April 16, 2012
I believe we are in a very fast moving season. I am writing on the "Tunnel of Love on Jesus' lap" (previously named "Going through the tunnel to sit on Jesus' Lap"),but another painting-word is already waiting for my next report to you. Of course I can only speak from my own journey through these thirty or more painting-words. Since they are prophetic paintings, they move in God's kairos time. Remember two weekends ago I was in Los Angeles region twice on assignments for the Lord and wrote that the painting-word was so profound it has already affected my inner life but that it would be difficult to report it. Today I am ready to share this word with you.
Basically, the Lord revealed that I had been believing and living in some cancerous lies and did not even know it. In November of 2005, I recorded in my book, Out of the Wilderness, that cancer was over and now the Lord was taking me on a new journey, the journey to discover "the others". I wrote in my book, "Sometime on this journey I will come to love and appreciate the bride of Christ that He loves so much." I was molested as a small child and grew up believing that no one would love me if they knew this shameful thing had happened to me. So, I withdrew into a cocoon and my personality did not develop properly. The result was a woman who could not feel love nor give love. So God began the process of re-parenting me by giving me these paintings-words. I am amazed and totally surprised that "Tunnel of Love on Jesus' lap" is a powerful painting-word for getting me into love - love from Him, love for others.
What I am sharing here is how the enemy works to trick us into believing lies about ourselves and our relationship with Jesus. He studies us and our background, and know what kind of lies we will receive as truth about ourselves. Beyond the enemy, the bottom line is we simply do not know God enough nor know His power to hold us in His strong arms through thick or thin. We also disqualify ourselves rather easily, thinking we are being humble in seeing how unfaithful we are to God. Rather we fall right into the trap of disqualifying ourselves as lovers of Jesus. The enemy lives for that - our disqualifying ourselves.
I had been believing the lie that in the past few years because of relentless attacks of the enemy to try to steal my healing of cancer that I had gotten so tired and no longer had the joy of the Lord in His Garden. An even more damaging lie was that I had fallen out of love with Jesus because I had become a "ministry" machine. Outwardly I could still write and paint and speak for the Lord, but secretly wondered if I was still in love with Him. Warfare had been horrendous within the circle of the bride of Christ, and I found myself falling into wanting to fight "the others" with tools of anger and bitterness. I felt I have failed. He had wanted me to learn to love the others, but I felt I had failed.
Praise God! Jesus came to scuttle the enemy and He brought me into the banqueting hall and fed me. He applied ointment on my wounds and spoke lovingly to me (this scene came out of the play version of my book, His Garden). I am living in that scene right now. He used the painting-word of "Tunnel of Love on Jesus' Lap" to speak the truth to me. That painting with the whirlpool or whirlwind had always stood for devastation of all sorts. I always thought it meant that we are safe from such devastations as long as we stay hidden in His arms. What a surprise that He said the tunnel is the tunnel of love - overwhelming, beyond comprehension, unreasonable, unlimited love of Jesus for me. He also told me that my writing for hours on end, going out to share wherever He sent me, and taking much risk to go out and pray for others who are sick and in torment, that in His eyes I was bringing a cup of living water to the least of these ones, and that I was really doing it out of love, for Him and for the others.
He reassured me, saying that I had never left His Garden and that our love for each other is as strong as ever. In fact, He practically shouted out for me to declare Romans 8: 35 - 39, "Who shall separate me from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all those things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Yes, the whirlpool or whirlwind means devastation to the world; yet, in Jesus, I and my house ("as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord"), we get to be whirling through the tunnel of love, being carried on Jesus' lap, from here to there to there, to proclaim His goodness in the land of the living, day in and day out, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until we see Him face to face.
While I was speaking at the Cerrito Aglow, His Presence and His anointing was so strong that I broke out in prayer for my dear friend, who had unexpectedly fallen into the grip of mental illness. I declared that even now, in her condition, I see her sitting on Jesus' lap in the tunnel of love. For indeed, who can separate her from the love of God in Christ Jesus? Not even mental illness. The power of God will bring this child of God to know His love in the deep places of her heart, beyond her mind, and that her knowing will break the power of torment, in Jesus' name. Amen!
