Get Ready for the Super Bloom by Joanne Green
Today’s guest blog is written by Joanne Green. Green is a former runway model for the exclusive Lord and Taylor stores in New York and Boston but now serves the Lord in ministry. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fashion Merchandising so while managing her home life as a wife and mother in Dallas, Texas she launched “Ezra,” a unique custom clothing line that was designed for women and children which she sold to Boutiques and marketed at Trade and Trunk Shows. Joanne quickly discovered that her work was thrusting her into the brokenness and spiritually bankrupt lives of professionals from corporate backgrounds and lifestyles. Her work evolved from designing for the outward individual to ministering to the inward and thus sharing the word of God became an ensuing passion.
In 1981, she acknowledged and prepared for the prophetic call on her life by attending Word of Faith Bible School. She was licensed to preach and teach in 1984 by her then Pastor, Ron Shaw, Dallas Texas, and later in 1994 was ordained by Bishop D. W. Washington, Houston, Texas, where she also served as an Associate Pastor for more than twenty years. Her professional experience includes Sales, Marketing and Human Resource Management. She was an active Executive Board Member of L.I.F.E. Inc. and currently serves on the Board of Directors of True Vineyard Ministries.
Her community involvement included being a Juvenile Volunteer in the Fairfield, California Correctional System, Religious Program Coordinator for the Galveston Texas Prison Medical Facility. She currently offers Inner Healing classes to survivors of domestic violence at the Fort Bend Women’s Center, in Richmond, Texas. She has traveled domestically and globally sharing the Word of God, volunteering and serving in mission outreaches. In 2005 “Ezra” became Ezra Ministries taken from the scripture found in Ezra 7:10 and in 2014 Ezra Ministries became a non-profit 501(c) (3) organization.
Joanne has been called to be a modern day Ezra with the mandate to impact lives through her gifting to preach the uncompromised truth, teach the word simply and to provoke people to become passionate and purposeful about kingdom principles. Joanne has just published and released her first book titled Pretty Woman, Redeemed by Promise, Destined for Purpose, now available through Amazon and Barnes & Nobles.
You can reach Joanne at: Ezra Ministries, Inc., 102 Wonder World Drive, Ste. 304-126, San Marcos, Texas, 78666
Office- 512-270-9059; Mobile- 713-516-5078
ministergreen@windstream.net; www.ezraministriesinc.org
Get Ready for the Super Bloom
As my thoughts were directed toward Jesus’ Resurrection, what I believe God wants me to share is found in 2 Kings 4 and Matthew 27:
In 2 Kings 4, the Shunammite woman had shown kindness to Elisha and Gehazi every time they came to her city. Because of her hospitality, Elisha wanted a way to repay the woman. We find she had no son, and her husband was old. In Verse 16 Elisha says, “Next year, when the season comes around, you will be holding a son.” “No, my lord,” she answered. “Man of God, don’t lie to your servant!”
The woman did conceive just as Elisha promised, and gave birth to a son the following year when the season came around. The child went out one day to be with his father, who was with the reapers. Suddenly he cried out to his father, “My head! My head hurts!” The Father instructed his servant, to “Carry him back to his mother.” When he had taken him and brought him to his mother, her son laid on her lap until noon; and then he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, shut the door and went out.
Point: The seed of promise is now lifeless and she laid her lifeless seed on the bed of the prophet. She left her seed in the soil of the prophet’s bed, perhaps because the residue of his anointing would somehow bring a miracle. She left the seed of her promise in the dark, and closed the door behind her.
Matthew 27: 57-60
Yeshua had just died by crucifixion. In Verse 57- Towards evening, there came a wealthy man from Arimathea named Yosef, who was himself a talmid (disciple) of Yeshua. He approached Pilate and asked for Yeshua’s body, and Pilate ordered it to be given to him. Yosef took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen sheet, and laid it in his own tomb, which he had recently cut out of a rock. After rolling a large stone in front of the entrance to the tomb, he went away.
Point: When Jesus, the seed of promise was taken off of the cross …a disciple named Joseph laid the dead lifeless seed in his tomb, the soil of the sepulcher and sealed the door behind him and departed.
In both of these circumstances we know that what was dead was brought back to life. Both the son of the Shunammite woman and the Son of Man / Son of God were restored to life. The promise of sons whose lives were temporarily snatched by death were put into the soil of Faith only to be substantiated by the Giver of Life. These seeds were redeemed and restored. Both the woman and the disciple had to step away from the lifeless seeds.
Some of us have to step away from those lifeless seeds of promise and allow God to work His resurrection power over those seeds. For one, the promise was restored immediately and for the other, the promise was restored in three days. It took time and faith for the manifestation to be seen, to be handled and touched. What am I saying today? Our dead “things” will come back to life! Will be restored!
Death Valley is the driest place in North America and nothing grows there, but right now Death Valley is blooming. There are wildflowers throughout the valley in full bloom. The phenomenon is called a Super Bloom. In October of 2015 the rains began to come and have continued over the winter. The desert is blooming. There is life throughout the valley. A prophetic word has been released and “The Lord is saying, that the jet-streams in our hearts and in our region are shifting, and the deserts in our lives are going to bloom.
The seeds that have been hidden, that have been laid in the soil, they will bloom. Our death valleys will bloom in places that were dead with no signs of life at all, in places that were hopeless and impossible; but they are going to bloom because God is pouring out His rains and His Jetstreams.
The rains have come to make the earth bring forth and bud; God has shifted the rains and the winds to come upon us …… those lifeless seeds in our lives will come to life……….some immediately and some that will take time, but there will be a manifestation, there will be signs, you will begin to see buds of life spring forth…
The Lord wants us to believe for the dead, lifeless things in our life to come back to life. He wants us to experience a His Super Bloom!
Joanne Green
Ezra Ministries, Inc.
102 Wonder World Drive, Ste. 304-126
San Marcos, TX. 78666
Thank you Joanne for that vibrant example of God’s love and mercy for us. the Easter season will more promising with those words in my heart. Have a Blessed Easter.
Joanne, I am a long time friend of Lisa Burkhardt Worley and we spent many, many years in the TV news business together!
I will be attending her workshop in San Antonio next month as well as the Roaring Lambs luncheon on April 14th. I read your bio and was delighted to see that your background is in fashion merchandising. My daughter is a fashion merchandising major at Savannah College of Art and Design and I would so love to speak to you sometime about this exciting business and see if you are ever in San Antonio so we could meet. I can be reached at hawaiiankaren@satx.rr.com. Thank you for your beautiful writing on the eve of this Easter and many blessings to you and your family this weekend. God bless you and hope to hear from you in the near future!