Prayer and Prophetic Dreaming...Running with the Horse Theme

I looked back, and guess I didn't blog this one. I think, however, I still have the email I sent back in June:

Blessings and honor to you guys! During my Bible study this morning, I came across a passage that makes me think I know why I had that visionary dream of K. I told you about yesterday, D. It also explains why his garment seemed to be the most important thing in terms of things prophetic. Interestingly, I had the dream about K. the very night after being at Horizon for a ballgame at which it rained, a confirmation that this is largely about the way God speaks to and through K. through water--God's emblem of wisdom--as you described to me. Here's what I put in my journal about the dream I had:
I saw K. at the baseball field, only it was not "just" the baseball field anymore. I saw him in a transfigured place and in a transfigured state. These things struck me about him in that state--
he had the eyes of a watchman
the chest and shoulders of a strong warrior-trainer
the stance of a guard-protector.
And I sensed a title spoken over him--the keeper of the games. I don't understand that part, though.
It seemed like his call was to prepare warriors for God and to guard and protect them while they were within his training ground, hence his stance inside the field's fence, and my comment during church last night about the graphic on the screens behind the worship-song lyrics showing a fence "for no apparent purpose." (smile)

These visionary dreams always have some element that proves the person's free-will is never compromised, so the image seemed to have the possibility of running two different directions: either as this trainer of God's warriors or as a Roman centurion-type who was training gladiators to die. (Reflecting back from today's position of things being manifested more fully, I see this was the garment of a charioteer, but at the time this was not yet perceptible, the other woman's prophecy and the verses from B.'s mouth in the pulpit were needed to complete the purpose of the beauty of the garment.) We all always have those choices before us, but the clue to the choice K. is making was in the garment he wore (reminds me of the parable about the one kicked out of the wedding feast because he wasn't in the right wedding garment. K.'s garment told the "rest of the story.") He wore a sleeveless tunic, belted at the waist (which made me think of all the verses about the benefits of being well-girded) and woven of fine fabric. But its color seemed most important, too. It was the color of blood, but not the bright red blood that is just come from the heart, rather it was the darker blood that is in the veins. "Blood on its way back to the heart," I thought in the dream. (Right now, that K. is working with kids for whom our best hope is that they are on their way back to the Lord's heart--this is utterly apropro.) And it seemed a very good thing to be on the way back to the heart of God. Yes, I wish I could make you see how lovely was that fabric!

Now today as I read my Bible reading, I come across this verse that makes me see God's important connection He's drawing to other things He's been saying through these visions He gave me for Horizon. Look at this from Isaiah 9:
3 You have multiplied the nation
And [fn1] increased its joy;
They rejoice before You
According to the joy of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
4 For You have broken the yoke of his burden
And the staff of his shoulder,
The rod of his oppressor,
As in the day of Midian.
5 For every warrior's sandal from the noisy battle,
And garments rolled in blood,
Will be used for burning and fuel of fire.

Keith, you are being called to offer holy fire somehow. This verse also brings me back to remembering how much lately God has highlighted the image of sandal straps on people's feet, so much so that I prayed in the moms' prayer group, asking that we might all be like John the Baptist, who professed himself unfit even to loose Christ's sandal strap because He realized the excellence and majesty of his Lord. But here the sandal image is again, only now for the warrior, and the warrior whose garment has been rolled in blood...these are they who are to be led by Keith, those who rejoice according to the joy of the harvest and who know that the Lord has broken the rod of their oppressors.

But equally significant to that is the image of the garment dipped in blood being used for burning. This takes me back to my own calling to recognize and tell about the soaps found in Malachi. Here's the passage again:

"Behold, I send My messenger,
And he will prepare the way before Me.
And the Lord, whom you seek,
Will suddenly come to His temple,
Even the Messenger of the covenant,
In whom you delight.
Behold, He is coming,"
Says the Lord of hosts.
2 "But who can endure the day of His coming?
And who can stand when He appears?
For He is like a refiner's fire
And like launderers' soap.
3 He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver;
He will purify the sons of Levi,
And purge them as gold and silver,
That they may offer to the Lord
An offering in righteousness.

I've told quite a number of people about this dream of the soaps, but I've always added the fact that my part was just that: a part, for I only saw the soaps. Nevertheless, for us to have been called to live out this passage, God made it clear that the soap is not the only refinement involved. Someone would be called to the role of the refinement by fire, and while the launderers are spoken of in multiples, even as I saw the nine bars, the one called to be the refiner with fire is a singular person. Might that person be K.? So I pray that K. may be given the supernatural witness that will purify with fire those things that are not to be purified with soap.
Two things are large in my prayers and study about this passage--one is that both fire and soap are purifying agents, but they can't be used interchangeably. What needs soap would be destroyed by fire and what needs fire isn't affected at all by soap. So I pray that we can see the difference. Up to now, two bars of soap out of the nine I saw are come and gone. But apparently the days of the refinement of fire are also looming before us. (Are now here.) The second thing is that in both passages the end result serves as our inspiration to get us through the strain of the days of purification...in the Isaiah passage it is the victory of the harvest and the freedom from oppression and in the Malachi one, it is that the people are purified so that they may have the privilege of offering to the Lord an "offering in righteousness."

God has been saying lately to me to get ready for Him to come before us with His majesty on display. I'm thinking we'd better buckle our seat belts for that ride!

That was the end of the letter. But this fall, what struck me when D. told me that K. received a prophetic call to "run with the horses" and found the Scriptural confirmation that this would be a season when God's call on him would ramp up, was that the way I saw him in this dream of mine was that the best way to describe his garment was that he was dressed as a charioteer. As one who controls the horses, and the Keeper of the Games title fits with the idea of chariot races quite well. As is often the case, I find things in real life running a confirming parallel to these dreams...for in Yahoo news today is an article about a chariot being excavated in Bulgaria where no complete chariot has ever been retrieved before, only bits and pieces of them as looters have taken the most valuable parts of many of these Thracian artifacts over the years.

Also interesting is the fact that I found another reference about horses that attaches these things God has to say to K. and D. to those very ideas He's been iving me, prompted by dreams and visions about some indiscretion becoming an issue this year...In Jeremiah 5, it says, "When I fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves in troops in the harlots' houses. They were as fed horses (or, well-fed lusty stallions) in the morning: every one neighing after his neighbor's wife. Shall I not visit (punish them) for these things?...Go yet upon her walls and destroy; but make not a full end (do not completely destroy.)"

That fire I was considering as I spoke to K. and D. in the letter this summer makes a more pointed appearance in both this NT passage and in the life of our student body this week, as several suspensions and an expulsion flared like a flash fire over the course of just two days this week, as "transgressions" came tumbling out as if from behind a firewall that was suddenly removed. Too heavy is the solemnity for now to see whether a new era is come to potential birth.
1Cr 3:9
For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building.
1Cr 3:10
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.
1Cr 3:11
For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1Cr 3:12
Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw,
1Cr 3:13
each one's work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.
1Cr 3:14
If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward.
1Cr 3:15
If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
1Cr 3:16
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
1Cr 3:17
If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.
1Cr 3:18
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
1Cr 3:19
For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their own craftiness";[fn1]
1Cr 3:20
and again, "The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile."[fn2]
1Cr 3:21
Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours:
1Cr 3:22
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come--all are yours.
1Cr 3:23
And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

Right now, almost all of this fire burns in the arena where K. works and has the greatest responsibility and influence. Thank You, God, that You kept him here to ride this chariot. Preserve him and the one called the Day who might carry this fire to other corners of this place...for I'm not sure it is all finished just yet. (Interestingly, the Dean of the Bible College has the last name Day. Is it that "I'm sovereign and I don't waste a thing and I make every detail of My word have its way of being true in the circumstance where I plant it" side of You revealing Himself here, O God? Hmmm...)

Finally, I think of my own dream some time ago about a spotted horse that--for lack of a better word--seemed rather stupid, or at least ignorant and without wisdom. It was inside a fenced area, but had found a weak spot in the wire fencing and was trying to break through that fence. I was outside the fence, but knew the horse should stay inside, so when I was given a tool meant to repair the wire fence, I went to work with it. When the horse realized it no longer had an easy way to breach the fence, it wandered back into the center of its designated pasture. Not long ago as I was reading a Blackaby book called Experiencing the Cross, this image was given a Biblical label: transgression. To transgress, by one definition, means to go beyond a boundary or limit. Somehow, we are called to control these horses and repair these fences, and God in His heaven sends images that parallel each other from a myriad of sources including His word to teach us His ways of dealing with the strain of the day--teaching us how to "redeem the time, for the days are evil."

Have I not asked this before: for those who think God's hand isn't strong on all this and His awareness isn't acute enough to be of effect, I'd ask...where have you been while He's been talking about all this these last few months!?!

A footman or a horseman?

This is the topic my friend D. (she is this one who is my prayer-partner in all these things) said came up in a prophetic prayer made over her husband last spring. "He will run with the horses," said the prophet-woman in prayer over K-my friend's husband and a man who has also appeared in my own dreams hand-given by God. Then the season of waiting and wondering what it meant ensues. I've found it to be a spiritual principle in things prophetic: the days of Sabbath. The time between the revelation and the consummation of the thing revealed. A period of time when faith has its perfect work, when watching and praying prove themselves, when pure devotion to God plants itself in a field that looks full of stones and weeds and says "nevertheless, good will grow here." When confusion or even unholiness seem to glow in the heart of the thing God claims is in His hand for the future, then faith says, "He alone will reveal how this is good and fight. I see with eyes not yet perfect, but that which is perfect will come after this Sabbath commitment, and the imperfect part will dissolve away." Then time and chance--those things that Solomon in his wisdom said touch every man's life and are therefore both the domain and the strategic tool of God's enemy--these become instead the very tools by which God is victor.
Moses in the giving of the law said it like this:
Exd 23:12
"Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed.
Exd 23:13
"And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.
And so it makes sense that there should be talk of a circumspect heart accompanying talk of a sabbath.

The prophets say it like this:
Isa 55:13
Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign [that] shall not be cut off.
And so we have the promise that this law and precept is ever at our hands for good when we join God in His seasons of rest and work.

What at last came of that strange prophesy? Just a week ago, here in a season of discouragement and wrestling with gnats and gorillas at every turn for this precious couple...more than any human knows but the two of them as flesh of each other's flesh. Now this verse comes up during a church service and gives D. chills in its prophetic significance:
Jer 12:5
If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and [if] in the land of peace, [wherein] thou trustedst, [they wearied thee], then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?

An encouragement, like Jesus come along and with a soft compassion making that address, "O ye of little faith..." before giving some word that will bolster the heart in places where is needs shoring up. They will need to run with the horses, in fact they will run with the horses. They needed to know God promised it in this day! So He sent them word of it before it ever made sense, before it ever became a promise of how precious they were in His hand.

As I pray for them on this topic, I find another passage relating simultaneously to footmen and horses:

1Ch 18:3
Then David destroyed the forces of King Hadadezer of Zobah, as far as Hamath,[fn1] when Hadadezer marched out to strengthen his control along the Euphrates River.
1Ch 18:4
David captured one thousand chariots, seven thousand charioteers, and twenty thousand foot soldiers. Then he crippled all but one hundred of the chariot horses.
1Ch 18:5
When Arameans from Damascus arrived to help Hadadezer, David killed twenty-two thousand of them.
1Ch 18:6
Then he placed several army garrisons in Damascus, the Aramean capital, and the Arameans became David's subjects and brought him tribute money. So the Lord gave David victory wherever he went.

I've heard You say that this seems to be the era of Defining the Remnant in the place where I work. And, here You present yet another reference to that concept.
Bless these friends of mine! And thank You, for how rich it is to hear the story of Your using the same mode of communication with them that You use with me, Lord God!