HARD THINGS

Five years ago, I was a different man. I harbored a deep pain and unforgiveness, I was angry over unresolved childhood trauma and I was still nursing the wounds given by a church that had betrayed my trust years before. I had been living with the regret over a double life grown after the betrayal and although that double life was long dead, the scars it cut within me ran deep and the shame still hung tight. I was still running, coming close back to Him but then always retreating when things became too hard. All that came to a head one day in a museum, of all places a bible wing of a museum. There I had an experience of Him that set the course of my life. I entered a room with bibles hundreds of years old. It was then that God entered.

All the noise among the bustling crowd around me dropped away as if the volume was turned down and I heard a vast myriad of voices all singing and praying and preaching about His love. It started out as a small trickle of voices but quickly grew louder until it was a roar of hundreds of voices. They were voices from long ago and also voices from the present. They preached and sang differently, they preached and sang in different tongues and different melodies but despite what should have been chaotic all these voices melted into one great beautiful song.

My heart split and tears began to flow. Within my heart I cried out, “I am sorry, I’m so sorry...” I had finally broken and I was convicted for my hard heart, I was convicted of my stubbornness and going my own way and hiding from Him, I was convicted of wallowing in a filthy pool of my own pain for so many years. As the tears flowed I then had a vision. From the ceiling I saw a great, what I can only call a mantle slowly float down from the museum rafters. It was about 12 to 15 feet in width and it was a warm, mustard, orange yellow color that seemed to be inches thick and had the thick texture of freshly spun wool.

This mantle slowly came down and rested upon me as cried. And as my head dropped to my chest I felt a firm but gentle hand on my right shoulder and then when I raised my head the chorus of voices and the great woolen mantle were gone. The weight of that hand was gone.

I went home that night and knew I had an encounter with God. That night I recommitted my life to Him. He wasn’t looking for a casual, Sunday morning follower but He was looking for a son who would give Him everything, his full energies, body, heart, mind and soul, fidelity and love. Nothing held back. He was looking for a radical commitment into a dangerous love. And I had the sense that if I accepted His call then it would come at personal cost to myself. I knew my path would be different from others and I knew it would somehow be a lonely road. I grew to understand that I would live and speak the “hard things.”

To whom much is given, much is required. - Luke 12:48

Truthfully, if you know me personally, I am wildly far from perfect and I blunder my way through many a situation but one thing I know, I am well acquainted with the voice and the leading of my God.

In person my tongue locks and I am hesitant to speak. But for some unknown reason, He has seen fit to give me a prophetic voice that I have been learning to hone. I would never had asked for it. And I have had to learn solely through His spirit. He has given me the hard things to speak. Having grown up without a voice and knowing fear my entire life it’s been a great challenge in trusting His direction and the words He has given. And honestly, my mind has been concerned with people thinking me either vain or just plain crazy with delusions of grandeur. Fear of men is a real thing.

But the rub is this, I haven’t been given prophetic unction which is meant to edify and lift and proclaim how wonderful life is. Rather, He has given me the spirit of a prophet that challenges and calls out.

You see, at the heart of the spirit of those brave prophets of old, they didn’t solely come in the foretelling of future events, (although this played a intregal part of it), their messages weren’t come in the act of miracles, (John the Baptist was considered the greatest of these and he worked no miracles.) They weren’t celebrated or lauded for their messages. They came and preached repentance to His people who had gone astray, their ears tickled by the world. They spoke truth to power and cried out about the injustice against the weak and the suffering. We have gotten it wrong these days about prophets. Especially the modern day prophets. We celebrate them and give them stages to sell their books with 5 step plans to wealth and prosperity. They sell their blessings for money in seats of power. YouTube is chock full of self-appointed prophets standing on their platforms of partisanship or offering their services in the spirit of Balaam or preaching falsities that no believer should even give time to. They are wolves among the sheep.

If you know me well, and if you have spent any time with me you would know my heart and you would know the fruit my tree produces that supports this. I am careful in choosing my words as I know that I will one day have to give an account for what I share in His name. These words and the messages I keep are inspired and always rooted in scripture as He will never contradict Himself.

The hard things have been going on, the hard things are here and the hard things will stay here. The greater evangelical church has lost her way, the church will never go under or be destroyed because it is by His hand it was built and what He sets into motion will never go fruitless but just like the spiritual birthright Esau gave for fleeting pottage so she has gone. The treatment of His image bearers, our allegiances to the world, a clean cup on the outside but unclean on the inside. These are the things that grieve Him, these are the things we justify but at the end of the day it doesn’t line up with His ways despite how badly we want it to. We have taken His seat and told the world what He would do rather than let Him rule. We can justify and form opinions and argue our points with our logic but truth is truth. The uplifting and carefree things we love and the things that go with our worldview we feel free to share and clap one another’s back for. Hard truth often walks alone.

And that is okay because I don’t do this for the approval of men, I do this as my act of worship to Him. Were it up to me, I would have written about something else more friendly. But I am guided by Him. I probably look like a fool doing this and you might be thinking just that. The evangelist Leonard Ravenhill had much to say on prophets and the rough road they would endure. But beyond that for anyone who claims His lordship and seeks to walk justly in His ways it always comes at a deep cost to your person. He demands a full allegiance and mercy because He freely gave it to us when we were rebels against Him.

Should you be reading this somewhere maybe a year or two from now and your heart is the same as mine, know that He brings hope and healing and goodness and direction despite the hard road. You are not alone, there is always a remnant. And to the others, He is a good God but He will not be mocked by our opinions and judgmentalism. But He always offers redemption for His heart is for you. He is for your good, but a good rooted on His own terms. His heart is near to the crushed, the weak and the despised. The gospel speaks to this. Believer and unbeliever alike. Now, go out well into this day, be the healing balm to someone who so desperately needs it and let them see Him in the words of your lips and work of your hands.