Mea Culpa: Unfinished Business

A basic principle of prophecy is a message from God seldom informs; it always seeks to change human behavior. As such, taking it literally will result in mistakes. Prophetic messages are typically parabolic, often larded with hyperbole and drama.

The message I had from God the other day was in essence: Today is a good day to complete unfinished business. Everything else in that post was simply my own extensions, and I wasn’t really giving it proper consideration. So while I stand by the original message — change your behavior and get used to living in constant readiness for difficulty — I find I must eat those words I added to it.

To my knowledge, nothing happened which matches my explanation, not in the time frame I deduced. I was wrong.

I’m not sure I can convey the sort of internal struggle I’ve been having since the day the message impressed itself upon me. The thing itself was quite agitating, and I wasn’t sure what was going on, why this sense of disturbance and impatience was burning just outside my conscious mind. After some fervent prayer, I simply started doing stuff to keep my ego busy while the other parts of me struggled in the depths of my soul. At some point it surfaced in my intellect I was doing what the urging said. With that recognition came a shape for the message in words.

I’m still learning this calling. I want others who may sense the calling to have at least my current experience so they can compare notes. There is no pretense of setting a pattern, as if things will for others always echo my own experience. Without a college of prophets working together, I’m not sure it’s possible to hash out a discipline which is of necessity experiential in nature. My prophet’s manual is simply a primer, not a graduate guide. The reason I confer with so few who claim to be established can be deduced by the many postings here by which I distance myself from much of mainstream Christianity, not to mention a large number of folks who walk about building little kingdoms with self-aggrandizing claims to the title of prophet.

I never asked for this; never saw it as something to which I should strive. I’m absolutely certain it was dropped on me against my wishes at the time. I’ve reconciled myself to some of the discomfort which comes with the mission, but I will never pretend to have this all worked out. By no means could I walk away from it. Keeping these messages to myself is simply unimaginable. But getting the message right, and remembering to remove my own personal clutter in the delivery, is something I simply must learn to do. And at this, I feel compelled to remain open and responsible to the One who called me, and to those He sent me.

An Hour of Truth 2

There was only a moment of silence before one of the geeks raised his hand. He was obviously affecting a tone for his own amusement, a complex acceptance of the dare and offering his own challenge. “So, Mr. Jansen, how come so many of the girls here swoon over you?”

He almost laughed. “Have you asked them why?”

The young man, half grinned. “It didn’t seem necessary. They chattered endlessly about your hair and beard, your muscles, your voice…”

Just beyond age forty, Mr. Jansen had been careful to maintain his fitness, though he wasn’t particularly large. And while none of the staff were permitted facial hair, nor much hair at all, he had a rugged outdoorsman look with a trim beard and mustache, and locks of graying hair which just touched his collar. This was matched with his resonant bass voice. His appearance was simply what he wanted to see in the mirror, with no particular attempt to cultivate some false image. He said, “Those don’t really matter. Girls tend to deceive themselves on such things.”

A couple of the young ladies let out an exasperated “uh” sound. The others scowled except for the Goth, who simply grinned.

He grinned himself. On the desktop, he held up two cupped hands about shoulder width apart. Shaking the left, he explained, “On the one hand, we all have a collection of wishes, desires and other wants which together can be referred to as ‘human need’. The path between them is not a direct route.” Shaking the right, “On the other hand, we have a solid possibility of meeting those needs. It’s not perfect, but it is the best of what’s possible on this plane of existence.” He paused a moment, grabbing the tray used for collecting the assignments turned in by the students, placing it in the center of the desk. He returned his hands to their former position. “There is a lot of stuff most of us have to get through before we even come close to what we can have. Most of us never get there, because we simply can’t negotiate all the crap we are taught to believe.”

One of the geeks shot back, “Crap like we are taught here in this school?”

He smiled. “That, and a lot more. Our whole society is built on false perception, teaching us to want things we can’t get, and to ignore what really is possible. Even when we obtain what society tells us we should want, some part of us knows it’s not quite right. I contend we have utterly false images of what men and women ought to be, and what makes either one of them desirable. Even when we encounter something we desire, we tend to deceive ourselves about why we want it.”

The thug raised his hand. “So what makes you da man?”

He took a deep breath, then said simply, “The mission.”