He Puts iron in our souls-By Bryan Hupperts

He Puts iron in our souls-By Bryan Hupperts
bryanhupperts@hotmail.com

Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:38:45 +0000

God often speaks to me about the healing ministry he promised me. A few days ago my knuckles split open because of the bizarre weather we're having in the Midwest. I have Lupus and it runs counter to all I have been promised. Stranger still, he asks me to trust and believe.

If this helps, the Lord once whispered to me, "When I am finally all you need, I will finally be all you need."

Consider this passage about Joseph.

He [God] called down famine on the land [of Canaan]
and destroyed all their supplies of food;
and he sent a man before them —
Joseph, sold as a slave.
They bruised his feet with shackles,
his neck [Hebrew:soul] was put in irons,
till what he foretold came to pass,
till the word of the LORD proved him true.
The king sent and released him,
the ruler of peoples set him free.
He made him master of his household,
ruler over all he possessed,
to instruct his princes as he pleased
and teach his elders wisdom (Psalm 105:16-22).

A line in verse 18 reads, "his soul came into iron," a figure of idiomatic speech rabbinical exegetes say means, "iron entered into his soul."

I am no Hebrew scholar, but if this idea is correct, it means that God puts iron into our soul. He will use a forage, heat, pressure, a hammer, and an anvil to accomplish transforming us into the character of his Son. If you are not looking at the end result, it sounds kind of merciless, doesn't it?

I once asked the Lord about the crowns he will give us on That Day. I could picture the angels working in an assembly line making crowns. He corrected me, showing me that our crowns are forged even as we are forged and transformed into his image. To the degree we yield and obey, is the degree we will rule and reign with him in eternity. There is no assembly line, just the cross and our willingness to pick it up daily and follow hard after the Lamb, wherever he goes.

If I were Joel Osteen, and I understood that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecutions, I would write a book called Your Best Death Now.

Iron in our Souls

Life is not as idle ore,
but iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
and dipped in baths of hissing tears,
And battered by the shocks of doom
to shape and use.

— Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bryan Hupperts
http://www.sheeptrax.com/


Response By-Sherry Mason
Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:58:02 -0800 (PST)
sparrowoftheplain@yahoo.com

Dear Bryan,

I thought you might like to hear about an experience I had.

I was at the bedside of a dying friend. She had been fighting cancer for several years. There were times it looked like she was succeeding and she would begin to make plans for her future. Every time, as she made her plans, the illness would return and the battle begin again. During the last year of her life a friend and I would go to see her several times a week and to pray with her. We felt that one problem was that our friend was making "HER" plans for when she was well. We told her that God had plans for her life and in this illness she should use the time to discover what those plans were. She never could quite grasp that. She had preconceived ideas taught by religion of what God expected of her and she could never let those go. I think religion killed her more than anything.

One day, during a time of prayer, I saw a vision of a crown. It was made of iron, with no jewels and it was tarnished as if blackened by smoke. I asked the Lord what I was seeing and immediately heard "This a crown forged in the fire". It was perfectly symetrical and completely formed but without ornamentation of any kind. I understood that like a sword or anything made of metal, this crown had to be forged (shaped) through intensely hot fire. The reason it was tarnished/smoky looking is because it had just been finished. It was not polished yet...no jewels had been set in it yet...it was simply a freshly forged crown just out of the fire. It was my friends crown.

One day in a worship service (shorly after my friend went to be with the Lord) God brought the vision back to me. We had been singing a song with the line "I cast my crown before you now". God gave me a word and said "If you understood how the crown was made would you still be so desirous of having it?"

I know many people who are in and have been in the fire for a long time. We look and long for rescue, healing, provision...etc. but the truth is that it is in this fire that we are given the opportunity to be "shaped" by the hand of the Lord. This is the only way we will become worthy to wear those crowns given us by Him. The crowns are only rightfully ours because they were shaped while we were in the fire. The Lord will polish them and add jewels to them. I am not sure what that process looks like but in the end we will be joyful and thankful for all that we endured in the process.

Sherry Mason