OH FRIENDS... I CRINGE .... Sometimes no amount of experience will ever prepare you...

Last night was full of some truly profound personal moments, and I am grateful for a God that takes us from strength to strength and glory to glory.  I am grateful for a God that grows up His sons and His daughters with mercy and grace as the soil and water and nourishment for seedlings.

So here are true confessions....

Last night I got some of the clearest pictures when in the past I stood arrogantly in confidence born of the flesh...  I had been saved by a visitation, Jesus walked with me, I could hear Him, I had received instruction by trustworthy teachers, I had been birthed, raised and propelled into the prophetic and I could see what the Lord was doing and communicate it and I was confident of that.  I was confident that put me in a room and my eyes at some point would see what the Father was doing and I would be able to communicate it.. It came naturally and it was easy and I was confident.

I was arrogant

I was a clanging gong!

Confidence not in the fact that Christ loves His people and of course He is speaking to them but confidence that the prophetic ministry had the capacity to change people's lives.  I stepped arrogantly and immaturely through some precious relationships because in my estimation they weren't receiving the prophetic the way they should...

Oh friends.. I CRINGE!!! I CRINGE!!!!

My confidence was in my training and in my gifting....  I valued character and could preach the gospel of character over anointing but boy did I love knowing the people I knew, and getting identity out of the places I walked...

Oh friends.. I CRINGE... I CRINGE

Coming to churches believing fully that God was going to minister to them all because He was going to flow in the prophetic and it was going to be awesome and powerful.. And it was.. Awesome and powerful .. but my heart was immature...

I realized that my confidence was in my gifting not in that which Father was doing or going to do...  and while the difference may seem nuanced... it is immense...

It makes me think of Paul when he says he throws away all his "resume" and will be a fool for Christ....

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, whoworship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3