Thin Places

You have probably heard someone say, “I feel thin”, as in feeling weak, exhausted or powerless when faced with a challenging situation. As I thought of the thin places in my own life, the Lord began to unpack a word of encouragement.

The thin places in our lives actually carry the potential for the greatest revelation and breakthrough. In the thinness, we are at the end of our emotional or spiritual rope. We have nothing left to offer. We have been thinned out by a challenging circumstance. In these thin places, the voice of God can be heard with a unique clarity not always available when we are insulted by the thickness of success, personal fortitude or a season of outward blessing when trouble seems far away.

In these thin places, we are actually closer to answers and breakthrough than at any other time. There is less distance between us and a resolution or a needed revelation. 

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians he described one of his thin seasons and shared a dialogue he had with Jesus, “And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9). The use of the word “grace” in that verse refers to Jesus personally assisting someone who is in a weak (thin) place. 

If you are in a thin place, I want to suggest something. Stop trying to figure out the reasons why the thinness has taken place. Tell the Lord you know He is present and assisting you even if the thinness has caused you to lose a measure of hope. As a result of that recognition, Paul said a beautiful contentment would enter your heart because you know you are not alone. Contentment is the breakthrough in the thin places of life.

What's Your Location?

My first night as a rookie-cop-in-training, I was lost in many ways. It was all so new and unfamiliar. I was thrust into another world. With so much coming at me I felt like a thirsty man trying to take a drink from a fire hose running at full blast.

That first night on patrol, my training officer Glenn asked me, “Where are we?” I said, “What?” He spoke again in a hurried tone, “Quick, I’ve just been shot and you need to call for help. What is our location? Dispatch needs to know!” I had no idea. I felt foolish.  Immediately, I began trying to remember what street we were on while listening to the radio and trying to take in all the newness of the job. I was still lost. My mind had not yet been conditioned to multi-task as a cop.

A few hours later, Glenn asked me again, “Where are we?” Again, I had no clue. He pulled our patrol car to the curb and we had one of the many “talks” a training officer will have with a rookie. After a few days, I had trained my mind to be constantly in touch with my location. Eventually, Glenn stopped asking me questions about our location. He could see that my head was now on a constant swivel trying to catch a street sign or mile marker as we zoomed through the dark night. After those first few days, I always knew my exact location. To this day, my head is still on that same swivel.

A lot of print and preaching comes our way about knowing where we are going. While that is important, it is secondary to knowing where we are in this moment because all we have is this moment. 

My wife, Jan, will occasionally ask me, “How are you doing?” To be honest, sometimes I don’t always want to talk when I feel stressed or defeated, but over the years I have found I need to be brutally honest and tell her exactly what I am feeling. When I reveal to her the true location of my emotions, sometimes hidden under my masking mechanisms or a dismissive attitude, she can bring to our conversation the support and honesty I need to help me gain a new perspective and move forward.

If we don’t know the location of our emotions and true spiritual condition, we cannot get help to our current situation when a real and spiritually life-threatening need arises. Businesses can fail, dreams can die and our personal lives can slip into a season of decay because we missed the street signs of our actual condition and were not able to get help moving our way when our life takes a negative turn. 

Put your spiritual head on swivel mode as you move through life. Check the streets signs that brought you to this place. If an attack does come and you are wounded your spiritual backup units will know where to find you because you were able to tell them your true location. 

The Perfect Fit

I have some friends whose daughter is a professional fit model. A fit model is someone with perfect physical dimensions used by clothing designers to check the drape and fit of the clothing they create. The fit model is, in essence, a living mannequin. Fit models are not voiceless or robotic. They give valuable feedback to a designer for how a garment fits, feels and wears as the model moves about while wearing the designer’s creation.

The Church only has one spiritual fit model – Jesus Christ. In every revival or reformation in history, the Lord has handed back to the Church ill-fitting garments we have imposed upon Him to wear.  Just before each historic move of God, the Lord will remove an old garment and invite the Church to create something new to more accurately express the dimensions of His heart in fresh and creative ways.

We can get too comfortable in the current garments of the Church.  Our comfort creates assumptions and demands that cannot be worn by successive generations. 

In God’s Kingdom, the garment does not define the model. The model defines the garment. The beauty of the Church can only be seen when her expression is hung upon the frame of Jesus Christ. He defines us and nothing else. It's not what we do in His name, the hopes we have of a great move of God or our personal ambition that brings this definition. It is Christ alone. He is the Perfect Fit. He defines the expression of His body.

We are in the midst of a garment change in Church history. Many are sewing new garments with the dimensions of God’s heart in mind as the single design influence. These new garments will walk down the runways of culture and draw an entirely new clientele into God's Kingdom. If we create these new garments with the fit of Jesus’ heart in mind the resulting creation will be stunning. Listen to the voice of the Lord as He informs you about the fit of what you are creating in His name. He will be faithful to tell you if what you are creating can easily be worn by Him and if it truly represents His heart.

Prophetic Couriers

A prophet is a courier. Like couriers who deliver documents between clients, so it is with a prophet who delivers a word from God. When we see ourselves as more than simple couriers, we will eventually feel the need to create a public platform highlighting our style of delivery and a ministry industry to promote our prophetic product. In the end, this will draw attention to the courier and not the One who employed our delivery services. 

We have entered a time of adjustment in the prophetic movement. Some things people hold dear are being dismantled so they can be reassembled for the glory of God. Do not fear these adjustments when they come. On the other side of this adjusting work of God there exists the release of a greater prophetic anointing and an increased depth of character for those who are willing to let God have His way. 

A Year of Unusual Rescue and Deliverance

In the coming year, many of you will experience unusual and unimagined rescue and deliverance from deep and entrenched places of spiritual warfare. Until your release takes place the spiritual conflict will intensify and in some cases, become overwhelming. Your options will appear to be few, but God has another plan.

When you find yourself pinned down by spiritual enemy fire and can no longer move forward in any direction you are not without hope. In those moments when it feels like you have run out of options and you are about to be overrun and destroyed, the Lord will reveal His plan of intervention and rescue. When all hope seems lost, you will be asked to employ your greatest weapon in spiritual conflict - trust. This is not a trust in your abilities or the abilities of others to rescue you. It is your trust in the Almighty God who promises to never leave anyone alone on the battlefield of faith. Trust will become a place of supernatural revelation. Trust will reveal the way forward through the conflict when no way seems possible. If you can trust God in these engagements, you will spiritually live to fight another day.

As you continue to do battle the rest of us will begin hearing the sounds of worship coming from within the foxhole of your faith. These sounds will be the evidence that you have discovered the weapon of trust. Your act of worship will begin to announce victory in a place where the odds were stacked overwhelmingly against you. Your trust in God and the resulting sound of worship will dissolve the enemy’s target of fear on your chest and give you the courage to rise from your foxhole and run forward in courageous faith to secure your future.

The Discipline of Silence and Separation

From the moment our first cry was heard when we left our mother’s womb to the last sound we will make as we exhale our final earthly breath, our sound has always let the world know we exist. My time of social media silence disciplined my life in an area I did not know needed discipline – my desire to make a sound. We all live a life of sound. It’s not evil or wrong. It just needs discipline from time-to-time in order to remain true and pure.  

In my time of silence and separation, I would read things other people wrote that stirred my emotions. I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings. I felt drawn to respond to some of those stimulations with either a comment or introduce a line of thinking to help steer people toward another consideration. 

There were times when almost unthinkingly, I reached for my keyboard only to remember my commitment to silence. The time away was like a room I was asked to enter and close the door behind me. The sounds of life and social interaction were taking place just outside the door of my self-imposed seclusion. I wanted in on those conversations. The door of my isolation continued to invite me to turn its knob and go back outside, but I resisted.

When I wrote the book, The Leadership Rock, I included a chapter titled, Margin Time. I shared how our lives need to have margins strategically positioned to buffer the bone-on-bone realities of life. These margins can take the form of silence, Sabbath or any planned interruption in the normal routine of life. These margins become spiritual buffers where we cushion ourselves to outside input so we can hear God more clearly. Silence and separation actually become a place of rest, revelation, and reset. Without these margins, too much of life will run together without a pause and clarity is lost.

As I now return to writing and posting content on this first day of 2019, I feel like someone who has tasted food for the first time after a prolonged fast. My writing palate has been cleansed. My thinking has leaned out. My spiritual garments fit better. My creative process has been refreshed. I am ready for a new season.

In the noise and busyness of life that will surely come your way in 2019, at some point, give God a sacred space of silence and separation. Create margins. Go there and listen. What you fear might be lost in your absence will be displaced by the release of something new. In that sacred space, fresh insights are awaiting your arrival. You will begin to hear things not easily recognized in the constant clamor of a connected life. 

Returning Refreshed

The last two months not posting on social media has been a unique time for me of personal reflection and reset. I will resume posting again tomorrow, January 1, sharing some of the things I learned during this time away. I want to bless each of you in the coming New Year with an increased realization of the goodness of God in all areas of your life. From the Elkins home to yours, Happy New Year!