I have not felt able to write much, or to articulate how I have been feeling/what I have been experiencing...but over the weekend, as I was preparing a message for offering, God rebuked me for sowing in the flesh instead of the things of the spirit. And He showed me that even when my dreams are NOT BIG ENOUGH, I am sowing in the flesh, because I am letting my dreams and my visions be limited by the measurements - the height, the depth, the length, the width - of our fleshly, natural world.
The world came into being by the word of God. If the imagination of my heart is not tied to the imagination of God's hearts, I will not have the faith to call into being things that are as yet unseen or uncreated. And what this generation, what this world needs is not more of the same things we already know, but such a powerful encounter with God that it breaks our dependence on all the things of the world and brings us to the point of focusing, wanting, desiring Him alone. We don't need to hear echoes and repetitions of things from the past. We don't need to keep asking for God to perform the miracles of old. God promised that He will do GREATER THINGS in the last days, that He will even REVEAL to us things that the great prophets of old had no access to, secrets of His hearts that no man had heard of or were able to CONCEIVE or imagine or receive. But His fullness is now available to us - and if this fullness does not result in the creation of something completely BEYOND what this natural world can give us, then we have not yet received or understood or perceived the fullness of God.
When God set that covenant with Abraham and CALLED him to be the father of many nations, He said, "I am El-Shaddai - God Almighty. Serve me faithfully and live a blameless life." In other words, stop walking in the flesh. The mark of the covenant was sealed in the act of circumcision. These days we no longer need to be physically circumcised. But in order to have a heart that delights in the laws of the Lord and desires to walk in righteousness and truth, our hearts have to be circumcised.
God is circumcising my heart, tearing off its foreskin so that my heart will be tenderised, open, sensitive. Not one as hard as stone, but one that is made of flesh and blood. One that feels, one that is broken before Him, one that bears that mark of my personal covenant with God, one that reminds me that He is not just the God of my forefathers, but MY GOD. One that has no personal agenda, but longs to be surprised and surrendered to the move of God. One that is open so that the rivers of living water that God plants into my heart can flow out as rivers of healing to the people around me, to the nations. One that has been ripped apart so that it can fully share in the sufferings of the cross as well as the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. One that is intimate with sorrow and pain so that it may know and experience joy. One that is covered by the blood of the lamb and cloaked in His righteousness and grace. A heart that knows God.
I feel like I understand a little bit more about what it means to have God set His seal upon my heart. First, to seal means to have His mark, His name, His stamp upon my heart. To be called by His name, to have a sign that identifies me as His very own treasured possession. And to seal also means to close my heart from the things that do not belong in it. It is having a heart that filters and rejects everything that is not of Him. To close my heart from the power of sin, to close my heart from the lies of the enemy, to close my heart from the snares of this world, to close my heart from any form of impurity. To ask God to set His seal upon my heart is to ask Him to give me the grace and the power and the will to be holy before Him. To ask Him to make my heart YEARN and hunger for the right things, the things that are of Him. It is asking Him to make me more and more like Him, to grow into His nature that I bear through His name, to protect the secrets that He puts into my heart that no one may steal my treasure or crown or inheritance in Him.
Set Your seal upon this heart. Make this life Your very own.
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