The Snow Globe in Your Hands: The Watch Letter

Recently, I was reminded how God sent me into a blessed place, but that I could have missed out on the blessing if I would have taken what I left behind with me and into the opportunity God provided. So, often God moves to deliver us from the dry place we are in. We go through the motions and make steps toward deliverance but when God sends us to our place or well of deliverance … behind our backs, we are holding that old dry place tight-fisted in our hands.

As I am writing this, I visualize the place we refuse to let go of or come out of in the form of a snow globe. This time of year, snow globes are popular because of certain traditions. They are a sphere usually made of glass containing a miniature city, place, building or scene.

God could be calling us out of a place, but like that snow globe we shrink it down to a portable size and memorialize it, freeze frame it and encase it so we can take that dry place with us everywhere we go.

At The Body of Christ, Inc., our choir sometimes sings a song that goes: “Take me out of the city. I’m blind and I am ready to see. Take me out of the city. I want to be who you called me to be. Take me out of the city. But first take the city out of me.”

The song is tied to the scripture Mark 8:22-26. For God to make the blind man whole, he had to take him out of the place he had been in, the place he had known, the place he was use to operating in. God needed him to take his mind off that place, and what he had been through there, and set his eyes and heart on Jesus. Like our Pastor, Preacher, Teacher, Prophet Chief Apostle H.C. Gunn has been teaching recently, we need to behold Jesus. We must turn our eyes away from what’s behind us and look to who is before us.

If the blind man would have refused to leave the place he was in behind, to be made whole, he would not have been able be embraced by Jesus, to have his hand held by Jesus and be guided by Jesus. If you notice, in the scripture below, for the man to be healed Jesus needed his complete focus to be on him and he knew he could not have been healed among the town’s people, the town's talk and the town’s way. Also notice, after Jesus healed him, he told him to not go back into the town or talk to anyone in the town. After God moves for us, often we take the blessing and backslide to the same old thing because we never really left it. If the blind man would have gone back into town and talked to the town’s people, he may have been so distracted that he left his healing where he received it. Or sometimes the people we talk to or go running to who are not of God can help zap our healing and deliverance right out of us.

Mark 8:22-26

22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him and besought him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. 24 And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. 25 After that he put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town.

The story of the blind man also reminds me of Genesis 19:15-26, when God sent his angels to help Lot and his family flee out of the place of sin. They didn’t want to die in the city, so they went with God's messengers, but they didn’t want to let go of the ways of city and the pleasures they enjoyed either. So, Lot’s wife looked back instead of looking to the Lord for her deliverance and Lot, although he escaped, ran right into the same old ways because he didn’t let them burn up with the city. Lot and his wife were too blind to see the salvation that God had prepared for them. They literally were being led out of the city by angels and were guided by God, and it still wasn’t enough to put their old places and ways behind them. They slowed around because they esteemed the sinful way, the unclean way, the ungodly way better than what God had for them.

No matter what God does for us, so often we remain unsatisfied and ungrateful because we still think the place we came from or the people we were supposed to leave behind matter more than anything God, his messengers and his people could offer.

Genesis 19:15-26

15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

16 And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.

18 And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord:

19 Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:

20 Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live.

21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou hast spoken.

22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.

23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.

24 Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;

25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

26 But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

During a recent family trip to Dothan, Alabama,

I noted that Dothan, in the Bible, is a place of sight and called the place of two wells. It was in Dothan, in the scriptures, that Elisha prayed for God to open the eyes of his servant to see the provision God had made for them to win the battle they were facing. God’s holy army was with them, and the enemy was outnumbered (2 Kings 6). He had given them the victory, but Elisha’s servant had to choose to see and receive his deliverance.

Are we refusing to see our deliverance because we would rather take the easy way out and go back to our old ways and patterns? Once Elisha’s servant beheld (saw) what the Lord had provided, he had three choices: He could accept the deliverance, he could run back in fear, or he could try to use his own way of doing things to help win the battle and that would not bring him success.

To my family members who were a part of that trip in Dothan and are reading this: What did we see? Did we see the salvation of the Lord and the help and healing he sent in the trip, or did we look back to the place we came from, the place God called us out of, and the people and the ways God called us away from. In Dothan, was God taking us out of the city so he could open our eyes that we may see who was truly with us and what he has provided for us?

The snow globe of the past and the ways that we continue to hold on to can easily break and dry out. But what God has prepared for us never fails and never ceases to meet our needs.

In Exodus 14, God was delivering the Children of Israel out of Egypt. But they were so busy looking back at pharaoh that they convinced themselves it would have been better to stay in Egypt than trust God to lead them into a place of deliverance. And just like the blind man and Lot and his wife, the Lord was holding their hand trying to lead them away from the life he wanted them to leave behind. This time, God’s hand holding theirs came in the form of Moses, his prophet and the leader God set over them. Many of us have been blessed with a Moses in our lives. Chief Apostle Gunn is our Moses at The Body of Christ, a man of God who has been given the insight and wisdom of God to lead us out of our Egypt into the promises of God. But we often slap that hand away by the choices we make or only hold on to it until we get what we want. This reminds me of a rat going after cheese in a mouse trap. We think we have successfully outsmarted God and our leader by getting what we want but still doing what we want and not what God wants. Yet, when we try to take the cheese and run away and go back to the old place, the old way we did things, the trap of the devil is released, pinning us down, and we find ourselves stuck in the place God wanted to free us from.

Exodus 14

10 And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and, behold, the Egyptians marched after them; and they were sore afraid: and the children of Israel cried out unto the Lord.

11 And they said unto Moses, Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness? wherefore hast thou dealt thus with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt?

12 Is not this the word that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us to serve the Egyptians, than that we should die in the wilderness.

13 And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

14 The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.

Listen to Saturday’s FORREAL RADIO BROADCAST with Chief Apostle Gunn “Behold II:” https://www.thebodyofchristinc.com/listen-in?wix-music-track-id=1068542141990012&wix-music-comp-id=comp-kjfzbgmx