Vision In A Coffee Shop

Over the years, I have had many visions.  For many good reasons, some are more intense than others.  Most touch me as lightly as a memory or an imagination.  A few reach into my vitals and mess with me, even causing unexplainable tears or groanings.  This vision is still messing with me, and I’m finding it all over the Bible.  I posted what I saw and how it happened at http://propheticsong.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/prophetic-song-in-the-coffee-shop/.  But understanding came with the vision, and I’ll write a brief version here.

I saw the battle between light and darkness.  The darkness rolled in as great clouds of deception.  The deception looked impenetrable, made as it was of interlocking lies.  The culture wars that predominate in much church thinking today are a response to these clouds.  The deception is a worldview foisted upon us by the world of media and its corporate sponsors, who offer us freedom while keeping us in slavery.  Such is their stranglehold on the public imagination that anyone who thinks differently than they do begins to look dangerous and perverted.  This is the deception, and it is so pervasive that it seems unstoppable.

But into this darkness came wisps of uncreated light.  It was like glowing mists, not large, but moving slowly through the darkness.  This mist was the glory of God Himself, and it was absurd to think there was any contest between light and darkness.  The darkness could not put out the light, but the light was amused that it would even try.  The interlocking lies were as flimsy as a house of cards.

I’ll keep this short, but here’s what I came to understand about the glowing mist that made the kingdom of darkness’s house of cards start falling down.  It was believers, starting to arise and shine as our light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon us.

These believers will refuse to couch their testimony in the language of the culture wars that have raged for the past few decades.  With lies, manipulations, and accusations, the darkness has bullied and deceived the whole earth – but God is laughing from heaven at their conspiracies.  (See Psalm 2.)  We can laugh too.

There are lessons for us in the call of Ezekiel.  He saw the glory of God, and then was led into radical obedience.  There would be times when God would not allow him to speak, and other times when God would not allow him to forebear.  See Ezekiel 3:22-27.

As this vision messes with me, I could write pages about these few verses in Ezekiel.  But for now, I’ll summarize.  Some of us find God putting bands on our mouths, and we can no longer address the world around us in terms of the culture wars. Never again will the deception set our agenda.  Our only agenda is the message birthed in God’s glory and revealed at the cross when the Father glorified the Son.  And this message cannot be just sound doctrine, as though our minds could contain it.  It must be glory-soaked, words of spirit and life, words that make people’s hearts burn within them.

Don’t let your heart be troubled, even when you consider things that are coming on the earth in the last days.  Keep beholding Jesus in His glory.  Let His presence saturate you.  You’ll be able to share God’s love with people all around you, and the tangible presence of God’s love will render all political-correctness issues null and void.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2011, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com