Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may lift you up at the appropriate time.
Cast all your worries on Him, for He cares for you.
Stay alert! Watch out! Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, searching for someone to devour.
Stand up against him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being laid upon your brothers and sisters throughout the world.
After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace—who has called you into His eternal glory in Messiah—will Himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you.
All power to Him forever! Amen. 1 Peter 5:6-11 TLV
The past few weeks have been one of spiritual inventory. This is the time of year on the Hebrew calendar for personal reflection, return, and repentance. We celebrated the Feast of Trumpets/Rosh Hashana this past weekend. The year is 5784, which Rabbi Jason Sobel has said is the time of the open door. The numbers are written with letters in Hebrew and the number 4 is also the letter dalet, which means door. I know that I am entering a new door in my walk with God, one that is unlike any I have ever walked through before.
As I was thinking about this, there was a scene from Jim Henson's movie Labyrinth that came to my mind. Towards the end of the movie, Sarah has taken a bite of a bespelled peach putting her into a deep sleep. When she wakes up, she is in a junkyard and meets a character whose clothing is made up of various pieces of junk and cast-off items. As Sarah tries to clear her head, she is asked, "Why don't you look where you're going, young woman?" As she focuses on trying to figure out what she is looking for and where she is going, the junk lady presents Sarah with one of her stuffed animals, her favorite teddy bear, insisting that this is what she is looking for. In a daze, Sarah agrees that this has to be it and is led through the door of a hut, which ends up transforming into her own bedroom. Relief washes over her to be home, but when she tries to leave to room to see if her parents are home, she finds herself face to face with the junk lady again, who pushes her back into the room, and keeps insisting that she doesn't want to go through that door, she wants to stay inside as it is much better there. To prove her point, the junk lady begins to hand Sarah all of her different toys and trinkets, sitting her down in front of her vanity. However, the more things she is handed and are piled on top of her, Sarah gets a revelation upon picking up the storybook about the labyrinth, reading about what she was really doing, and making the declaration that it's all junk. The junk lady picks up a music box with a dancer that at one time was so precious to Sarah and insists that it is not junk, but with a shout, Sarah yells, "Yes, it is!", throwing it at the vanity before her. As soon as she does so, the walls of her room begin to crumble, and she finds herself back in the junkyard her mind renewed to the task at hand.
I laid out this scene in as much detail as I could remember to give the visual impact of how it is with us sometimes. There are times when the enemy is much like the junk lady and will begin to pile things upon us. Mindsets, burdens, opinions, offenses, and many of us, like Sarah will sit and let them pile up. I know I have. It was when she picked up the book and began to read from it, that she realized that all of the things piled upon her truly were junk, and so it is with us. When we pick up the Word and begin to speak it over our lives, and we begin to declare the Word of the Lord over us we can give a Jericho shout and say in the face of the enemy that it is all junk and then watch as the walls begin to fall. The junk lady tried to keep Sarah trapped behind the old door, the door of familiarity, the door of past hurts, the door of past offenses, the door of pride and self-indulgence. The enemy does the same to us. We have to shake off the junk and step out into what God is calling us to do. Sarah's battle cry was, "I have to save Toby!" What is yours?
When Sarah finally meets Jareth face to face to try to get her brother back, it all hinges on a single line from the storybook. This is a line that I myself have used against the enemy. It is a simple statement, but it is full of truth. YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME! As I said at the beginning of this post, Hebrew is alpha-numeric. 5784, the 4 representing the year that we are in, the 8 representing the decade. Rabbi Jason reveals that the 8 is the decade of the Peh, meaning mouth. It is a decade of breakthrough, of coming out of Egypt, of declaration. It is time that we use out Peh, our mouth, and declare to the enemy that he has no power over us, because greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4) It is time we cast off the junk he has tried to burden us with, calling it what it is no matter how comfortable we are carrying it. It is time we walk through the door and into the new season God has for us.
TLV - Tree of Life Version
Rabbi Jason Sobel - www.fusionglobal.org
Labyrinth directed by Jim Henson (1986)