I am in a group where Holy Spirit leads, and I am one of His closest spectators, i.e. I am listed as the leader. Tonight was one of those nights where I was just in awe of His revelation.
We were talking about wisdom, and how it can become an idol. And how Holy Spirit is sort of a safety net. Wisdom is a great gift. And the authors of the book that we are using, “Breaking the Idols of Your Heart“, emphasize that the first chapters of the book of Proverbs speak about wisdom as a person, intentionally. Wisdom isn’t a commmodity in God’s kingdom, it is a part of our relationship with Him.
The relationship between wisdom and truth was talked about, and we read what Jesus said in John 14 about Holy Spirit, and how He is an indwelling companion, with full knowledge of God’s plan, and a commitment to lead us, relationally, as His kingdom grows.
After going through how God handles our hearts, such as in Prov 21:1, we touched on the question of if that applied to evil kings and queens in the Old Testament, as well as despots today.
Then we went personal, and close up, where the Lord had me share my experience of going into memories with Jesus as He led me. This is a part of some “inner healing” experiences such as the Immanuel Approach, and HeartSync. Gordon Dalbey was facilitating inner healing with me (this was before Immanuel Approach and HeartSync were developed or widely known).
Jesus took me to a “memory” that I didn’t have. But it was my mom and dad’s memory. And they repeated it to me a few times, but their account stuck with me, I believe by Holy Spirit. It was a memory of something traumatic that happened to me when I was only a few weeks old. I was still in a bassinette, in my parent’s bedroom. I was sleeping. And about the time I started screaming, my older brother, not yet 3, came running out. He wasn’t very pleased with my arrival. He didn’t want a baby brother or sister. It turns out that he had punched me in the nose.
I had gone through the memory with Jesus, probably 27 years ago. But tonight, as I recounted it, having had more experience with Jesus in memories, He added details. I know even more clearly now that often the most important part of Jesus in the memory, is to discover His heart at that time. Gordon Dalbey emphasized to me that the true essence of inner healing was getting to know Jesus. If we experience inner healing, that is great, but real success comes from getting to know Jesus more.
And it is important to ask if He wants to reveal something to me about a memory where He has taken me. It seems to be harder when we come to Jesus and want to know where He is and what He is thinking/feeling in a memory that we have already selected. Better to just let Him drive.
So, tonight, I ended up with the realization that He knew the struggles with fear that I would have, stemming from such an early experience of the world being an unsafe place. He knew the toll that hypervigilance and fear would have on my relationships, my home, and my body. He knew how fear would distort my reading of scripture, and my understanding of who He was. In that split second of my older brother expressing his free will, Jesus was planning the ways in which He would bolster my courage, and guide my misguided free will reactions to things over the years. And how He would work my sins and misguided free will into good for His kingdom, and for His other children that I had hurt.
Up until tonight, Romans 8:28, had given me assurance, especially when the accuser, satan, had tried to beat me up with “that was stupid”, “look at how you messed everything up” or worse. God was my safety net. And He was His own kingdom’s safety net from my sins and mistakes.
And, I know that the Creator of time is not subject to it. And that is hard to get our heads around. We can’t imagine anything other than before and after. So, when I said that in the split second of my own brother’s exercise of his free will that Jesus was planning ways, I think that it is an inaccurate, but sufficient metaphor. He isn’t a GPS, where He is “recalculating” at billions of people’s wrong turns. But, He has a plan, already for every wrong turn, and some of those plans involve other people’s wrong turns as well. We can’t comprehend the scale of such planning, and such minute detail at such a scale. But, that is not the important part.
The important part is that Jesus takes it all in. The time that He led me to the memory 25 years ago, I could hear Him yell “No” to my older brother. It was emphatic, but had an element of pleading to it.
Tonight, I knew that He knew that evil was being unleashed, and that it would harm my brother as well as me. He saw the suffering that it would bring in many ways, across many years, to many people. And, He saw the ways that people, including me, would run from the suffering, or try to numb it. And He saw the problems that would cause.
We can have fellowship with Him in His sufferings (Phl 3:10). But, I still struggle with that. I know that I have a high priest, Jesus, who is able to understand our weaknesses, and teach us to expect His grace (Hebrews 4:14-16)
He also saw the hope, in His good plan. I know that we run into another hard to understand concept with God and hope. He says both that we are made in His image, and that God has emotions, hating what is evil, and rejoicing when the lost get found. And we can please God. The thing that is challenging is to understand that He can hold multiple feelings or emotions at the same time, emotions that some might think are in conflict. But, He can do it. And, with us individually, He can hate the sin, and love the sinner.
He is present to all of it. So the update was to look at the working of all things together for good from His perspective, and just not my own.
He wants as much good in His kingdom, and for His children as is possible. This is also not something that can be measured in liters or kilometers. It is relational, personal, individually tailored.
And He can do it too. So He can experience not just horror, and hatred of the evil and its agents, but also hope, and generosity, and, dare I say it, He can be amazed at how beautiful and good His plan is as He unfolds it. There is probably more, much more. So I look forward to future revelations.
Jesus Day by Day 