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1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
What had occurred by eating that day so many decades ago? A violation and a transgression had occurred against the purpose that the Spirit required. So I would know the seriousness of the offense, I began to experience physically what the Holy Spirit was feeling. I had offended, grieved, quenched, and cognizantly, deliberately, and intentionally resisted the Holy Spirit. And I needed to find out what those true repercussions would be.
I don't think in the immediate I really understood the depth and the import of what the Holy Spirit was asking of me. I received the grace to fast casually, without the watch and the guard that this word and impartation required. I had not brought myself to the attention to protect what had been given me against what was an established habit. Though I knew the reality of what God spoke, though I knew that it was mandated, somehow I did not remove myself from the casualness and regularity of a daily habit.
The habits that were so familiar to my physical function and daily pattern had not been submitted to the sensitivity and the watch that the Spirit required to fully obey and immediately correspond to the instruction.
As the revival continued, I was faithful to attend each service. I read for the man of God every night. But I deliberately removed and distanced myself from working the altar because I felt so condemned and convicted. I felt detached, separated, and alienated from the meeting and all of the marvelous manifestations that I witnessed. It was as if I were outside, removed from what was occurring. As if the pores of my spirit had been clogged from absorption. Like getting numbed at the dentist. I could feel the pressure, but I was no longer sensitized to the touch. I felt bone dry in the midst of a pouring rain. My tongue felt thick, and my language slurred. My hands and feet felt weighted. I felt an extreme spirit of heaviness, and an exhaustion that was otherworldly. I pressed and sought for tears. I yearned for and anticipated brokenness. And nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And more of nothing.
The Lord allowed me to experience this because He wanted to establish, to forge, to sear a memory that would become a part of my spiritual curriculum vitae. The feelings, memory, and interpretation of what the Lord erects in our lives removes us from the callous, cavalier, and unconvicted response we have toward negligence, avoidance, disobedience, and rebellion. It makes us seek out the revelation and the desire to experience Godly sorrow, for without it there is no repentance and no redemption.
Hebrews 12:17-18 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears,
What had happened was...
So what happened when I mindlessly breakfasted, and negated the grace of the fast? The Holy Spirit wanted me to know what actually had occurred in both the natural and spiritual realms, both present and future future. I had been given an opportunity, a privilege, to receive an anointing that I had never experienced before for a future that was to come. I had been given the privilege to be selected, chosen, and appointed to pioneer or to continue something that had preceded me in the realm of the spirit.
Through a diligent search over these decades of foundationally and structurally leading and training others, I now understand that a casual response to a spiritual directive negated many purposed priorities:
My sons and daughters that were to come would be denied necessary impartations for the completion of their anointing and gift suite. And their sons and daughters, and as many as the Lord thy God shall call. Acts 2:39
The angels of the Lord and the ministering spirits of God now had their assigned help taken from them to wage war against the enemies of what I was to receive. And what the open heavens were to release as a result of the fast, this was now stalled and held up. Demonic forces had been loosed from chains and restrictions and been given license and permission through my disobedience to initiate meddling interferences in territories they once had no license to operate in.
The other impartations I was to receive from the remaining nights of the meeting: my disobedience had released a prohibition against me receiving them. The assistance that my other resident gifts (that were mature, perfected) needed, now had to struggle in my assignment without the impartations I would have been a candidate for from that fast. Because I wasn't in a place to receive them, I opened the door to vexation, criticism, and jealousy toward those who had been invited to a similar experience, who had walked worthy of their call.
By being disobedient to the fast that the Lord had created such grace and enablement for, I removed myself from participating in what God would have required of me for those services while on the fast. In disobedience, you strengthen the individual works of the flesh and the appetites that cause them to prevail. And while there is a difference between being seduced to sin, and falling into sin because of a strongly established habit or pattern, the results are the same. It is a rebellion and it is doing the polar opposite of what the Spirit has required to be strengthened for use.
By failing the grace that was given to fast, I missed the opportunity to break the repetitive and consistent cycles in my life that destroyed the work of the Spirit, because this fast was designed to not only impart something, but it was sent to extract something that was designed to derail my future. And the fast was to prevent a disruption in the timing, order, and sequence from God of what I was to experience and when. Part 3 available in the next Chronicle post.