On the Palms of My Hands

Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands. 

Your walls are continually before Me.

Go, Anoint Elisha!

Many years ago I heard Lou Engle, the man dubbed “Praying Machine”, declare those words he’d heard from the Lord. This was to be his assignment for the rest of his life, to cast a double portion of his anointing and call upon the generation God was raising up. When I heard him declare those words, something went off in me like a missile. I knew I too was to take my place in the generation whom God was calling forth to arise and take Elijah’s place.

I wept and wept, and I cried to the Lord, “Yes.” I prayed I would inherit Lou Engle’s prayers and calling, and the double portion of all he and his generation sowed and laboured in and prayed for. I was giving my heart consent to the Lord’s challenge and invitation.

Six months later we went on a week’s holiday. Holidays were no holidays for me, as my little child, Nathan, was a very active boy. He only stopped moving and making noise when he fell asleep, and he went to sleep only very reluctantly. But Paul, my husband, definitely needed a holiday.

During the last three days of the holiday, Nathan caught cold virus. When Nathan had the virus as a child, sometimes he wasn’t able to walk because his muscles ached too much. Believe it or not, when Nathan was immobilised with cold virus during the last two days of the holiday, I started my real holiday. I could finally get some rest and breathe, not having to stop Nathan from jumping all over the place and endangering himself all the time.

On the last night of the holiday at six o’clock as I sat at the table to do my Quiet Time, suddenly there was the strong presence of the Lord. The hand of the Lord was upon me and I sat there for hours weeping. He brought each occasion to my mind as I started hearing the call of God on my life, starting from my childhood. I began reliving them as if I was right there again as a child, then as a teenager, then as a young woman. I realised in God, time had no meaning. To God all was current and vitally present. His call was as real right there as it was decades ago. And His call never ceased.

I sat there weeping. I read the portion from the Bible where Elisha picks up Elijah’s mantle and strikes the river Jordan, crying: “Where the Lord, the God of Elijah?” How many times have I cried the same cry? How many times have I raised my face to heaven and pounded the heaven’s wall?

I could hear my prayers reverberating loud and clear in God’s very presence, the prayers I’d prayed as a child, as a teenager, and as a young woman… Those prayers were as vibrant and alive and ringing in God’s ears as if I was crying out to Him right before Him there and then. Many prayers that I’d even forgotten… And I understood the Word of the Lord through Isaiah the prophet.

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me,
And the Lord has forgotten me.”
 “Can a woman forget her nursing child
And have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.
 “Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
Your walls are continually before Me."
(Isaiah 49:14-16)

My walls, the walls of prayer (Isa 62:6) upon which I’d stood time and time again, were ever before the Lord. None of the prayers that I’d ever uttered unto Him were ever lost. They were ever reverberating in His ears - clear, urgent and alive.

As I sat there in the hotel room, I knew a transaction was taking place over my life. And I said once again to the Lord, the God of my life, “Yes.”

Mia Kim