As it comes to adhering to socially acceptable practices, I’m intrigued with this spunky, bald headed prophet in scripture named Elisha. Elisha is the guy who picked up the mantle as it fell from the flying chariot ablaze with fire taking his predecessor, Elijah, to heaven.
He was a radical in his day. Soon after he put on Elijah’s mantle, he was being ridiculed by a bunch of boys picking on him about his bald head. He doesn’t shout at them or send them home to their mommies. He cursed them in the name of the Lord and two she bears came out of the woods and tore up 42 of them… not socially acceptable. I’m thinking if Elisa was living in our world today, if you told him to put a mask on, he would rip your mask off and shove it down your throat… after he cut off both your ears so you couldn’t wear another mask.
People of his day weren’t keen on inviting Elisha over for dinner, but they knew the power of God was all over him. In 2 Kings 3… right after the bear curse, we find three kings who have marched seven days with their armies going to war against Moab. They get to the battlefield only to find there’s no water for their warriors and horses. They sheepishly approach Elisha’s house, checking the woods first for bears, and ask for his help. True to form, Elisha tells them to ask for help from their foreign gods. Then tells two of the kings he wouldn’t even be talking to them at all, if it wasn’t for the respect he had for the third king.
After insulting the kings, Elisha gets the worship band on stage… another lesson in itself… and as they played, the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he prophecies the dry river bed in the battlefield will be filled with pools of water the next morning. Then prophecies Moab will be destroyed… oh… and while you’re at it… cut down their trees, stop up their springs and throw rocks in their fields.
As I was reading this story this week, God brought my attention to the pools of water in the battlefield. There is a move of God happening in the world today as prophesied in Isaiah 43:19…
“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland”.
I believe each one of us are represented by the pools of water. Picture this in your mind… water comes rushing down from Edom in 2 Kings 3:20 and creates pools one after another until the whole country is flowing with water. Now… if I’m a pool of water, the water I receive comes to me from the pool next to me and the water flows through me to another pool… to another… to another. So what’s my responsibility in this last day’s prophetic move of God? Keep my pool flowing with water! So… what can stop the flow of Holy Spirit water in my life?
Bitterness… jealousy… resentment… unforgiveness… pride… condemnation... unconfessed sin…
Come on, folks! Let’s get into the pool and clean out the sewage stopping up the flow. I need the Spirit of God flowing through you to get to my pool. And I need you to receive the flow coming through my pool. We are pools in the battlefield right here… right now…
Keep the water flowing…