For example: You’ve just been hurt real bad. Okay? Right when they’ve been hurt, they don’t need information.
They need mercy,
‘It’s okay. Tell me about it again. How do you feel?’
But there’s going to come a time where God shifts into,
‘All right, it’s time to come out of this.’
If the mercy voice stays too long, you don’t shift to freedom; you become a victim. Was the mercy voice bad? No. But God had to cut it because now God has shifted. Now you need information. Now God is wanting you to claw your way out. He’s wanting you to get back in your right mind. God is wanting you to be the head and not the tail. God wants you to get your foot on it instead of having its foot on you.
And now what became mercy and healing will move into a pity-party and a victim mentality if God don’t shift the voices. And see that’s what God is talking about. He said,
‘It’s easy to let go of the bad, but it was good to sit there and have an ear listen to you.’
And now God’s pulling it away from your cold, dead hands. And now a voice is coming in that ain’t nearly as sympathetic saying,
‘You got to get it together. Pull that shade up. Get out of this bed. Get your résumé together
and we’re going to drop it off at 8 different places today!’
See, we don’t like that!
‘Bring me back that person who was crying with me and telling me it was going to be all right.’
See, when God moves the season, He’s got to move the people.
‘Abide in Me and I in you.’
Do you notice how many times He says, ‘Abide’? He just keeps saying, ‘Abide’.
Now look at John 15, verse 4:
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine,
neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
He says,
‘If you let this process cause you to disconnect from Me, what’s in you will never come out.’
God is telling you upfront in John 15,
‘Let Me tell you HOW this thing works.’
He says,
‘This process…I’m going to activate it in your life. It is a key that I’m bringing you closer.
No longer going to be a servant. I’m going to bring you inside.’
He said,
‘Now, understanding this process and sticking it out is the KEY to becoming fruitful! Abide.’
In other words, fruit is not birthed when you connect in spurts. Too many folk run to God and run to church in bad times. And as soon as God gives you your miracle, you disappear. And I just got the guts to tell you. And you know why you never stay fruitful? You never abide. You’re in. You’re out. You’re in. You’re out. And Jesus is saying,
‘No. Stay. Stay. Stay.’
He says,
‘I’m going to cut you, but stay with me while I cut you. Because…I’m cutting you so what’s in
you can come out. But if you disassociate and disconnect from Me because you can’t trust
Me when you don’t understand why, then your fruit will never be birthed.’
In John 16, verse 1,
“These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble.
He said,
‘This I’m telling you, because I don’t want this process to make you fall. So I’m trying to help
you understand HOW it works NOW.’
I’m convinced I wouldn’t be here today had I not made 5 difficult decisions about 5 people who were very precious to me. I don’t believe that cutting is God’s first option. I believe the first thing He’ll do is speak to you and see if you’ll handle it on your own. And if you won’t handle it on your own, all of a sudden people will start falling out with you and you won’t understand what’s going on. And see if you didn’t move it yourself, all of a sudden they start getting weird. You know why? Cause God said,
‘They ain’t going to do it themselves. Let Me go to work on it.’
And God will go and design something crazy. And you think it’s just random activity of life. No. It’s God with the shears. You really don’t know what’s in you, but you’ve got to TRUST that God does. And before God starts TELLING you why, He’ll make you trust Him BLINDLY when you don’t know why.
Ron Carpenter, Redemption World Outreach Church