Family - The Government of Heaven

Malachi 4:5-6

 "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet 

Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.

And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,

And the hearts of the children to their fathers,

Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” 

Family is the government of Heaven.  God is a family man.  Look at the Trinity.  There is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  They are incomplete without each other.  Look at Adam and Eve.  Adam was incomplete without Eve even though he lived in Paradise and walked with God.  The importance of family is huge to Papa God.  He holds this design of His closer to His heart than any of His other designs.  It is His secret weapon.  

That is why the enemy is so set on destroying the family unit.  Family is under attack.  In our society, the value of family is decreasing by the day.  Marriage covenants are being flippantly tossed out the window.  Rebellion is filling the hearts of children toward their parents.  Offense and unforgiveness are as cold fingers, prying loved ones apart.  Orphans fill our streets.  They may be masked with success, titles of importance, popularity statuses, etc...  But beneath the surface are little boys and little girls who have never known what it is to have a real father and a real mother.

Over the past few months the Lord has been highlighting to me the great importance of family.  We were never meant to be alone.  We were meant to belong to a family unit, to be known and to be loved as we are.  When we devalue family, we devalue the very heart of God.  It is through family that revival will be sustained.  Each of us must have fathers and mothers in our lives who speak wisdom and direction into us.  We must have people that come alongside of us and will run the race with us.

I feel like I have been richly blessed in the past with wonderful family units.  And the great thing about family, is that it's always expanding.  God is always bringing us new faces that will become brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.  I love how the Kingdom of God is one big body!

Transition - A Beautiful Thing

2011 was prophesied to be the year of transition.  When I heard this I nodded my head in agreement, thinking, "Ya I'm all for that God!  I'm ready to upgrade, to go from glory to glory.  I never want to be stuck in the comfortable.  Bring on the transition!"  I mean, if I broke everything down to the main reasons I left everything to come to Bethel for this season, was for more of God and to be changed.  As a person who prefers the predictable, comfortable, routine side of life, that was a huge jump.  But I had a vision before me of what the outcome could be.  And to me, that was completely worth any discomfort that change would most certainly bring about. 

Well God seems to take my requests seriously, but God’s way of transition was far different than what I pictured it would be.  I was looking for more of a glorious transition, where things got “better” in my life.  Don’t get me wrong, I believe that everything God does in our lives is taking us from glory to glory.  Romans 8:28 tells us that “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”  He is our Papa who wants the best for us.  Everything He does is for our good.  In saying that, not everything He does is easy, clean, or orderly.  Upgrade doesn’t always come to us in a neat little package or in the way that we want it.  But I’m finding that even when transition feels messy, painful, and chaotic, there is so much beauty in the midst of it.  Because it is the hope of greater glory, increase and upgrade that helps us to embrace transition.  Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2).  He went through the ultimate transition in history: from being God to becoming man and enduring death.

So these are all thoughts that I am contemplating as I go through the transition right now.  I have gone through transition all year long, so the move from leaving BSSM back to Colorado is just one of the many.  But I am learning to embrace it as a blessing from my Papa.  It’s still funny to me, coming back to what was once so comfortable and familiar and finding that is completely different... Or more likely it is me that is different.