Of my prophetic friends, I have a 50/50 chance of hearing such an announcement.  But honestly what I hear is the computer on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

Can you hear it?  “Warning, Warning, Warning!” Yeah, ok, that’s a Trekkie thing.  Ha.  And I admit I absolutely loved that show along with all the movies and the sequel series. But I could continue to love it because I always knew the ‘warnings” meant complete destruction would somehow be overcome by the end of the hour through the genius of Captain Kirk, or Jean Luke Picard or Kathryn Janeway.

However, I don’t want to hear “Warning, Warning, Warning” from my spiritual friends.  Father never speaks to me that way.  Ever. And I have come to know that His direction comes through gentle urgings and sweet tenderness.  When anxiety or fear or any other aspect of darkness comes to plague me, He is instantly there to comfort me and encourage me to walk through it and overcome it.

In His gradual sweetness as guide, He has shown me that any ugliness or even warning before me has only appeared there as a lesson in a new area of overcoming.  I am an overcomer.  It really is that plain and simple.  He didn’t create me to run or cower or be defeated under any circumstance.  I see no warning as impetus to plan for escape.  Rather I see it as my invitation to defeat it.  In Father’s eyes, nothing can defeat me – unless I chose not to advance.  And even then, He still sees no defeat, only the first in many like instances that will continue to present before my face until I have found my strong ground in Him to see the obstacle as He sees it – only something to be walked over or through.  He will gently allow me to continue walking around the same kind of mountain until I begin to see it as a mole hill and gain the courage to stand in His strength.

These battles are not about screaming at the enemy or rebuking demons.  At least they aren’t for me.  I never found that course of action to profit me much.  But in His lessons of identity, I became less arrogant and more comfortable in my own skin, knowing without a doubt what my name is and who my Father is.  I know the weapons in my arsenal and I can wield them swiftly and without a moments hesitation.

It’s ironic to remember how I behaved just a few years ago and see how I behave now.  This woman of God hasn’t developed through my efforts to recite scripture and spend 5 hours a day in prayer.  If I could name the one thing that has made the greatest change in me, it would be that overwhelmingly enormous sense of all-consuming LOVE that vibrates through and around me most of the time now.  I have become so aware of His presence that it supersedes all else.

I did not work at achieving this.  Father did.  He pursued me relentlessly.  He is the overachiever.  He convinced me to stop pushing so hard and showed me how quickly He’d respond when I would sit back and rest inside Him.  He invited me to test Him over and over.

It’s a bit like the trust I have in my husband.  It was achieved through years of walking through experiences together.  I know exactly how he will react and exactly how much I can trust his heart.  It’s the same way with Father.