What is the purpose of a wall?
Like the little girl in the dish soap commercial says, “So what does the dishwasher do?”
I say, “What does a wall do?”
It mimics a Godly natural wonder. The sheer cliff.
Cliffs like, the white cliffs of Dover. Or cliffs found in The Alps and Andes. The Pyrenees. The Himalayas, and The Rocky Mountains.
They are natural barriers. That at one point in time… man could not get up and over.
First and foremost a wall is intended to keep bad things out and provides security, safety, and sanctuary for those things that are kept and live within it’s confines.
Some famous walls of history… The Walls of Jericho, Hadrian’s Wall, The Great Wall of China.
To name a few.
A physical wall is meant to be IMPOSING.
A BARRIER.
Proverbs 17:19 says, “He who trusts in high walls invites disaster.”
Every famous wall, peak, and mountain range in history has been defeated. Including Kilimanjaro, the Matterhorn, Everest, El Capitan, The Great Wall, Hadrian’s Wall, The Berlin Wall, even Walla-Walla Washington was incorporated and citified.
All have been navigated through, climbed over, flown over, roads paved through, guards bribed for entry, blown up, carved out, demolished, re-built and demolished again, and again…
every man made obstacle ever made has in turn been defeated by man… every… single… time.
I haven’t re-found the author of this quote but it gives a picture of what I’m talking about.
A military commander was asked, “How will you get in? The walls of the castle are impenetrable.” The commander replied, “Can the sunlight enter? If the sunlight can enter, so can we.” ~ ??
All the walls and barriers of the different people of the world have been defeated, except for…
an occasional personal ‘mental barrier.’
Why is that?
Why do we give such an insurmountable, and formidable presence, to our mental walls?
The Holy Spirit has given me a lesson recently, concerning walls. I have to be honest with you. I believe it transpired through a vision. My friend and pastor has shown me that I have the appointed office of a prophet. One who handles the word of God. A messenger.
“he said, “Listen to my words: “When there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, reveal myself to them in visions, I speak to them in dreams.” ~ NIV/Numbers 12:6
On my journey as I came out of the dark, it felt like early morning. I was surrounded by grayness and wisps of the ever present spiritual battle smoke. I slowed down as I came upon a small earthen incline. After a few steps I was nose to nose with a wall. As I looked up I could not see the top of it.
I had a very small field of view. I was nose to nose with the wall and became anxious. The old anxiousness that sits right below your sternum and gives you that sour, burning acidic, throw up taste, in the back of your throat. A fear, a panic, flashed in my mind.
There I stood. At the bottom of this wall. Trapped somehow.
Just me and The Holy Spirit. I knew it was a test because the teacher was being very quiet.
It stayed that way for a few days. I know it was a vision because it was at the front of my mind both while asleep and while I was awake.
I stilled myself and my mind. And I remembered what he told me in the past, “That’s what I love about you.” Gods love. God loves us. Where does it say that?
I looked up bible verses where it says, straight out “I love you” and I went through the book of Proverbs and circled all of the positive love and blessing verses in 4 or 5 chapters.
Then this revelation… “We are made aware that God loves us through the knowledge of what the blood of Jesus has done, in that it opens the way for us to not only realize Gods directed love at us but that so we can… reciprocate… that love. That we can have a back and forth with God. A true relationship.
After a few days I found myself at my day job. We have some rather formidable, sheer walls in certain areas. I walked up to one and put my nose against it and looked straight up.
Enter into the vision… a sledgehammer. I felt a mental urge to ‘pick it up.’ I hesitated and looked at it again. I know what to do with a sledgehammer. But that’s one big wall.
I believe the sledgehammer represented ‘my own effort.’ Which I know wouldn’t amount to much against such a wall.
Enter into the battle smoke, Death, The Grimm Reaper himself. Pointing a bony finger straight up. The only thing I got from that was that, “I’m not afraid of death. What are you pointing at?” Then he was gone.
There I was, nose to the wall, looking up. Remembering Gods words to me, and then was reminded of recent verses given to me by my pastor relating to The Kingdom of Heaven. Which led me to this verse…
2 “He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
~Matthew 18:2-4 NIV
So I became childlike and looked at the problem anew.
I looked to the left… nuthin’.
To the right… nuthin’.
Turned around and said, “You can’t go backwards.”
So I stepped back and thought, “how could I get over this thing?” Then as I stepped back another step and looked left, and looked right… something happened to my physical eye vision… I could see some pipes now. I couldn’t see them before. One was just out of reach. Then as I looked more there was a pipe half way down the wall which was low enough and big enough to hold my weight.
“And there it is, I’ll just shimmy up the pipe. Ha!”
I didn’t actually shimmy up it, but I could have. Because I have shimmied up and down pipes before… bada bing, bada boom!
Then, right then, all the anxiousness, and pukey taste left my body.
He then showed me how my narrow vision is constricting my life. He showed me how I had constructed that mental wall myself, trauma or not, anxiety or not.
So, I, a man, constructed that mental wall.
So, then, I, as a man can defeat that wall. Standing with God nothing is impossible. Nothing is insurmountable or so formidably imposing that it should mentally paralyze you.
I think to be child like is to believe, just believe, and don’t worry about what people will say if they see you shimmying up a drain pipe…
“and the walls come tumbling down, and the walls, come tumbling, tumbling.” ~ John Mellencamp
Paul Michiels says
The way you write is not how I think, so it makes me think…I like that.
I am going to think about this, thanks.
Dave Bosquez says
So my writing is like PB Blaster for you?