Weighing The Words

(Fair warning: this post may only make sense to a small portion of my audience who are flowing in the same "stream" I am.  Yet, I'm going to post it anyway.)

 "For we know in part and we prophesy in part...."  I Corinthians 13:9

God is so good.  He really is.  The longer I walk with Him the more I am convinced that He wants the best for me.  He's so tender toward me.  It is His goodness that leads us to repentance.  (Romans 2:4)  He knows my weaknesses and He knows how to communicate with me in ways I can understand.  I love that about Him.  Of course He would know how, after all, He made me, loves me, and knows me.


Recently I received a word of "prophecy" that was sort of scathing.  Taking into account that I am overly-sensitive to criticism, I tried to evaluate it objectively.  I am my own worst critic in so many ways.  Yet, it just didn't....jive.  (You could say it didn't "bear witness with my spirit.")  So, I submitted it to those to whom I'm accountable and spiritually aligned.  Not only did it not "jive" with them, they outright rejected it and told me to do the same.


Yet, it was working against my peace.  Try as I might I couldn't let it go.  I was....disturbed.

"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.  Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."  James 3:17-18

I know that if a word is truly from Him for me that it will be pure and peaceable and gentle, etc.  The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace.  And this word had disturbed me and made me fretful.  Not sown in peace, how could it be a fruit of righteousness?


Then came yesterday.  I had a SOZO-type healing session scheduled for yesterday before this other prophetic word arrived.  My counselor so lovingly dug to the roots of my heart.  We examined things, we pulled some stuff out.  I dealt with some things I'd been stuffing down.  Basically it was some good soul housekeeping.  We need that once in a while, don't we?!  At least I do!


In the course of the over 2 hour session a word came from the Lord that hit my heart like an arrow and then washed over me like a cleansing river.  Later I shared it with Gana.  What made it so remarkable and timely is that it was basically the exact opposite from the "prophecy" I had received recently that had disturbed me.  It was as if God was audibly telling me the exact opposite and undoing everything the enemy had tried to work in me.


I have felt such an overwhelming peace since then.  


Can I say it again?  God is so good.


Gana and I both agreed that I need to learn how not take every word, every criticism, every review, every person, every prophecy quite so deeply into my heart.  I need to learn to care less what everyone is going to think and feel about me, my family, my choices, my message and to be satisfied with the Father.  Jesus said that He only did what He saw the Father do.  He wasn't derailed by every wind of popular thought and criticism.  I need a healthy dose of that.  


Because, there will always be people who think you are doing it wrong.  There are always people who think you need to be doing something else, somewhere else or somehow else.  What each of us has to do is to find our acceptance and worth and satisfaction in the presence of God and in looking into His face.  Then, it doesn't matter so much the reaction of others.  That old "audience of one" thing.  You know?

Peace.