Let Your Past Launch You:
"Someone Needs Your Testimony"
Dr. Theresa Phillips, Saint Charles, IL
The Elijah List
Your Difficult Past Can Be Used Positively For Both Your Present and Your Future
My death story: In 1977, I was quite ill... critically ill! I had had my gall bladder removed and somehow later, I ended up back in the hospital with a pancreatic attack. Then the hospital didn't pay attention to my drug allergy. Subsequently, they gave me the wrong medication and I died, yes, died! I had the most amazing journey – one that changed me forever.
I'm sharing because I want to see you edified by REMEMBERING that your past can be used positively for both your present and your future!
After I was given the medication, the shift changed and a nurse came in and gave it to me again. That is when I flatlined the first time. At that time, I had left my body and saw myself on the bed, and I saw no one was doing anything about it. My secretary Karen was in the room. The nurse was stunned and she didn't know what to do.
I came back into my body and said to my secretary, Karen, who was in the room, "Go get a doctor, I'm dying!"
The nurse laughed. It wasn't funny! I left my body a second time and saw myself lying there. I got very angry and went back into my body and yelled at Karen, "Get me a doctor, I'm dying! Or I'm not coming back. I'm dead, Karen, dead!"(Photo via Pixabay)
The nurse was thinking I was having a hallucination. I knew differently. Karen knew differently too. She was going to listen to her pastor and ran out of the room to get help, yelling for a doctor. Thank GOD one came! But I was gone, again.
The third time I died, I left my body and took a journey. I was somehow standing with a crowd, ready to board a train. Thousands were ready to board the train, which was as long as the eye could see. The train was heading east. I was being shoved from behind to go forward, when suddenly a hand came from nowhere. This hand had a hole above the wrist, and a voice so clear and bold said to me, "No!" The train passed, and I was left staring at an ancient stone wall.
I was then translated futuristically to a moment in time – to my own grave site. I was lying in my grave when I looked up and saw my family, especially my son, uncontrollably weeping. I was moved for them, so moved for them, forgetting it was me they were weeping over.
I yelled, "Jesus, send me back to a lost and dying world!" And I meant that with all my heart.
Immediately, I was in the room watching the doctors. They had turned my room into an intensive care unit. Good Karen, I thought!
I had had cardiac arrest and flatlined. I had been gone.
Now this time when I entered my body, I felt such enormous pain all over my body, and I knew that the road back was going to be long and hard. BUT I had seen a hand, I heard a voice, and I had made a decision. I was really sick and weak, BUT I was there. I came back, and this time I stayed.
An Awakening – "Please Send Me!"
Today I was reminded of that time in my life. It seems so long ago, but still as near as NOW. There were no headlines, no invites to share. Just what it was... just an incident that allowed me to be in a place and a fragment of time during this due course when He was deciding my future, whatever that would be.
Now, all these years later, I feel as if I am waking from a deep sleep of a long-ago, miraculous memory. I know many others are as well who are in the magnitude of circumstances of uncontrollable, destructive epochs. So many troubles, so many worries, so many wondering, so many...
Desperate times call for desperate measures and developing desperate people. During such times, we see a lot of competition, dissension, and confusion. The moments of hopeful, supernatural increase and resurrections seem to idle by. Hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12). These days are long, hard, and unknowing...
BUT, I am being reminded that I died, and somehow a NOW moment in time has caused me to revisit that time in my life and pick up a promise I made to a "lost and dying world": PLEASE SEND ME! (Photo via Pixabay)
Well, the long-ago memory is here. It never left, BUT now I have a brand new awakening toward the lost, the dying, and the world. And today I begin to weep like Rachel for her children:
"This is what the LORD says: 'A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more'" (Jeremiah 31:15).
I am weeping because of all the people who are hurting, who are confused, who are desperate. I sensed today I was weeping with GOD over His children.
Prophetic Word of the Lord, "I Am Digging Your Well"
And now I'm being prompted by Holy Spirit to tell you all: Search your data bank in all the recesses of your mind. Where is the promise? It's still alive, and GOD is revisiting that well of the promise you made a long time ago. So often we remind Him of His promises; He is now reminding us of ours, how we responded when that time came, but yet somehow we let it slip away. He is breathing again on that time in our lives.
Yes, God is calling us to search our hearts and live again that visitation that first catapulted us into His presence so we might carry on once more. He is revisiting us to enjoy the excitement and expectations as when we were first saved. A fresh new realm of excitement is brewing. It's like being born again, AGAIN! I was jumping for joy! "Thank You, Jesus!" I was shouting. "I'm feeling it!"
Then suddenly (I love suddenness), I heard Him begin to speak to me! He was visiting me, repeating a word that I've prophesied before. But there is a new wind blowing on it. It's a NOW word!
"You, the older generation, YOU are coming forth! O yes, you are! You are coming with experience to share with many. I am visiting you as I did in the powers of your youth, and I am giving you a supernatural strength and vitality that you thought were gone. I am even slimming you down; I'm taking off the weights that have kept you down. (Photo via Pixabay)
"There have been words spoken over you that your time is over, to make way for the next generation. But I am going to use you, YES I AM!" says the LORD. "Yes, many will listen this time. They will listen, for they do not have the WISDOM you have had, or your experiences. I am digging your well.
"You, younger generation, YOU will begin once again to REMEMBER and long for those defining moments of someone's life that impacted you. Yes, a longing of what was will develop fresh and new. You will long to know what is to BE. Yes, to the younger ones, I will place in your heart the desire to get to the teachers, the prophets, and the apostolic mantles that have been over the evangelist and the pastor. You will seek out teachers and elders who will equip you to go forth, for your days of just doing will come to an abrupt end. Suddenly your heart will GROW in wisdom and knowledge," says the Lord, "for I am going to give the elders some divine strategies, and you will carry them out. Get up and pray for your direction," says the Lord.
God Says, "Someone Needs Your Testimony!"
God is visiting His people. As these days of old are revisited, He will give you divine encounters with your past, because you will now be healed from the past, and it will no longer affect you.The past will launch you. Divine revelation and purpose once again!
As the Spirit of the Lord began to soften me, I was able to move on in my thinking. Then I was reminded that while I was recovering from the awful illness I had suffered from, I had asked Jesus, "Why did You allow me to go through that?" I even gave Him my spiritual resume of how good I was, and that therefore this should not be happening to me.
His answer was, "I didn't do this. You didn't do this. It happened, BUT I'm trusting you to come through with a testimony to share and strengthen My people." Well, that made it almost bearable. Now, all these years later, I am writing about it. And I pray I am encouraging you!
I began to thank Him for bringing me through, when I heard these words clearly, as if a BOOM had come into my room: "I am trusting you to have a testimony that will strengthen others, impact others, give hope to others, and comfort others."
Then, I heard in the silence, and it was almost shocking, "DO NOT GIVE UP," says the Lord."Do not give UP!" Jesus says, "Don't give up; it's a new day, a new season, and a new way of learning. Your testimony is important. Someone needs your testimony!" (Photo by Tawny Nelson)
They triumphed over him (the one who kills steals and destroys) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Revelation 12:11, note mine
As I pray for you, please pray for others as well:
Dear Lord Jesus, I surrender my past both to my present and my future. Visit me NOW with the remembrance of what I had promised. I am repentant of forgetting and not doing. I am willing to say that because of a new day.
Dear Jesus, by Your precious Holy Spirit, allow me to move forward and grow into a moment in time, to obtain the NOW, to be all You have called me to be. I release my past, my confusion, my weariness, and all that has made me unsure about today and my place in it.
I thank You that You can redeem the time and give us another chance. I am willing to make it a new and forever change day by day.
I know, O Lord, the days are evil, but I choose to shun evil and walk in the uprightness of Your Word and Your purpose You have for me; with the guidance of the elders and Your precious Holy Spirit I can do this. In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Dr. Theresa Phillips
Chicago Prophetic Voice
Chicago Prophetic Voice
Dr. Theresa Phillips is senior pastor of Praise Ministries Church and dean of Praise Christian Seminary in St. Charles, Illinois. Theresa is dedicated to helping you encounter the living God and be filled with His never-ending glory. Pastor Theresa and her husband Robert have started an online publication called Chicago Prophetic Voice. This online publication is intended to help you see and hear the unseen and unheard realms of God as they are portrayed in the written Scriptures of the Holy Bible.
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