Genesis 1:1-3
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
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My spiritual father brought this up in church a couple of weeks ago. He read this portion, all the way through much of the first chapter of Genesis, but after the first two verses, he stopped reading, looked up at us, and said, “That was me.”
“The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.”
That was me. That was you, too. That was all of us.
“And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”
That was God in my life. That was God wooing me to Him. That was God protecting me from evil and preserving me for a grand purpose that I knew nothing about and certainly didn’t want to have anything to do with.
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I think we have this interesting idea about sinners (the definition for “sinners” being that they are in the world and don’t know Jesus and yahda-yahda) that because they reject God or don’t know anything about Him, that He is absent from the situation and the devil has total control of that person. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of discernment to see God hovering over them, protecting them, brooding over them, being concerned for them, mourning for them, and moving on their behalf, orchestrating things perfectly so they can come into the Kingdom.
And it’s just interesting to me, because a lot of the time we’re unwilling to share our hearts with people and have intimate conversations with them and let them into the safe places of our hearts until we see the conversion point of “Let there be light.” And THEN we acknowledge them as people, THEN we want to know what’s on their heart and what concerns them. THEN we want to be their friend.
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I’m not disregarding what the Bible says. I’m not skipping over the verses of caution that say, “Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” Yes, we have an enemy. Yes, he is formidable. Yes, he is the prince of this world. Yes, we have to resist the devil so he may flee from us (James 4:7).
But immediately after James writes that, He says “Come near to God, and He will come near to you.”
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Maybe this is just me, but I know I personally have never found encouragement or strength in looking at my enemy. I don’t need to behold him. I don’t need to assess him. I don’t need to analyze him. And I certainly don’t need to focus on how close he is to me.
Because I’m easily impressed with darkness–that’s a great weakness of mine. I used to hear stories about demons and the darkness of the world, and just eat it up without even thinking or questioning what sort of spirit was behind this news and what spirit I was receiving it all in.
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God has given me a gift of great discernment of spirits, and I have to be careful not to get all wrapped up in it all the time. It’s so easy to see someone and notice that there is a spirit of death on them, or a spirit of depression and rejection–and then to take that knowledge and address it in a way I see fit, like go right up to them and say, “Oh, do you have problems with rejection?” Or go and tell my friend, “Hey, so-and-so has a spirit of death on them. We should really pray.” (I think the only reason we should make certain discernment of evil spirits public is so we empower each other to speak life and blessing and encouragement into whomever or whatever the spirit is on.) I hope that makes sense.
With this gift of discernment, and being surrounded by a lot of very prophetic people who are sensitive to the workings of the Holy Spirit, it can be very tempting to focus on the problem and not on the Solution–yes, Solution with a capital S, because the Solution is not a bill passed, a law, a mandate, a behavior, a punishment, a program or a speech–the Solution is a Man. His name is Jesus.
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People come over to our house to pray almost every day–and we’re talking large groups, from spheres and spectrums all across the board, all different ages. And a lot of them pray very fiercely against certain moves of law in our Capitol. Sitting in on these prayer meetings, I quickly became very confused, and extremely exhausted–and discouraged. And my heart was crying out with the desire just to worship and to set our gaze on Jesus and bring Him glory with our words and the meditations of our hearts.
Because my heart is to seek His heart. And if I focus on the problem–the sin condition, the behavior of a person, the way I’m feeling, the offense someone dealt me or another–if I focus on that for any length of time at all, it will start to consume me because darkness is so easily overwhelming when we pull our focus from the Solution.
My only excuse to spend time thinking about these things are so I can say: “Okay Holy Spirit, help me understand this. What is this? …Oh, okay. I understand. Now I will pray equipped, powerful prayers about this. And I give this burden to you. Will you show me your face? Oh Holy Spirit, you’re so good to us,” and so on. My prayer time always begins and ends in worship, exalting who He is, magnifying Him above the problem. And in the face of His glory and His strength and His might, the world just fades away into the background.
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This is not to say that I disagree with words of caution at all, but just to maybe bring a new perspective and share some of my testimony. And if you’re feeling a word of caution that we need to focus on righteousness and that maybe the devil is getting a little too close to our personal business for comfort, I’d like to challenge you to start declaring life to that.
I’d like to challenge you to lead us in declaring over ourselves, things like, “I was made in God’s image” (Gen. 1:27), “I am being transformed by the renewing of my mind” (Rom. 12:22), “I have a new nature–Christ’s nature” (Eph. 4:24), “As God is Holy, so I am Holy” (1 Peter 1:16).
Just try it and see what happens.
Grace Notes 