Living Well In The Present

It's good to be prayerfully aware of the future, and to understand both the positive and negative effects of the past. But if our minds LIVE in the past or the future we'll be frustrated and unhappy. I should know. I've done both.

Numerous prophetically gifted people have prophesied that I'm a seer who sees a long way off, like a person high up on a wall using a telescope.

Some of us are wired to see 'out there' into our future...OR... 'out there' into our past. Yes, seeing into the past is part of the seer gifting. When I wrote Unlocking Our Inheritance, it was a God-assignment of digging into the past in order to bring healing, freedom, and reconciliation to historic wounds of a people group.

I also 'see' into the future. Not a literal seeing, but a sense of what's coming. In one instance, I knew a God-assignment was finished five years before it actually ended. And since I was still learning about the seer gift, I assumed it was time to immediately leave the assignment and move on. I struggled with impatience. I thought my husband was missing the Lord by delaying our departure.

The mistake is, if our souls are geared to the future: we see what's coming and want to abandon the present and go there NOW. We want to move on LONG before it's time for movement to actually occur.

Without an anchor in the present we can move out of time with the Kingdom of God.

God used my husband to help me slow down. He's prophetic in a very different way, and he was able to perceive the timing of God. But it was so hard for me to wait when I SAW that we were going to move on!

One more comment about seeing into the past. We all have ancestors, parents, grandparents. We're part of our parents' lineages. The good and the not-so-good stuff can get passed down to us as inheritances (the good) or as iniquities (the bad).

My dad's family is full of artists, writers and creative people: a gift of creativity is part of my family heritage. That's the good.

The bad, aka Iniquities, are passed down through heart attitudes, actions, and words, through belief systems, and through cultural perceptions.

These iniquities affect our grandparents and parents and ultimately affect our personal experiences of growing up in our families. Healing and forgiving the past are essential if we don't want to live in the past. We'll struggle to escape the past if there are ropes of generational iniquity or familial personal wounding that have not been healed and cleansed by the blood of Jesus.

After much work in healing the past and coming to understand the seer gifting, God is teaching me to live in the present; not an easy task for me, since I've lived in the past or the future for so long. I'm being stretched to embrace each day: to take one day at a time and not to think I have to hurry up and run ahead into what I see in the future. I'm learning to wait. I get strong as I wait on God's timing. (Isaiah 40:31)

It's good to pray and dream and plan for the future.

But it's essential to LIVE in the PRESENT. God in me NOW. Here. Jesus with me as I go to the grocery store. As I make dinner. As I encourage a friend. Jesus and I as we do the dishes. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit as I write.

This is where I rise up with wings of a bird and soar. This is where I am renewed. It's in the present, with God, right now, that I grow and change and live and love.