From the desk of Steve Shultz:
This is a great article and encouragement of what "stepping out in faith" can do. Garris Elkins shares a story with a great analogy from when he lived in Germany. Let this word encourage you as you launch out into your God-given dreams.
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NEW!
What Is God Saying for 2013?
by Chuck Pierce, Dutch Sheets, Garris Elkins, Bobby Haaby, and Denny Cline
Entire 2013 Elijah List Conference Set
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Garris Elkins:
A Step of Faith - Launching a Dream
A Dream Launched
When Jan and I lived in Berlin, Germany, we loved walking in the city parks. The park system in Berlin was unlike any I had ever seen. The parks of Berlin were not the traditional square piece of grassy land with a few trees surrounded by an urban center. The parks in Berlin ran throughout the entire city ? from border to border. Berlin has more land dedicated to parks than most other cities in the world.
One of our favorite walks was to leave our apartment on Am Pfarracker Strasse and walk east to the Otto Lilienthal Memorial. This was a beautiful park with a reflecting pool and a small man-made hill. Jan and I would use the stairs leading to the top of this 50 foot hill as part of our daily workout. The hill was named "Fliegeberg" (Mount Flight).
Atop the hill was a memorial to Otto Lilienthal, known as the "Glider King." Otto, a pioneer of manned flight, would use the small hill he had constructed to launch his gliders. Otto made over 2,000 flights. Many of these flights were from the small hill in the park bearing his name. His 2,000 plus flights logged a total of five hours of flight, and the math shows these 2,000 flights were each only a few seconds in duration. (Photo courtesy: Richard Carter, journeytoberlin.com)
As I think of Otto, he gives me an example of someone who had a dream, but needed to build a hill to jump from in order to make his dream a reality. The landscape in Berlin surrounding Otto's memorial is flat. The hill is an oddity ? like a Noah's Ark in a culture without the knowledge of rain or floods. Otto saw something in a flightless world that required creating a platform from which his dream could be launched.
The Exercise of Our Faith
God will lead us to a place from where we will take our step of faith. Moses was led by God into an opened sea, with walls of water standing on both sides of the dry path that lay before him. He had to step forward into the dry seabed if he and the nation of Israel were to escape Egypt and live.
God led the priests of Israel to step out over the waters of the Jordan River at flood stage. The waters did not part until their feet actually touched the raging river. God spoke to Peter to tell a crippled beggar he was healed. Peter said he had no money to give him, but to stand up and be healed. Peter took the risk of faith by making the Word of God both verbal and visible. Paul shook off a poisonous serpent and lived to tell the story. He shook off the snake because he had faced death before and knew God would save him. The Word of God is filled with people who walked by faith. Many of them did not arrive at these places of faith without some season of preparation before they acted.
The exercise of our faith may resemble that of Otto Lilienthal. Otto hauled wheelbarrow loads of dirt into a field of obedience and began building a hill from which he would eventually jump. Imagine what Otto's neighbors thought? At that time no one believed a human could fly.
There is a time of preparation in our lives that gets us ready and positioned to take our step of faith. While we are building our hill, God is building us. This preparation for flight may require a season of hauling dirt in a sweaty and gritty form of daily obedience until the right circumstances present themselves ? until our mound of obedience is tall enough to sustain the step of faith God has asked us to take.
I can remember those many times that I would walk up the Otto Lilienthal Memorial steps and think about his accomplishments. My thoughts were always on the event of his flight and not the many months it took him to add dirt to a flat field to build his hill of flight.
There are seasons of obedience that resemble weeks, months, or even years of faithfully hauling spiritual dirt in preparation for flight. Without the hill of obedience we would have no launching point for our faith.
I can only imagine what Otto felt that first time he jumped off his hill. He must have felt all the dirt hauling was worth it. In fact, I'm sure the hill he built, and all the sweat, struggle and ridicule he endured, was not foremost on his mind the first time he stepped from his hill and flew like a bird.
Garris Elkins, Senior Leader
Living Waters Church ? Medford, Oregon
Email: info@prophetichorizons.com
Website: livingwatersmedford.org
Garris Elkins' ministry, Prophetic Horizons, is a ministry of teaching, writing and prophecy committed to raising up a prophetic generation to speak to the cultures of our world with the empowered voice of Heaven. Garris and his wife, Jan, are the Senior Leaders of Living Waters Church in Medford, Oregon, and have two grown children, Anna and David.
