FMF~ Messenger

I love the chance to be creative with words, Fridays always provide a sense of community and adventure with the FMF post. Writing with one another, sharing a common topic, but surpassing the redundancy sometimes found in like-mindedness to embracing diversity while uniting in word.  I love Five Minute Friday Challenge.

The word today:  Messenger

So I as I was sifting through my devotion this morning, before I read the FMF challenge I began writing about the importance  of preparing a place for God to transform.   Acts 10:9-10 has Peter praying on a roof and the result of his prayer was unexpected.  He was sent a message, by a messenger, and was then sent to be a messenger.

Sometimes those messages are just not received well. Sometimes the messenger has to plead for grace in order to be heard.

And I think… do I do that to others? Am I so focused on revealing what I have to say that I don’t think about pausing to hear the message that they are bringing?

Amber Haines said, ” Peter provided a place for God when He prayed.” I love that it totally takes into account the role of the messenger as they reveal the message.  First and foremost, we should be praying about the things that we have to say, and then we should be preparing a place that God can transform through the message He gives.

God showed up when Peter prayed because Peter prepared a place for him to inhabit. We need to prepare the way for the Lord to come in and move mountains or even sweep the dust and cobwebs out.

Let his approach to you be ever attended with expectation. Stop waiting for the possiblity and being making it apossible by showing up and pushign aside anything that is clogging up space.

Peter prepared the way and God shocked him with a message.  He told him that the common was sacred and to call anything that God created  unclean was offensive.

What God calls Holy we can not demean by our assumption of value.

Too often I see things through the schewed lens of my reality, when God is telling mensomething different.   As you prepare for God to come in with a message meant to change  hearts, expect  the possiblity that He may just change your vision.

{ Are you willing to accept a message like that and then be a messager of the sacred commonness He reveals?}

Ironically, it this often were we (meaning me) fall. We attack the messenger because we don’t like the message. Consider this:

• We don’t get to define grace or love, we get to receive it.
• We don’t get to define forgiveness or hope, we get to adminster it.
• We don’t get to make the rules, we get to follow them.
• We don’t get to choose WHO hears the message, we get to be the messenger.

I was stopped completely this  morning at the message I heard in my heart.  Don’t miss the holiness of the common by failing to include His definition of acceptance. 

{Are you prepared to be a messenger today?}

Blessings,

Linking up with Lisa Jo at Five Minute Friday today. I encourage you to visit her the rest of the messengers faithfully sharing the heart message they have been given.