Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Divine Anointing: The Death of Doing Things In My Own Power (originally written 06/12/2019)

Last Wednesday, I got home a bit late and made that big mistake most women do at some point in their life: I fell asleep with my make up on. The next morning, my racoon-eyed self stumbled to the bathroom to undo the damage. Unfortunately, as I began removing the makeup, there looked to be a part of my eye that a stye was beginning to form. Thankfully, a few years ago, I had gone to an eye doctor after experiencing another morning of fun when my eyelid actually stuck together due to a bad allergy season coupled with staring at a screen for hours every day. I did what she told me back then last Wednesday, I applied a warm compress which allowed whatever was trying to get “stuck” to not be stuck…and all was good in the eye hood. 

Why on earth am I telling you this? Well, it dawned on me as I was sharing my predicament with Maria later that morning that what the eye doctor taught me could actually be applied to divine anointing. I don’t know if you all know this, but we actually have glands in our eye lids. The lachrymal glands in the upper lid is where our tears come from. The meibomian glands located on the edge of the eyelids produce oil. When my eyelids got stuck together, she explained that the oil glands had become blocked. When the oil glands are working properly, a thin layer of oil is spread on the eye surface each time we blink. This oil actually changes the consistency of the tear, which lubricates the eye. I let the doctor know that my eyes teared uncontrollably most days, but she explained that those tears are not the same without the oil. They don’t lubricate the eye properly which decreases the eyes function. If you go too long without unblocking the oil glands, not only will you have dry eye, but you can have small scratches that appear on the lens which can reduce your sight for life. 

My first thought when learning this is, “aren’t our bodies freakin amazing?!” But then again, we all know who made our bodies. 

Anyway, this got me thinking…this thing I do called blinking…I do, most times, without even thinking about it. I mean, you all probably just became very aware of how much you’re blinking now that I’ve shared this information with you, but most of the times, we just do it because that’s how God made us. And that’s what I see as divine anointing…that thing that God made us to do without even thinking about it. It’s because it’s that thing He put in us and that He works through us. Charles Spurgeon called it “unction.” It’s not something we can force or make happen…we can’t manufacture it…it’s just that smooth oil that slides in with the living water at just the right time to make the body function the way it’s supposed to function. It’s why some of you can preach a portion of scripture I’ve heard a million times, but it cuts through to my heart in a new way. It’s why some of you are the person that people are drawn to in times of need because you ask the good questions with care and concern. It’s also what makes this body we call the church move. There is literally and figuratively “unction” in the “function.” 

The thing that really stuck out to me about all of this is that it wasn’t that I didn’t have the oil gland in my eye, and that there wasn’t oil present…it was that there was just something preventing the oil from flowing. And that, for me, is where the death of doing things in my own power comes to play. 

It’s probably pretty safe to say that everyone in this room knows that “moment.” That moment where we recognize the anointing is flowing…the work that gets completed when you decided to spend time with your family and not your laptop. That church service that we allowed to go in a completely different direction then we planned or that service we didn’t plan at all! That moment you are able to walk alongside a person in a situation that once brought you pain and suffering. It’s that moment when we stop doing things in our own power and allow God’s power to take over…and it’s also sometimes that moment we run into the danger of manufacturing the anointing. 

Probably one of the number one things people will do when their eyes are dry is to put artificial tears or use eye drops. I mean, that makes sense, right? Somethings not wet, you need it to be wet, so you make it wet…but the artificial tear can never be the tear that lubricates the eye. Sure, it can come close, but it’s not the real thing. In fact, depending on what you use, you can actually make your eye dryer. 

So…this is where I’m about to get really real with you all – this is the part of this 7 minute teaching that I was stuck at for 3 days. I was really having a hard time landing this plane. I knew God gave me this revelation about the eye and the anointing, but I struggled with finding the right words to say. For the last few days, I’ve been trying to pull out scripture so I can really make this holy…I even went back and forth with a blog I’d written a year ago that was “really good” and might be able to be used to explain divine anointing, but it wasn’t until I was hashing out my ideas with Paul on the car ride home yesterday that it hit me like a ton of bricks…I once again was trying to do this in my own strength. 

This morning, at 6:17am, I stopped trying to do it in my own power. I put down all the books and blogs I had drug out. I closed the google search page of “divine anointing.” I turned off the youtube sermon I had playing in the background. And I asked God – what is it you want me to tell them? I believe what God is asking me to do individually, and this body collectively, is to stop trying to manufacture the flow…instead of going to the artificial tears when things get a bit uncomfortable, instead of trying to force a flow that doesn’t seem to be coming, how about we just focus on what could be blocking the flow in us? Like I said in the beginning, what I learned is that the oil was there, it was just being blocked. I had to take off my make up, and apply a warm compress and allow my body to work in a way that God made it to work. And this isn’t a call to start to pick apart what he or she is doing to block the flow…it’s starting with my own dry eyes and my own blockages. 

A few hours after completing this this morning, God gave me a vision… He showed me a picture of an oil well…you know the ones you see in Texas? But what He reminded me of is that I used to drive past them as a child on the way to my Mom’s eye doctor. You all may have seen them in parts of LA…I remember as a kid there was an educational cartoon which explained where oil came from…they said that the oil was formed when the earth was covered by water and all the plants and animals died off. They said the pressure of the water and sand eroding and pushing against them turned them into rocks…they actually would show dinosaurs turning into oil…which why as a kid my mom would point out these large contraptions drilling the land and say “look Gena, there’s a dinosaur.” The weight of the rocks in conjunction with the heat of the earth forms the oil and the continued pressure then pushes the oil up and through any crevice that is open. I don’t think God showed me this to say, “Hey, this is how oil is made.” I think He is reminding me once again that there is oil in the field. And we aren’t going to have to put a contraption on the field to pull the oil out…He’ll take care of that in His power. But what we just have to do is allow God to change us in His strength and not ours…unblocking our own well. 

I believe and prophecy that we are about to experience an outpouring of oil in these fields…this staff…this church…this city…like we have never seen before. 

Let it start with us.

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