I cannot remember a season when I have received so many words of discipline and correction from my Abba Father. This morning when I awoke, I even heard the Holy Spirit say, "This is a season of testing and refining. This season is quiet because you have work to do to get purified in your inner man before you can face the days that lie ahead."
"Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." (Hebrews 12:7-13).
How shall we strengthen our arms? By keeping them raised high in praise! How shall we strengthen our weak knees? By staying ON them in prayer! This is a season of being hemmed in with Yeshua, feeding on His Word as our food, and committing it to our hearts. A day is coming when we will not have the printed Word and will need to bring it forth from our hearts, where it has been planted.
A day is coming when the "lame" will be either disabled or healed, depending on how we are prepared to minister to and teach them. The lame, I believe, are those who have not known the Lord. They have no relationship with Him (even if they have sat in church pews for years) and they do not know His Word. Will we be ready to offer healing for their dying spirits?
In this time of discipline, the Holy Spirit is continually showing me why I get irritated with certain people. "You are looking in the mirror," He says. "You don't like their behavior because you don't like that behavior in yourself." I have begun to journal those things the LORD points out to me so that I can consciously pray and work to change those behaviors. It has been painful to see myself in that mirror so often!
"Do not merely listen to the Word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect Torah that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does. " (James 1:22-25).
Father, thank you for treating me as your own daughter. Please don't let me turn away from the mirror and forget. Keep my arms lifted high in praise, keep me on my knees, and purify me in this season, so that your discipline and training will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace! Amen.
