Emmanuel

In 2004 I met Kevin Kraft online through a film professionals' website. He was casting a film and I emailed him my resume, headshot and bio. If I remember correctly he was also looking for film scripts to develop with his production company – I’ll have to check this with him because I’m not sure of all the details, but there was some connection to writing, although it may have just been that when we talked on the phone after our initial emails we talked about our writing too, and he read a screenplay of mine and gave me some great feedback. I didn’t end up doing the film, but that wasn’t the reason I met him. It was just before I was born again and God had another plan.

God will do that sometimes – we’ll be meeting someone and we think it’s about something and it turns out to be about something else and sometimes even several things over time. God has a way of unfolding His plans as we go along. I always tell people I’m on a need to know basis with Him. He only tells me what I need to know as I take each next step. I often don’t know the outcome – I usually don’t – and on the rare occasions when He gives me a glimpse of the vision, I have no idea how I’m going to get there. I just have to trust Him and believe in faith as I keep walking the next step and the next, often in complete darkness of any human understanding. But He is always faithful, and when I start to falter and have to ask Him for a confirmation that I’m really doing what He wants me to do and that I really heard what I thought I heard Him say, He’ll always give it.

I had some great conversations with Kevin by phone and email before I was born again. I was in a relationship that I thought was happy when I met him and he is happily married, so it was never about anything except film and writing and acting and art. I’ve never met him in person, but we’ve kept in touch over the years, and after I was born again I told him what had happened. He told me then that he’d been praying for me all along – that when he first met me he’d started praying. He is a very strong Christian who loves the Lord, and God had put it on his heart to pray for me. That’s the kind of thing God does – we’ll meet someone and think it’s about something and maybe it is, but it’s always about much more than we think it is when it’s from Him.

I just had the pleasure of reading Kevin’s book “S.” You can find it online at www.lulu.com and on Amazon.com. I don’t want to give away the story, but let’s just say that it’s a great book and a fun read, and it touches your heart too. I ordered it a few weeks ago with some other things from Amazon – I’d been wanting to read it since he told me about it, but I’d been waiting for a gift card I knew I’d be receiving and I wanted to order enough to get the free shipping. I finally made the order, but it was taking a while for one other book to be in stock, so they finally sent me a partial order – nice of them, and God’s perfect timing for the holiday weekend. I was lucky it came when it did because I was enjoying reading it so much I literally did not want to put it down. I stayed up way past my bedtime on Saturday night reading and almost finished it Sunday morning. I had to go out and almost didn’t want to, that’s how good the book is. I finally finished it on Sunday afternoon when I got home.

I hope I’m not giving too much of the plot away when I say that one of the things that Kevin talks about in his book is the idea that Christians, people who are believers in Jesus and who profess that they have been saved or born again by the power of faith in Christ, have the ability to live lives free from sin. He debunks the idea of the devil having power over believers, and that’s something that is so basic to Biblical truth, but it’s something that many times you don’t hear in churches or from Christians, and very often you can hear the exact opposite. I just wrote here the other day about the idea of choice, and about how we can say “the devil made me do it,” but he doesn’t make us do anything – we can always choose. We do sometimes choose the wrong choice, and God is merciful to forgive us, but what we do is always our choice. It’s not always easy to choose to do the right thing, and the devil does make things difficult for us – sometimes seemingly impossible – he knows how to put the pressure on and he knows our weak spots better than we do sometimes, better than anyone but God, but as believers, we have scriptural truth that backs up our faith and we can call on the name of Jesus, the name above all names, to help us in times of trial and struggle. It’s not easy sometimes, but it is possible.

Last summer the Lord had made a promise to me that was very difficult to keep believing. I kept having to ask Him to confirm it and He did over and over and over again. At one point He started giving me songs. I’d get something in my head, a song I’d heard somewhere and couldn’t remember exactly what it was, so I’d go online and search for it, and He’d give me not only that song, but in the searching process I’d find so many more. One song He gave me one early morning was Hillsong’s “Emmanuel.” I didn’t only find the song, I found a video of a worship service. Hillsong is an anointed ministry, and I can’t even describe what the video and that song did for me. On that early week day morning – it must have been sometime around 3am or 4am - I have to get up early sometimes like that to get to some of the places where I teach my nutrition and wellness classes – on that morning when it was still dark outside, and I didn’t know how to believe the promise the Lord was making to me, I heard these words, “Holy, Holy, I will bow before my Lord and King. Hallelujiah you have come to us, you make all things new. Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, you’ll never let me go. My Shepherd King, you’re watching over me, Emmanuel. So amazing, you have made the stars in the deepest night. Still you love me, you have called my name, I will follow you. Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, you’ll never let me go. My Shepherd King, you’re watching over me. Emmanuel.”

The promise that God had made to me meant that I needed to open my heart in a way that I had not opened it in a long, long time. He was asking me to love someone, and to love them without reservation, to trust someone without worrying about being betrayed, to give my whole heart without holding anything back. When I heard that song, I knew that He was telling me that in opening my heart, I was being obedient to what He was asking me to do. It was an act of worship and a sacrifice, and in doing it I was bowing before Him and saying that yes, He is really Lord over my life, over every part of it, even that part that I had been trying to keep hidden away. Scripturally He had already given me Isaiah Isaiah 43:18-19, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing; do you not perceive it?” and here it was again, “Hallelujiah, you have come to us, you make all things new.” And then the pure sweetness of the chorus, “Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, you’ll never let me go. My Shepherd King, you’re watching over me. Emmanuel.” Isaiah 43:1-2 says, “Do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;  and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior.” Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, you’ll never let me go. My Shepherd King, you’re watching over me. Emmanuel.

Emmanuel in Hebrew means God is with us. The first time the name appears is in Isaiah 7:14. The prophet Isaiah, speaking for the Lord, tells King Ahaz to ask for a sign from God that what He has said will come to pass, and King Ahaz says that he will not test the Lord by asking for a sign. The Lord replies through Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel.” One of the times that I asked for a confirmation, I was apologizing to the Lord for asking again and again for a sign, for a confirmation, for help in believing, for help in trusting, and this is the scripture that He gave me. Emmanuel, Jesus Christ, you’ll never let me go. My Shepherd King, you’re watching over me.  Emmanuel.

When I had first met Kevin, I was in a relationship that was one of the happiest I’d had in my life. I was living in a house that I loved with someone who I loved, I was doing things I loved to do every day, my artistic and creative life was at the fullest it had ever been. When that all went sour, it was as if the floor had dropped away beneath me and I was in freefall. Only I wasn’t free, I was still trying to hang onto the life I’d been living. A musician I was working with at the time connected me with a psychic healer she knew, and I found out that people were doing Santeria against me. Isaiah 8:19-20 tells us, “When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.” If I had known then what I know now! Thank God for His mercy. I ended up spending a lot of money that I didn’t have going to see a Santero, and paying this psychic healer, to have them tell me what was going on and to do cleansings and healings for me. It was an adventure all right, and I do love a good story, but if I had known then what I know now, I would have never gotten into the mess I was in to begin with, and if I had for some reason, I would have known that I didn’t need a person to cleanse and heal me. All I needed was to call on the name that is above all names, Jesus, Emmanuel, the God who is always with us.

And that is true for any time, for anything we face in our lives as believers. When we call on Him, He will answer us, and He will show us the right way to go. We will sometimes make mistakes - in our human weakness we don't always take the time to call on Him and ask for His advice and help. I wrote yesterday about the pride that kept me from calling on Him before I was born again, and that pride still comes into place even afterwards. We want sometimes to think we can handle things on our own, that we do have the answers and that we are in control. That is a real struggle that we have as humans, but it is not an excuse to sin. When I am honest with myself, when I hold myself accountable for my actions, when I don't try to blame anyone else or anything else for the choice I made to do things my own way, the choice to choose the old way of doing things rather than to walk in a new way in the light of faith, that is when I can learn from my mistakes, and experience the mercy and love of God in all its fullness. That is when I can grow in my faith and learn to walk in victory.

Kevin talks about so much that is important in his book, so much that everyone needs to hear. Christians and non Christians, believers and non believers. He talks about faith and the love and mercy of God in a way that we can all benefit from, and shows what it means to be a real Christian, and to have faith and trust in God. And he does it in a way that is fun and full of life and love and hope – there are a lot of laughs in that book, and that’s important too. Being a Christian can be tough sometimes, but it can also be fun and full of joy. That’s the way God wants us to live our lives, full of the joy and hope that comes with knowing Him and trusting that he is always with us, watching over us, and that He will never let us go.

In Isaiah 7:9, the Lord says to King Ahaz, “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” King Ahaz was looking at two armies that had banded together against him, and he was afraid. But God was telling Him not to look at the armies as something frightening, but to trust in Him that He would do what He had promised. The word that the Lord spoke to King Ahaz through Isaiah was the exact opposite of what the situation looked like, and this is where faith starts to live or when it dies. It doesn’t matter what things look like, it matters if we trust God. When we can trust Him beyond what we see and forget about the past, knowing that He makes all things new, including us, when we can stand firm in our faith, we will see His glory, and we will know the true power that is available to us in Christ, the power of Emmanuel, God with us.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan