Not quite like I thought...

Well, since Truman has taken my name at wordpress, I will continue to blog here for the moment.

This morning something has been stirring in my heart. We always think that when the move of God is in our midst that we will somehow be superhuman, or that things will kind of 'suspend' in this nebulous existence devoid of natural occurance. It is how we view eternity, and ultimately it is how we think about the move of God in our day and time. Yet, over the past few days I have had a fresh encounter with the God of the supernaturally-natural!

For all that who do not know, a prophetic gal in our midst, the beloved Julie Meyer, received a word from the Lord that IHOP was going to be given a season of grace in order to partner with God's grace to become pure. The Lord promised her He would give two signs to confirm that this was His word for our family at this point. The first was it would snow in April (which it did on April 13 or 15 I believe...which ended up being one of the biggest snows after April 1st in a long time). The second sign would be a season of unprecedented rain which was to show that God is so near to us with grace to help purify us.

Well, I have a leaky basement! Also, I have been working on this project, and in my heart I have actually asked the Lord to withold the unprecedented rains until I could fix some of the leaks. Now, this was not necisarily the Lord's plan, because it seems that the season of rain has begun. I received an email this morning from someone who posted part of the statement from the national weather service last night. They said that the weather pattern moving through the Lower Missouri Valley region has not been seen since the Great Flood of 1993.

To top it off, not only does my basement leak, fairly badly I must say, the drain in my basement does not drain for some reason ( we had a plumber out last night LATE, but he could not solve the problem ), so the water which leaks into the basement has nowhere to go, except up! So for the whole night last night I kept waking up with this frightful fealing that our basement was going to be submerged and all our appliances would be ruined. This was because when I went to bed last night the water had already risen to the bottom of the furnace, hot water heater, and the washer and dryer. I knew that there was nowhere for the water to go, so there must be much more now.

I finally got out of bed at 4:30 in order to go down and try to shop vac some of it out. After a little try I decided this was a fruitless approach at the problem. It was raining hard and it seemed as if the water was coming in faster than the shop vac would suck it out. Bailing actually seemed like a good option at this point. By this time Abby was with me and we took breather to the couches to talk.

I must admit that I was absolutely furious, frustrated, annoyed, whatever you wanna call it (anger). Throughout the time I kept remembering that this was the word of the Lord, and that I am living in the midst of God's prophetic move. I thought "certainly this is not what it felt like in 83 when the Lord was speaking then." I actually wanted to not be apart of the time if it meant that my basement could not be clean at that point.

Then my beloved wife reminded me of something, and it put everything in perspective, and I remembered and began to rejoice in the God who supernaturally interacts with the natural in such natural ways! She reminded me of the five-thousand who were flooded in Mississippi in order for the confirmation of the Bob Jones word of 500 to 5,000 in 1983. She reminded me that all of those people were real people with real houses and real lives which were caught up in the midst of God's sovereing movement in order that His word could go forth. I started to then think of the 5,000 who would be displaced overnight who move to KC. They are all real people who will be seemingly 'inconvenienced' while living in the midst of the manifestation of God's word. However, they have the option to respond to God with faith and hope in His goodness regardless of thier circumstances.

I am not trying to set forth a theology of how God manifests His word, and the interaction between the natural and the supernatural. But rather I am saying that I can let the 'naturalness' of life in the midst of the prophetic moment cause me to become offended and cynical towards the move of God. As I was driving to the rental place to rent a water pump (which pumped a volumnuous 76 gallons/minute!) I just began to thank God for His word and His grace. My heart began to move toward the God who manifests Himself in the natural, and uses natural process and natural occurance (not exclusively, but He does) in order to speak to us. Yet, if our hearts are not postured in thanksgiving and gratitude we may miss the ability to partake of it because of our cynicism and offense.

Ron