Doug Tales 88: Sacrifice

Knowledge comes after sacrifice. Doug Mendenhall talks about how our Savior sacrificed repeatedly in order to do His Father’s work, and he invites us to do the same in I See…Awake! (2015), on pages 49-53:

“And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him, and saying, Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

“Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.

“Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

“Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:14-21)

Jesus and His disciples were 15 furlongs (less than 2 miles) away from Lazarus when he was informed of his death, yet he took four days to get there. In most of the commentaries on the Bible they say that He stayed away because of the Jewish belief that the person’s spirit lingers for three days and then leaves. So in four days it is gone for sure. Therefore, the Jewish leaders couldn’t make the claim that Lazarus really wasn’t dead.

I asked about this and the answer was no; that Jesus immediately started fasting and preparing Himself for the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead. He had to prepare Himself and needed to fast for four days. So Jesus took time out to prepare Himself for what He was about to do, to renew Himself, and to commune with God the Father. The Savior did this several times as recorded in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

“And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.” (Matthew 14:23)

“And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” (Mark 1:35)

“And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.” (Luke 6:12)

“And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)

He withdrew to pray to the Father. It is my belief that He also withdrew in order to “fill” Himself up again. Jesus understood energy. Daily He had contact with many people, people that drew from Him energy or light. Every time He healed, taught, manifested wine, fed thousands, disappeared from sight, walked on water, He used light.

In this next experience, notice the word used to describe what was “gone out of” Him: “And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” (Luke 8:43-46)

The Lord perceived “virtue” had gone out of Him. He is talking about light or energy. He was totally aware of His person, inside and out. If energy has gone out of Him, does it automatically come back in, or was He like us in that He had to sleep, meditate, and refresh Himself?

In the next book I will discuss this in detail, but last spring, Kitten, Alyssa, and I went to close some portals at a ranch in south-central Utah. There were some very good friends down in that area that knew about the problem. They called and wanted to help. Previously I had called Kitten, and she was told the portals were strong enough that it would require four days of fasting, among several other things, to close the portals.

I informed my friends of this, but they felt it was enough of an emergency that they chose to go the next day to close them. They went, but all it did was stir up the entities on the property.

Kitten had informed me the Lord required four days fasting and I got confirmation by the Spirit that this was true. So the moment we decided to go, I started the four day fast. I have been around enough of this evil that I wasn’t going to make any mistakes or not do it the way the Lord wanted it done.

On the evening of the second day of my fast. I was preparing to take my wife and a few others out to dinner, and since I was fasting, I wasn’t planning on eating. On the way to the restaurant, the Lord told me that I was free to eat dinner with them. He then said, “I have accepted your sacrifice.”

Until then I had not contemplated that it was a “sacrifice” to fast for the purpose of helping someone, it was just what the Lord wanted. But I started to look back at events in my life in which there was a required sacrifice before there was an intervention by the Lord….

If you go to the University to learn, you make the sacrifice of money, time, and energy to achieve your degree. If you choose to attend the Lord’s university (No, it isn’t BYU), you’re going to have to pay the price of sacrifice, perhaps also in money, time, energy, attention, faith, etc. In relation to God, you obtain what you obtain from Him by sacrifice. There is no other way. Once the required sacrifice is made, then the wanted knowledge can be acquired.

If you want to be part of a healing that the Lord has authorized, then a price of sacrifice is required. Make sure to ask Him what He wants. Only He knows what an equivalent sacrifice would be for what we are seeking. The sacrifice will most likely involve both parties, the one being blessed and the one doing the blessing. It has been this way for all of the workshops we have taught and has become so common, we hardly discuss it anymore.