At our last Gathering, one of our ladies began her testimony by thanking me. Like many in our region, her background is in the Vineyard Churches. For years, she has heard the call to be natrally supernatural, and supernaturally natural. And she’s been hearing that the Holy Spirit is ready to flow through her life with prophetic and/or power gifts. But, like many of us, she sometimes finds it difficult to take the first steps. “But I stepped out the other day,” she told us. “And I want to thank you for stirrng the nest like a mother eagle,so all your little eaglets would test our wings and start learning to fly.”
It’s not that I’m such a great mother eagle. Sometimes the best way to stir my own nest has been to stir everyone else’s. It’s been fun. As new creatures in Christ, it’s our birthright to soar on the winds of the Holy Spirit. How can we be content with less?
Her testimony was about sharing a word with a service technician who had come to repair or adjust her stove. “He was a nice young man” she told us, “and I was feeling that he could be doing something better. But it was so obvious! It didn’t feel prophetic. I wondered if I should say anything about it or not. But eventually I did.”
“You know, I keep feeling that you could be doing something much better,” she told him.
Hen, his answer amazed her. “I shouldn’t really talk about this right now, but hardly a day passes,” he said feelingly, ‘ that I don’t dream that I’m doing something better with my life.”
Wow, who would have guessed that this simple word of encouragement would touch such a depth of emotion? Maybe God had led her to speak up, after all.
I’m sharing this story because it two or three things about it may stir your nest and help you step out when God gives you something.
Sometimes God gives something that looks so obvious that we’re embarrassed to speak it.
It may look obvious simply because the Holy Spirit is present, and He’s showing us what’s really going on. If He weren’t on the scene, possibly nothing would look obvious to us.
Meanwhile, there was the obvious word, and it “didn’t feel very prophetic.” Does a word have to feel prophetic before we should give it? No. What would make a word feel prophetic, anyway?
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of God.” We might feel we have nothing to give while pouring out a rich flow of the Holy Spirit. It can happen that way in prophecy, healing, or any other gift or operation of the Holy Spirit.
But she overcame her objections and shared the word. Then, to her surprise, it touched a wellspring of emotion she hadn’t realized was there. She didn’t know, but God did….
There’s always that double aspect to prophetic gifts. Part of the word might seem obvious, but then there’s another side of the picture that we know nothing about. That paradox of knowing and not knowing is what makes it an adventure to move in the Holy Spirit.
As we get over our fear of looking foolish if we make a mistake, we may find that we love the adventure. http://www.squidoo.com/learn-to-hear-from-God-day-29
This may be why I’ve had so much fun stirring my own nest, as well as a few others. Then I would hear the surprise and delight in testimonies from those who have tried their eagle wings and found God to be faithful.
