Your Own Word from God

A couple of weeks ago, Jack at Sigma Frame wrote this about prophecy:

What is not commonly understood is that if a prophetic message says something about the future, then it is because God wishes to outline a judgment on the present situation by revealing the eventual consequences thereof.

The purpose of prophecy is not to reveal the future. The purpose of prophecy is to promote changes in the present to make us more consistent with divine revelation as a whole. Prophecy in Scripture was quite often hyperbole, a dramatic presentation of the moral threat meant to enhance your perception. “Do you really want to end up like this?”

Such is how I experience the prophetic gift. Only rarely do I get a strong sense of something specific; it is typically a sense of foreboding that can only be expressed in dramatic and symbolic terms. And while my mind tends to take that in the wrong direction, my heart knows that the whole point is a warning that I need to build some resolve, and let that resolve shape my actions.

The messages have almost all come into my conscious awareness from somewhere deep inside, impinging on my soul in various ways. This morning I awoke from a dream about being back in military uniform and highly confused about the situation, completely without any clear orders from superiors. It was as if there was some big secret and no one could tell me anything useful. Yet everyone else was going about their own orders with a clear purpose in mind, leaving me to figure out everything on my own. There was that strong sense of foreboding that something big was about to happen and I lacked even a shred of a clue what I was expected to do.

This thing stuck in my craw. It wasn’t just a passing curiosity of my own self awareness; most of my strange dreams fade away. This one kept pinging off my conscious mind so that I knew it was more than a simple dream. It was a word from God; it resonated with my convictions. Further, it did so in a way that indicated I really need to share the message. Other little things throughout my morning routine clicked with it to help define the meaning.

I confess openly that this sort of thing comes into my awareness via the exact same wiring as my creative imagination. In my youth I suffered from a very wild and potent imagination that led me down countless wrong paths, and got me hurt too many times to count. My psyche is littered with scar tissue from those moments. And yet, all of that together is itself a message that God was speaking and no one could help me understand the language. It required much trial and error, prayer and contemplation, an awful lot of time alone with God, to begin turning that into a useful lore of experience that helps me feel more sure when stuff like that hits me again. And this morning it did just that.

Here’s what I make of it so far: Nothing we’ve been told about this COVID-19 plague is the full truth. Nothing. Nobody who’s talking about it knows the whole story, and those who do know aren’t talking. Most of the stories you read/hear will have factual elements, but something very substantial is being kept from us. Unless you have witnessed something of this plague first hand, you cannot know for sure anything you hear about it. Worse, we may never really understand who is playing what part in this massive deception. So you are left to your own convictions to help you decide whom to trust, and what part of the narrative applies to you.

Keep something in mind here: No two of us should expect to come up with exactly the same answers. When the lies are big enough and pervasive enough, the whole point is to drive us back upon the one thing about which we can be certain — God’s voice in our hearts. If you can read your own convictions about what to do, that’s all you really have to know. And it is the nature of convictions that they will always move us along slightly different paths. Convergence does happen at points, but God speaks to you just as faithfully as He does to me. You are obliged to check what I suggest against your own internal voice.

I’m called to share my personal narrative as an example, not as instructions. I can tell you that I know my mission hasn’t changed. I’m supposed to be riding bikes around the Oklahoma countryside and taking pictures of various natural features and just whatever God brings to my attention. And I’m supposed to publish the pictures and stories of those adventures. I have a very strong pull to visit certain places right now; those natural features are calling to me across the miles. There is this big barrier of government interference, but that’s just a temporary hindrance. I’m supposed to play along for the most part with government demands, but with a deep cynicism about the honesty of those making all the pronouncements.

I’m supposed to keep faith with my commitment to buy that new bicycle, and I’m communicating with the shop owner because God has told me to treat that man as my good friend. I’m supposed to trust Steve Gooden to do what’s pleasing to God in this matter. Further, the money is already on the way; it will be there when the time is right. So yesterday I took the money I was planning to add to the fund myself, and gave it to some relatives who were dangerously close to running out of food.

Meanwhile, I need to act like whatever it is that’s going on behind the scenes isn’t going to stop my mission. It will delay the mission, but that mission remains out there ahead of me on the path somewhere. For now, the main point is to be skeptical and cynical about the mainstream news, as well as the alternative news sources. I doubt any of them really know what they are talking about. I suggest you play along, but don’t commit to anything except your own mission and calling from God.