Soul Speakers

Only the Holy Spirit can do the work that needs to be done to raise up His Bride from the ruins of Christendom.  In the days ahead, there will be people in the Body of Christ whose words will not be their own, but the Holy Spirit.  God calls them “soul speakers.”  Their words will pierce through the darkness, bringing much needed light.  Their words will pierce through the confusion and lies, bringing much needed truth.  Their words will pierce stony hearts and sinful minds, bringing the much needed conviction of the Holy Spirit.  

Scripture says that Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to “convict the world about sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you no longer behold Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged.” (John 16:8-11).  At Luke Chapter 4, Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1,2 in a synagogue at Nazareth.  He stops halfway through verse 2, rolls up the scroll, and doesn’t finish it.  In this pericope, Jesus is announcing the “year of the Lord’s favor” in which the good news of the Gospel is preached, the brokenhearted are bound up, freedom is proclaimed for the captives, and the prisoners are released from darkness (Is 61:1).  That “year of the Lord’s favor” (Is 61:2a) has been taking place for the last 2000 years.  The Holy Spirit has been convicting people of sin and righteousness for 2000 years so that they can receive the salvation offered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  But one day we will arrive at the rest of Isaiah 61, verse 2, and the year of the Lord’s favor will cease and we will enter into “the day of vengeance of our God” (Is 61:2b).  It is then that the Holy Spirit will bring the judgment of the ruler of this world to its culmination.

Today, the landscape of Christendom is a parched, cracked ground and the people languish for want of Living Water.  They receive a thimble-full of lifeless doctrine and a vat of platitudes on any given Sunday, and they may wander away with a full heart, their flesh may be filled, but their soul starves.  When God raises up the swords in the hands of these soul piercers, it will be an all-out war upon the kingdom of darkness.  There will be casualties, there will be blood.  But there will also be salvation unto eternal life.  There will be firebrands snatched from the fire and hinges torn off from the gates of hell, bars bent and in disarray from the onslaught of God’s swordsmen.  Do not glory in these men and women, but glory in the God Who shaped them by His own hand.  The God Who removed them from human institution and put them in the wilderness for a season to learn His voice, His heart, His ways.  They are simply vessels which have been prepared for times such as these, and all preparation has been done by God and God alone, Who alone should be gloried.

I see the feet of a woman. 

I keep seeing these feet in my mind’s eye, standing on a hill, on the precipice of a battlefield. 

The wind gently blows the bottom tendrils of a flowy gown, licking at her ankles as she stands there.  

I see a sword in her hand, loosely gripped, the tip of it resting on the ground near her feet.  

She stands silently, looking out over the battlefield. 

Waiting.

She waits, not because she doesn’t have the strength to pick up the sword, but because she has not heard the instructions to do so.  

She waits, not with fear or doubt or trembling, but with building courage and growing confidence and increasing strength.  

She waits, as a lioness waits along the edges of the savanna and watches her prey, observing, assessing, waiting for the opportune moment to make her move.    

Timing.

Whether hunt or battle, it is all about timing.  

Both prey and battle are lost without the proper timing.  

Should the sword be lifted too soon, the warrior fights unprepared, incomplete in training, swinging at anything that moves, reaching exhaustion too soon, and is then overcome by the enemy during a moment of weakness.

Should the sword be lifted too late, the warrior misses the most opportune time.

When you are waiting for the most opportune time to strike, you are silent.  You are observing, gathering understanding.

As a snake makes its approach, there is only a window of time to stand up and frighten it away.  

If you wait too long, it will get too close to scare away and will strike at you instead.  

If you stand up too soon, it will be startled away before it gets within reach of the sword.

Timing.

Knowing how long to wait and when to rise up.

Many bare feet stand on this hill, on the precipice of the battle field.

Swords loosely gripped, the tips resting on the ground near their feet.

They look out at the battle that rages on the plain before them.

Waiting.

For it is not they who will raise the sword in their hand, but God.

"..the Lord has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor. They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations." (Is 61:1-3)

"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and His glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Lift up your eyes and look about you:  All assemble and come to you; your sons come from afar, and your daughters are carried on the hip." (Is 60:1-4)

"His eyes are like blazing fire, and on His head are many crowns. He has a name written on Him that no one knows but He Himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following Him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of His mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty." (Rev 19:12-15)

"But what about you?" He asked. "Who do you say I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." (Matt 16:15-18)

The Reluctant Hand

There was a time in my walk with God that He began to deal with my inner man.  It was a time in which I came face to face with who I truly was in light of God’s holiness, and the only thing that carried me through it and kept me going was His merciful grace.  Thinking back on it, I liken it to when God allowed the prophet Isaiah to see Him on His throne in heaven and all Isaiah could do was cry, “Woe to me…I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” (Is 6:5).  Isaiah saw himself in the light of Who God is, and he was utterly undone.  I see many people in the church who seem to believe in Jesus Christ, but they have never gotten to the place where they have allowed Him to deal with their inner man.  They have never opened themselves up fully to Him, allowing Him to sift through them, dealing with their flaws, healing them of all their inner brokenness.  They are like the rich young ruler at Mark Chapter 10, who followed all the rules as he followed Jesus around for a time, but then when Jesus was ready to deal with the young ruler’s heart, the young ruler walked away, unwilling to give himself to Christ fully and completely.  What we learn from this account in the Gospels is that people can follow Jesus on a superficial level, and yet never truly trust in Him.  We learn from this account, that God is more interested in dealing with your heart than receiving your superficial religion. 

Three years ago, as God was dealing with me in the furnace, purifying my heart, I wrote a poem in my prayer journal that I have never shared.  I’ve never shared it because it was a moment of deep intimacy with God, a moment of total nakedness, total surrender, total honesty.  I never intended to share this poem with anyone, because it was just between me and God and this moment belonged to Him.  But we are at a place in Christendom where people need to understand how to be in right relationship with God, more so than any understanding they are getting from sitting in a pew one hour a week.  We are at a place where people need to hear deep truths that will pull them out of Babylon, out of superficial commercial religion and into the kind of relationship that God truly wants to have with them.  It is my desire to cast a net for those who are hungry and broken and seeking to know and understand God that compels me to share this deeply personal journal entry:

August 7, 2017

I am so aware of my brokenness.  I grieve over my flaws and deeply scarred wounds.  I imagine all the ways my ugliness will seep to the surface and flood my circumstances with sin.  Anger, contempt, pride, oozing through the cracks and fissures that I cry out to God to repair.

I come to You and say, “I am broken.”

I hold my shattered pieces out to You and say, “See?  I need to be fixed.”

I need to be fixed.

But I am afraid of the nail.

I lay on this cross, one hand nailed to it,

But the other I keep snatching away.

I snatch it away because I am broken and I need to be fixed.

But the only way I can be fixed,

Is to stop snatching it away.

Paradox.

I am affixed to Your cross by this nail of faith through my hand,

A hand that I willingly give.

A hand that I would allow to be nailed here, over and over.

But as I lay here, affixed to You for all eternity,

Your brilliant light shows the deep, dark shadows that remain.

The shadows where my wounds and flaws reside.

Your beauty only magnifies my ugliness.

I weep and I beg for you to remove this thorn,

Not realizing that it is this thorn which You are using

To nail my other hand to this cross

And set me free

Today, as I sit here, I can say with great joy and worshipful gratitude, that I have been nailed to the cross of Jesus Christ and I have been set free.  It never ceases to amaze me how God can take a sinner like me—broken and flawed, cracked and chipped—and not only see value underneath all of that, but also transform me into something useful.  Know this, my beloved weary and broken traveler, Jesus Christ makes the broken whole, He rejoices over the rejected, He trades us salvation for shame and He turns sinners into saints…..if you would but give Him your other hand and stop snatching it away.  If you would but trust that He can not only clean up your mess, but give you beauty for your brokenness.

So to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me. (2 Cor 12:7-9)

“…to provide for those who grieve in Zion—to give them a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise in place of a spirit of despair. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” (Is 61:3)

“Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments..”  “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”  Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” He said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow Me.” At this the man’s face fell.  He went away sad because he had great wealth. (Mark 10:17-22)

You say, “I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.” But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.  (Rev 3:17-20)

Design

Spread me out on the ground like a tent before You, O Lord
Pore over every thread
Examine every stitch
Press the weight of Your glory upon me
And iron out every crease
Straighten every wrinkle

Brood over me
As You contemplate Your intentions for me
Let my finished pattern fill Your mind
And impress it upon me by the force of Your will
May I yield to Your tailoring
May I conform to the weaving of Your hand

May You stand back and gaze upon me
With satisfaction and delight--
The finished work of Your design

"In Him, we were also chosen as God's own, having been predestined according to the plan of Him Who works out everything by the counsel of His will.." (Eph 1:11)

"For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters." (Rom 8:29)

"And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, Who is the Spirit." (2 Cor 3:18)

Beauty

I often feel like when I try to tell people about God, when I try to explain what He’s really like, no one is interested.  No one wants that God, they want another one.  One that is friendly rather than fearsome.  One that is kind rather than crushing.  One that embodies mercy more than judgment, One that proffers grace more than accountability.  Often times, when people come face to face with the God that the Bible describes in Scripture, He seems foreign to them.  They don’t want a God Who sometimes answers a prayer for healing with continued sickness.  They don’t want a God who disciplines His creation through their circumstances.  A God Who, when we ask for faith, He gives us a trial.  When we ask for beauty, He blesses us with failure and rejection.  A God like this doesn’t make sense to most people who imagine God to be something He is not.  As I sat in my prayer chair next to my bed the other day and contemplated Who I know God to be versus what many people seem to imagine Him to be like, I wrote this poem:

I asked God to make me beautiful,

So He let me fail.

He let me sit in the darkness alone.

He let me weep in despair.

He let me wrestle dragons and stand against scorpions,

He let me cry out to Him for help.

He let me doubt and question,

He let me wallow in the depths of human ignorance.

He let me climb the peaks and suffer the valleys of human emotion.

He let me be rejected, He let me be tempted, He let me be disappointed.

He allowed me to be sifted.

Challenge after challenge, test after test, 

The waters rose until my feet could touch no more.

Then wave after wave tried to take me under,

Until at last, 

I sat on a deserted beach, 

Alone.

As water dripped from my face,

I looked up to heaven and cried out,

“Father, I prayed for You to make me beautiful!”

And He answered, 

“I did.”

Beauty in the eyes of heaven is a faith that is tried and tested, and yet endures.  Beauty in heaven is seeming defeat on earth, yet the unwillingness to let go of hope.  Beauty in heaven is tenacity in the face of relentless discouragement and persistence in the face of relentless persecution.  Beauty in heaven is running and not growing weary, it is walking and not fainting.  It is the resolve to hold onto God despite the silence, despite the shame, ridicule, rejection, fear, sorrow, and disappointment.

Beauty in heaven is a heart that has withstood the furnace of both human ruthlessness and heavenly refinement.  Because it is both the intensity of the flame and the unrelenting hammer that makes the sharpest swords.

"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31,32)

"For I will give the command, and I will shake the people of Israel among all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will reach the ground." (Amos 9:9)

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:2-5)

Pursuit

"Many are the pursuits of mankind's hearts, but there is only one pursuit that will genuinely satisfy. All other pursuits only lead to more hunger. The heart of mankind is insatiable with regard to all other pursuits but one."

This is what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart after my prayer time today. One of the things that the Spirit is currently burdening my heart with, is how we so easily deceive ourselves. There are many in the church who have convinced themselves that they are pursuing God, but what they are really pursuing is success, recognition, acknowledgement, their own ambition, validation, a comfortable version of Jesus, wealth, prosperity, power, control over their circumstances, and many other things that are the true treasure of their heart, rather than Jesus Christ the person, Who calls us to die to ourselves and stand naked before Him.  Too many of us want to bring our own clothing with us, our good deeds, our noble pursuits, our successful endeavors we have accomplished in Jesus' name.  But what we don't realize is that our own clothing is like filthy rags before the throne of God (Zechariah 3:4,5). Our white garments must come from the Lord, and the Lord alone (Rev 3:18), because it is only His righteousness that is truly worthy. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit.." (Matt 5:3) because they are those who realize and understand their spiritual poverty without the benevolence of God.

Many of us are willing to accept Jesus-plus-the-thing-we-want-Him-to-do-for-us. We are willing to accept Jesus, as long as it's on our terms. But what we really need to understand is that we must be willing to accept Jesus alone, on His terms alone. This is because anything we add to our pursuit of Him will eventually get in the way. Jesus, alone, is worth forsaking every other pursuit of our heart. That is why He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field" (Matt 13:44). We pursue many things to satisfy our hearts, and many in the church pursue much in Jesus' name, but all He truly wants us to pursue is Him.

What is the treasure of your heart? What are you pursuing? Are you clothed in your own garments or His? Ask God to examine your heart.  But many of us may first have to pray for the courage to face what God finds.  God doesn't need us to build bigger churches, grow larger ministries, accumulate wealth and influence, fix our political system, or any other thing we convince ourselves that God has "called" us to do.  Many of the things we do in Jesus' name are things He never asked us to do in the first place.  He simply said, "Follow Me."  And when we walk alongside of Jesus as He walked, we find that His path led not to the satisfaction of His own ambition or comfort, but to a rough-hewn cross.  Sometimes God just wants us to sit still long enough to let Him do His work in us.

As they traveled along, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet, listening to His teaching. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations to be made. She came to Jesus and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord replied, "you are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part and it shall not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)   

Let Go

One of the hardest things for us to do is to let go.  This fear of loss seems to be unbearable.  The thought of letting go of our vision of how life should be, or how we should be, or how others should be, or how God should be, is like a looming boogey monster.  But when we let go, we come to a place where true faith in God’s goodness and trustworthiness can begin to take root in our heart as He replaces our own vision with His.

There was a book that was popular when I was a little girl called, “Where the Red Fern Grows.”  It’s a tear-jerker about a boy and his dogs. As Trump would say, “It’s a really terrific book, a fantastic book, everyone agrees it’s a great book.” There is a part in the story where it describes a trap devised by the boy to catch raccoons. A large hole is drilled down into a log and then tack nails are driven in, along the rim of the hole, all at an angle pointed toward the center.  Something shiny and desirable is placed in the bottom of the hole and then the trap is set. When the coon comes along and sees that shiny thing in the bottom of the hole, it reaches in, closes its fist around it and won’t let go. Its closed fist is too big to fit back out the hole because of the angled tack nails, which pierce the closed fist every time the coon tries to pull it out. No matter what, the coon won’t let go. Neither hunger nor approaching danger will cause the coon to release its treasure.

Satan uses this same sort of tactic.  He entices our hearts and imaginations to reach down into his trap to grasp at the desirable thing and close our heart and mind around it like a fist. But when we try to move forward with it, we find that we are trapped and become stuck because we won’t let go. Like the coon, all we have to do to be set free is to let go of the desirable shiny thing, and like the coon, we refuse. Like the coon, we hold onto the vain illusion even if it means we die while still holding onto it.  Our desire to hold on is stronger than our desire to be set free.

Jesus came to set mankind free.  He came to heal our hearts of their sickness.  He offers us a cross that will set us free, but many would rather hang onto the shiny thing that Satan has enticed their heart with. I’ve been down this road, I’ve struggled with holding onto what I envisioned my future to be versus letting go and allowing God to replace my vision with His. I’ve struggled with letting go of the image I tried to live up to, versus the image that God wanted to shape in me. I’ve struggled with letting go of who I wanted God to be, versus Who He truly is.  I’ve watched others vainly pursue human desires both outside the church and within it, since none of us are immune.  Satan works by luring us down a road of empty promises, a path lined by the desires of our own heart.  Humanity must know and understand that Satan weaponizes our own heart against us.  That is why it is critical that we allow God to examine it, so He can reveal to us the things that Satan could weaponize against us.

All Satan needs to succeed in his work against us is to keep us reaching for his lies instead of God’s truth. All he needs to succeed is to keep us reaching for our own vision, instead of God’s.  As the darkness continues to close in around us, and it will, we must let go of whatever shiny thing we have been holding onto.  We must let go and allow God to sift our hearts and replace our own vision with His.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick--who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind to reward a man according to his way, by what his deeds deserve." (Jer 17:9,10)

"What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will repay each one according to what he has done." (Matt 16:26,27)

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you," declares the Lord. (Jer 29:13,14)

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will fine; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matt 7:7,8)