Coming Calamity...

I've gotten several comments from a reader of my blog (I didn't know I had any of those!) who was asking some questions about the posts I made about some dreams that I had a couple of years ago about coming calamity to our nation.  Since those few posts, and David Wilkerson's "Urgent Warning", with exception of the looming recession, it seems we've been business as usual in America.  Nothing so far has happened.  No calamity.  No collapse.  No decimated city.  And no further dreams or words of wisdom or knowledge or messages from God have come concerning this. Things have been quiet.

I'm no "wrath monger" so to me this is a good thing, especially to my human sensibilities because who in their right mind wants to see wrath from God?  If there are any out there, then we have no clear understanding or fear of the terrible God that exists.  Wrath isn't nice.  Wrath from such a cosmic deity as God would be the most unthinkable, terrible thing that could ever happen to a people group in any time in our human existence.  Francis Chan wrote in "Crazy Love" (and I'll paraphrase), that if our mind is the size of a soda can and God is countless vast oceans, then how do we think we can understand Him by what little water we can scoop into our can?

The silence makes me even question what I saw "in the light".  Did I really dream something from God or am I taking it that way?  Was God really speaking to me, or did I just assume those were spiritual dreams?  One wise person said, "It's easy to doubt in the dark what you saw in the light."  Which is so true.  I had no doubts what I saw at the time, but time and distance from the dreams makes it harder to hold onto especially when those dreams and sensings aren't fresh and have grown stale with age.

So what do we do???

I'm glad you asked...

First, we recognize that the problem of our distance from God is real.  We must see the ways in which we hold more tightly to this temporary world than we do His eternal kingdom. This causes us not to regard Him so highly in all aspects of our lives.

Once we recognize this, then we should pray and turn away from our clutches of this world by letting go of the things we hold more closely to our hearts than Him.  We should ask Him to help us through out our inhibitions that keep us from proclaiming Christ Jesus to our neighbors out of fear for what they may think of us.  We must learn to love those who are in love with this world and see every one as the one Jesus died for.

Second, we should prepare our hearts for whatever God's will may be.  When we try to figure out the details of such things, especially where details weren't given in prophecies, dreams, etc., we run the risk of missing God's plan because it doesn't match our imaginings or our own plan and how we see things.  Remember, He is the author of such things and if we desire to know what the author means then we should ask Him and not guess.  If He is silent, then we shouldn't make things up according to our own understandings.  Look, we don't have to be in control of every situation.  He apparently doesn't want us knowing everything so we will trust in Him instead of our own devising of how to get ourselves out of the mess we're in.  We are only capable, apart from Him, of messing things up not making them better.

And, lastly, we shouldn't despise prophetic utterances.  I have a tendency to do this even though it seems that I've written things under God's anointing that would be labeled as such.  The scriptures teach us to not despise prophecy but try everything according to the Spirit.  I'm on no ego trip, so if I've missed it then I'll be the first to admit my error and ask God to forgive me and receive my stoning under His grace.  My intentions were to report His word not to manufacture His word.  This isn't a confession that I have missed it.  Jeremiah preached for 39 years before God performed what Jeremiah was speaking for Him.  Our trust is in the Lord, and to quote Jim Elliot, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot not keep to gain what he can never lose."  When our life is given to Him completely, it's then our life has never been more sure.

I'm resigned to wait upon the Lord, teach my family to honor God in Christ with all of our hearts and live to bring Him glory upon this Earth.  Great is His faithfulness forever.