Sovereignty

Exactly two years ago, I was home for the holidays helping my mom care for my grandparents. Though caring for them wasn’t new, it was different because my mom was sick and couldn’t help out. So, my sister and I did all of the heavy lifting. On many occasions, my grandmother would apologize. She thought she was a burden. I kept explaining that she wasn’t. I was honored to care for her at 89-years-old. She and my grandfather (90-years-old) cared for me when I was younger, so why was it a big deal to care for them? I was merely honoring their lives and serving them because I have immense respect for the life they’ve lived and who they are.

Over the span of twenty or so days caring for them, Holy Spirit started to speak to me about his sovereign nature and the way it’s paired with honor and reverence.

This is part of our conversation.

This morning, Holy Spirit told me, “My people don’t understand my sovereignty and the way it works. They believe my sovereign nature just sort of magically happens. That I kind of get fed up with evil and darkness and then step forward and do something extraordinary about it that blows their minds and leaves them in awe. This is untrue. There is a process to sovereignty. There is a system it works through. You, as a human with a spirit, soul and body, are involved in that process and system. The power of my sovereignty is worked out through you.”

Because I constantly want to understand my world in a deeper way than I do now, I asked, “Can you teach me about this? Can you show me the way sovereignty works and help me understand this process and system?”

Holy Spirit said, “The majority of my people operate with me from a heart posture of sacrifice rather than honor. The majority don’t know or understand how to operate from a place of honor because they don’t cultivate a culture of reverence in their heart.

When you choose to honor and respect me, it opens you up to a level of carrying the weight of my sovereign power. That sovereign power opens doors and gates that remained locked without sovereignty’s influence over them.

My sovereign nature is not about sacrifice. It’s about honor. It’s about reverence. It’s about you stepping into a position of honor and reverence for me over sacrifice. It’s a much deeper reach into the depth of your human spirit and my character.

As you choose to lead with honor and reverence in the places I’ve called you, there is a point where my sovereign nature is produced.

Getting there is rather challenging though in the sense that it takes immense focus. You have to change the posture of your heart and mind. You must look at honor over sacrifice. You must approach the mandates and assignments I’ve given you with honor and reverence for me over sacrifice.

Yes, sacrifice will be present, but you have matured past the point of sacrifice alone. Now, you are dwelling in the land where my sovereign power can come forward and work with you. It simply needs honor and reverence to open up the doors and gates so that it may come forward.”

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After he shared this, I thought deeply about it for several months and asked loads of questions. However, the posture of my heart wasn’t there to fully receive what he shared. I didn’t know how to translate what he was saying into my life because I’d been living from a heart posture of sacrifice over honor and reverence.

To me, at the time, I thought, “This is powerful, but I don’t know how to apply it.” Because I didn’t know how to apply it, I kind of left it on a shelf to come back to at a later date.

Three weeks ago, the later date presented itself. Holy Spirit pulled me back to the topic of sovereignty. As I searched my notes, I realized I’d been walking onto a path of honor and reverence without really noticing it.

Honor is a higher frequency than sacrifice alone. Sacrifice is doing things that you don’t want to do. It’s following through with laying down your own self-will and desires from a place of obedience and servanthood.

Honor is different. Weaved inside of it is a desire to serve someone or something from a place of respect. It’s seeing the value and worth of the mandate you’ve been given or the human spirit you’ve come in contact with and then choosing to lead with honor because the mandate and/or person is due the respect.

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