A Spiritual Palate Cleanse is Needed

God is longing to grow us and mature us in all ways. To do that, we allow Holy Spirit to renew our minds.

However life is full of voices, opinions, denominations, groups, organizations, political parties, and hot takes. You don’t even have to TRY to find distractions. They will find you! We have the whole world of opinions and hot takes right in our pocket. Chances are, you’re reading this prophetic word from a tiny computer that gives you access to people (along with their opinions) from around the globe, including mine. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, when they are used wisely and put in their proper place.

Furthermore, we have our little church worlds, with our Christian friends, our Christian lingo, and whatever doctrines that our faith adheres to. Sometimes, that doctrine is literally all we are exposed to on a regular basis. Many of us do not hear perspectives or interpretations of scripture that contradict the doctrines we profess.

As I was tuning into God’s voice & listening, Holy Spirit, and began hearing this message about cleansing our palates, a memory flashed into my mind.

When I was at a department store, smelling colognes & perfumes with my husband Rene, he showed me something cool. When you’re smelling multiple different colognes, after one or two you start to not be able to smell them anymore or differentiate which cologne you’re actually smelling. It all starts to kind of smell the same. However, if you’ll sniff coffee beans in between, it cleanses your palate and you are able to smell the next cologne! It’s pretty cool!

The coffee beans cleanse your palate, which brings clarity so that you can smell the next cologne, untainted by the last one.

Ok bear with me for a second. I promise I’ll land the plane very soon & you’ll be glad you kept reading.

When my kiddos were little, they wore diapers. I know, shocker. Well my wild and chaotic middle child LOVED to steal her baby sister’s diapers when I was changing her over to a clean one. While I was busy putting the fresh diaper on, older sister would steal the stinky one and run away to hide it. She did this often. Well I had been home all day with little kiddos, and Rene came home from work. He eventually asked me “What is that awful smell in here?” I honestly didn’t know, and I told him that I didn’t even smell anything bad. Since he was home, I left (ALONNNNNE, which is glorious after a home alone with hooligans) to go buy groceries. When I came back home, the smell hit me in the face! I knew right away that my middle stinker had stashed away a real stinker of a diaper somewhere that I must have missed. Sure enough she did!

Have you ever heard of the term nose deaf? Well I recently learned that official name for that is anosmia, and there are ranges of severity but you can be temporarily nose deaf by being cooped up with a bad smell for a prolonged amount of time. So when I came back home from buying groceries, I could smell it for what it TRULY was, not just what I had become accustomed to.

Many of us are so indoctrinated in our set of pet doctrines, or even just the culture of our particular denomination, group of like-minded believers, etc. that we don’t even see some of the stinky diapers that are very much noticeable to someone who isn’t accustomed to it. Like we just walk right by it everyday and it’s like it was always there because we’re used to it it feels normal. & everyone else there is indoctrinated too so it doesn’t seem out of place to them either. So if an outsider comes along and says “Hey guys I’m smelling something bad”, it’s easy to dismiss them as a heretic, false prophet, or a wolf. 

I’m not here to tell you what ”stinky diapers” might be sitting around in your belief system. I don’t think that’s what God wanted me to share with this prophetic word.

But many of us grew up believing a set of doctrines, and when you grow up believing something, that no one around you ever contradicts or challenges you to consider differently… We will oftentimes miss out on God’s attempts to renew our minds, or change the way we think on something.

Personally, during the lock down for Covid, I stayed home and Holy Spirit ministered to me deeply in solitude. It was painful, and so very healing for me. I’m not trying to tell you to stop going to church so PLEASE don’t jump to that conclusion. And on the other hand if you were to conclude that Holy Spirit is leading you to a break then I wouldn’t wag a finger at you. When I returned to church, I could FEEL things when they were off, like people pleasing, manipulation, striving to impress others, and there was this other thing that is super hard to describe but it is PREVALENT in prophetic type of churches. Even though it is hard to explain it was the number one thing that Holy Spirit showed me that I had fallen trap to. It’s this desire to be admired and affirmed by others, beyond what is healthy. It is almost like a longing for recognition, a longing to be a part of the “in-group” at church, and a desire for others to see my gifts and talents. I’m telling you, it was deep deep deeply rooted in my heart, and I had no idea because I was nose deaf to it. It had led to this performance type of exercising of my own gifts. I’m repulsed by it now, but I wonder how long it would have taken me to become aware of it without the palate cleanse that I desperately needed (even though I didn’t know it or want it).

Right now your wheels might be turning, as you consider whether or not there might be some stinky diaper mindsets, doctrines, or ideas that have been sitting around without you realizing it. You also might be wondering what in the world a palate cleanse might look like for you. This is where my part ends. I’ve delivered the message, and now it’s all yours to do with it what you will.

God bless you, and I hope & pray that this brings you so much freedom.

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