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The Encounter – Carriers of the Lord’s True Light
Sep
I’ve found there are two types of convictions in our desire to know the Lord. They oppose one another and one of the two is just simply not real. It’s a knock off and a counterfeit (just as Satan himself is a fraud that masquerades himself as an angel of light)…. just as the wolves are wearing sheeps clothing… the ways of mankind have crept into our reasoning as it relates to ways of the Lord.
A few nights ago the Lord showed me something of importance. I didn’t know why it was so important and I don’t know why I’ve not seen this clearly before. Most of us have heard the story of Jesus sending out the disciples two by two. There are some details that I’ve never really thought much about. And as I was reminded of this event, I kept hearing, “Imagine what they look like… Can you see them?”
In Luke it says the Lord told those that he was sending before him, “behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.” There’s the visual I was led to seek deeper. Imagine it…. These men were sent out broke and poor (no money with them), no food with them, no bags – nothing in their hands. They were sent barefoot on their journey.
The very next morning, my daughter asked me to read over a paper that was due for her college English class. She was assigned to write a paper about the single moment in her life that has impacted her the most. As I reached page 3 of her writing, I could feel the hair on my arms standing up. It was a divine appointment with the Lord and a completion of what He was showing me with the description of the image of his disciples that He sent out. My daughter has been through a lot. She’s had her life shaped and molded through many trials at an early age, and this was the moment that impacted her the most of all the moments in her life thus far?
She writes: “Why would he lay hands and pray for me? I have everything I need and this man has nothing.” The encounter she speaks of happened two years ago. She was participating in a homeless simulation for a class project at AHS, in which they took this group of Juniors by bus to Waco, Texas, stripped them of all of their personal belongings and allowed them to keep only 3 items. One sock for example, was 1 item. Then they through them on the streets in downtown Waco as moneyless, half-dressed homeless kids. After 3 days of walking miles in the hot sun with nothing to eat or drink and sleeping on the cold ground without blankets, my daughter’s group encountered a homeless man that she will never forget. She told him the truth – that she’s not really homeless – that she lives a life with luxuries that we take for granted. She has a nice home and clothes. She has running water and plenty of food to eat. After explaining the situation to the man, he told her that he’d been homeless for over 20 years, and he seemed to pity her as he asked her if he could pray for her. He prayed for Jesus to be the guidance of her life and he prayed for her eternal soul. I can’t explain the impact that only she knows from this experience. I can’t fully understand how this man changed my daughter, as she wrote about in her paper. But I can say how amazing it is to read this paper of hers the morning after revelation of the condition of the disciples that Jesus sent out. I could see the connection. The disciples didn’t look like me. They looked like the homeless man that prayed over my daughter in the park.
Jesus said in Mathew to those who are selected to inherit the Kingdom of his Father, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” And in response these people didn’t know they had done ANYTHING for Jesus – which I interpret as, he appeared to them in ways they didn’t identify as him, or expect. And reading into this further, I see the disciples again. I see the homeless man that encountered my daughter. I see the irony of WHO carries the word of the Lord and how different these vessels look than what we might anticipate.
If only I could understand how truly backwards my way of thinking is… how truly opposite my carnal thoughts and expectations are to the ways of the Living God.
My daughter wrote a word in her paper to conclude her encounter with the homeless man….. CONVICTED. That man didn’t pray for her to have food to eat or clothes on her back. He didn’t pray for her to have an easy life or to be sheltered from trials and suffering. He prayed for her eternal soul… An alignment with the Will of God that is so simplistic, yet so difficult to grasp in our temporary state of foolish desire.
Lord thank you for sending a true disciple of your light to my child and giving her this milestone to always remember.
Dear Sister Jodi, you won’t believe how you just confirmed a conversation I was having with the Lord this morning as I woke up before the dawn and your post was in my email and I knew instantly the Lord was allowing me to understand further my question. I have been deep in thought and prayer with the Lord for understanding about this thing we call a “life” and how really up is down and down is up. How we have been lied to for so long about who Jesus really was and all that He did while He walked this earth.
I know you and your family have gone through a huge trial of late and that God is using it to bring you closer and to have a deeper connection and relationship with Him and to teach to trust in Him fully. I know this because though our circumstances are not the same, the end result is and I can clearly see we are sisters in faith linked but have never spoken or even met. I understand what it is to be a committed long-term caregiver to your precious loved one and how that has shaped and molded my life over the last 20 plus years, not to mention all I have learned (still learning!) and dealt with as a mother. This is the journey that led me to an intimate personal relationship with our Lord and Savior and Heavenly Father. This was the driving factor that drove me to my knees because I knew the help and answers I seek cannot come from this earthly world or any human being.
So as I was talking with the Lord I was asking Him about the kingdom of this world that belongs to the devil and that has become so apparent of late and how it opposes everything that is of God Almighty’s Kingdom and how each living being is a representative of either the kingdom of satan’s darkness (which like you say can even come disguised as light) or is a representative of the True Kingdom of Light of our Lord Our God. The Lord was humbly revealing to me all that you are saying here not even 5 minutes before I read your awesome post here. The Lord keeps taking me back to Hebrews over and over of late. This is exactly what you are referring to here.
Hebrews 13:1-3 1 Let brotherly love continue. 2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3 Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; [and] them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.
Who are the true angels of light in this world? Well how many times have we disregarded them from preconceived thoughts or concepts of our own deceived minds and how many opportunities have we missed to entertain true angels of light by our misunderstanding of who and what our Lord Jesus said, did, and taught. For He said as you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto Me
I know of 2 times that the Lord has let me know that I disregarded one of His angels that were put in my path; one a homeless man sitting on a curb and the 2nd a man crying in the ER parking lot. Shame shame on me. Why did I do that? Because at the ER I was consumed in my own emergent situation, tribulations and problems and responsibilities and I told myself I will just go in to the ER with my dad and get that took care of and speak to someone to let them know I was there after the ambulance had already took my dad into the ER and then I would come back out to help this man, but when I came out he was gone and so was the opportunity to do what the Lord would have had me do because something was convicting me already BEFORE I made the decision and rationalized it away. Then on another occasion several years prior to that, I was traveling and there was a homeless man right in front of me at a gas station and it was purely my preconceived thoughts of what the situation was that God used to let me know differently and I felt ashamed of my own blindness and wretchedness and God showed me that within a half hour after it happened. It broke me, it really did. Then I said well I won’t make that mistake again and then I did.
It seems quite apparent to me that there is a reason for our separation from God while we are in this flesh life and it’s for us to learn a valuable lesson. For us to recognize the lies of the enemy because he has obviously fooled us in the age before and in the age now. It’s quite disturbing and agonizing to wake up in this world and come to this realization that nothing is as it seems and our only hope and help is our one and only TRUE Lord and Savior, Jesus Yeshua the Christ, Immanuel God With Us that hung on the Cross and died for our wretched sinful nature in this flesh and He defeated all of it, and resurrected and through that He offers this dark world His True Light and Love. It is becoming quite clear that satan is a cheap deceptive imitating copycat of God’s Kingdom and he deceives the whole entire world with his lies and deceptions, and these days it is only through a one-on-one personal relationship with Christ and seeking the face of our Lord our God that we can see the difference and the truth. There is no other way. I believe this is how we really recognize our brothers and sisters that are like in the faith. I find that absolutely amazing and humbling.
God bless you Sister Jodi, I truly appreciate your blog here and look forward to hearing more about your journey and your walk with Christ. We are clinging to His words and His promises and His mercy and forgiveness and long-suffering patience with us as He molds and shapes us more and more every day until the Daystar arises in our hearts as we take fully His mind and His heart. He said anyone that falls on this Rock will be broken and that is the process He takes us through to transform us into being His servant in His kingdom. A bruised reed He will not break and a smoking flax He will not quench. We are that bruised reed and our lamps a smoking flax, but in His faithfulness He will continue a perfect work in us, pick us back up and put us back together, and put more oil in our lamps if we are willing and keep opening the doors to our hearts and rend them to Him. Our sacrifices that are pleasing to Him is our praise and rending our hearts to Him especially while we are in the midst of a fiery trial. He told me to tie myself to Him like a baby with an umbilical cord and never ever let go and that He loves us and is faithful to deliver and rescue. .He will never leave us or forsake us. We are His
Agape Love to you Sister Jodi! Prayers on their way to and for you.
Cindy
I’m sorry this site gets so much spam I sometimes miss the comments. Thank you Cindy for this beautiful message. I think each day I feel more removed from convictions of anything other than the Lord is the answer to all things. I love that he’s bringing us up to return to a state of childlike faith – removing pride and knowledge of the world while molding us into something humble and seekful of Him for all revelation and wisdom. As I’m writing you this a song just popping in my head… “Just hold on, we’re going home.” is the chorus to a R&B song lol… All thing will be made new by the kingdom within – Him in us. Love you sweet sister in Christ.