And to your sisters, ‘Mercy is shown.’ Hos 2:2 “Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; For she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts;
Hos 2:3 Lest I strip her naked And expose her, as in the day she was born, And make her like a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. Hos 2:4 “I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children of harlotry.
Hos 2:5 For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.’
Hos 2:6 “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And wall her in, so that she cannot find her paths.
Hos 2:7 She will chase her lovers, But not overtake them; Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, For then it was better for me than now.’
Hos 2:8 For she did not know That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, And multiplied her silver and gold— Which they prepared for Baal.
Hos 2:9 “Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time And My new wine in its season, And will take back My wool and My linen, Given to cover her nakedness.
Hos 2:10 Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, And no one shall deliver her from My hand.
Hos 2:11 I will also cause all her mirth to cease, Her feast days, Her New Moons, Her Sabbaths— All her appointed feasts.
Hos 2:12 “And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, Of which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me.’ So I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field shall eat them.
Hos 2:13 I will punish her For the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, And went after her lovers; But Me she forgot,” says the LORD.
Hos 2:14 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the wilderness, And speak comfort to her.
Hos 2:15 I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; She shall sing there, As in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
Hos 2:16 “And it shall be, in that day,” Says the LORD, “That you will call Me ‘My Husband,’ And no longer call Me ‘My Master,’
Hos 2:17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
Hos 2:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them With the beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down safely.
Hos 2:19 “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy;
Hos 2:20 I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the LORD. Hos 2:21 “It shall come to pass in that day That I will answer,” says the LORD; “I will answer the heavens, And they shall answer the earth.
Hos 2:22 The earth shall answer With grain, With new wine, And with oil; They shall answer Jezreel.
Hos 2:23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’ “