A while back God woke me up in the middle of the night. He told me to pray for my sister. I felt no fear or anxiety for her, just a very clear understanding to pray for her. There was even a slight urgency to his request. I remembered the sensation I felt from my spider bite dream (see earlier post, Discipline), and crawled out of bed and onto my knees! I usually just sit up in bed to pray.
As I prayed, I laid my hands on the bed, palms up. The Lord showed me my sister lying in my hands. She was dressed in street clothes but had a white light emanating from in and around her. Then our God showed me a hot, burning furnace. Over the furnace he was holding a rectangular crucible filled with melted silver. As I watched, grainy black impurities in the silver rose to the top of the liquid. The circles of black that formed slowly decreased in size and then disappeared. All that remained was a clean silvery liquid as shiny as a mirror.
Our heavenly Father showed me he had my sister in the fire. However, he also showed me he’s watching closely. Her impurities were being removed, and she was being transformed and cleaned into something beautiful. He won’t leave her in the fire one moment longer than he needs to. Neither will he leave your loved ones in the fire any longer than it takes to get their attention and purify them.
We are all a work in progress. Our Lord loves us. He knows better than any of us how long eternity really is. We, on the other hand, are extremely short sighted. Sometimes we want to be comfortable, wealthy and popular for 100 years on earth and forget eternity is real…and permanent. If we claim to be Christians, we are claiming to be “Christ-ones”, or like Christ1. Jesus didn’t just speak, he acted. It is our responsibility to pray for our loved ones and then lead them by our example, not our constant, well-meaning words.
Our prayers are effective, but only when we pray them. Ephesians chapters 1 and 2 talk about our identity and purpose in Christ. Since we live in him and he lives in us, we have his authority over our lives. Any relationship is unhealthy if it’s a one-way relationship. The same is true in our relationship with Jesus. He willingly took the punishment we deserved. We ought to help him, and help our loved ones, by spending a little time on our knees and going to war in the Spirit.
And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
Ephesians 2:6
1 Acts 11: The Origin of the Word “Christian”, May 20, 2011, Dillon Burroughs. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/holywrit/2011/05/acts-11-the-origin-of-the-word-christian/
Katie Nelson Rau 
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