Letting go of the good

You know those big prayers, not the ones where you are asking for big things for you necessarily, or miracles, or things that seem big to you. But like those ones where you’re like PLEASE God don’t let me waste my life, don’t let me be mediocre, I want to be a warrior for Your kingdom. Sweet Jesus, He will absolutely go full send on those. Maybe not right away, but let me tell you, He will always come through on those if those warrior prayers are from an earnest heart. Those are the big and scary prayers. When God gets the ball rolling on those prayers, you better strap in. God desires us to be all in, because He’s all in. He’s always looking for people who are desiring to surrender their entire selves to His kingdom and mission on earth. I think many of us run around hoping that He will do amazing things with us while we still desire to be in charge of our lives. By God, He will bring you to maturity if you so desire it; true history making maturity in the Kingdom of God requires ultimate surrender, sacrifice, and obedience. There is not one single warrior for God’s Kingdom who made waves who has not seen ultimate sacrifice, stripping of the flesh, and the beating back of sin in their life. We each go through phases of the flesh being pruned back, usually each one being deeper than the last. At some point if we are honest in our prayer life, we desire more from God, and less of worldly satisfactions; we get bored, stagnant, and are caught running circles in the flesh trying to uphold our little worlds hoping God will do something with us. We spend days running around hoping we are doing His will, but unwilling to take on the threshing that’s required to plant the next season. We like to stay where we are comfortable even in the discomfort and stagnancy.

John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Luke 3:16-17

Threshing requires us to get to work dividing the chaff of the past season from the seeds of the next. A lot of times that crushing, separating, and dividing isn’t just what we are doing in obedience, but where we are personally being sifted by God. Our spiritual growth and fruit is harvested and harvest requires death to bring new life. All that has grown for the glory of God as well as anything that has not, is cut down, separated and sifted, so that only what is for the next season remains. The threshing floor of our spirit and physical lives requires submission, obedience, and active work towards the future.

The threshing floor was many times linked as a metaphor to the judgement of God throughout the Old Testament. Threshing or winnowing was a picture of separating the good from the bad, true from false in order for us to understand that this crushing allows for us to see what is meant to survive. God promises us we will not be burned, consumed, or overwhelmed as spoken in Isaiah 43. What will survive are the portions of Him, because He will not crush Himself, only crushing and separating what has eternal significance and value from what is meant to be left behind. The threshing floor is where we are judged and tested, but also a place for worship which positions us for future blessing. When we spiritually position ourselves where we let go of our lives, then we are positioned to bear fruit in due season. Then the threshing done to us allows us to thresh the mountains before us. Submission of our flesh is where we find our greatest strength, which sharpens us. When we are found strong in the Father and weak in the flesh; sharp in the sword of the Spirit and dull in the might of man, we are at our best. We are crushed, sifted, and tested. The ultimate yes and letting go is in making it through the process and bearing fruit in due season again and again.

Crushing requires submission, sifting requires obedience, and testing requires our active work. The big yes to God that requires you to let go of everything to have everything, will require you to walk through these three places. He will call you, He will make a way, but first He will crush you. Your self made life will be crushed like wheat separated from the stalk or grapes in a wine press. You will be at a crossroads that places you where you continue to be where you have been and where he’s calling you to go. You will be crushed and pressure to every facet of who you are will be challenged. Only what is meant to remain will stay if you submit to His plans. You’ll be called from everything you are and you know. It will challenge every idea of who you are in Jesus and in your sphere. He will crush your pride, your ideals, your plans, your un-Godly pieces, your self made kingdom, and your picture of how things should be. If you submit to the crushing, then you are on your way to a holier, more submitted, and sanctified you. You’ve trusted the first step and had the faith to believe that what He’s doing if for your good and His glory. The choice is yours to either hold on to everything you built, or step away and know that He’s taking you somewhere new. First it just may feel like you will die, like your world is ending, like everything you thought you were supposed to be doing is stripped from you. Not that what you’ve been or what you’ve been doing isn’t good, but it’s time for the next season, the next chapter. God has to get us to make the next move, not staying complacent in a place that’s no longer for us.

If you let Him, He will separate you from the parts of your identity and life that are not meant to remain. He will sift the deepest parts of you. God will breathe fresh wind on the seeds of your life separating them from what grew and produced them to that point. Much of what grew you to the point you are at will be winnowed and blown away by the wind of God. We can either stand there and try to grasp at the strands of our lives that aren’t meant to go forward with us, or we can choose to submit to where God is taking us and what we are called to leave behind.

I am the one who helps you, declares the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel. Behold, I make of you a threshing sledge, new, sharp, and having teeth; you shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff; you shall winnow them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them. And you shall rejoice in the Lord; in the Holy One of Israel you shall glory.

Isaiah 41:14-16

He is our Helper even when we don’t feel we want or need the help. Many times it will feel unwanted when this season of change comes upon you. When we are willing to trust Him in the midst of the the work He is doing in our lives we come out the other side of the threshing floor, ready to plant the next season. He is always doing a great work in us, but we must realize that He is redeeming us from our flesh and cycle of death over and over again to purify His bride. The Father desires to help us grow better in every new season, bear fruit in new and different ways, and not live in a place that is stagnant or past due. When I say cycle of death, the idea is that we are always working to bring life to that which is around us. But many times, when we grow stale in our spiritual and physical positions we are put in, we will do the same work over and over, but it will no longer produce the life that it used to. We are people of habit, comfort, and generally simplicity. If we are given our way, we will keep running the same cycles hoping that we will grow and thrive somewhere different. Much of anything we can do in the flesh without the positioning and anointing of God will won’t produce life when we get to the destination. It will fall flat and without divine purpose when we get to the end of the journey. Our Redeemer, Holy One of Israel promises us something very different when we submit to Him. We go from being the one who is threshed, to being equipped with the same tools of heaven to do the threshing. Isaiah is speaking to Israel in this scripture, but it also applies to us as believers who have been grafted into the family of God. The Father promises us that we are victors and have the authority to thresh what comes against us, that every thing that is not of Him, we have authority to crush and sift. We are given such a promise to see His kingdom come to earth, so that people can see Him and His Glory.

When we are able to take what God has done in us and use it for His glory and the good of those around us, then we are able to sow for the current season and do the work He has called us to do. Our desires and vision shift to His heart for what He desires to to do in us and through us. When we have come to the place where we can do the threshing, we find that its a place where God has taken our eyes off of ourselves and what we think is good for us. We come to a place where we are no longer self focused, but Christ focused, which is where His good and His glory reside. In this place we can see what He is doing around us and how He wants us to pursue His heart in the current season. Seek the righteousness of the Lord, let him crush you, sift you, test you, and plant you. In this you will let go of your good and pick up His good. His good is the best of what can be. So be sharp, be precise, and be pure of heart, to let him to the work He has called you to do.

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.

Hosea 10:12