Sabbatical blessings chapter 9: A time to taste fruit, a time to let mine grow

This is the last in a series of updates "Sabbatical Blessings", in which I shared significant experiences of my sabbatical, from Jan - July 2013.

 

Recently I heard an illustration from a Bill Johnson sermon that helped me put my sabbatical experiences in perspective. I borrow that now, but also modify it to make it clearer.

Reading about the grand promises God gives us in the Bible is like looking at a map of a beautiful country.

In this direction, we are told that we are “seated in the Heavenly places with Christ”.  Let’s just imagine that’s represented by a river on the map.

Looking that way, we see that we have power to “cast out demons” and “speak with new tongues”. Again let’s say that refers to a beautiful forest somewhere else.

To fully experience the glory of the Kingdom that is freely available to us, we have to go beyond reading the map and use it to actually explore the land we have been given by immersing ourselves in God-experiences.

You can’t enjoy a river by looking at it on a map. You have to go to the river, jump into it, drink from it, feel the water on your skin.

The same is true for the forest. We have to walk in its shade, eat of the fruit that grows there, to fully appreciate the beauty of the forest, not just look at pictures.

Over the past few months, I have been very privileged to personally explore some of the most breathtaking sites of the land of faith in this moment of church history.

I have tasted the fruit of the most radical revival, healing and worship movement in our lifetime.

I ask myself, what is the lasting fruit in me that I am to grow in the soil of my life?

After a long time of processing I am inclined to conclude, the best fruit to nurture, is a transformed self, a renewed mind.

The Kingdom of God is “righteousness and peace and joy” (Romans 14:17); “and now abide faith, hope, love” (1 Cor 13:13).

A renewed mind that thinks upon faith, hope and love is like a canvas on which God can draw anything He wants; a heart manifesting righteousness, peace and joy is rightly postured to receive every heavenly download of wisdom and revelation.

This is the fruit that the Spirit is growing in me. And my assignment is to protect it.

In the natural, I go back to a ministry context filled with more uncertainty than when I left.

Uncertainty is good. It means I have no control, and God alone is in charge, which is the way it should be.

There is a blindness that is of God, like when Saul was led to Damascus as a blind man after his vision of Jesus.

For three days Saul could not see anything on the outside. All he could see was the blinding light within.

It is a powerful picture to me, of shutting our eyes to natural circumstances, not in denial, but in faith, and gazing only on the light of Jesus that is within.

So as I wrap up my sabbatical, would you pray that the fruit of transformation in my heart and mind would be fully formed in me by the power of the Spirit, unaffected by external circumstances and the past?

I pray too that you will manifest what I long to myself, in the circumstances you are in.