Nazarite Vow
In early June 2011 I attended “The
Call” in Wasilla Alaska. The Call
is a movement in America led by Lou Engle and his son Jesse that is rising up a
generation of young people who are giving themselves to worship, fasting and
prayer to Jesus to see revival come to America and abortion end in our
nation. At this event last summer
I spontaneously received prayer from Lou in the worship time before the event
actually started and a deposit was made into my spirit that I could not
ignore. The prayer left me
marked by a man given to a lifestyle of prayer and fasting and his prayers over
me compelled me to want to know Jesus even more. Everything in me needed to respond to the prompting of the
spirit to consecrate myself for a season in a demonstration of sacrifice and
obedience. Truth be told, I didn’t
completely know what I was doing when I began. I just knew that I needed to do this and that if I said yes
to the Lord he would give direction and fill in the details.
The outline of the vow is found in
the bible, book of Numbers, chapter 6.
Herein are the details of the vow, specifically no razor on the head, no
alcohol, grapes, vinegar or any foods associated with the grapevine and no
going near dead bodies. The
key point is that it’s the Lord who lights the fire for intimacy with Him but
it’s up to us to keep the fire burning (Leviticus 6) and I set out on a
pilgrimage to know Him in a more intimate way. Anyone desiring to make the vow would set the time and
determine how long the vow would last.
Most have varied from a few months to a few years and I was sensing that
I would go for at least a year, maybe two. I ended up going for a little over 16 months, more on that
later.
The vow itself is an act of consecration
to the Lord; body soul, mind and spirit, and has with it a few outer
manifestations that represent spiritual realities. As I understand it, hair represents strength and by not
cutting my hair I was declaring that my strength doesn’t come from by my own
means “but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Deuteronomy
8:3). I was also visibly marking
myself as a set apart, consecrated one but not done out of spiritual pride;
just an awareness that I am desiring to get closer to God and setting my face
like flint for a season. Grapes
and alcohol represent joy, pleasure and intoxication and by abstaining from
natural pleasures I was declaring that I desire my true joy come from the
presence of God (Psalm 16).
Avoiding the dead and funerals was a way of stating that I was
disassociating myself from anything in my life that would bring me death:
relationships, habits, ambitions or anything else that would compete with the
Lord for first place in my life.
I began the vow knowing that these
things really weren’t that hard for me to be devout in my devotion but the
pressing in for the deeper things of the spirit became the challenge as to find
out what the Lord was doing in my life through the vow. Honestly, it was during the last month
of the vow that the Lord clearly began to speak to me as to what He was after
in my life. Everything
else up until then seemed to be just growing out my hair and not drinking
alcohol as I was half hearted in my attempt to serve Him and fumbling my way through
it most of the time, even with a profound encounter with the Lord from the
beginning. My wife would ask
me occasionally why I was doing it and most times I couldn’t even give her a
decent answer. All that I knew was
that I was supposed to do it. But
even in my weak and feeble efforts to be obedient to His prompting, the Lord
broke through with revelation of who Jesus is and how much He loves
people. I’ll say it again: the
Lord Jesus is crazy in love with people. That might not be earth shattering to most but allow
me to tell you about what He is doing to my heart and my perception of
others.
Twice in the book of Matthew,
chapter 9 and 12, Jesus, in response to forgiving sin, performing miraculous
healing and doing things that were unlawful in the Pharisee minds says “go
learn what this means: I desire mercy not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13). In the past it’s a passage that I
have read and glazed over with zero understanding. I have come to understand that what Jesus is saying is
this. He isn’t saying that
sacrifice isn’t important.
Mercy, love and a heart of compassion from His heart for people is what
is most important. Sacrifice
in its right context is extremely valuable but in the end it’s really a vehicle
to bring us closer into relationship with God by whatever means necessary,
namely repentance.
During some soaking time towards
the end of my vow I was meditating on what Jesus said, “I desire mercy, not
sacrifice” and He began to reveal Him self to me. I was lying on the floor, my head was on His chest over His
heart and I could hear His heart of love for people. The sound of His love was a sonic BOOM in His chest that
ripped through the earth and mountains and was impossible to ignore. His love is way beyond what we
can comprehend or contain. I was
also remembering entries from a book I’m reading by Heidi Baker, “Compelled by
love”. It’s full of stories
about their ministry to the poor in and destitute in Mozambique, Africa and how
the Lord is using the poor to teach her about love using the “beatitudes” as a
foundation for living an authentic Christian life. The poor are dependant naturally and spiritually at a level
that most of us (namely me) never experience in life here in the west. But when the poor encounter the
love of Jesus they are never the same! I was recounting some of the stories of love breaking
through and miracles happening and as I was receiving more of His love I began
to pray this grand prayer – “Lord, give me your heart for the unlovely. Teach me how to love like that
and give me your heart for the unlovely”. I thought that I was praying according to His will
until the Holy Spirit corrected/rebuked me mid-encounter, gently but firmly
with these words: “There’s no such thing as unlovely”.
I began to weep at the revelation
of how He sees us through the eyes of His fierce love. He didn’t stop speaking. As I was coming unglued at the
condition of my own heart and trying to repent and form a response, the Holy
Spirit continued on. He told
me “Present condition is not the qualifier. In the kingdom, we aren’t allowed to see with earthly
eyes”. Then He told me to read
Acts 10.
This chapter is about Peter and an
encounter he has with Lord when he falls into a trance while praying. You can read the chapter
but basically the Lord is changing paradigms in Peter in what he believes about
the Holy Spirit as he is poured out on the Gentiles. In his trance he is directed by the Lord to kill
and eat animals that he considered to be unclean. He in turn basically tells the Lord that he won’t and the
Lord tells him, “Don’t call anything impure that God has made clean” (vs.
9). The Lord was confronting the
religious spirit in Peter and setting him up for a personal and larger
breakthrough as the Holy Spirit was about to be poured out on hungry and
thirsty people who just wanted to know Jesus. The other interesting note in the story is about
Cornelius. Here is a guy in
the Italian army who is operating outside of his comfort zones by giving
generously to the poor and devoting himself and his family to prayer and acts
of service to the needy. His
prayers and acts grab the attention of heaven and angelic activity is released
in response. The Lord
uses this man and creates seismic shifts in Peter to bring the kingdom to those
who are thirsting for the presence of the living God. Here again is an example of the heart of love and compassion
for people that our heavenly Father has for all mankind that desire His
face. “I desire mercy not
sacrifice”.
I had another encounter in which I
was at Matthew the tax collector’s house (scene from Matthew 9:9-10) and I was
sitting across the table from Jesus.
He was sitting with His right leg crossed over His left and was casually
eating and enjoying the company around the table. In the actual story His very presence with tax collectors
and sinners confused and enraged the religious minds of the day. They couldn’t understand why He would
associate with them. In my
encounter He looked at me and said, “What do you want to know”, and kept eating
as we engaged each other in dialogue. Honestly, I can’t recall anything we were discussing
but after a while He leaned over to me and said “The religious mind seeks only
to bring understanding. True
love for Me seeks Me for understanding. The religious mind isn’t really interested in
Me”. He sat back in His
chair, kept eating and looking at me and appeared to be completely un-offended
by the religious minds trying to discredit Him. I began to ponder what He just said and I realized
that this was His sonic boom of love for people. He has a furious love for people that’s beyond our
scope of reason, even for those who completely misunderstand Him.
The impression that I got of Jesus
is this – Him standing there talking to those who only see religious activity
as most important and Him saying, “All the scriptures you read and study point
to Me and I’m standing right in front of you and you’re missing Me because your
heart isn’t open to Me. But
that’s ok because when you desire Me I’ll be right here waiting for you and I
can’t wait until you do.”
All of this to say that what the
Lord is doing in me in this season is purifying and maturing His love in me for
others and removing religious mindsets from my thinking. I believe that this is a picture of what He wants to do in
the church as well but this is hitting me on a level that I’m not seeing things
the way I used to (which is a good thing!). Through this season of taking my vow what He was really
revealing to me was that the point of the sacrifice was to gain more revelation
of His massive heart for me and for people and how much of my thinking needed
to be cleansed so I can see, hear and respond more like Jesus did. His huge heart of love and compassion
for mankind compelled everything He did from creating us in the beginning,
coming to earth to redeem us back to the Father, taking on our weak frames and
His ultimate demonstration of love by going to the cross for us. His love is so complete and pure that
our hearts and minds need to be renewed in order for us to continuously grow in
his radical love. Then his
life and love in us can flow in a clear channel through us to others.
Here’s a harsh reality. If all of our sacrifice and religious
activity aren’t bringing us closer in love relationship with Jesus then its
just form of godliness without power, an idol that we pass off to others as
holiness but blinds us from the truth of where we really are spiritually. I functioned this way for several
months without even realizing all the while wondering why my heart was lukewarm
and I wasn’t seeing any fruit from my life during the season of
“consecration”. But even in the
midst of my half hearted attempt to serve Him in this way He still took that
ember in my heart to show me how much He loves me and wants to reveal more of
Himself to me and how much He truly loves people.
My vow lasted almost a year and a
half. Truth is I should have
ended it after one year. It
was becoming religious activity to which I wasn’t even connected. A friend of mine had a dream that
I was clean shaven at the 13 month point into the vow and my wife had a dream
of me clean shaven about 2 months ago (prompted by the Holy Spirit and not her
desire to see me less scraggly).
Another friend on mine recently had a prophetic word for me that was
right on the mark and added that he saw the Lord “cleaning” me, my face and
hair. I said to the Lord,
“are you trying to tell me to end my vow”? Duh, Jason.
“Yes” was all I heard from him. I am a creature of routine and loyal to a fault
sometimes. The vow had
become an idol and I wasn’t even aware of it. But even in my attempt to please him and be loyal to
my commitment I allowed it to become the focus instead of Him. But even then He still busted into my
heart to reveal to me one of the mysteries of his kingdom: His ferocious love
for people.
I’ve told the Lord recently that my
desire is to know what is important to His heart and in exchange He can do what
He wants with my life. By this I
mean that I want to be so in love and in communication with Him that I know
what He’s thinking, seeing and feeling all the time so that I can arrange my
life accordingly with His heart and purpose for me and those around me. I’ve asked Him. “How far can Your
kingdom reach through my life?”
The truth is we can’t want the form (religion) separate from the Man
(Jesus). I remember a quote
from Bill Johnson – “Jesus, if I’m not thinking like you come and mess with me
until I am.” My desire is to
have this be the posture of my heart. He is a jealous lover. He has no rivals and His love is transforming my life,
again.
Blessings!!
Jason Manalli
link to message, Mature Love - Jason Manalli 10/21/12
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| his ponytail! |
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| And here he is!! |
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| Burning the hair |