Confined, corralled, constrained. There is a time where we are subdued by the hand of the Lord. In this time, we must submit with our heart willingly and obediently to His hand. You cannot bypass this step if you long to serve the Lord. Those who are destined to move In Him will be confined, corralled and constrained by His hand for a season.
Bill Britton in his article - "The Harness of the Lord" says this:
"God is dealing with inward rebellion of our wills which must be brought into absolute and complete surrender to the will of our Lord."
What can I say about this time in my life? I am sure if you are reading this, you also have a distinct testimony of your time of constraint. It is not a pleasant time while you are going through, but in hindsight, I would not have it any other way. During this time, my flesh was so strong and my pain was so great. The tension pulled me between two places. With all my heart I wanted to submit but with all my heart I did not want to submit. I wanted the process to be easier that it was so I could join the "mix" - those I saw all around me moving forward, seemingly oblivious to the pain I found myself in and the process I found myself in. God got down to the distinct motives of my heart not letting anything go. What others could seemingly do, I could not. Not only could I not do what I wanted, I could not justify or explain why it seemed that I was forsaken and forgotten with no anointing and no plan in my life. I sat in silence many times, moving around the corral with fury and vengeance, wanting out at any moment.
I would even pretend that I wholeheartedly accepted this place but God saw deep into my heart. The words that I was speaking did not match up with what was going on inside of me. There was an inward rebellion that I justified in so many ways and questioned in so many other ways. I wanted out as quickly as possible.
But as the years went by, I did not get out. The promises seemed dim and forgotten and my hope started to wane to the point of losing hope. The corral seemed like a prison to me and a place of pain and sorrow. I wanted out.
Every time I started to compare myself to those outside of this place I found myself in, I lost hope. I saw people running to conferences, moving forward in networking and ministry, going at a breakneck speed and then smiling at me as they went by. Many times I tried to stop those walking or running by my corral and tried to explain some things to them.
I would shout "Hey how are you? I am called. I am chosen. Oh this is just a short time for me......wait I will join you shortly." They would keep walking and ignore that simple fact that I was anointed of God for His purpose. Here I was - just a nobody, a horse in a corral that was going nowhere and quite plain.
But God.........................He saw things a little differently. My loss over the years of 2008 and 2009 was a loss of self-confidence and human effort to fulfill a supernatural purpose and destiny. My place of confinement was boring, simple, and so mundane. Each day I fought to get out and each day God kept me in that place of confinement. I mean, let's face it, I could have walked out. There was no keeping me there except my love to submit and obey. I could have also promoted myself and joined the 'mix' of people that seemed to be going somewhere but when push came to shove, despite all the pain and suffering to my flesh and my life, I stayed in the corral.
Why? Because I am a spiritual giant?? No. I simply knew that there were no shortcuts to a walk of wholehearted abandonment and surrender to God. To live in His increase and His, you must die to your life and lose it. So I stayed with one eye on the outside and one eye on God........I stayed and I waited. My focus was still divided but that would change over time.
For deep inside of me, I loved God with all that was in me. I had a seed of hope that I had to believe in - that He had not forgotten me and that there was coming a day where a breakthrough and a breakout would come.
But in the process, I had to learn to keep my eyes focused on Him and Him alone. Not easy but oh so so worth it.
Horses, horses, horses - I am thinking about them all the time. Seabiscuit (the movie) makes me cry as I feel it shows me a lot about the breakthrough of Rivers of Eden in God's timing. He was truly a broken horse that united a nation in the midst of the Great Depression.
Then there is the new movie Secratariat which I truly want to see. But instead of writing today, I have a favor to ask you. Read something and then I will write more tomorrow. Will you do that for me? It will truly bless you. I assure you of that. And if you have read this, read it again.
The Harness of the Lord
by Bill Britton
http://tinyurl.com/3xdtgry
Read it with yourself in mind and cry, smile, and see God speaking to you in this article.
Then tomorrow more things on horses, being harnessed for His glory, times of confinement - so much good stuff. All our wilderness adventures coming alive in a blog. My mom used to say that I got bored easy and how right she was. I am easily bored and had to be tamed by God's hand to submit in every situation He put me in whether I liked it or not. It worked. I whine and complain less and less each day. But oh God...........now my sanctified boredom is always trying to think creatively and out of the box. How dearly I want that in my Christian walk. So read this - Please!!!!! And check back tomorrow.
People have been writing me to say how much they like reading this. Thanks..........from the bottom of my heart, thanks. I have opened up this blog for anyone to comment on it at the bottom below this, I believe.
Where is this taking me? I am not sure but I sense in my spirit it is taking me down a path that is leading to our breakthrough. The nations are in my womb as my friend Pat tells me. We want to reach people and touch people............from home groups to churches.
But for right now, here I sit in Abu Dhabi. Could not go to Marks and Spencer yesterday so off I go today. See you..........
Read read read..............please???
Later..........................
Each day God gives me something to write about. I have determined to follow the anointing of where God is leading. That is important and essential to our walk. Follow where He leads, not where you want Him to lead. In years past, I somehow felt that I must secure a spiritual prophetic position to impart by saying "Thus saith the Lord" or somehow to be added to some prophetic network or list, etc. to be part of the mix or gain credibility. Yet recently God is telling me to get out of any boundaries (even in the current prophetic environment) and invade the world with myself. What is in me, who is in me - He comes out so well in the midst of confrontation with the world's systems. So each day I look and listen and observe to see where God is moving and how He is speaking to me so that He may speak through me.
This writing is not started with any hype to try to prove I hear God by hyping up any surperlative language to make you want to read. I pray you do read and that you discern God is speaking through me as He wants to speak through you, in fresh and new and creative ways.
I woke up in Abu Dhabi this morning about 7 am. We live in the middle of a city of a million people, traffic, mosques, noise. Just felt compelled to have some coffee and watch CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera.................so I did. I am a Christian with a brain, and a spirit that is alive in Christ. I use it. I am not afraid to hear that which contradicts what I believe. I love it for I love confrontation. I know I have what the world needs. The question is "How do I make them see that?" Well I have to go beyond borders.
I kept hearing CNN's catchy phrase "Go Beyond Borders!" So that is my phrase for the day as they may have been speaking it but God was speaking through them to me. Go beyond borders!
That's a big statement to make for anyone. They claim to do that but they can't for they are of this world and are constricted by this world. We, as Christians, are not. We must have a Kingdom View or we will get swept up in the prevailing climate of fear and trepidation that is taking over the world. The world is like a house of cards - one little wind and it is going to crumble down. What will you do?
Now back to the statement. "Go beyond borders". You are seated with Christ in heavenly places. You are to set your mind on things above not on things of this earth. You are a person, as a Christian, of living physically in one realm while living in Christ in heavenly places. You are beyond borders. So why do we live like we are confined and constrained by the world's demands and dictates. Go beyond borders - soar in the Holy Spirit, see things as God sees things, hear things as God hears things, prophecy, live, love, challenge, confront, move, shake, disrupt, agitate......................that is LIFE.
Let fear go. Let anxiety go. Let apathy go. Let confusion go. In the name of Jesus. Wake up and move. It is time. Just move a little and go beyond the borders of your confinement and live in Christ. Don't ask me how. Ask Him and follow as He leads you out of yourself and into greater realms in Him. :)
See ya! Waiting for our car to come back from the shop so I can go to Marks and Spencer....quite British you know in Abu Dhabi......................:)
Okay I am keeping you on the edge............radical! :) Changed the picture to the other side. What will she do next? I am in a good mood this morning, smiling and filled with joy - listening to Fred Hammond and just dancing and praying. Selling all our stuff as we leave the Emirates in one month to head back to California (the Bay Area) and our next assignment from the Spirit.
So on to today - what to say? Cracked glass and distorted vision. I lived in a PROTECTED PARADIGM and so do you probably. A paradigm that protects us in a sphere of comfortability - until God listens to a cry that comes from our Spirit one day - MORE LORD!
Then He smiles and begins to bring about a sanctified destruction of our life to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. Ouch - it hurts! But how worth it. Rather than tell you about all the pain and destruction that I have been through in my life, I am choosing righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. I will speak forth that which will bring glory to Him through my broken distorted life that He filled, healed and made whole.
I have been in the desert physically and spiritually for about 3 years now, traveling between living in Finland and the Emirates. Both are deserts in their own ways and both changed my life. As I lived day by day, wondering, through all the stuff, where exactly was God and what was He doing, I realized that my paradigm was shifting through a massive earthquake, until it began to crack right in front of my eyes. All that I thought I could count on, I realized was shifting and shaking all around me. Props falling before my eyes. I lost friends. I had no ministry. I was separated from family and home. Physical attacks constantly barraged me. I fell into bouts of depression with great spiritual warfare. As Marvin and I were both going through this at the same time, God also saw fit to separate us at times for several months. (I am not talking about our marriage. That is excellent and intact. ) He stayed and worked in the Emirates and I lived in Finland attempting to minister as the Spirit led us as a team. Wow - such pain in Finland but that is another story. We were both 'going through'.
Now my comfortable paradigm of Christianity was laid open and bare and cracking before my eyes - my vision was distorted and I saw just like that picture of that glass above. I was humbled as God began to reveal how little I knew. Western Christianity has the uncanny ability to form you into its image - the conferences, the images of a diluted God, the books. the distortion, the materialism and on and on. We get wrapped up in a paradigm of seeing Christianity through a distortion. God led me overseas to develop a Kingdom World View with Jesus Christ as the center of my life and my universe.
Living in the Emirates alongside over 125 nations represented here, assumption is deadly and presumption will humiliate you. My paradigms were shaken the moment I left the apartment - language, dress, weather, Islam, Arabs from all over the Middle East, Europeans, Russians, Asians......whew.........it was enough to keep you inside for the day. :) But ones gotta eat!
I read newspapers that exposed me to politics from India, Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa and all over. I talked to people from so many nations. We had Muslims eat at our table and share with us their lives and their religion. There is so much more and I loved it all. I want to come back and minister in the Middle East as God opens doors.
Paradigms cracking little by little. So what to do? I had an idea from a simple verse of Scripture. All this variety, culture, world view, religion, opinions, belief systems can either make or break you. Tolerance is not a word in my vocabulary. I believe that word is demonic. I am not tolerant but asked the Lord to clear my vision to begin to truly see through a new paradigm.............one where the cross took center stage.....slowly it did! I lived this verse day by day....
1 Cor 2: 2 For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. NKJV
I saw Him - everywhere. I heard Him - everywhere. Not behind walls of comfortability but through love and grace and faith - not tolerance or ignorance. I challenged people with my faith - was accepted and rejected. I walked in the midst of Mosques going off and people rushing in malls to prayer times. I got up at 4 in the morning and awakened the dawn as the Mosque call went off. I loved it all. I can say that now.
Hmmmmmmmmm I see Marvin smiling when he reads this...................I did not always say that or believe that but hindsight is of great benefit to me.
More tomorrow.
Christians are not called to opt out as ostriches hiding their head in the sand. Get out there. He is real and He can handle all of it for He sits on the throne now and forever more.
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