Avalanche Refresh

Steve Hill released a prophetic word two years ago about a coming spiritual avalanche. The full word was posted at the Charisma News site, and a fuller explanation was posted on the main Charisma site.

In a dream last night, I recalled Steve’s word. I was walking at the top of a snow-covered peak. I watched as a stainless steel cannon ball was fired at the upper levels of the sloop. It was meant to cause an avalanche. Based on Steve’s word, I would consider this to be an action that was initiated by God, but it was still a dangerous situation. There was no need to fear though for those with the right footwear. Those who walked on the peaks wearing sandals did not need to be afraid of the avalanches. For me, sandals speak of humility and a simplicity of trust in Jesus. It is an uncomplicated, unsophisticated faith that causes us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.

I woke up this morning thinking about the goodness of God. In particular, I was focused on the intentionally of God’s goodness. The world at large can accept that God loves them, but I think that there is an assumption that God’s love is an automatic action, a default state if you will. It is almost as though we imagine God as being "accidentally kind". In reality, God has gone out of his way to show us kindness, mercy, patience, and forgiveness.

It is through a relationship of trust with Jesus that we are saved. I grew up hearing that we trust in and adhere to Jesus in order to be saved. That is true and yet, the focus is off. We trust in and adhere to Jesus because of who He is: He is the only begotten Son of God. He is the manifestation of the radiance of God’s glory. He is the righteous and holy judge before whom we all will give account of our lives. It is out of a recognition and a proper response to who Jesus is that we enter into relationship with him. Out of that context flows the care and intentional kindness of God.

Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: “The Lord knows those who are His,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of Christ[c] depart from iniquity.” – 2 Timothy 2:19

As we focus our hearts on the nature of God, we will stand secure on the solid foundation of God. There is no slippery slope for us when we walk in a humble recognition of who God is and of who are before him.

A Different Sort of Stamina

I have had various dreams and prophetic experiences in which I saw hard times ahead. I have shared with others that God is creating within us endurance for what is on the horizon. Others have seen and predicted economic collapse and civil unrest. Accordingly, I usually think about stamina in the content of standing strong in the midst of overwhelming pressure and sadness. Today though, I had a thought come to mind as I was walking around my workplace, “What if God is developing in us a stamina for joy?”

In March of 2010, I had an amazing dream about a coming revival. In the dream, I was with a group of believers. One of them made a rough calculation of how many people had accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior in the last 2,000 years. To give us a visual representation, they filled a glass jar halfway to the top with water. As we observed, the water in the jar continued to increase as more people in our day came to a personal trust in Jesus. In an approximately 2 year period, the water filled the jar to the very top. We were experiencing true revival. People were not debating the gospel with believers: They knew the basic facts, and they had a personal conviction that they needed to get right with Jesus. The most exciting part of the dream was I knew that we would empty the jar to allow for more water to fill it. When we did, I knew that the greatest increase was yet to come!

In Luke 15:10, Jesus told us, “Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” If one person coming to trust in Jesus causes joy in Heaven, what would it be like if millions of people came to trust in Jesus? It would be wave after wave after wave of joy. Can we handle that much heavenly joy?

It is my belief that our lives will intersect and interact with Heaven’s realities in a greater way in the coming years. Many of our ideas about God comes from our earthly experiences rather than heavenly experiences. The darkness of this world has given a certain religious glimmer to soberness and sadness. What if we are destined to experience a greater level of heavenly joy than we have ever known? If that is the case, it is time for God to give us greater stamina for joy.

Ice Cream Makers and Sabbath Rest

Two weekends ago, I commented to a friend that I would love to have a hand-crank ice cream maker. My family owns a small electric unit, but the concept of making ice cream purely by hand seemed magical. That next week, I walked into the local thrift store. There on the shelf, it waited for me: An original Richmond Cedar Works hand-crank ice maker.

I knew that God had postured me to receive it. There was something to cause me minor concern though. I paid $6 for it. Later in the week, I found myself researching the prophetic meaning of the number six. Among other things, it can mean “Human labor contrasted with God’s rest” and “Rest (six full days bring us to seven : rest)”. There was an immediate connection between the concept of human labor and laboring to make ice cream, but I could not reconcile that with the belief that God had blessed me with the unit.

On the following Sunday, we mixed up the ice cream custard base, purchased ice, and got to business. We cranked and cranked and cranked. We figured that the ice cream would be ready when the crank was too hard to push. Sadly, the plastic beater broke in half. No more ice cream maker.

I was deeply confused by this. How could God bless me with a hard to find item and then allow it to be so easily broken? It was only as I thought about the $6 that it came together for me: We are moving from our labors into the time of God’s Sabbath rest. What worked in those six previous days will no longer suffice on the Sabbath.

Many of us have worked hard for God. We have seen little fruit for our labors, and we have taken comfort in the sweat, tears and sacrifices that we have made for God. Now, it is the end of our labors. God is about to do something in our time that cannot be earned. It cannot be qualified for through human labor. He is causing every place of “Look at what I accomplished for you, God!” to be broken beyond repair. We are beginning to transition from boasting of our works to boasting of God’s works.

Do not grow discouraged as your best achievements unravel. The brokenness being produced will allow God to use us in a way that far surpasses our finest labors. It is just the end of who we are in this world’s system and the beginning of who we are in Christ. Abandon the ideals of human perfection and acceptance. It is time to sit in Daddy’s arms and know that we are loved as His children.

Yielding

I have always, always struggled in my relationship with God. That is not to say that I have struggled to live a moral life, but I have struggled to relate to God properly. I can understand the older brother’s perspective in Jesus’ parable about the prodigal son. During my teen years, I received a couple of prophetic words that instructed me to stop striving, to stop laboring. It never made sense to me. What does “not striving” look like, practically speaking?

Over the years, I have learned to rest a little more in God, but it is still a largely unresolved area for me. Last week, God gave me a picture of what he is looking for. I was asking him how to better align with him or something to that affect. Immediately, I saw a mental picture of a railroad.

This is what it meant to me: I get to wait on God in the same way that I would wait on a train. He is stronger than me, and he wants to carry the loads of my life. He has promised me things, and like the rail cars that seem to stretch out into the distant horizon, what he has promised will move forward and come to past in his timing.

Words that Wound

I have been reading Journal of the Unknown Prophet. One of its prophetic words talks about how the enemy uses us to hurt each other when we give into the urge to defend ourselves. We seek to save our life by exposing the error of others and in doing so, we lose the life that God wants us to have. This particular message deeply resonated with me.

As that word sank deep into my spirit, I had two troubling dreams that sharpened the focus. I have never considered myself to be a gossip, but I do find myself complaining about others when their expectations seem excessive. Many times, I have grumbled aloud about coworkers who needed more than what I felt that I could reasonably provide. I know that it is wrong, and my response is usually to reassure myself that it could be worse and to commit to trying harder.

A week ago, I dreamed two dreams over the course of two nights. In the first, someone held down another man. As they did, I stabbed him through the heart. I was not angry about it. In fact, it felt like an inconvenient thing that had to be taken care of. Later in that dream, I had doubts about what I had done. A brother in Christ reassured me that it was the right thing to do. He said that it was OK because it was “self-defense”.

The next night, I dreamed that there was small but annoying alligator in my neighborhood. I moved him to someone else’s neighborhood. Other time, the alligator killed everyone in the other neighborhood. It was only later that I began to realize the gravity of what I had done. I went back to check on the alligator. I was careful, but he surprised me. He had grown from a small creature into one larger than me. Now, he wanted to eat me. I left the dream knowing the enemy wants to use me to hurt other people and then to hurt me too.

I was deeply troubled by these dreams. The first dream showed me that my “little sin” of complaining about others was spiritual murder. The second demonstrated with crystal clarity the way that a small habit of sharp remarks could devour others and grow into a monster that would eat me alive. To see myself this way is less than flattering and deflates the confidence of self-improvement.

Out of these dreams, I am coming to understand that I cannot change myself but neither can I treat lightly this sin of words that wound. I am getting a glimpse of why we need Jesus. He did not come just to save us from Hell. He came to save us from sin. I cringe to think how gross my own iniquity is before God….and from this, I find hope: Jesus came to remove me from all unrighteousness. He promises that as I tell the truth about how he sees my sin, he will cleanse from all unrighteousness.

Seasonal Visions

There was a season in which my family met with a small Sunday morning church group. We utilized a projector for our worship service. Eventually, the church shrunk and dispersed. We inherited the projector to use for both soaking worship and entertainment. The projector bulb burned out after many hours of use. Last night, I dreamed about the projector.

In my dream, someone came looking for the projector. They wanted to use it again for church services. I explained that the bulb had died. When I searched for the unit itself, it was found to have been recalled and removed from our reach.

“Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them—the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, as I said to Moses...” – Joshua 1:2-3

The gifts and callings of God are without recall, but God releases and later recalls seasonal visions. Visions provide the strategy for parts of the journey, and as such, they are transient. My dream reminded me of visions that have served their purpose and then burned out. The vision of God did not fail, but rather, it fulfilled its intended purpose. When a vision has reached its end of life, we are left waiting for the next step to take. It can be tempting to put the old vision back into service, but we cannot go back. Each vision is a foundation for the upcoming vision.

My desire is to trust God to impart the vision for this next season. My heart wants to go back and find comfort in what used to work, but that vision is dead now. It is time to arise and cross into a new land. The promises of God are ahead of me, and he will be faithful to continue what he has begun in my life.

Seek First

Everything that Jesus said and everything written in the Word is subject to the filters that we possess. I was thinking about Matthew 6:33 this morning, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” This verse requires a contextual understanding and an emotional wholeness to be properly received.

I treasure rules because rules guarantee outcomes. I gravitate toward principles in the Word and in the Christian walk because they help to predict what is coming next. Many books have been sold because they were rich in the study of biblical principles. I cannot speak for others, but much of my love of rules and principles is centered in distrust. Internally, I have used these abstractions to force God to be predictable.

The context of Matthew 6 is that our greater reward is yet to come, and that we are deeply loved right now. Jesus came to set us free from living for the here and now so that we could love God and others without being consumed by our own needs. At this point in my life, this is a hard truth for me. I know that Jesus’ character is being formed in me, and yet, I do not trust God the way that I should. I am growing convinced though I will not accomplish anything of lasting value except that I am willing to die to my way of getting it.

I am still learning how to walk this out. This is a heart thing. It is not a matter of having no desires or no needs. It is not a matter of trading obedience for provision. It is a relational trust that once fully developed will allow me to suffer gracefully and to love those who do not understand me. Such an outcome is daunting to consider, but I draw encouragement from Peter. Over time, God grew Peter from self-sufficiency to become the shepherd that he was called to be. I know that God can do the same for me.