Making Crooked Places Straight

Scripture: Isaiah 45 v 2:  "I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron."

Luke 3 v 4 - 6: "As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
 5  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;
 6  And all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

The Lord has undertaken a mighty task in taking every person who is born again and changing them from crooked to straight and from rough to smooth.  He employs His followers in this huge effort to pray for, teach, warn and encourage those who are coming out of darkness into His light.

Without Jesus going before us these barriers are impossible to clear out of our way. He sees beforehand the obstacles in our path and asks us to walk in His footsteps to avoid spiritual landmines - these are laid by our sly enemy who wants to cause us to slip up so he can accuse us before God.  The name Satan means Accuser of the Brethren.

Jesus is our Advocate before the Father.  It means when the enemy is accusing the born again saints, He is taking the blame for us.  If our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life then our sins are all forgiven and our Father looks on the righteousness of His Son and says Case Dismissed to Satan.

In this world we can be deceived by those who lurk in crooked places to trip us and catch us in their schemes. Jesus makes a straight path of honesty and truth to teach sinners to know there is a better way.  We must renew the way we think to break wrong thought patterns that lead us to compromise.

It is the gates of brass that block us spiritually from growing in grace through faith and Jesus will break them into pieces when we pray to get past them. We may have ignorantly backed ourselves into these problems. So ask that every blockage we have erected be shattered.

The bars of iron speak of imprisonment, captivity and bondage. When we are freed from sin we have leverage to pray for Jesus to burst these bars asunder. He will reveal the hidden layers of ancestral curses and set us free.  We carry the unknown baggage of past generations into our present lives.  Jesus cancels it all when we ask Him to do so.  The release can be a bit turbulent at times but when its over we know we are free.

I will share a turbulent testimony to give you an example.  This is a true story that happened in the 1980's.  A lady I barely knew phoned me one morning to ask for prayer ministry and immediately set out to visit me.  I asked the Lord for guidance while she was on her way.  He told me I was going to encounter demons connected with the Klu Klux Klan.  I had heard of them but South Africa is a long way off.

When she arrived she gave me her full name and I was jolted when I saw her initials were KKK!  I often see clues in people's names but this one made me gasp.  The problem was that as soon as I started to pray for her she died! Stopped breathing, no heartbeat, blue round mouth....as soon as I quit praying she came back to life.  Seriously!

After three death and revival moments I asked her to wait while I fetched my sons from school.  While driving the Lord told me that this was an ancestral curse on her family because four generations back one of her ancestors was part of the KKK in America and they had wrongfully lynched a young Negro man for the rape of a white girl.

The mother of this young man had got a voodoo priestess to put a violent death curse on the men and their families for generations in retribution for this murder.  Armed with this new information I asked the Lord to show me how to break it.  He showed me a vision of four voodoo dolls and told me to reverse the flow back into the dolls and that they can only send peace and blessings now, which I did.

This time she did not die but floated into a peaceful slumber for 30 minutes.  She woke up saying she had never felt so free or peaceful in her life.  She told me that there was a history of violent deaths in her family, the most recent being her uncle who had been electrocuted.  There was no doubt in my mind that she was next on the agenda but for the grace and mercy of God making the crooked places straight.

He is the mighty conqueror of this world and the Creator of every being. Nothing is too hard for Him to do. He reveals to those who pray the things that need shattering and removing and raises up those who have struggled and fills them with joy.  He always has an answer to the most difficult problems.  

He also makes the rough places smooth.  We all start off with some rough edges - we get angry, shout, rant, sulk, throw things and Jesus needs to calm us down to be like Him.  He did all that too against those who desecrated the Temple and made His Father's house a place of business.  Many still do that and need that rough edge removed.

Jesus does not hurry this work in us.  He does it slowly and thoroughly and to perfection.  So invite Him to sort out anything in our lives that needs fixing and it will be done in a beautiful way.

Prayer: Father God, there are barriers, blockages, rough spots and crooked places in my life that need the gentle hand of Jesus to smooth and break.  Here I am Lord ready to be changed into whatever pleases You. I humble myself before You that You may lift me up.  In Jesus' name. Amen.