Labor day weekend marks the traditional end of summer and the transition into a new season. For our 24-year-old son Matthew, this week is especially significant. He will leave his family,friends, and coworkers, and began his 13 week Marine Boot Camp training in San Diego, California. We are proud and extremely blessed to support him in this new venture. I was doing pretty well until this morning when, in the shower of all places, an unexpected wellspring of tears began to flow. (good place to cry) Carlene and I took Matthew to The Truffle Hunter, his favorite restaurant, where one giant sandwich feeds four. Throughout the day, I found myself reaching for the Kleenex a half a dozen times or more. I guess tears are a natural expression of a father's heart when separated from his children.
The analogy of the father's heart is simple and profound. God has the same full spectrum of emotions we have. After all, we are created in His image... and with His emotions. Father God has demonstrated the full expression of His nature in the Gift of His Son. We don't really understand the emotions of the Son unless we understand the Heart of the Father. This afternoon in our living room, I held my son...I cried, and blessed him. Matthew's name has a Hebrew origin which means: Gift of the Lord. Carlene and I are honored to have received Matthew as a gift, and once again entrust him to the Father.
Many in the body of Christ are also beginning to understand the significance of God's timing as expressed in the Hebrew calendar. Chuck Pierce, an apostolic leader who leads Glory of Zion in Denton Texas ( www.gloryofzion.org) recently issued this prophetic word:
A new beginning is breaking forth. We are asking the Lord to give us fresh vision for the year ahead so that we do not stay focused on the old cycles of our past. I am praying that we cut loose our delusions of what we think things should be, and then worship in Spirit and Truth and see the Reality of a Holy God. I am bringing us before the Father so we can lay down all of our emotional ways and expectations of how we think things will happen.
The Lord is calling for a season of the Potter's Wheel. May He take our forms, formats and the shape of things as we have imagined them, and break the power of the mold we are striving in....Release what you are striving in, your vision, plan, business, and let Him take it back to the Potter's Wheel. I feel the Lord is saying, "The vessel we have imagined and are striving for is limited in capacity and less than what I wish to make." We must repent for imaging our own vessel, call out for the vessel He wants to form, and give ourselves to the shape of things to come.
The Lord is calling for a season of the Potter's Wheel. May He take our forms, formats and the shape of things as we have imagined them, and break the power of the mold we are striving in....Release what you are striving in, your vision, plan, business, and let Him take it back to the Potter's Wheel. I feel the Lord is saying, "The vessel we have imagined and are striving for is limited in capacity and less than what I wish to make." We must repent for imaging our own vessel, call out for the vessel He wants to form, and give ourselves to the shape of things to come.
This Sunday evening, September 9 at 6 p.m. in Troutdale Oregon, you'll find a group of people who are hungry to worship the Father in Spirit and Truth. Who desire to offer a sacrifice of praise. Who will submit to the Potter's Wheel. Who freely desire to give back to the Father that which already belonged to Him: our hearts.
We bless you in this new season,
Darrell and Carlene
