Posted on by Daisy Joan

  For Christ’s Body

For Christ’s Body on the Earth.

(The Lord gave me this word about a week ago, and I’ve felt permission to share it.)

My hand is outstretched in judgment.

My Body and My Blood are the life raft I’m offering the world.

Don’t you know you are a Holy Priesthood?

My hands hold you up and protect you from the judgment and the wrath yet to come.

My Body should produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

Stop focusing on the law and live it, just as Christ fulfilled the law in His body.

You are His body.  Have you forgotten?  You are His life raft.  

Float.

Save the world that is dying.  

I have already achieved the Ultimate Victory. 

It is my GIFT to you to carry the Lost into my Kingdom.  That’s why you are here!

Come let us reason together, little ones. 

Your job is not to figure anything out.  It’s not even to sow the seeds.  I sow the seeds.  And I sow them generously.

You are the soil.  Bear fruit.

I have planted a seed in every one of my children so that it will produce fruit.

You produce what I have already made and ordained.

Don’t listen to the lie that you have no value.

Don’t listen to the lie that you have nothing to offer.

You have everything in your nothingness!

Have you not seen it?  Have you not tasted it?

It can explode out of each one of you with nothing more than your tiniest faith.

Please trust me.  My eyes are in you.  Use them to see what the dark rulers of this world have tried to use to blind you. You see through a glass darkly, yes, but your darkness cannot conceal ME.  I AM.  And I will show you the way through the darkness.  

Put out your hands and grab the Lost who are drowning.  

You are not the swimmer.  You are the life raft.  

I am the Salvation of the World and you are my Body.  You have eaten of my flesh and drank my blood.  It now runs through you.  Float because you were made to be my life rafts in this age.  Float and put out your hands.  I will put lost little hands into your hands and give enough strength to pull them into the temporary shelter I have made you to be.  

I travel with you, just as I did with Moses and the Israelites.  Can’t you feel me?  Can’t you see me?  You don’t need Moses to talk for you.  You have ME.  

And even when you are scared of Me, I will accept you and bring you to me with loving kindness and patience.  I won’t deny you or condemn you.  That isn’t who I am.

Repent and don’t look back, except to weep for those who are drowning.  

Keep putting your hands out.  I do everything else.  My yoke is easy.  My burdens are light.  It is only the Enemy of this world that disqualifies you, and he is already my footstool.  Don’t listen to the footstool who offers you falsehood disguised as honey.  Drink deeply from the water of life as the Samaritan woman did.  Be like her.  Go tell everyone that I know everything about you and I love you, you were lost and I found you and I gave you life.  Lead them to me.  Lead them to life.  

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Posted on by Daisy Joan

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 2 Cor 4:7-11 (ESV)

My earthen vessel isn’t cracked, it’s smashed.  It’s smashed to dust. And I admit that for a long time I thought there was surely something wrong with me. I felt victimized. I felt wronged.  It wasn’t fair.  It wasn’t right.  I’ve been abused.  I’ve been ravished.   I’ve talked to God about it a lot.  

“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” Isaiah 64:8 (ESV) 

If He’s the potter and I’m the clay, then why do I feel like dust? 

Did you know how dust becomes clay?  

“Clays form from millions of years of mineral erosion. Mountains break down into boulders, boulders into rocks, rocks into pebbles, sand, silt and eventually, when the silt reaches a certain size of fineness, an amazing transformation occurs. Instead of just being a loose mix, the fine particles manifest an attraction for water and each other at a molecular level. Clay can be thought of less as a material and more of a behavior, the phenomenon of very finely eroded minerals to agglomerate.” (Webb, Patrick “From Dust We Come: A Look at Clay.” Traditional Building. Feb 14, 2017 https://www.traditionalbuilding.com/opinions/a-look-at-clay)

Today as I began to write and lament about my suffering, the Lord reminded me of a vision he’d given me a few years ago. I saw a beaten and battered up old vase sitting on a pedestal.  Light showed through the cracks and broken places and cast an intricate pattern of spider web designs across the walls.  The room was lit up by them.  

The vision could have ended there for me to know that God was working and making beauty from my brokeness, but God had more to show me.  A huge sledgehammer suddenly came down and smashed the vase, but instead of extinguishing the light, an explosion of vibrant colors filled the room. The walls around it could not contain it, and they crumbled into dust as the light and colors filled the world outside with unimaginable beauty as far as the eye could see.  

As I recalled the vision this afternoon, I heard God say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

There’s my dust. 

I thought back to the Garden of Eden.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust was a consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had warned Adam and Eve about it, but they didn’t listen.  

Yet I know I’m not suffering the consequences of my sin because I’ve chosen to eat from the tree of life through Jesus instead of the tree of slavery to my own debauchery.  My consequences got paid for on the cross. 

What I’m carrying are the marks of an enemy who hates me.  He hates me because I chose Jesus instead of death.  I chose to eat from the tree of life.  I called BS on the serpent’s lies. 

I think of Jesus, and why He chose to go the cross, and why He called His disciples to do the same.  “And he (Jesus) said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23 ESV) We saw Jesus carry His cross. He couldn’t even do it by himself, he needed help!  It was excruciating, horrifying, and brutal. But necessary.  

Jesus came in the flesh to show us that the pain of this world and the death that it brings doesn’t have to be eternal.  He came to show us that we don’t have to suffer the consequences of Adam and Eve and their bad decision.  We can choose for ourselves to take the fruit of life offered by Him. We can choose life. 

It’s a necessary step, suffering.  It’s the consequence of an evil serpent throwing a tantrum because Jesus has offered us eternal life. Jesus knows that road well. He faced those consequences, too.  He did it for us. He submitted to Satan’s tantrum and said, “Give me your worst!” and Satan obliged Him.  

Jesus’s life wasn’t pretty, and it ended brutally, but resurrection followed!  Jesus gets the last word.  Jesus is the Word made flesh.  And the Word cannot be overcome.  It is life and it is beautiful, and he carries the scars on his own resurrected flesh just to remind us of that.  What a gift.  I’m so thankful for it.  

If I’m to follow him in all things, then I must be willing to accept the crushing with the hope that it will bring resurrection life.  Not because God hates me, but because the world does, and God is not content to let me suffer in vain.  There’s got to be beauty that comes from it, or there’s no point in living at all.  

Jesus showed me that because He experienced it.  He laid down his life willingly so that I could see that all the suffering the enemy could throw at me in this world would not be the end of me.  Because He conquered death, if I follow Him in life, I too shall stand upon the wreckage of death and proclaim eternal life through Him who saved me from it!

Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust. Dust to clay. Clay to life in the Potter’s capable hands.

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Dying to Self

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24

It’s hard to imagine that dying to self could be a pleasant experience.  It goes against all reason and sense. Dying is bad, right? Dying hurts.  Dying is the end. But not to God.

Each day I am dying to myself.  I am letting all that I am, all that I have, and all that I want be broken down into death so that it can be resurrected by Christ for His glory.  

To God, dying brought life and light to the world.  Jesus conquered death so that it no longer had to hold me with its fear and power.  Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus rose other people from the dead! Jesus brings life from death in all of His creation!  The seed that dies and is buried springs for life. Every 24 hours, the day itself dies in a glow of majestic color and beauty only to succumb quickly to darkness, and then be reborn again the following morning.  

So I guess death isn’t quite as bad as it sounds.  Nihilists make death the end. Not Jesus. Jesus proclaims death to self for us, so that we might live:  not on our own, with our sinful brokenness and decay, but with Christ who lives within us, magnified, glorified and free.

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Galatians 2:20

I don’t know about you, but I like the sound of freedom.  The evil in this world sickens me. It sickens most of us.  We hate it and we wonder why God would let it happen. But God has offered us a free solution if we want it.  And the solution is to let God make us alive through Jesus Christ. When we submit to Him and die to our own desires, we receive the fullness of life that God always intended.  

So, I choose to let myself be put to death so that I might find and enjoy life in Christ, because Christ Himself lives in me by His Spirit.

“We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

In the Summer of 2016, while praying the verse above, I received the following vision:

On a plain pedestal rests a cracked and pitiful clay pot.  The pot is large. It is crazed with lines and imperfections.  It isn’t made to last. It isn’t even finished. It isn’t fired.  It’s fragile. Unpainted. Unadorned. But little beams of light stream out through the cracks and chips. The light inside the pot makes ornate patterns across the shell and beautiful pictures reflect on the walls of the room.  The pot is me.

Without warning a giant sledgehammer slams down on it.  The pot is annihilated. Dust and debris remain for a moment and then dissipate in the breeze. The light within the pot also explodes, but the light has form.  The light covers everything. It cannot be extinguished. The source of the light remains bright and strong. It throbs with power. It is joy and peace and love.  It is unquenchable. The light coats everything it touches with a thickness that spreads and grows. Little splatters become throbbing pulsing lights of their own.

 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:5

My earthen vessel, my jar of clay, has been shattered by the enemy, but the Lord’s hand is upon the hammer.  The Lord made the hammer and the jar. The Lord decides what the hammer can strike and what the outcome will be. The Lord will use the destruction of my body as an instrument to spread his enduring, powerful light, his love, his joy, his peace, to thousands upon thousands of people.  Even creation itself will be affected by the light that explodes out of me, and the light will never die. I will never die. The power of God will only spread and multiply.

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
John 12:24

 

Posted on by Daisy Joan

Beneath the Throne of God

I had this vision a few months ago.  It was very powerful for me, and I’ve decided to share it.  May it bless any who read it.

I saw the throne of Christ, and seated on the throne was the Lord.  Like in Revelation, He was a lamb, His neck broken and bloodied from being slaughtered, but He was (of course) alive and majestically sitting on His Throne.  Hovering above Him floated the Presence of the Lord as an ethereal Light that filled the room but specifically spot-lighted Jesus. Beneath the throne, a small, frail child hid, his tiny arms circled around scrawny legs drawn up to his chest.  He was frightened and hiding in the shelter of the Most High God (beneath His throne) but he was afraid to come fully into the Lord’s Presence as if the Light of the Lord would burn him up.

Jesus poked His broken head over the edge of the Mercy Seat and looked lovingly at the child, a gentle smile on His face.  Still, the child was too frightened to come out. At this point the Holy Spirit came in the form of what I could only describe as also a little child, though His Presence was like the wind, completely imperceptible with the eyes, but somehow utterly relatable, available, approachable, and safe.  The Lord allowed me to perceive the Spirit on His hands and knees crawling under the throne of God to meet the little child exactly where he was and lead him out from under the throne into the full Presence of the Lord.

I felt the Lord say, “Don’t be afraid.  Your fear has you thinking that even though you have found your protection in the shelter of the Most High God, you think that you will be burned up by His Presence if I see You.  But look, I see you! And my Spirit will meet you where you are and draw you out. Your sin has already been burned up by My Presence. You have nothing to fear. Come and experience the fullness of My Presence and be comforted.”

Lord Jesus, draw us out from under Your throne and into Your Presence.  We want to trust You and be with You.  Help us to overcome our fear and shame to be closer to You, Jesus.