Wednesday, October 13, 2010

"Confused and Confirmed" by Garris Elkins

On Tuesday mornings I gather with other believers in the sanctuary at Living Waters Church to pray. Like we do each week, we put on some worship music and spend an hour together in God's presence. There is something powerful and spiritually fulfilling about being in prayer with other believers.

For the first half hour many of us walk around, some sit and others kneel in prayer as the Spirit leads. We pray with our mind and with our Spirit. During these times of weekly prayer things are taking place in the heavenly realm that we are not fully aware of. Systems of darkness that hold people captive are being dismantled. Families are being set free. Supernatural provision is called in. For the last half hour the music is turned down and we pray for circumstances God has brought to our attention and we pray for each other.

As a couple of the men were receiving prayer for specific needs in their lives the Lord prompted me to share a word. In essence the word was this:

"This is a time of both confusion and confirmation. Your mind is being renewed and your old way of thinking is now confused. What has worked is no longer working. God is doing a new thing in your life that He is renewing your mind to receive. New things are coming to you to confirm that this is God Who is at work in you."

God is not the author of confusion. When God is doing a new work in us His new work will challenge our old mindsets. He is not throwing the old away, He is simply taking us to a deeper place of revelation. Each new revelation builds upon the previous revelation. The Kingdom of God is ever-expanding. If we hold on to the old, at the expense of the new, we will miss the fresh work God is doing in our lives and upon the earth.

We get confused when our religious thinking and religious systems are no longer producing the life they once provided. Some people continue to hold on to the past out of fear because it is familiar and controllable. At this point we can either attempt to justify their continued existence or we can lift them up to God in exchange for something new.

The confusion we are experiencing will begin to leave when we make the exchange - the old for the new. In this process of letting go the confirmation that comes will turn our confusion into understanding.

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