A Time of Fine-Tuning and Preparation

“I AM calling you away. I AM calling you further, deeper, higher.

I will give you eyes to see and ears to hear.

I will give you a heart of flesh. A heart that is completely and wholly mine.

Be sensitive to My leading.

Let your tread be light, your hands soft and tender and your words few.

Look with My Eyes. Think with My Mind. Love with My Heart.

I will teach you My ways, so you can walk in them.

This time is fine-tuning and preparation.

It is time worth your giving to Me, time that will be amply rewarded.”

Embrace the Differences

Have you noticed how different people experience the same event differently?

What is exciting to one — is just boring to another?

One person drinks wine and says they can taste peach and metallic overtones, with hints of newly-mown grass and honey and fresh peas, and a lingering aftertaste of oak and coffee.

Another drinks the same and shrugs their shoulders and says it just tastes of wine.

A trip to the shops can be thrilling to a child — but verging on miserable for their harassed parents!

I am often surprised by sensitivity or lack of sensitivity to The Holy Spirit, and how seemingly random it is.

One person will happily say whatever comes into their minds because “The Spirit said so” and not care about giving offence.

Another holds back from ever expressing their opinion because they sense the leading of The Holy Spirit to “tread carefully”.

So out of misplaced confidence one crassly ‘galumphs about’ like the proverbial “bull in a china shop” and causes lasting hurt.

While, out of fear of giving offence, the other says little that gives life or is worth hearing.

One person will speak at great length on religion versus living faith, and how dead and lifeless so many Churches are, and how useless are all forms of traditional liturgy and procedures.

But another person during their lunch-break, can walk into a well-known landmark like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, when it is busy with tourists and students taking photos, and stagger under the weight of God’s Glory.

Personally….

Personally, I lost count of the number of Spirit-filled people, especially outside The United Kingdom, who saw the coronation of King Charles III on-screen.

Afterwards they said they are republican — or they don’t approve of King Charles as head of The Church of England — so the Ceremony seemed to them to be all for show, futile and lacking in any real spiritual substance.

Then you hear from someone else — someone not Anglican, neither monarchist nor republican — but who happened by chance to be present in Westminster Abbey that day, and they found the experience deeply moving!

Whom do you think I am more likely to believe?

The Spirit-filled person with preconceived ideas, passionately expressing their personal opinion, based on seeing at a distance an unfamiliar ceremony of a denomination they don’t know, all filtered by their existing mindset?

Or the Spirit-filled person who had no preconceptions, but was actually there at the time, who said, despite the cameras, that the Abbey was ‘thick with The Holy Spirit and centuries of worship’, and that you felt the tangible Presence of the King of Kings descend and remain on the earthly king?

Most…..

Most of us seem to veer from one side of spiritual sensitivity through the whole spectrum to the other and back again, from moment to moment.

We can be grossly insensitive or highly sensitive and every degree in-between.

Sometimes we have a particular sensitivity to the leading of The Holy Spirit in one area of life — but not in another.

Sometimes this is simply because it is not our calling.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. We don’t always have to be sensitive to everything. We all need an “off-switch.”

Sometimes it is because we just aren’t familiar with that expression of The Holy Spirit, so we don’t recognise it.

Or perhaps it is too subtle for our understanding, so we are not sensitive to it.

This is something The LORD can teach us about.

We can ask Him to train us in His ways.

We are never too old and it is never too late to learn.

But sometimes it is because we have a spiritual “blind spot”, an area in which our own prejudice or mindset prevents us from seeing the truth.

We can go only so far in this state. Here we not only need to learn, but to repent.

Sometimes we really do need to learn to avoid just seeing and hearing what we want to or what we know, and see and hear instead with the loving, humble, enlightened eyes and ears of the Spirit of Wisdom.

This is going to be of vital importance in the coming move of The LORD.

Sensitivity to The Holy Spirit, will be key to preventing us from ignoring or dismissing His new work as it will not necessarily be like anything we have previously experienced.

A renewed mind and heart are necessary to move forward.

The LORD is calling us higher today. Will you come?

Prayer

LORD, we thank You for your gracious invitation to come higher with You.

Reign in us as You reign in Heaven.

Use this time of waiting to prepare us.

Teach us Your ways.

Let us know Your ways and walk in them and continue to find favour with you.

We repent of the times we have been either over-sensitive or too insensitive.

We turn away from our old ways and turn towards You for renewal.

Make us sensitive to Your Presence and sensitive to Your beautiful Voice.

Open our eyes to see as You see.

Open our ears to hear as You hear.

Open our minds to think as You think.

Open our hearts to You.

Pour out Your love into our hearts and make us completely and wholly Yours.

We ask this in the mighty Name of Jesus, our King of Kings. Amen.

 

~ Iris Maud, UK.

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Iris Maud, UK.

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