Convergence: Where Faith and Life Meet by Paulette Reed

Surprise, AZ

Miracle Growth

As I've been in a season of quietness lately, contemplating the past year while also looking for signposts for the coming year, Holy Spirit clearly spoke to my heart and said, "Faith grows by using it, a seed grows by sowing it, and love grows by being it." At the surface of this statement, I realize that most of us already know this. But when we receive an utterance from Heaven, the Lord's Spirit speaking to our spirit, that word becomes ours. It's like a prophetic arrow that hit the bull's-eye, a word for this time and for this season.

The faith that God has been building in you, those seeds you've sown in different arenas of your life, and all the love the Lord has poured in and out of you is about to explode for the purposes of God in this coming year. This year is going to be a year of convergence for many in the Body of Christ. Let's take a look at the three areas the Lord spoke to my heart – faith, seeds, and love– before we look at how they all converge together.

Faith Grows by Using It

Think back to last year for a moment, and then write down a minimum of five prayer requests the Lord answered for you. You prayed and believed, sowing seeds of faith in your heart; your prayers spoke life into those seeds as they germinated, similar to planting seeds in a field. It's amazing to realize that while planting these seeds of faith, we become conduits for God's will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven. By writing down answered prayer requests, we set up stones of remembrance that will testify of God's goodness forever. The Book of Joshua tells us about the importance of these stones and how our faith grows by using it:

"Now when all the nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD spoke to Joshua, saying, 'Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from each tribe, and command them, saying, "Take up for yourselves twelve stones from here out of the middle of the Jordan, from the place where the priests' feet are standing firm, and carry them over with you and lay them down in the lodging place where you will lodge tonight."'

So Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the sons of Israel, one man from each tribe; and Joshua said to them, 'Cross again to the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan, and each of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Israel. Let this be a sign among you, so that when your children ask later, saying, "What do these stones mean to you?" then you shall say to them, "Because the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off." So these stones shall become a memorial to the sons of Israel forever'" (Joshua 4:1-7). (Photo via Pixabay)

The more stones of remembrance we accumulate over our lifetime, the more our faith becomes actual knowledge. We no longer think the Lord will do something for us; rather, we know He will do it. And knowing that God is actually working on our behalf leads us to Habakkuk 2:14, where we see that we are to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord: "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea."

What is the knowledge of the glory of the Lord that the earth will be filled with? Well, no human can truly define glory any more than we can define God. But, we do know that glory is the fullness of God, and it is a topic that's higher than our ways and too complex for our finite minds. We also know that when God gives His glory, He gives of Himself. So glory is all that God is – His splendor, honor, praise, worthiness – and all that He has.

As our faith grows by using it, then it becomes usable knowledge. When we accumulate this knowledge by cultivating faith in our hearts, then we are filled with the Lord's glory so that we become more like Him, more Christlike, and we have more of what He has. Therefore, filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, we have provision for our vision.

Romans 12:3 tells us that each of us is given a measure of faith: "For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith." As our measure of faith is stretched, it grows – our measure of faith increases. God longs to strengthen our faith, causing us to grow more and more in the use of our faith, so that when the Son of Man returns, He truly will find faith on the earth (see Luke 18:8). (Photo via Pixabay)

Let's be attentive, Beloved, and make certain that our measure of faith is growing. I see too many people get stuck in survival mode, and their faith lies dormant. We know that the Israelites went from not enough, to just enough, to more than enough – that's what the Lord wants for us as well. This is because the more we are blessed, the more we can be a blessing to others.

The Apostle Paul reminds us of this in 2 Thessalonians, declaring that faith grows as we use it: "We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing" (2 Thessalonians 1:3).

Think about it: How will you know how much faith you have if you don't use what God has already given to you?

A Seed Grows by Sowing it

The second thing Holy Spirit said was that a seed grows by sowing it. He didn't say that we throw our seed about; He said that we actually have to sow it. Paul wrote, "A man reaps what he sows" (Galatians 6:7). That means that if a farmer plants corn, then that same farmer will reap corn; if he plants soy beans, then of course he reaps soy beans; likewise, if he plants cotton, then he'll reap cotton.

Whatever we sow is what we are going to reap. Or to say it another way is that we never reap something we didn't sow. When I need clothes, I sow clothes. When I need money, I sow money. In my life I have sown dining room sets, bedroom suites, entertainment centers, and even a car. To God be the glory, I have reaped them all back when the Lord knew I needed them.

So, as we travel on our journey with Jesus, we learn to sow our seeds and we speak life over them. We pray and water them with the Word of God, nurturing them in our heart, being careful never to speak curses but blessings over them. Not only that, but we also expect a harvest of the seeds that we have sown. (Photo via Freeimages)

Just as our faith grows by using it, so our seed should grow by sowing it. And, keep in mind here, that the seeds we sow should be getting bigger and bigger, because we are reaping larger blessings as a result. If we sowed $1.00 ten years ago, we'd better still not be sowing the same $1.00. The Word of God commands us to be fruitful and multiply (see Genesis 1:22). The smallest number that we can multiply is 2, which means if we sowed $1,000 last year, then this year we should be thrilled to sow at least $2,000. We don't add a little every season – we multiply it.

Love Grows by Being it

Many years ago, someone significant in my life said to me, "I just don't like people. I mean, I just don't." When this individual said this to me, I knew in my heart that it was just not right. And so I thought, "I'm going to love people. That's what God would do." I relate this brief interaction to illustrate the point that we have to make the conscious choice to love someone – it doesn't always flow naturally out of who we are.

In fact, love is the bedrock of Christianity. Christ died for us because the Father was motivated by nothing other than His great love toward us. Jesus didn't call 10,000 angels to get Him down from the Cross – it was because of love that Jesus became a human, dying the death we deserved, so that we could have the life He deserved. It was love that held him on the Cross so that we could be forgiven. Likewise, everything that we do as disciples of Christ should be motivated out of love. Especially as a prophetic people, we cannot be prophesying without love or we are nothing but a clanging cymbal or a noisy gong.

The love we carry will be consistently tested so that it can grow. Alleluia...I think. God doesn't want us to stay at the same love level as we walked in last year. He longs for us to grow as we continue to behold the God of love: Jesus Christ Himself.

When a man came up to Jesus to ask Him what the greatest commandment was, Jesus quoted an Old Testament Scripture, saying that a person is to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is the greatest commandment. But then Jesus quickly followed it up by saying that the second commandment, which is much like the first, is that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves (see Matthew 22:37-39). If you're really struggling with loving someone, then press into God and His love will flow through you. Jesus said in John 13, "Love one another, even as I have loved you." We only love because He first loved us. (Photo via Pixabay)

I think that one of the greatest ways to test our love level is to go on a mission's trip. When you have ten women staying together in one room, then you'll know what I mean when I say that we have to consciously choose to love others. This can also happen in our day-to-day lives – at the marketplace, the grocery store, or even in the church parking lot.

Each time we bump into others, there is an opportunity for our love to be tested. Consequently, our love can't really grow if we're isolated. How exciting it is to know that each time we pass a love test, our level of love is bumped up. Let's make it our prayer this year to ask God for a fresh baptism of love – ask Him to fill you to overflowing with His abundant and steadfast love.

Convergence

This year is going to be a year of convergence. Convergence is when your dreams, gifts, talents, skills, and Christlike character all come together at a point in time, and they come into alignment so your destiny can explode.

I recently ordered a stainless steel pizza rack for a large luncheon I was hosting. When the pizza rack arrived, I took it out of the box and for a moment I couldn't find the opening where eleven pizza pans could slide onto the shelves. It was then that I realized the company I ordered from had inadvertently sent two pizza racks, which were locked together. As I separated the two racks, Holy Spirit spoke to me about the idea of convergence – that 2016 would be a year of convergence. (Photo via Paulette Reed)

Of course, we need to first build up and develop our dreams and our destiny, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to converge. But when we have built and prayed and used our faith, sown our seeds, and loved as Christ loves, there is an amazing convergence that takes place where we see an explosion of Kingdom productivity.

We can't actually make a convergence happen, but there are a number of ways we can cooperate with what Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. I think many, many people never get to the point of convergence in their lives because they aren't aware of the Kingdom process.

For one thing, we can stay focused and avoid distractions, learning to stay in the rhythm or the flow of Heaven and not strive. We need to be faithful, sowing seeds, loving God's people, and always listening for the still, small voice of God. And of course we trust God, remaining grateful, to cultivate an atmosphere where convergence takes place.

I believe that convergence is always God's intention from the time we're born. We see it in the Old Testament with Joseph, who had favor in prison and everywhere else he went, and he ended up ruling a nation. We see it manifested in the life of Daniel, as he interpreted the king's dream with his spiritual gift – his gifts converged with his environment and he had provision for the vision.

Let's make our mantra for this year to be "Convergence: Where Faith and Life Meet."

Paulette Reed
Prophetic Arrow Ministries
Email: info@propheticarrow.org
Website: www.propheticarrow.org