In the last session, I spoke about the connection between angels and thresholds. One of the reasons they are stationed there is to minister to us in the aftermath of the tests we experience.
The threshold is, quite simply, a place of testing. As we pass through trials and challenges, the Fruit of the Spirit matures in us. Like muscle that develops with resistance training, the Fruit of the Spirit in us grows as we meet and overcome challenges.
I had a friend who I thought was as honest as the day was long. She’d return to a shop if they accidentally gave her too much change; she’d go out of her way to return a lost wallet she’d found. I’d have given her a reference any day, extolling her integrity. So it was a great shock to discover that she’d used her position as treasurer of a social club to defraud it. As I came to grips with the knowledge someone I’d trusted was seriously dishonest, I wondered how I could have been so mistaken. Eventually I realised that I’d been taken in by the old adage that, if you’re honest in small things, you’re honest in big ones. This wasn’t the case for my friend. It was simply that, prior to having access to the bank account belonging to the social club, the financial rewards were just never big enough to tempt her.
Honesty is a virtue that we can only claim if we’ve been subject to a temptation that was genuinely hard to resist. We only become people of integrity when we’ve been through the fire and turned our backs on duplicity when giving in would have been the easy way out of the furnace.
Although there’s nothing we’d like to avoid more than testing, God’s assays are vital to the growth of the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives. The divine Fruit is essential to achieving our calling—it’s part of the arsenal of weaponry gifted to us by the Holy Spirit to defeat the enemy.
The Armour of God is largely defensive and protective but the Fruit of the Spirit is an offensive group of armaments. When it comes to testing by the threshold guardians, those fallen powers who want to block our way into our calling, we need to be able to discern which Fruit to deploy to overcome the specific enemy we’re facing at a particular time.
Integrity, for example, overcomes Leviathan, the spirit of retaliation. Integrity’s more common ‘botanical’ name in the spirit world is shalom, which we identify as peace.
Many believers want to sneak over the threshold and bypass the tests. But just as Adam and Eve were tested, just as Jesus was tested in the wilderness—so we will find ourselves at the appointed time on a testing ground. More often than not, we fail the test. But, never forget, our God is the Lord of second chances.
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May the Lord of Second Chances kiss you today.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
This is so beautiful!
Thank you so much, Anne. What you have shared here has given me quite an “aha” and a greater understanding of your other material around threshold spirits and so on. The example you have used is particularly pertinent.
At the beginning of the last few years, I have been asking God if He has a word for me. This year it was peace, which at first I struggled with – like patience, was it going to be tested? However, as I started to ask Him about it, the word “shalom” also dropped into my mind. As I did a deeper dive into the connotations of shalom, the richness of this word thrilled me, and also made so much sense connected into the roles I find myself in. In reading/listening to this podcast, I suddenly saw that we are right in the middle of a test on this and it is very much about integrity. My husband has particularly had his integrity attacked in the last few weeks, even by someone we considered a good friend. Rather than saying anything he has done is wrong or bad, it is all about how he did it, which basically comes back to character assassination. There is an idea being promulgated that his heart or motivation is bad. In all this, there is basically no response that helps.
In the last year, God has been talking to me about not defending or justifying myself. I am realising that most of the time we do this, we are trying to get vindication, to feel better about ourselves. This situation is the same. Our hearts cry is to be heard, for people to understand us, to know our truth. Unfortunately, in these situations everything seems to get heard through the lens of what is already believed and only serves to prove what is being said (just like people unjustly incarcerated in an asylum – every word proves how delusional you are!). As we have prayed into the situation, there is a strong sense to stand still and say nothing and allow God to fight this battle (some of which has come from other parts of your teaching). I will continue to unpack this teaching into this circumstance for all its deeper connotations, which I sense are many.
Blessings, and thank you again for your faithfulness.
When it comes to integrity, the tests are about maturing the fruit of shalom within us. It can’t grow unless it’s placed in circumstances when we are tempted to lack integrity. The maturing of this fruit is what helps to ready us for being able to keep our inheritance. Not just come into it, but actually keep it (in both senses of “keep” – possess and watch over.)
Listening to this has been both enlightening and saddening at the same time. I am sad to say I have been lacking in integrity. But, I would never have described myself so until this epiphany. Both liberating and saddening. I have been asking for the big things but God has has been protecting me from myself because I would have failed miserably at the top , had He answered my prayers. Now, I do not know how to repent as I’m not sure I can make the right choices still, if given the same options again.
It’s good that you don’t know how to repent because it will mean that you will rely on God’s help for it. When I repent, I say something like: “I repent of seeking coffee as my first port of call when I want a refuge. I want You, Lord, as my one and only refuge! Jesus, please empower the words I have just spoken to achieve the repentance You want to see in me.” Without the empowerment of Jesus, we tend to rely on our own willpower – which, in some cases, works well and gives us the false impression that for everything else we just need to try harder. In fact, God in His grace has strengthened our willpower, but He will not do so when we come to rely on it rather than Him.
Hi Anne, I’m finding it very hard to follow in order?
Hi Christa – I hope you’re on a computer browser, rather than a mobile one. I’m not sure what the page looks like on mobile. On a computer, go to the bottom and look for “older entries”, click through. Then look for “older entries” again and click through. That will take you through to the first post, right at the end. The posts are in reverse order, the most recent first and the earliest ones are last.
It’s same on a mobile
Hello Anne,
I feel as though I am being tested at a threshold. Leviathon has at the past couple of thresholds dishonored me. Thankfully, I have read most of your books now and hopefully I think I have now figured out where my sin was in that I had dishonored someone. But now I am at a threshold that requires me to write about some abusive things that happened to me 13 years ago. God has been telling me over and over for 10 years to write in hundreds of ways, because someone needs to hear my story, but I refused His call because I did not believe I was hearing God but instead was being presumptuious even daring to think I could write a book worth reading. Recently God sent a total stranger to my door, who delivered God’s message “you need to write a book, someone needs to hear your story.” I know it was God who sent this person and I finally believe I am hearing God say to write a book and I want to obey Him now and write about what happened, however, I feel that if I tell the truth of the things that were done to me and my family in a book, won’t I be dishonoring the person responsable for hurting us? I am just so confused and very cautious about engaging Leviathon again. Would very much appreciate your input and advice before I proceed. Thank you so much! God Bless you for all the things you have taught me!!
Hi Anne, am enjoying your grace drops and came to one that discusses binding. How do you understand the “bind the strongman” verses at Mark 3:27. Would you see that also as being a church action versus individual action?