I listened to a seismologist talking about earthquakes. After the broadcast, I considered the spiritual parallels between natural quaking and the shaking events in our lives.
Earthquakes rupture along a fault line and move away from the epicenter of the original event at the speed of two miles per second. The epicenter where the earthquake first began is unknown to those standing at subsequent points down the fault line as the quaking event moves forward. Significant damage caused by the traveling quaking motion is experienced miles away from the actual event at a later time. Those on the receiving end of these traveling tremors interpret them in their immediate surroundings. As the earthquake develops at their location, they are simply trying to survive, thinking the earthquake began under their feet when, in reality, it occurred at another time and in another place. The same can be true for spiritual events and their effects on our lives.
Our immediate surroundings, and even our current history, may not accurately define the source of the spiritual tremors we are now feeling. It is not difficult to see and define the things that are happening around us in real-time. That does not require discernment. We need spiritual discernment and prophetic insight to look beyond the current quaking activity in our lives to see where the turmoil originated and what sparked the original epicenter event.
A child can display negative behavior motivated by a previously unresolved betrayal by a close friend, something a parent may not realize. A nation can experience the rippling effect of decades of ignoring the deeper needs of its citizens culminating in a future national crisis. An over-achieving executive can drive his wife away motivated to succeed at all costs, even the loss of loved ones, because as a young boy, his father linked his manhood to success. Unresolved past events that wound a person or a nation’s soul are the epicenter events that will shoot tremors along the fault line of a life experience, wreaking havoc as they move forward in time.
If a close relationship is being challenged or an earth-shaking cultural event suddenly transpires – things that seem to come out of nowhere – before we speak or react, we need to ask God to show us the epicenter event creating the current shaking. In that revealing, ask the Lord to reveal the spiritual forces initially involved at the epicenter. Those discoveries are where our prayers and action need to focus first, or we will be wasting our time dealing with by-products of the original quake, not the root cause of the shaking. Only by discerning those issues and dealing with the spiritual forces inspiring the original rupture can the current earthquakes be stilled, and family and national bloodlines begin a process of healing.
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