God's ways are not like ours, and His thoughts are so far above ours that without His Living Word, His Written Word and His Spirit... all men would live as scattering ants at any sign of His presence. God always shows up in the most unlikely places ... And in the most unassuming fashion ... And His timing is always paramount in the lives of individuals whose hearts are captured in That Encounter. And then, like the ripple and sway of the tides, the lives nearest to the shore of the ocean-effect of these "Strategic" individuals will also bear the consequence of the "God" encounter.
The individuals chosen and who choose to be caught in the encounter were never perfect but they all had one thing in common ... a single heart caught in awe of God of the Encounter. These Soul Redirected Individuals must find that becoming truly effective means that they must set their hearts due north by focusing their lives on Him instead of the shifting sand of this world around them. In fact - God is their cliff.
He has taken them there and they have learned the safety of the "edge of eternity". The ledge, the Crag, the cliff... This fragile life was not meant to be built to last here, but to be built solidly in such a way that when the shaking comes we are on the edge of eternity. My firmness in this life doesn't come from founding my life on temporal shifting and sinking sand fortifications, but from founding it on the edge, the ledge, the cliff of God's Word. Petros ...Petra...
Where in our relationships do we find the greatest trials? Where is Faith tested to the max? Possibly where are our actions to bring resolution and words to persuade have all but failed. Perhaps it is when we have been forced to flee and we have had to unload all protection, all defense, all tools, and all supplies in order to run with no earthly weights to slow us down; we stop to catch our breath only to find our run has taken us to the edge of a cliff or put our backs up against the base of an un-ascendable shear jutting of unmovable rock.
And then we wake up to the light that forces its way through the curtains that are never thick enough or drawn tight enough to keep the light completely out. The light has us sit many times on the edge of our night resting place only to wait for "nothing".
O the clamor of the of the enemy hordes that keep pressing on our heels, and the glamour of the enemy whoredoms that keep flashing to draw our gaze away from our forward movement and the prize that lay before us; both the clamor and the glamour are there to cause us to stumble, fall, deter, and discourage. The enemy's great hope is that we quit before we get to the place of full trust in our God.
All of a sudden my race forward stopped in unbelief as I tottered at the edge of a cliff above the clouds. The sheer vision of the immeasurable distance below and the fear of the bottomless fall was enough to stop the heart of the most experienced mountain climber. What a cruel joke, that God would lead me on to this seemingly impossible end to my journey! But echoing from the vanishing point ahead came a very resolute, small voice that said "Fear not I have been here, I am here, be still!"
But the cliff was never the plan that we carried in our hearts. There was supposed to be the miraculous turn of events that would stop the angry enemy tide right in its tracks. There was to be total devastation and annihilation of the enemy hordes done in such a way that the fear of God was elevated, and that the joy of the LORD would be left blowing away the residue of guilt and shame.
Didn't happen ... not even remotely in the context of what I would have liked to see. Instead, I have found myself on this precarious ledge with absolutely nowhere to run, no place to hide, and no one to turn to. The voice came to again and said "You are safe, wholeness is near!"
What happened next felt like something right out of the "weird" play-books of the unsolved mysteries of the universe. I turned and where the lines of the enemy pressing me to the ledge had been impenetrable, now there appeared a passageway and there was One much like the Son of Man saying "Follow Me!"
It was like the enemy was frozen in place with absolutely no power to disrupt my forward movements following the Way.
HLFA,
Jeff