John 13:7
“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.’”
HAPPY MAY, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!!!
I pray you're in a chipper mood as I am. Even though here in Chicago it's been raining cats and dogs, I won't complain a bit.
As the old folks would say, "April showers equals May flowers." If this is true, I'm happy because I'm a sucker for flowers. Plus, the spiritual implications of rain being followed by flourishing flowers is impossible for someone like me to overlook. I see it this way, if you've been experiencing heavy downpours in your life, fret not!
Trouble don't last always. You're bound to reap beauty for your ashes sooner or later. Especially if you've planted good seeds. I recommend you check out a post I wrote last year about this. If of course you haven't already.
Trouble don't last always. You're bound to reap beauty for your ashes sooner or later. Especially if you've planted good seeds. I recommend you check out a post I wrote last year about this. If of course you haven't already.
A few weeks ago, a beautiful soul reached out to me for a private consultation. We actually met in 2015 at a community activists' event I'd assisted in facilitating. I basically walked through a few areas with her where she was seeking wisdom. She then asked me if she could send me a picture of something. Curious, I told her sure.
The picture she sent was taken of a nasty room with bloody machetes and various sized clay pots.
It was awful to say the least. But I wasn't peeved out though since God had previously informed me some years ago, that He was going to give me the stomach to see some unsettling things.
Anyway, she told me that this was a picture of where God had delivered her from. I asked her if this was some kind of blood sacrifice altar and she said yes. God had delivered her from African spirituality and its ungodly rituals. Something she'd started practicing after losing her faith in God.
She then confided in me that at the current moment she hasn't felt as close enough to hear Him as she did when He first delivered her and that she felt lost in a way she couldn't explain.
Immediately, I was triggered by this. Triggered because I've been here before. A few times actually.
LOST.
I'm not sure if anybody remember the original version of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
I was reminded of this cartoon so I watched it to refresh my memory.
The story followed a little girl who found herself in a strange world after trying to chase a fully dressed rabbit with a pocket watch down a hole.
Well nothing was what it was supposed to be and everything it was, wasn't what it seemed.
All the animals she ran into could talk. She could speak things into existence. She could drink potions and grow and eat cake and shrink.
There was one point she'd grown so much she couldn't fit through a door so she cried a river of tears that flooded the land and wound up being encouraged by one of the creatures to participate in a race running in a circle to dry off.
The random encounters continued until she was led to court to be a witness for the Knave of Hearts who was accused of stealing some tarts from the Queen of Hearts.
But before she could testify, she kept growing until she was larger than everyone in court.
A dormouse told her she needed to stop growing. She hit him with a clapback and told him pretty much that she couldn't help it and that everybody grows.
When she took to the stand the Queen of Hearts told her that anybody bigger than a certain size couldn't be a witness in the trial.
Alice fought back and basically told her that this was stupid. The Queen threatened her life with a command, "Off with her head!"
Alice was chased by the Queen and some card shaped people until she was shaken awake from her sleep by her sister.
Please read carefully as I am about to paint you a very eclectic picture to explain what and why you're probably experiencing like my fellow sister in Christ, a sense of feeling completely lost.
At some point in our lives, we've all had an idea or fantasy about what we wanted our lives to look like. And if we be honest at some point we chased rabbits with pocket clocks (timeframes/calendars) down dark holes in hopes of meeting these ideals. Which only led us into places where our growth rates were heavily influenced by the environments these places housed.
Inevitably depressed by our girth and uniqueness, we realized that in order to fit into doors (crowds and opportunities) we'd have to shrink. Not understanding that if we chose to do so (shrink), eventually we'd find ourselves running in a circle trying to clean up the mess we'd created when we weren't so emotionally sober. As well as on trial to defend the very part of ourselves we have no control of; our growth.
So, deliverance was ordered to shake us awake.
This is going to ring very true for those who've recently been brought out of something whether mentally, spiritually, or physically.
Do I still have your attention?
Good.
Let's continue painting.
I shared with my sister in response to her candid laments that right now, God has a lot of His people in a necessary vigorous transition.
This transition involves a confrontation of worlds and old governments.
He's shifting paradigms so the first thing that will go, is our compass
Which describes the lost feeling.
New wine can't go into old wine skins. (Mark 2:22)
Everything about our nature must be deregulated and reprogrammed
Updated and reconfigured.
In the past we used old strategies to make decisions
that were simply derived from trauma and pain.
Once God delivered us from the trauma and pain, these old strategies were made obsolete
Even if we were to refer back to them they won't work.
When you're more whole than you used to be, the methods you once held true to, to make moves that accommodated a broken version of you,
will not work anymore for you.
This lost feeling may just very well be a very good thing.
There are people on God's list to be rehabbed. But they must be gutted out first.
He will take away all of your old reliances and replace them with something new.
Yet for a moment, none of this will make sense for a while.
It will seem like you're running through a maze.
Your appetite and motivations will change.
Sometimes you will be in a funk.
This will all just be your old security system being disarmed.
Nevertheless, know that you are in good company and even greater hands.
God knows what He's doing.
Consider it even an honor that He chose to put you on His list to be rehabbed.
That means He sees great value in you!
I remember last year at our last ministerial alliance meeting I'd attended at my church, the prophet who was teaching began to prophesy to everyone individually.
I was the first person she spoke a word to.
Don't ask me why, but I was frightened. Ha!
One of the things God told her though, was that I was going to undergo an extreme transformation and that everything about me was getting ready to change and that this change was going to accompany an abundance of joy.
Shortly after I received that message, my gutting would come.
A painful gutting.
This is why I can paint such a picture for you guys. I know what that terrible nagging feeling of not being aware of too much of anything looks like. Being in familiar spaces but everything seeming foreign. Wondering even if your most current decisions were made in your right mind.
Trust, I get it.
I'm commissioned to tell you that this is it. This is the moment where you must hold onto God. Hold on as if your life depends on it! You go ahead and hurl up all of those questions and grievances to Him and humbly place a demand on Him to answer.
And He will most definitely.
Just don't let go!
Don't be ashamed to need Him in a greater way.
In the Bible when Jacob was in transition and getting roughed up by an angel of the Lord, that man refused to let go of that angel which was later revealed to be God.
As a result, Jacob walked away with a limp and a name change which would be his identification for where God had ordained him to walk into.
Shucks now!
In John 13, Jesus took it upon himself to wash the feet of the disciples. Peter was sort of adamant about this gesture. He really didn't want Jesus to do that. And that's when Jesus responded, "You do not understand what I'm doing but after this you will."
Peter still was not having it. He told Jesus, "No! Don't wash my feet." Jesus let him know that if he did not wash his feet that Peter would not have a part with him.
Jesus washing Peter's feet was a part of a much bigger plan.
It wasn't no small gesture.
The picture she sent was taken of a nasty room with bloody machetes and various sized clay pots.
It was awful to say the least. But I wasn't peeved out though since God had previously informed me some years ago, that He was going to give me the stomach to see some unsettling things.
Anyway, she told me that this was a picture of where God had delivered her from. I asked her if this was some kind of blood sacrifice altar and she said yes. God had delivered her from African spirituality and its ungodly rituals. Something she'd started practicing after losing her faith in God.
She then confided in me that at the current moment she hasn't felt as close enough to hear Him as she did when He first delivered her and that she felt lost in a way she couldn't explain.
Immediately, I was triggered by this. Triggered because I've been here before. A few times actually.
LOST.
I'm not sure if anybody remember the original version of
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
I was reminded of this cartoon so I watched it to refresh my memory.
The story followed a little girl who found herself in a strange world after trying to chase a fully dressed rabbit with a pocket watch down a hole.
Well nothing was what it was supposed to be and everything it was, wasn't what it seemed.
All the animals she ran into could talk. She could speak things into existence. She could drink potions and grow and eat cake and shrink.
There was one point she'd grown so much she couldn't fit through a door so she cried a river of tears that flooded the land and wound up being encouraged by one of the creatures to participate in a race running in a circle to dry off.
The random encounters continued until she was led to court to be a witness for the Knave of Hearts who was accused of stealing some tarts from the Queen of Hearts.
But before she could testify, she kept growing until she was larger than everyone in court.
A dormouse told her she needed to stop growing. She hit him with a clapback and told him pretty much that she couldn't help it and that everybody grows.
When she took to the stand the Queen of Hearts told her that anybody bigger than a certain size couldn't be a witness in the trial.
Alice fought back and basically told her that this was stupid. The Queen threatened her life with a command, "Off with her head!"
Alice was chased by the Queen and some card shaped people until she was shaken awake from her sleep by her sister.
Please read carefully as I am about to paint you a very eclectic picture to explain what and why you're probably experiencing like my fellow sister in Christ, a sense of feeling completely lost.
At some point in our lives, we've all had an idea or fantasy about what we wanted our lives to look like. And if we be honest at some point we chased rabbits with pocket clocks (timeframes/calendars) down dark holes in hopes of meeting these ideals. Which only led us into places where our growth rates were heavily influenced by the environments these places housed.
Inevitably depressed by our girth and uniqueness, we realized that in order to fit into doors (crowds and opportunities) we'd have to shrink. Not understanding that if we chose to do so (shrink), eventually we'd find ourselves running in a circle trying to clean up the mess we'd created when we weren't so emotionally sober. As well as on trial to defend the very part of ourselves we have no control of; our growth.
So, deliverance was ordered to shake us awake.
This is going to ring very true for those who've recently been brought out of something whether mentally, spiritually, or physically.
Do I still have your attention?
Good.
Let's continue painting.
I shared with my sister in response to her candid laments that right now, God has a lot of His people in a necessary vigorous transition.
This transition involves a confrontation of worlds and old governments.
He's shifting paradigms so the first thing that will go, is our compass
Which describes the lost feeling.
New wine can't go into old wine skins. (Mark 2:22)
Everything about our nature must be deregulated and reprogrammed
Updated and reconfigured.
In the past we used old strategies to make decisions
that were simply derived from trauma and pain.
Once God delivered us from the trauma and pain, these old strategies were made obsolete
Even if we were to refer back to them they won't work.
When you're more whole than you used to be, the methods you once held true to, to make moves that accommodated a broken version of you,
will not work anymore for you.
This lost feeling may just very well be a very good thing.
There are people on God's list to be rehabbed. But they must be gutted out first.
He will take away all of your old reliances and replace them with something new.
Yet for a moment, none of this will make sense for a while.
It will seem like you're running through a maze.
Your appetite and motivations will change.
Sometimes you will be in a funk.
This will all just be your old security system being disarmed.
Nevertheless, know that you are in good company and even greater hands.
God knows what He's doing.
Consider it even an honor that He chose to put you on His list to be rehabbed.
That means He sees great value in you!
I remember last year at our last ministerial alliance meeting I'd attended at my church, the prophet who was teaching began to prophesy to everyone individually.
I was the first person she spoke a word to.
Don't ask me why, but I was frightened. Ha!
One of the things God told her though, was that I was going to undergo an extreme transformation and that everything about me was getting ready to change and that this change was going to accompany an abundance of joy.
Shortly after I received that message, my gutting would come.
A painful gutting.
This is why I can paint such a picture for you guys. I know what that terrible nagging feeling of not being aware of too much of anything looks like. Being in familiar spaces but everything seeming foreign. Wondering even if your most current decisions were made in your right mind.
Trust, I get it.
I'm commissioned to tell you that this is it. This is the moment where you must hold onto God. Hold on as if your life depends on it! You go ahead and hurl up all of those questions and grievances to Him and humbly place a demand on Him to answer.
And He will most definitely.
Just don't let go!
Don't be ashamed to need Him in a greater way.
In the Bible when Jacob was in transition and getting roughed up by an angel of the Lord, that man refused to let go of that angel which was later revealed to be God.
As a result, Jacob walked away with a limp and a name change which would be his identification for where God had ordained him to walk into.
Shucks now!
In John 13, Jesus took it upon himself to wash the feet of the disciples. Peter was sort of adamant about this gesture. He really didn't want Jesus to do that. And that's when Jesus responded, "You do not understand what I'm doing but after this you will."
Peter still was not having it. He told Jesus, "No! Don't wash my feet." Jesus let him know that if he did not wash his feet that Peter would not have a part with him.
Jesus washing Peter's feet was a part of a much bigger plan.
It wasn't no small gesture.
If you're reading this and you feel lost, don't let this be the time to isolate yourself, to reject the process, and to turn mute.
NO!
Force yourself to move in tandem with the divine rehabilitative rhythm of God and watch how this dance will somehow waltz you into a new scenery, no longer lost but so graciously found and blessed.
NO!
Force yourself to move in tandem with the divine rehabilitative rhythm of God and watch how this dance will somehow waltz you into a new scenery, no longer lost but so graciously found and blessed.
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