Finding Patterns in the Chaos

When I was a young cop, I was assigned to a unit with the acronym, OCCIS. The formal name was the Organized Crime and Criminal Information Section. It was a federally funded task force sourced from multiple police agencies in the Silicon Valley of California. We looked for patterns in criminal organizations and used those patterns to uncover hidden illegal activity. Some of those same techniques are being used today to discover the perpetrators of Human Trafficking.

As part of my training, I was sent to a Data Collectors class. It was two-week training intensive. One of our instructors was a chain-smoking CIA officer. His field of expertise was in mathematics. Using math and graphing techniques, he could predict if a crime was taking place in a business. Simply staking out a restaurant for a week with a menu in hand and measuring the foot traffic, he could determine if a money laundering operation was taking place when he compared his data with the tax returns filed by the business. He helped us see how to find patterns in a sea of data that would not be obvious to a casual observer.

In the matters of the Spirit you have been given the ability to see patterns in the chaos of culture. While others are choosing to be overwhelmed at the pace of life or the unpleasant events taking place, you have been given the gift of discernment. For many that gift remains untapped because it is held captive to the obvious. The prophetic assignment of the Church is not to repeat the obvious, but to view every situation with the penetrating insight of the Spirit. Just like the CIA analyst helped me see how an innocent looking restaurant in a quiet neighborhood was actually a money-laundering front, you have been given the ability to see through a veil of deception to uncover what is really taking place.

Do not allow your insight or your voice to be robbed of its impact by throwing your hands up in disgust or despair. You are embedded in culture for a reason – to bring light into dark places. To do this you must be able to see what is hidden to the casual observer. The captives God wants to set free are being held in dark places enslaved under well-prepared fronts of deception. The discovery and uncovering of these plans is part of God’s redemptive process. He wants to use you to shine His light of truth into the hidden places of our world to expose and dismantle every evil enterprise.

“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” Ephesians 5:11