The Royal Tiara

“I have word for you from the LORD Pattie. May I give it to you?” Her question startled and troubled me. Gathering up my speaking notes, I nodded apprehensively while shooting up a quick prayer for discernment. “As you were speaking, I believe God gave me a vision of you and a message for you.” She went on, “You know the scene where Cinderella is carrying all the trays? That is the vision God gave to me, only Cinderella also had a tiara and you were Cinderella.” The woman then confidently added, “God wants you to know you are doing exactly what He has asked of you as His princess.”

This was not the first time someone had approached me with, “I have word from the LORD for you.” But this was the first time I had to choke back tears. The timing was literally astounding. Just the night before, I was lying flat on the floor of my bedroom crying out to the LORD asking Him if I had taken on too much, if the weight of responsibility that was overwhelming me was of my own doing. I literally prayed, “Lord am I living as your daughter? Is all this for your Kingdom or my queendom?”

And then, just twelve hours after lying on my floor, I was receiving – from a perfect stranger – a message that addressed the cry of my heart complete with a visual aid: Cinderella, wearing a tiara, balancing trays. Suddenly I found myself ‘rolodexing’ through the word of God, attempting to retrieve whatever I knew His Word had to say regarding prophecy. I wish I had found Deuteronomy 13:1-3.

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, 'Let us go after other gods,' which you have not known, 'and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Had I recalled this passage, I would have remembered that any “word” from the LORD is a test to determine whether I love the LORD my God with all my heart and with all my soul. Will I follow one who has a “word from the LORD” or will I follow the “LORD of THE Word?”

As we have been discovering in our study of the kings of Israel, God used everyday men to speak for Him. Because God’s people did not have the whole counsel of His Word—the Bible we hold in our hands---God appointed and equipped specific men (prophets) to counsel and confront His people. Often God’s prophets had visual aids, miracles that would authenticate the source of their message: God himself.

We, who now have the whole counsel of God, have our hands full!  As A. Graeme Auld writes, “Obedience to what we already know from God is to be preferred to new disclosures—however powerful, and apparently divine, the visual aids employed to present them.”

So what if I tell you I have a word from the LORD for you? Well I do. It is 1 Peter 2:9 and it comes with a visual aid. Can you see the tiara on Cinderella as she moves from queendom to Kingdom?

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Pattie