Blog In Audio:
Greetings;
As I shared last week, I received a prophetic picture through a member of G42 where a young lady saw me in a backyard setting and I was working on the back fence of the backyard. It was a wooden fence and I was making sure it was in good repair, but I was not making it new. I wasn’t painting the fence. I was buffering the wood to make it look as it had been. As I presented this word to God in my own personal meditation I felt that God spoke to me clearly.
As I previously wrote, my back fence is what defines the beginning of my backyard. Where the church is today is defined by the end of what God did yesterday. Without a visible fence in the back of my backyard, there is no defining point of where my space is now. Restoring the fence in a condition of wood that looks as it was is significant of being sure that the principles, patterns, and values of the past are not lost, but also that they are not walked out in the same activity and cosmetics as the past in the present. The fence was not painted. It was restored to the past condition for the sake of the present, it didn’t seek to be a fence that tried to put the things of the past into my backyard. The methods and means of the past are not the methods and means of the present, but the principals, patterns, and values of the past must define the boarder that allows us to live as we should today. We cannot lose the gold, silver, and precious stones of the past. We can only move beyond the straw, hay, and wood of the past. The substance of the past is generational in purpose, but we must find the treasures of heaven in the ground of today or we will only have the human efforts of men in what we do today. We must let go of methods, but we cannot let go of values. When we lose the past, we don’t know where we are today.
Wisdom is found in the path that is furtherance of where we have come from, but it doesn’t hold us in what was yesterday. Like the ant, the street of our journey defines the season of today and we can recognize the change of seasons. The season has changed, but the path is a continuance of where we have come from.
Wisdom also raises her voice in the open squares; it is like a rock badger in its quest to live. Though the rock badger is small and not considerably strong, it uses its natural environment to get its foods. It builds it home in the crags of the rocks and uses its house as a place of protection and a way of surprising its prey to sustain itself in life. What in the open squares of our lives leads to the destiny of God’s glory? What is obvious around us and can serve us in our roles in the destiny of life? Some of the obvious things are the things that have been established in our surroundings by the work of others. We must be attentive to what is working today and we cannot mourn for the loss of what worked yesterday. We may seem feeble and small, like the rock badger, but something in our present will empower us to be all we are called to be in Christ. I am not merely talking about natural things, but things of the Spirit of God that are working today. We must be led by the Spirit of God to be people of faith. This is the testimony of being sons and daughters of God.
Wisdom cries out in the chief concourses; it is like the locust. The locust realizes that if it lives in close relationship with other locusts it can do impossible things. What relationships are in our lives? How do those relationships serve the purpose of who we are? Who are we joined to? Our direction forward is connected to the relationships given to us in life. Our relationships in life are part of our inheritance in life. Those relationships are meant to lead us to others even as Paul told Timothy to find faithful men who would be able to teach others also. What God is doing today is connected to the relationships of our past, but not restrained by them. Relationships of life always lead to increased life! It is time for a furtherance of community and testimony of the family identity, testimony, and purpose in all things. This is not merely a day of great ministry; it is a furtherance of great family purpose!
Wisdom speaks at the gates in the city; it is like a spider or a lizard. Spiders or lizards are small, but they are faithful with what they can grasp hold of, and they end up in influential places. Their influence in the city comes from their personal abilities. Those abilities are part of who they are, and they are merely faithful with what is in front of them. What are our present abilities and how are we being faithful today with what is directly in front of us? This will lead to a journey of influence in life. Our abilities were given to us for advancing God’s glory in the earth! How our abilities worked for us yesterday may not be how they work for us today. We must know who we are and what we are able to do in every season of our lives.
What are the things that we inherit? What is it that we must advance in the generations of men? The instructions of our fathers with the principals, patterns, and values given to us are the substance of inheritance to the future. Cultures and societies of the world reject the instructions of their fathers and the substance given them by their mothers. They think themselves to be wiser than the past. Wisdom is not found in the past; it is found in the things that are being given to us by God in heaven. It is found the instructions, principles, patterns, and values of the past set as a foundation for our hearing of wisdom today. The back fence of our back yard must be a present reality, but it is a present reality to define the back yard of our place of kingdom influence today.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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