Okay so someone said; honesty is the best policy. Not sure who said that, but he must have been feeling pretty good with himself at the time. I can’t think of any sane reason other than at the moment it was spoken, someone had just been honest about something. He or she was feeling rather free at the moment.
How many times have you’ve been honest and it turned on you in a heartbeat? I have many times, matter of fact I’m walking through one such time right now in my own personal life.
You see, I made what some would call a mistake. I let the enemy in on a secret. I exposed myself naked before the Lord. Now the enemy is beating me with a battering ram. Bam, bam, bam! His arrows like pesky gnats at a picnic. The more you try not swallow them, the more they end up in your throat. Pretty soon you get all choked up and the little buggers get stuck somewhere between swallowing and making the plunge down your esophagus on to your stomach.
We spit and sputter, hack and cough while trying to gulp down water only to gag on the air instead.
Has anybody done this besides me?
We love to say we are like Daniel; yet at our core we are actually Jonah.
Daniel 10:1-3.
We all claim to be mighty warriors on our knees. Waiting patiently for that Angel of The Lord to show up and proclaim our steadfastness in the fire.
Right, I am right aren’t I?
We go on Daniels fast and all so that we will be healthy right? We proclaim days of fasting and prayers right?
Pride aside, I’m going to be honest with you. You may turn me off after this point, that’s your business.
Most of the time, I pray like Daniel but my heart is more often like Jonah.
I want the power, I want the glory. I want the miracle of the Red Sea parting, but my Jonah heart spits and sputters at having to actually go and tell people to repent. I will dig my feet in and rebuke the enemy in Jesus name. I will convince myself that it wasn’t God who spoke that at all. So I proceed to bind everything I can bind in the name of Jesus. Satan sits there laughing his bum off.
I see the enemy at every turn around every corner. I’m binding the oppression all the while the Holy Ghost is trying to get me to shut up so He can speak.
Oh I’m convincing I will grant you that! So convincing that I don’t usually wake up until someone is throwing me over board. Needless to say that huge splash is a wakeup call.
I know this post won’t be popular and it probably won’t get shared, but you know what I am not concerned about it anymore. The truth is we are all a bunch of Jonah’s’ walking around puffed up like we are Daniel. Calling conviction our lion’s den and waiting for the deliver to show up and rescue us out of trouble.
Problem is He’s not coming.
He’s not coming because we aren’t in the lions’ den because of our faithfulness but rather because we refuse to do His will. We are on that boat headed to Joppa and we are lying when we say we aren’t.
Let’s face it it’s not easy standing for truth and righteousness. It’s far easier to backspace and pick more easily digested words so we don’t offend.
Sometimes the zeal of God’s house will overtake us and we will stand for truth. Usually there are many standing with us, so the pressures off. There is strength in numbers no doubt.
I can tell you right now whether you agree or you don’t agree there are not many of us who face the giants bravely like David or consistently like Daniel.
It’s not because we don’t care, nor even because we are complacent. No, no, no our enemy is way too smart to throw that at us. No, the enemy who has been around since the very beginning throws something else at us entirely. You ready for this one>
Hath God said?
Translated to your own language… Did God really say that!
Come on you know you have heard that.
Can you admit you’ve heard it and bought the line!
I can and I will! Guilty as charged!
Back to my original thought, you see I confessed this before the Lord awhile back. I wanted and still want to be pure before The Lord. So, I began to quote scriptures about forgiveness I John 1:9. I began to quote the Psalms especially Psalms 51. I began to bind spirits that had tormented me for years.
So it began, not all at once, but slowly and calculating. The thoughts began to trickle in like that example of swallowing gnats at a picnic. It didn’t happen all at once or even consecutively. At times I win other times I lose. I’ve been warned about it and I’ve prayed that I would not become deceived. Yet here I stand and I’m looking at the boat going to Joppa aptly christened “Deceived”
Thankfully there are many of you that God is speaking to today that have hit me hard over the head. I think for the very first time I realized that I am standing there looking at the boat with a ticket in my hand. As the baggage falls from my hand and the ticket floats away in the breeze, I feel the strength to square my shoulders pick up my bags and head back to the place I came from.
God will meet me there because He promised He would. He will give me the strength once again to answer the call. Maybe this time I will be Daniel rather than Jonah. I am praying and I believe that He is able who promised, to keep everything I’ve committed to Him against such a day and time as this.
My prayer is this! That you will stand for the Truth. If God asks you to speak, don’t be ashamed to do so. If He requires you to go, go, by all means necessary.
You may be saving a life or calling a brother sister back to God. Truth is you may never know and that’s OK because He knows. Someday you may as well, but until then pray fervently, watch patiently and endure until the end!
I’m hid with Christ!
Shawn
Images by: vimeo and Lambertville library.
Searching Gods Heart 