Don’t Drink the Vinegar

Tonight I saw 27 again – pictured on an image of a workout machine. It’s the crossroad I live at now and the bday of this woman and a number that pops up frequently wanting to tell me a message it seems.

I looked up it’s meaning in the bible and first read over the book of proverbs 27. Then I saw a connection to the crucifixion of Jesus with this number.

I heard in the Spirit, “When you’re thirsty don’t drink the vinegar. Wait upon the Lord.” And then I was shown there are many different types of fasting. It’s not just food that we need or long for. In fact, for me my hunger and thirst for so long now has been rooted in love. I want love returned. I want to feel covered in love and surrounded by love and I want love to penetrate my heart, soul, mind and body. But in the absence of that love, I’ve drank of many cups that seemed good but left me empty and worse off than I was before.

Perhaps this is the tale of Eve in the garden. She was tempted to eat of something that looked good on the outside but filled her with poison – such is the effects of counterfeit love.

In these moments I get anxious. I want to run away as fast as I can to a faraway land and live on a ranch in the wilderness surrounded by horses and puppies. The idea seems great and yet I was referred back to proverbs 27 again where it says not to boast in tomorrow. In dreaming of a plan to get where I think I want to be I again paint a picture that looks amazing in a picture or on a screen. But if that’s what would truly satisfy my soul I can’t say. God knows. I don’t.

I am where I am tonight – in a hot room in California wishing I could find a way out of something I can’t even define. I don’t belong here. But when I search my heart to find the compass within I only look out again in fear. I’m not sure where home is or could be. My heart has no guidance for me today.

Maybe the vinegar is that very thing – the desire that screams so loudly demanding to have its needs met, the mind has no choice but to search for an answer. But it doesn’t know the substance of what it perceives. On the outside, water and vinegar look the same. It’s not until we taste of it can we know what it truly is. Maybe this season is about doing taste testing as I’ve found myself embedded in a land of dreams – Hollywood. And behind all of the beautiful imagery I’ve kept in my thoughts likely since I was a child growing up on Disney movies, I learn that it’s not what I expected it to be. Like Dorothy seeking to find the Wizard of Oz only to learn that there is no great wizard, I’m here in a puddle of disappointment.

Today I did have one very beautiful revelation however; the weapon of prayer. Rather than to run, move, jump, consume and create based on the temptations of desire. Perhaps the power is in prayer alone. God if this is good for me, give it to me. I don’t want to eat what the serpant feeds me. I want to take it to God and say, “I was told this is good for me, what do you say about that?”

I want the promise – the real one. There is a love that would lay his life down for me. I don’t want to be filled with anything less than that. So I pray tonight for wisdom from God to know what’s not this thing and to turn away from the vinegar that poisons the very passion of pursuing a promise I seek from the Lord.