Soul Remodeling: Wilderness Call
I was free falling. I couldn’t breathe. My body, yes. My soul, not so much. It was suffocating. I’d lost my tribe in more ways than one and didn’t know where I fit in any more, if any place. And the uneasiness of where else this journey was taking me (soul wise or otherwise) was escalating. I felt like a character in one of my favorite YA movies, Divergent. I was headed into a God-appointed wilderness journey . . .
Human viewpoint says you have to get tougher, stronger through life’s valleys and potholes. But toughening up solely via your human strength can make you bitter, harder, harsher, louder, colder. Filled with a false sense of power. God has a different plan . . . and it takes you right smack into unchartered waters for a deconstructing-reconstructing soul experience.
Flashes of His light. The soul pricked with divine sparks. That was Sarah. The call from the polytheistic, cosmopolitan Ur to Haran to Canaan, then dealings with Lot, a battle with five kings, and sweepings into pharaoh’s and Abimelech’s harems. Whew. Something had to be learned here, absorbed here, infused here, stripped here in order to birth something of greater magnitude later. Maybe you can relate.
Position doesn’t just happen. It’s given by God. Joseph’s prophetic dreams weren’t a free pass to ride the tails of his royal or priest-like, multi-colored coat. No, those dreams were manifestations of a calling that would first become a lightning rod in God’s hands—a tool that would spark situations and form a wilderness path for Joseph’s soul.
God, in precision timing, was on the move. He separated Moses from the common—his birth tribe and his adopted, privileged position in Egypt—for a series of deconstructing-reconstructing encounters with God to beat all others. But Moses almost missed it. The story goes like this . . .
God’s calling on Jeremiah’s life was straightforward. There would be no discussion, no fiery bush, no staff-turned-snake demonstrations as Adonai had done with Moses. But there definitely would be times of heavy deconstructing-reconstructing in his soul—like Israel’s. A tearing down to build up. Soul lessons for us all . . .
He’s the famed Pharisee whom some Jews and some Christians love to hate. His story—a real page-turner. His name, Saul Paulus from Tarsus. Privileged and free, yet caged behind bars of religious zealousness, then later caged by man, yet free in the Spirit of God. A remarkable deconstructing-reconstructing soul story . . .