Yesterday at the beginning of Church I had a short vision that involved a young man in our church that was just laid off from his job.  As the service went on the Lord began to reveal to me that it was not just for him but was for many including Chuck & I.  I was going to share at the end of the service, but there were so many good words I did not find an appropriate opportunity.  I’m thinking the timing was not right for me to share because I did not have full understanding.  At the very end of the service our pastor confirmed to me that what I saw was of the Lord by saying that many would find something unexpected this week, maybe even a coin(I’ll explain further).

What I saw was a halberd on the left side and the hand of the Lord on the right. I mistook the halberd for a grim reaper’s scythe and could not put it together with the words that came.  However, after searching it out today I realized it was a halberd, a Medieval ax. A halberd was a weapon of war, usually used by foot soldiers.  It was so sharp it could cut off a limb with one blow.  I also saw this young man walking on a path and right in front of him on the path was a large new shinny gold coin. He bent down and picked it up and held it in his hand looking down at it as if to be pondering what he just found.  That was the end of the vision.

I began to understand that many of us have felt like we had been axed. We had our dreams and our plans and suddenly in one quick swoop they were cut away.  We pondered it, questioned why, wondered what we did wrong and how did the enemy have access to us.  But the truth is the enemy may come at us  with the halberd with evil intent to kill and destroy, but the hand of the Lord is there to restrain our enemy and use the halberd to prepare us for our destiny.

I could see that it was like Joseph.  God gave Joseph two dreams about his destiny. Once he declared what the Lord had revealed he was rejected by his family, thrown in a pit, sent to a foreign land, crowned with favor for a season, falsely accused, thrown in jail and forgotten.  Then, one day all that came to an end through the favor, anointing and revelation of God and Joseph was raised up into that destiny that God showed him many years before.

The fact is that if Joseph had stayed in the familiar comfortable place then he would have never entered into his destiny and he and his family would have starved. That would have been the end of the genealogical seed leading to Jesus the Messiah.

It appeared that the halberd had come down onto Joseph and cut away his dreams, but the truth is the hand of God pulled him out and into his destiny. He himself proclaimed “what you meant for evil, God meant for good”.  We have all felt the swift blow of the sharp halberd.  We have all wondered if we would ever walk in that which the Lord showed us years ago.  The way to those dreams is filled with pits, rejection, hurt, and desertion but along the path there is gold(not only provision but precious nuggets) and the knowledge that the hand of the Lord is moving us into our destiny.