PROPHETIC WORDS

GOD IS DEALING WITH OUR ILLUSIONS

A Prophetic Insight by Lyn Packer

July 2022

This is a season where God is speaking to us in a very clear and understandable way. In doing so, He is bringing us face to face with our illusions so that He, and we, can deal with them, thereby bringing us into much needed clarity, insight and strategic revelation. This will allow us to move forward in life in greater freedom and power.

An illusion is a mistaken or false impression or belief, a deception, a fallacy, a distorted perspective that we have of ourself, others, and life. We all have illusions. Our life is lived from our internally held beliefs, opinions, expectations, and judgments. They form our ideas about what our life, people we know, church, and even God, are like or should be like, (according to us). Sadly some of these opinions, beliefs, and judgements, are based on a foundation of illusion – a wrong or misinterpreted perception of our experiences, or even of life itself. These internal illusions, those distorted perspectives, can have a very strong dominating voice in our life. When they do, we can view everything that happens to us through them, and we can speak and act from them.

Even though it’s hard, we need from time to time to be brought face to face with our inner life – our illusions, our wrong/false ideas and beliefs; about God, ourselves, the church, other people and the world in general. That was one of the reasons Christ came, and one of the messages He carried and embodied. He came as Truth. Truth – someone who offers to liberate us from false illusions, and the lies we’ve lived under. If we want to allow Christ to be formed in us and represent Him well then we must face our illusions and the lies of the enemy that we lived from, allowing God to uproot them from our lives, and to replace them with truth, love, and His grace.

As Christians, we can sometimes slip into the unspoken expectation that because we are now God’s children everything in our life will be sweet. We can unconsciously pick up the idea that God will always come through for us in the way we expect Him to, and when He doesn’t we squash down our thoughts or questions, thinking they are signs that we are rebellious, or that we somehow lack faith. Questions like, Why am I going through this, I thought God would protect me/deliver me? Why do so many of my prayers not get answered the way I want? Why don’t I get the breakthroughs I have believed for, (for years, in some cases)? Why do people keep on letting me down, or not be who I thought they were? Why are so many leaders sinning and being publicly exposed in sin when I expected so much better from them?

Yet the reality is, if we look at each of those questions we may find that they are in fact an expression of an illusion, an unrealistic expectation…

• the illusion that God will protect me from all hardship or…

• the illusion that if I do somehow suffer hardship God will miraculously rescue me from it with a sudden breakthrough and miraculous provision.

• the illusion that my prayers will always get answered the way I expect them to.

• the illusion that relationships will be free of issues if we’re Christians.

• the illusion that leaders are somehow different, more perfect than the rest of us.

• etc…

When our illusions aren’t realized and they don’t come to pass, then we think that the answer is to pray more, believe harder, and expect that God will come through because of our extra effort and faith. Yet, sometimes God’s plan is not to rescue us from hardships and struggles. Sometimes it’s to reveal to us that we are not alone or abandoned, He is with us, and will stay with us, in the midst of all we are facing. And, that He will give us much needed wisdom, support, and encouragement, forge new strengths in us, or teach us important life lessons within our hard times.

A Courageous Act

As Christians we often don’t do self-examination, critique, questioning or discontent well. We tend to try to avoid them because of the discomfort they make us feel. Yet they are critical for our growth. Without them we stagnate, and when things become stagnant they end up foul, stinky and highly toxic. When this happens in our lives revelatory insight from the Lord ends up being replaced by cliché’s, flexibility gets replaced by obstinacy, and the unforced rhythms of grace get replaced by habit.

The action of self-examination and facing our illusions is a courageous act of renewal and personal revival, and a pre-cursor to growth and taking new territory. And if we want to grow we must allow this process to take place. We must be courageous and allow our illusions to be challenged and shattered, and our thinking, our minds, to be renewed so that we can be transformed.

Sometimes illusions are broken down through questions being asked and answered; sometimes illusions are shattered in a moment. Either way it hurts when illusions are shattered or dismantled, yet the truth that floods in can truly set us gloriously free to grow and operate on a whole different footing.

A Word of Warning

In our self-examination and examination of the church, however, we must be aware that evaluation without vision for how we move forward will become criticism. Evaluation and criticism, if not handled correctly, can cause us to become disillusioned and to descend into cynicism, scepticism, and then into pride and arrogance in our insights. In our self-examination we must ask the Lord to not only expose our illusions, but give us answers for how to bring change and go forward with fresh renewed vision.

Sadly in the process of their illusions being exposed, many have become cynical and sceptical of all things to do with God. In doing so they are choosing to cast away all they believe about God, instead of simply casting away untruths and illusions (false internal beliefs). They have become angry with God, with themselves, with others, or with the world in general. They have put up defences, lashed out, gone into battle mode, and struck–out at those they have now come to see as enemies, when a few weeks ago those same people were close friends or family.

In this season where God is systematically dealing with our illusions let’s be aware of the danger of descending into cynicism and ask the Lord to show us when that is happening, and to bring us back to seeing that His greater plan is not destruction, but to deconstruct so that reconstruction can happen. His plan is to tear down instability so He can build us up, strong and able to stand firmly rooted and established in love and truth.

Tearing Down to Build Up

If our mind being renewed so our life can be transformed (Rom 12:2) is part of what God has for us, then we must accept that our mind has wrong beliefs established in it. If part of our Christian life is that we will know the truth and the truth shall set us free (John 8:32) then we must expect that falsehoods, illusions, wrong beliefs that we have will be challenged by God, and by truth along the way.

Part of that process is that we must make peace with the fact that we don’t know everything and we aren’t always right about everything. Make peace with having questions, with unanswered prayer, with things that didn’t go the way you thought your faith would make them work. Maybe it means not being able to always get the answers we seek and being okay with that.

Maybe it means letting go of certain expectations, certain illusions. Does letting go of those things mean that you don’t have enough faith? Does accepting something as it is, mean that you don’t trust God? Scripture tells us that Abraham was able to accept that His body was as good as dead, and at the same time stand in faith (Rom 4:18-22). In our lives there will be times when God will be the supernatural deliverer we expect Him to be, but there are also times when He wants to be something else to us.

Maybe He is wanting to show Himself to you as wise counsellor, or loving Father, or faithful friend, and the one who will never leave you or forsake you – no matter how full of questions you are, or how disillusioned you are.

Somewhere along the way, in the midst of all my questions, worries, fears etc. I’ve discovered that faith is based on relational trust. Trust that has come from experiencing God’s goodness, love and faithfulness time and time again, not faith based on theological beliefs, or a church system. I’ve learnt that it’s about developing an honest and authentic relationship with God. I discovered that I needed a God who was not blind to my humanity and shortcomings, yet loved me anyway, a God who is as close to me in my times of uncertainty as He is in my hope.

I’ve learnt that not getting prayers answered the way I wanted them to be answered usually means I was expecting there was “only–one–right–answer”. I had an illusion and an expectation based on that illusion!

The point of life, or of our relationship with God, is not ‘being right’, having all the answers, or being the perfect Christian. It’s not about having every prayer answered in the way we expect. It’s actually about developing an authentic and honest relationship with God in the midst of an untidy, imperfect human life. It’s about the process of being transformed – becoming more like Christ, loving the world as He does, and in doing so, realising all that can happen through us as imperfect people who don’t have everything figured out. It has never been about becoming a cookie–cutter version of Jesus based on stereotypical and false images. That’s one of the illusions we need to get rid of! It’s about becoming fully authentically you and at the same time displaying Jesus as authentically as you can at any given point in your life journey.

I’ve discovered that I need my illusions destroyed so that my mind can be renewed, so I can see with greater clarity and truth. I’ve also discovered that in that process I need the friend who is closer than a brother, the Father who loves me deeply and eternally, and the wise counsellor who is always ready to guide me and give me wisdom as I navigate this imperfect life; and you do too!

So let’s allow God to expose and deal with our illusions so that we can live a life that embraces our humanity, both the natural and supernatural aspects of it, while at the same time allowing God to authentically be who He is through us.

PRAYER POINTS

Prayer is not just us coming to God with a list of requests. As part of our relationship with Him, it is us having a conversation with the Lord, which involves talking and listening on both sides. The following prayer points are some things you can talk to Him about in regards to this prophetic word.

• Pray that the Lord will, in His gracious love and kindness toward us, expose our illusions, our distorted perceptions, wrong beliefs, inner deceptions, false impressions etc. in order that we may be set free from them.

• Pray that we will realise and experience the reality of truth setting us free.

• Ask God to show the church where we operate as individuals, and corporately, in arrogance, believing that our perspective is the ‘only correct’ way to see things. Pray for courage to admit that even on our best days we have only partial perspective, we don’t know everything, and we need God’s wisdom and insight in order to view situations correctly.

• Pray for humility to cloak us, love to guide us, and that we would walk as He showed us in Micah 6:8 –  “Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the LORD requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

BIO