This post was inspired by a prophetic word the Lord gave me for my family. It’s the first article that I received from the Lord and wrote down in one sitting. It was like my hand couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with what I was receiving in my spirit. After looking it over, I felt this word could help others, so I decided to share it. Here it goes.
Two themes have been running through my mind recently: healthy families and generational patterns. Why are healthy relationships so difficult to cultivate these days? Why does the cycle of unhealthy families and relationships seem to pass down from one generation to the next? I have a few thoughts on the matter.
People can only operate out of the grid they have and nothing else. Meaning, you cannot produce function out of dysfunction. If there’s an unhealthy cycle already in place, God has to intervene and interject His cycle of blessing. Our generation is facing issues and challenges that the previous generation didn’t have to face. As a result, solutions that worked for them may not necessarily work for us. I believe what God wants to do, is to create a whole new paradigm for us. Using unhealthy grids and paradigms is like trying to travel in an ark during an era of spaceships –It just won’t fly.
So what is the challenge when we’re talking about grids and paradigms? The challenge is that when God attempts to introduce a new paradigm to us we either cannot comprehend it or we’re totally resistant to it.
Here’s an example in scripture where Jesus tried to share a new paradigm. Remember when Jesus told Nicodemus about being born again? Nicodemus basically responded with, “I don’t get it.”-John 3:9 Jesus said, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” -John 3:12 Jesus was saying to Nicodemus, “I just gave you a basic paradigm. What if I gave you a grid out of a whole new realm? You should already get this!”
Another paradigm that people didn’t understand was Jesus being the bread of heaven. In John 6:41-52, Jesus teaches His disciples about His flesh being bread. And if that wasn’t offensive enough in John 6:53-59, He goes on to say that the disciples have to eat His flesh and drink His blood. Because of our understanding of communion, we have a grid to put this verse in but the disciples had no such grid. What was their response to this new, foreign paradigm? John 6:60 says, “When they heard this, said, This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” The disciples were still operating out of archaic grids. They couldn’t grasp the new paradigm that Jesus was trying to give to them.
What about instances when we’re completely resistant to a new idea from God? Great question. In Matthew 9:14-17, Jesus is questioned by John’s disciples about fasting. Their subtle complaint sounded like this “Your disciples aren’t fasting like we are. Why aren’t they using our old strategy?” Jesus’ response was perfect, “You have to put new wine into new wineskins.”-Matthew 9:14 You cannot expect to get new results by relying on old paradigms. Wineskins connote the structure that holds that which is truly valuable. God wants to gives us healthy families and relationships but not all have the structure to contain it. The new thing God is doing can be likened to sophisticated machinery much like a spaceship. You can’t use the same tools you used to build an ark to engineer a spaceship. This could explain some of the challenges in developing kingdom families and relationships. In the story of the new wineskins, Jesus explained that people are typically resistant when God begins to move in a new way. He said, “But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. The old is just fine, they say.” -Luke 5:39 The old grid becomes a hindrance to the new.
So that’s just it. Could a lot of the challenges we’re seeing in relationships and families be due to our resistance to new paradigms? Maybe. But how can you tell? Well, if you feel like you’re throwing your head against a brick wall and it’s not moving; that could be an indicator that it’s time for a new paradigm. Let’s take some inventory of our lives and relationships to figure out what’s not working and why. I really feel the Holy Spirit is ready to open up minds to see which paradigms need to be ditched and which grids need to be embraced.
Don’t delay, upgrade to one of God’s spaceships today!
© Solape Osoba 2012
Spreading Hope 