Day 12: The Court of Final Appeal
"I was watching; and the same horn was making war against the saints, and prevailing against them, until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom." — Daniel 7:21-22
When You Have Done Everything and Nothing Has Changed
You have spent eleven days searching. You have confessed the sins of your fathers, renounced dedications, emptied shelves, retraced your travels, forgiven your enemies, paid old vows, and commanded the thief to give back what he took.
What if you are still stuck?
Not because you were careless. Because you have genuinely done everything you know to do, and the pressure has not lifted.
There is one more weapon, and it is the last one in this book because it is the last one you should reach for.
Seasons Are Real — and Seasons Are Meant to End
"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance." (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4)
Every believer passes through seasons of suffering. God does not promise otherwise; He promises to be with us in them, and He grows us in the hard times as He grows us nowhere else.
But note the other half of that passage. Seasons end. Winter is not a permanent address.
The enemy's strategy is to prolong a season — to stretch a time of legitimate testing into a life sentence of defeat, until you conclude that discouragement is simply your lot and stop expecting anything else.
The questions in any season are only these: How will I go through it? And what will I learn?
The People This Lesson Came From
The couple who taught this material had earned the right to teach it.
Daniel was raised in a family that served darkness. Sent overseas at six to a boarding school that was a center of occult practice, he never saw his parents again. He endured thirteen years of severe ritual abuse there. And yet God reached into that place: in the worst hour of it, as a terrified child, he cried out "Doesn't anyone care about me? Is there anyone in the whole world who wants me?" — and light broke into that room, arms took hold of him, and a voice said, "Yes, I love you and I want you." He did not know then who it was.
Years later, when a ceremony required him to swear his will away permanently, light shattered the goblet in his hands before he could finish the vow, and a voice told him he was called to serve the one true God. He told God to get lost and spent the next years running — into wealth, power, martial arts, danger, and an arranged marriage he resented.
His wife Kai found Jesus Christ. She changed completely — peaceful, joyful, unstoppable, telling everyone. Both families demanded he silence her. He would not. She kept asking him what it would take for him to believe. "If your God is so real, then have Him make me love someone." She told him to ask God himself. He did, sarcastically, and forgot about it. Within weeks he found himself defending her, protecting her, wanting her company.
The families sent men to force her to renounce Christ or die. They ran for three months and were caught. He was chained to a wall and made to watch her tortured to death.
It was a total victory. Kai told her captors she forgave them. She told them Jesus is the true God and Messiah, a God of love, and that no matter what they did they could not hurt her because He was inside her. She sang praises until she died.
He fled to a cabin in the mountains and studied her Bible for a year, at first in rage, determined to prove her God a fraud. Instead he found the truth, fell on his knees, and gave his life to Jesus Christ. He walked away from his family and his fortune.
Four years later, God brought him and Rebecca together.
Then Everything Came Apart Again
A year after their marriage, Daniel's family moved to destroy them. False accusations. A midnight raid on their home by ten men, three of them officers, who held their house-sitter at gunpoint for hours and carried out nearly everything they owned. Daniel was arrested and flown between prisons across the country for forty days while Rebecca drove after him trying to find a lawyer. Assassins were sent; God protected him each time. He led a number of men to Christ in those cells. They each lost forty pounds in forty days.
Eighty days in prisons. A three-year court battle. Every penny they had went to attorneys. For over three years they lived in a motor home and then a series of fifth-wheels.
They finally settled in Arkansas, both working, beginning to stabilize — and the Lord told them to give up their jobs and return to full-time ministry. They obeyed in August 1993. By February they were completely bankrupt. Love offerings collected for them were largely kept by the churches; they routinely received two or three hundred dollars, not even covering travel.
They reached the point where they would lose their home on wheels and end up on the street. Daniel was offered an excellent job that required a five-year contract and the end of the ministry. They agreed: if God did not do something definite within two weeks, they would leave ministry and go back to work.
And they had already done everything in this book. They cried and prayed and fasted and asked the Lord to reveal any hidden sin — there was none. They rebuked Satan. They commanded every possible curse broken in the name of Jesus Christ.
Nothing.
Then a scheduled engagement in Denver turned out not to exist; the man had lied. They were stranded without money to get back.
"You May Have to Ask Him to Judge Your Case"
A friend put Rebecca on the phone with a woman neither of them knew. Two strangers sat in awkward silence. Finally the woman said:
"I really don't have anything to say to you except this. For some reason the Lord is laying on my heart that you need to realize that God the Father is your heavenly Father — but He is also the Judge of the Universe. Sometimes we have to go into His courtroom and ask Him to judge our case."
That was all. She hung up.
Daniel's reaction was immediate: "You're crazy! I don't need God to judge me! I need His mercy. Forget it!" — which is understandable, given that every courtroom they had ever entered had been a nightmare.
But the Holy Spirit would not let the thought go. At three in the morning she crept into the dark living room.
She had searched hard and found no unrepented sin in either of their lives. She also understood that one does not walk into a courtroom unprepared, and that God's courtroom is more serious than any on earth. So she organized her petitions carefully.
And she settled the question of standing first. She could not come on the basis of anything either of them had done — "all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). She could come only under the blood of Jesus Christ, wearing His righteousness and none of her own. And because God had made them one, she could appear on her husband's behalf as well.
Then she lay face down on the floor and prayed.
The Petition
Father, in the name of Jesus Christ Your Son, I humbly come into Your presence. In the name of Jesus, I petition You to allow me to come before Your throne as Judge of the Universe. I petition You to allow me a court hearing. I am asking You to judge between my husband and myself and Satan. Therefore I petition that You make Satan come and be present for this hearing.
Father, I want to make it very clear that I dare to come before You only under the covering of the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Daniel and I have no righteousness of our own; we have only the righteousness of Your Son. Now I have several petitions to present to You in the name of Jesus.
1. Judge once and for all: have You, or have You not, called Daniel and me into full-time ministry for You? We believe with all our hearts that You have. If You judge that You have, then I submit to You that it is Your responsibility to enable us to carry out the work You commanded us to do.
2. Look into our hearts and judge — are we truly willing to do Your will, no matter the cost? If Your judgment is that we have proven willing, then You know, we know, and Satan knows that he has prevented us from performing Your will. I am asking You to put a restraining order on Satan and his hosts and make them stop preventing us from doing Your will.
3. I know from Your Word that You do allow Satan to sift us. I also know the sifting comes to an end — Jesus told Peter that after he was sifted he would strengthen the brethren (Luke 22:31-32). Father, I dare to tell You that I believe this sifting has gone on long enough. I ask You to bring it to a complete stop so we can get on with the work You called us to do.
4. I petition You to force Satan and his spirits to stop tormenting my husband with nightmares and flashbacks. Enough is enough. They have no right to continue, and I petition You to bring this torment to a halt forever.
5. Ever since Daniel was arrested, we have lived under a yoke of fear. I am asking You to break this yoke off our lives once and for all.
6. Review our finances. Judge whether we have been righteous in this area. If Your judgment is that we have, then make Satan remove his hands from our finances. We cannot go forward in the work You called us to if we must stop and work secular jobs simply to survive.
7. Force Satan to stop interfering with Your communication to us. If You have judged our hearts willing, then You know that all You have to do is tell us Your commands clearly, and we will obey.
Father, I commit our lives into Your care. I know You are a completely just Judge, and I trust You to judge our case honestly. I suppose You will hear Satan's arguments now, so with Your leave I am going to go back to bed. I thank You most sincerely in the precious name of Jesus Christ for hearing me. Amen.
She went to bed — and was afraid to tell her husband. She knew perfectly well the Judge could rule against them.
The Verdict
Later that day they visited an eighty-four-year-old pastor of a tiny church who knew nothing whatever about their circumstances. As he shared what God had done in his life, the presence of the Lord filled the room. Mid-sentence he stopped and said, "Let's pray."
As they bowed their heads, the Holy Spirit began speaking to Daniel with unusual clarity, and — as is his habit — he simply said aloud what he was hearing:
"Honey, the Lord is speaking to me so clearly. He says that, as of this hour, I am breaking the yoke of fear off your lives."
She began to cry. Daniel knew nothing of the night before.
"The Lord says that He has called us into a full-time work for Him and that He will make a way for us. I am not to take that job. He says we are to go back to Arkansas immediately and that He will provide a house for us there."
One by one, through her husband's mouth, she heard the Lord answer every single petition in order.
Then he paused, looking puzzled. "And the Lord says that He has rendered judgment in our favor. Rebecca — did you pray last night?"
The Judge of the Universe had ruled against Satan in their case.
What followed: a brand-new house provided within one month, through miracle after miracle. Their finances reversed. A stranger who was not even a Christian traded them his new car for their old truck — and later came to Christ himself. Daniel has not had one nightmare or flashback since that night. And three months after the judgment, the earthly judge over their case abruptly signed off the entire matter, ending a three-year legal nightmare and setting them completely free.
It Was Not a One-Time Gift
Dennis and Mary were once wealthy. A contract with the U.S. Air Force went wrong, the Air Force cheated on it, and they lost the business and nearly everything else. They served the Lord anyway. They went to court. For ten years the battle dragged on. Hundreds of thousands of dollars went to attorneys with no result. When their friends met them again, they were facing yet another financial crisis, worn out and discouraged.
They were told about the Judge of the Universe.
They went home, carefully and prayerfully searched and cleansed their lives, then sat down together and drew up their case and their petitions. They went before the Lord, asked Him to render judgment, and asked Him to bring His judgment to pass in the courts of earth.
Exactly one month later they were summoned to fly to Washington, D.C. for an unscheduled hearing — a full year before their next scheduled date. The attorneys on both sides had not even had time to review the case.
They stood before a panel of four judges who obviously knew the case thoroughly, who grilled the lawyers and corrected them when they misstated facts, and whose minds were plainly made up before they entered the room. That same day, those four judges ruled in favor of Dennis and Mary and ended the ten-year ordeal.
How to Use This Weapon
Read the qualification carefully, because it is the whole point:
When you have done everything you know to do, and when you have prayerfully searched your life for sin or legal ground and found none — then you have a final court of appeals before a Judge who is completely just.
This is not a shortcut around Days 1 through 11. It is what comes after them. If there is unconfessed sin, unforgiveness, or open legal ground in your life, deal with that first — the Judge is just, and He is just with your adversary too.
But if you have searched and cleansed and there is genuinely nothing left, do not resign yourself to a prolonged season. Prepare your case. Come under the blood of Jesus Christ and no other standing. State your petitions clearly and specifically. Ask for judgment. Ask for a restraining order. Ask that His judgment be executed on earth.
"Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession." (Hebrews 4:14)
"For the LORD will judge His people and have compassion on His servants, when He sees that their power is gone." (Deuteronomy 32:36)
Twelve Days Later
Go back and find the page you wrote on Day 1 — the unsolved problems, and the patterns running through your family line.
Read it again with everything you now know.
Some of those items have already broken. Some you now understand for the first time. Some are still open, and you know exactly what to do about them.
You have been given the whole toolkit. How curses work and where the enemy gets his rights. How to confess the iniquities of your fathers. How to renounce what was spoken over you. What must come out of your house. Where you may not walk and what battles are not yours. How to break what someone aims at you. How to guard your tongue and pay your vows. How to make the thief give it back. And now, when all else is done, how to appeal to the Judge of the Universe.
None of it is for the purpose of making you afraid. All of it is for one purpose: so that nothing hinders you from the work God put you here to do.
"And He said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End... He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.'" (Revelation 21:6-7)
Do not accept your current situation as your permanent address. Seek the Lord. Cleanse your life. Stand up. Take authority over the thief.
And if you have done all of that — go before the Judge.
Point to Ponder
God is your Father, and He is also the Judge of the Universe. When you have exhausted everything else, you have the right to ask Him for a hearing.
Verse to Remember
"Until the Ancient of Days came, and a judgment was made in favor of the saints of the Most High, and the time came for the saints to possess the kingdom." — Daniel 7:22
Question to Consider
Have I quietly accepted a season of defeat as permanent — when God intends for it to end?
Today's Practice
First, finish the search. Look one last time. Ask the Holy Spirit directly: "Is there anything left? Any sin unconfessed, anyone unforgiven, any door still open?" If He shows you something, deal with it today by the steps you have learned. Do not take an unclean case into court.
Then prepare your case. Sit down with paper and write it out — organized, specific, numbered. Not a vague complaint. A petition.
For each item, state plainly what you are asking the Judge to rule on and what you are asking Him to enforce. Follow the pattern:
- Judge whether ______ is truly Your calling on my life.
- Judge whether my heart is genuinely willing to obey You.
- Judge whether the enemy has been unlawfully preventing what You commanded.
- I petition You for a restraining order against him in the matter of ______.
- I petition You to bring this season of sifting to an end.
- I petition You to break the yoke of ______ off my life.
- I petition You to render Your judgment in the courts of earth as well.
Then go. On your face, if you are able. Come only under the blood of Jesus Christ — never on your own record. Ask permission to approach. Ask that your adversary be present. Present your petitions. Thank Him. And then leave the matter with Him, because a just Judge does not need to be nagged.
Then watch. The answer may come through a stranger, a pastor, an unexpected phone call, or your own spouse speaking words they could not possibly know to say.
Prayer
Father, I come to You today as a child comes to a father, and as a petitioner comes before a judge. Both are true of You, and I need both.
I have searched my life over these twelve days. I have confessed what I found. I have renounced what was spoken over me, cleared what was in my house, forgiven who needed forgiving, and taken back what I could. Where anything remains hidden, reveal it and I will deal with it — I have nothing left that I want more than I want to be free.
And where I have done all that I know to do, I ask You now for a hearing. Judge my case. Restrain my adversary. End the sifting. Let the season change.
I do not come with any righteousness of my own. I come covered by the blood of Your Son, wearing His righteousness alone. That is my only standing, and it is enough.
Thank You for hearing me. Thank You that Jesus became a curse so that I could go free. Now let me get on with the work You put me here to do — unhindered, unafraid, and useful, all the days of my life.
In the name of Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
Day 12 of 12 — Christ redeemed you from the curse. Walk out of it, and go do what He called you to do.