Inward Knots

Roughly 5 years ago I found myself at home on a weekend afternoon laying on the couch trying to take a nap. Like most people I don't sleep well in a room full of light and I noticed that the sunlight was coming in through a window, reflecting off of the T.V. and shining right in my face. I got up and walked over to the window and while attempting to lower the blinds I found myself unable to do so seeing as the 4 strings that made up the cord had wound themselves into a knot. You know the ones I am talking about. They looked similar to the ones pictured right, although the ones on our blinds had 4 of them.

They were all so bound up with one another that I was unable to completely lower the blinds and so there I was spending a few minutes trying to untie this huge knot. After a bit of wrestling I got frustrated, walked over to my wife's sowing table and picked up a pair of scissors and proceeded to cut the knot off. I cut so much string off of that I came close to completely ruining the blinds.

Now let's do the spiritual application here. This happened at a time in my life when the Lord had me deeply entrenched in a season of what we will call prophetic riddles. Look at the following scripture.

"When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the Lord." Numbers 12:6-8

The word used for "riddle" in this passage is Chiydah. It means a puzzle, a hard question, a proverb or riddles. Chiydah is derived from the Hebrew word Chuwd. Chuwd means to put forth a riddle or to tie into a knot.

Over the years I have heard the Lord speak to me in a multitude of ways as I am sure you have as well. Dreams, visions, clear spoken words into the ear, wisdom and understanding within the heart, .....But I have to tell you the most demanding way I believe God speaks to his people is within the realm of riddles.

 I say riddles because the Lord will often set his words in front of us in the form of some type of riddle and then force us to wrestle with it for extended periods of time until we get peaceful understanding on what He is really telling us. He will pull us out of our comfort zone (taking a nap) and set something before us (a knot) that requires our focus, steadfastness, repentance and spiritual determination in order that we might understand it. He gives us knots to untie. He speaks to us in riddles and then tells us to look to him for understanding to solve them. Some knots are untied quickly. Some take years to get unraveled.

I did not plan on saying this but this comes to me as I write. I think we, as people, are like knots and riddles to the Lord except that he completely understands how to untie us. He knows how we got in this mess in the first place and therefore he has complete understanding on how to help us get untied inwardly and see us through to complete repentance. That is why the scripture says:

"If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him." James 1:5

The Lord has every intention of unraveling the complexity of our souls if only we will give ourselves over to him and let him lead us in continual levels of repentance and grace. Humans can be complicated, sensitive, impatient and unforgiving. Jesus offers us simple truth, a tender touch and patient forgiveness. We need to accept these opportunities for grace and power before the door closes on us and the times of the Gentiles is fulfilled (See Romans 11:25). We should be wise virgins and fill our lamps with the oil of repentance while there is yet time.

"As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says, 'In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.'....I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation." 2 Corinthians 6:1,2

We are confined to the realm of time and within that time we need to take advantage of our opportunity for repentance and get unraveled inside ourselves. We need to get untied. We need to be solved and repent while there is still time. We need to humble ourselves now so God doesn't have to retroactively force humility on us. Let's take advantage of the time we do have and ask the Lord to search us inwardly.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Psalm 139:23,24

I will leave you with this. In the late winter of 1997 the Lord took me to Midland, TX for six months to begin untying some of my internal knots. While out in the desert I began to see the complexity of my soul and how the enemy had complicated my life over the years. It began with a spirit of rejection in my childhood, led to ambition in my late teens and resulted in a consistent spirit of anger when I didn't get my way. Through the years the unfulfilled gaps of my soul were filled in with alcohol and bad relationships. The Lord began to untie me and continue the multi-year process of solving the riddle of my soul. What I couldn't see before I could now see.

"I was blind, but now I see." John 9:25

This internal unraveling, this process of inward revelation is an ongoing thing. It's a multi-year process that spans decades with many of us.

I guess what I am saying is that the Lord wants to shower us with prophetic riddles to solve (Dreams, Riddles, Prophetic Symbols and Similitudes). But he only does this in accordance with the level to which we allow him to solve the complexity of our own selves internally. Before he can trust us with riddles that relate to other people he must work on us first. First he solves our inward puzzle and then we shows us the prophetic puzzle of the world around us.

It was in my time in Midland, during that season of internal revelation and cleansing, that the Lord started giving me outward prophetic riddles that pertained to other things, both circumstances and people. So riddle-solving starts inwardly and then God moves outwardly into prophetic ministry. First inward, then outward in various forms of ministry.

In the next post I will talk more of some of the prophetic riddles the Lord has given me to solve over the past decade and how one in particular applies to events in the world today.

Be Blessed,
JEB
www.miraclesinmerida.blogspot.com.

The Black Swan

A new metaphor called The Black Swan Event was coined in the realm of macroeconomics by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in 2007. A Black Swan Event is simply an occurrence of a highly unpredictable event that has a major impact on nations and/or the worlds socio-economic structure. It is a high-impact, hard to predict event that has life-changing influence on every phase of our lives.

The rise of new technologies like the personal computer and the Internet, major world wars, natural disasters like earthquakes, terrorist events like 9-11...they all fit within the definition of the Black Swan Theory. These are all types of Black Swans. And each one has a high-degree of probability of influencing entire economies, overall social structure, politics on every level and all aspects of daily living.  

We live in the hour of the Black Swan. She has been laying her eggs and they are now starting to hatch with greater frequency and intensity. The dynamic of the Black Swan has taken over.

On March 10th my wife asked me to fix a default setting on our spreadsheet that we use to keep track of  our business orders for our company. The program was giving her a hard time so when I went to fix the problem on Microsoft Windows I found that I couldn't get the cell that she was typing in to accept the "Date" setting in part of one column. Every time we typed in the date 3/9/2011 and hit the [Enter] button on the laptop it would change the date to "9-11". I tried it over and over and it simply wouldn't take my commands as I tried to fix the problem. 

I finally looked at Christine and said, "9-11 was a Black Swan Event. Maybe the Lord is showing us that a Black Swan Event is about to occur." Later in the day I took the boys out to run some errands and while in one store a man came and stood in front of me with a dark-blue soccer jersey on. On the back of his jersey was the word, "JAPAN." Below the word across the back of his shirt was the #9. Without going into all the details, the #9 has always signified "change" to me.

In retrospect, when I connect the dots, what the Lord was showing me that day was that a Black Swan Event was about to occur in Japan that would bring inevitable change. I'm not making any of this up. I was actually seeing this, albeit at the time I was so caught up with our daily routine that I didn't stop and really identify it at the time. It wasn't until the next morning when we clicked on the news that we saw what had happened in Japan with the earthquake and the subsequent Tsunami that I then realized the Lord was showing this to us the day before.

Why do I share all of this with you? .....I guess for the following reason. The happenings in Japan are actually a part of a greater series of events that, when taken as a whole, symbolize a bigger picture that God is wanting to paint for us right now. Click on the following link and read the following blogpost by Joseph Herrin if you want to understand what I am referring to: The Ring of Fire.

Did you read it? If not go back and do so.

These things are the beginnings of birth pains. And the Japanese quake and the subsequent and ongoing fallout is not the last one we can expect. Read the following prophetic word to see what I am referring to:
A Big Earthquake.

Did you read it? I know I did....for about the 10th time. On March 24th, 2006, about 7 weeks after Michael came forth with that word, I walked out to my mailbox on that particular day to get the mail. On lo-and-behold the magazine pictured to the right was sitting in my mailbox. It was a brand new edition of the National Geographic still inside the plastic sealed bag, completely unopened. And the really strange thing was that it had no mailing address on it. It wasn't a neighbors piece of mail that was "accidentally" stuck in my mailbox. It had no mailing or forwarding address on it. Nothing. It just "showed up" in my mailbox. Confirmation? Absolutely.

Why do I bring all this up?......Expect more Black Swans. Quit worrying about petty things. The trivial things we allow to consume us today are going to pale in comparison to what we are about to see unfolding on the earth.

"...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:1,2

We need to endure with JOY right now knowing that God has a plan for us and our children in spite of the sufferings of the world. God has a plan for us in this hour and we must pursue it with all manner of diligence. Pray and talk to the Lord about everything right now. Everything. Everything. Talk to the Lord. Pursue Him. Ask for Wisdom. Let us find our hearts swelling with God's voice on a level that we have never known. God is faithful. He will never leave us nor forsake us.

God is faithful.

Be Blessed
JEB
http://www.miraclesinmerida.blogspot.com/