“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (Isa 45:1-3)

When we have walked the bended path with God and found Him in the struggle, we are ready to straighten out the bended paths within us: those ways that were once pure before sin came into the world, now corrupted by the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life. Straightening out the bended paths in us is really the process of choosing the straight path before us when our inner nature would prefer the detour, avoiding the construction site designed to perfect us yet even more.

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 “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight:  (Isa 45:1-3)

I mentioned in my last email on this subject that sometimes God makes the path crooked. He often puts the bends and twists and turns in the path to work things out in our lives. It is futile to fight against the bends that He puts in the road. If you do find a way around the trial, you are actually worse off. It would be like helping a butterfly emerge from its cocoon. Butterflies develop the strength they need to fly by struggling to get out of the cocoon. If they get out of the cocoon without the struggle, they will never be able to fly and will soon die, falling short of what they were created to do. (N’est pas?)

Not all paths were made crooked by God. When sin came into the world, a lot of things became crooked that were originally made straight. The most obvious things that have been made crooked by sin have to do with our old flesh nature: Crooked desires, crooked dispositions, crooked words, crooked thoughts, etc. That which has been made crooked by sin, God has made straight by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is to say, there is now a straight path we can follow, the path of straight words, straight thinking, godly desires and dispositions, etc. Before Christ, sin had dominion over us, (Rom 6:14) but now we have been freed from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2) and thus freed from sin (Rom 6:14).

As Christians, we are called to make our path straight. To walk the straight and narrow. No more speaking with forked tongue. Our words to be words of iron. Thinking on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report. The straight path can be very difficult as we straighten out by the grace of God those things that are crooked in us, but it is the path that leads to life and few there be that find it. (Matt 7:14)

“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (Isa 45:1-3)

So I ask you, what makes a crooked path? I believe there are two causes of the crooked path and they both serve a purpose. The first cause of the crooked path is God Himself. It is on the crooked path that we learn to rely on Him. It is on the crooked path that we come to the end of ourselves. It is on the crooked path that we behold the beauty of the Lord and His glory. It is on the crooked path, that we must bend our will to His way. It is on the crooked path that we become entwined with Him. We injure ourselves when we try to straighten what God has made crooked. We must learn to bend with the Father and conform to His “way”. He is taking us to school along the crooked path. Learn to enjoy the scenery.

Charles Kuralt of CBS fame once said, “Interstate highways allow you to drive coast to coast, without seeing anything”. It’s the curse of the straight path. While it’s true that the shortest path between any two points is a straight line, the straight line is not always best. The devil always tells us, we deserve it now. Get rich quick. Take the shortest path. Don’t wait. Time’s a wasting! If you get on the straight path, (the interstate highway), before you have the Father’s heart built in and the old nature brought under, you may find yourself broadsided by a fast moving 18 wheeler, you didn’t see coming!

Give a young man his inheritance before he has the wisdom to steward it and you will lose both the inheritance and quite possibly your son. Before you give your child any inheritance, make sure you have passed on the inheritance of your heart. A great way to do that is on the difficult path. The crooked path. The inheritance of your heart is more “caught than taught” and the trials of life provide the perfect context to pass on the wealth of understanding God has deposited in your heart as you learned to bend to His will and His ways along the winding path.

Quick note: For an excellent teaching on what it means to pass on your wealth to the next generation, I suggest you get your hands on this. You won’t be disappointed.

Creating Wealth: Training Families to Build Dynasties
Eight Part Series. This Strategic Christian Services seminar focuses on the ultimate challenge we all face, in terms of making our lives truly count for God’s purposes in history-how, in our personal lives, families, careers, and even our nation, we pass on the inheritance of our hearts so that our values, vision, and wealth are not wasted by the next generation. For the first time, the entire Peacocke family (Dennis, Jan, Adam, Rachel, and Katherine) shares together in a conference, both individually and in a panel discussion. God is beginning to restore an understanding of generational transfer to us as a people and as a nation. Our intention is to provide you with practical tools to break the curse of single-generational living.

Here are links to the downloadable version and to the Audio CD version.

“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (Isa 45:1-3)

When I was a young man selling life insurance in the fishing villages of British Columbia, I sometimes had to travel by mountainous logging roads to get from one village to the next. On one particularly memorable trip, it took me three hours of zig zagging up and down a washed out gravel mountain road just to get to my first prospect. Thirty years later, I returned with my wife to show her that same rustic fishing village. To my delight, the government had come in and made a straight path, a paved highway, and the travel time between the two towns was now only twenty minutes.

What a difference a straight path can make! That is precisely what God did for Cyrus. He made the crooked places straight. When everyone else had to fight the terrain, God promised Cyrus He would make his path straight. Would that all our paths be straight; but not all crooked paths are bad. There is much to learn in the struggle that can’t be learned on the paved highway. Think of the crooked path as training. It’s where things get worked out in you to prepare you for the responsibility of the straight path, when things can accelerate.

Jesus knew all about straight paths. He could (and did) walk through walls. I believe as we mature into sonship (not a gender statement), we will also do the seemingly impossible. We will walk through walls of resistance that were built to keep us out. Some of you reading this are running into those walls right now and Jesus stands ready to lead you right through that wall. You will find yourself on the other side and not quite know how you got there, but there you will be. Do you think Peter understood how he was able to walk on water? It was only when he began to reason, that he began to sink. Selah.

“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you…

A father’s promise to his son is that he will go before him and make a way. That’s how God led Cyrus and that’s how He wants to lead us today. A good father wants to give good gifts to his children and one of those gifts is to make his child’s path easier than his own. The father wants to open doors for his child, but there’s a catch. As genuinely as the father wants to go before the child, the son or daughter must be willing to follow the father.

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Sons in the marketplace know how to carry their God-given name. God the Father gave Jesus the name above every other name that in His name, people would find salvation. No other name would do. The name of Jesus, or Yeshua in the Hebrew, has more authority and power than any other name under Heaven. Jesus often spoke of His name in John saying, “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do.” “If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.” There are several like it.

Have you ever prayed in His name and it not happen? There are, of course, the standard caveats that give us comfort. It was not His will. It was not His timing, etc. and while that may be true in many cases as James tells us, I believe there is much more to it. I have prayed in His name for things I believe to this moment were in His will, but they failed to come to pass. Was Jesus just kidding? Was it simply because He chose not to override another person’s will so my prayer would be answered? Of course that’s possible, but as long as we accept those pat answers as the only answer, we may be robbing ourselves of spiritual growth.

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (Isaiah 45:1-2)

God promises Cyrus that He will open the gates of an otherwise impenetrable city for him. Most people would not know how to take a promise like that. They want to spiritualize it away. They want to delay it ‘til the future, preferably the after life. But Cyrus lived in the here and now and believed he was born for precisely that purpose… to subdue nations, not metaphorically, but in practical reality.
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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (Isaiah 45:1-2)

This verse speaks of Babylon, the strongest most fortified city in the known world at that time. There were 100 gates to the city and they were made of bronze. No point in hurling flaming arrows at that. No point in using a battering ram either. It was impenetrable. Everyone knew that, even Cyrus. But that didn’t deter him. (Note: I said the seeming impossibility of the task, DID NOT deter Cyrus).

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“Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings, (Isa 45:1) “Only rebel not against the LORD, neither fear you the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not.” (Num 14:9)

God promises Cyrus that He will loose the armor of kings. It means He will enfeeble them. It was not without precedent. In Numbers 14, Joshua and Caleb having returned from spying out the Promised Land with ten other spies, tried to assure the people that although there were giants in the land, their “defense had departed from them and the Lord is with us”. It’s an unusual expression which quite literally means the shadow or “favor” of God was not with the enemy.

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 “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will (1) loose the armor of kings,(2) to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; (3) I will go before you, and (4) make the crooked places straight: (5) I will break in pieces the gates of bronze, and (6) cut asunder the bars of iron: And (7) I will give you the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that you may know that I, the LORD, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel.” (Isa 45:1-3)

In my last blog on this series of sons in the marketplace, I asked what it will look like to see a corporate body of sons rising in the marketplace. And while that answer may well be as diverse as there are sons arising, I would like us to look at Cyrus as a possible model. Cyrus, the Persian king, was not a Hebrew. He did study Isaiah and knew the Scripture spoke of him and most agree he is a type of Christ or anyone who is anointed of God. My premise is that most of us, like Cyrus, were heathens who God sovereignly chose and anointed for His purposes.

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