"I baptize you with water for repentance.But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit(and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
Matthew 3:11-12
Yesterday morning the Lord started speaking to me about Winnowing. The Winnowing process is a fascinating one! There are so many times between it and what is happening spiritually and in the natural right now. So as I share this with you, I pray it inspires you to HOLD ON.
Winnow comes from the Old English word for "wind". The meanings include "Remove until only the best is left", "find or identify the valuable or useful part of something", and "blow on". This is a process involved in seasons of HARVEST and follows threshing. So after the wheat has been beaten and trampled to separate the grain from it's chaff casing, it is winnowed. Lightly tossed in the air or blown with a fan to blow away all that's not useful. It always follows a time of threshing. Anyone else feel like 2020 has been a time of threshing? Impact after impact, wave after wave. What if, however, this threshing was not to knock you down but to FREE YOU from everything but God's best? What if God uses it to identify or find the VALUES or USES left in you? Or to show you what is valuable or useful? What if God is blowing His creative breath and the winds of His Spirit on you that never leave things unchanged?
The first thing that winnowing does: Removes pests. Anything that would EAT AWAY at good grain is blown off. Tactics of the enemy that gnaw at our time, our resources, our thoughts, or our provision.
Talking about this with my husband he recalled a time he rosted coffee beans with a friend. He said as they heated the beans you have to listen for faint cracks. They're very quiet, but it means the shells are breaking away, and they are READY. He and his friend would then put them to a fan which would blow away the dried and flaky shell like confetti and leave the done beans.
How interesting that I found the winnowing-fan (λίκνον [líknon], also meaning a "cradle". What a contrast to being threshed. The threshing happens. Then as God cradles us, He blows away all that isn't life giving. In fact, let's look deeper at what exactly chaff is. What's getting blown away?
Chaff is "a dry, scaly, protective casing of the seeds. Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it and in agriculture it is used as livestock fodder, or is a waste material pitched into the soil
Also interestingly, a Hungarian engineer László Schremmer has recently discovered that by the chaff is an incredible FILTER. Interesting. What filters are you being covered with that are IMPEDING your growth or you hearing the truth? The filter we see and hear through is critical. Words hold the power of life and death. There are sources of lies or twisted images about what's happening that you need to disconnect from IN ORDER TO reconnect with God.
The good news (because with God there's always good news) is that you merely have to HOLD ON through the process. You won't be blown away. This is all just blowing away the chaff in your world. The seed- the good stuff- doesn't blow away because of its DENSITY. Hold on to what has substance- which is only ever the Word of God. It will keep you from being tossed in the wind and blown away. It will also bring a tremendous CLARITY in the coming weeks as the world around you remains in confusion.
God is bringing you out of your shell because you're about to be used. You're about to grow. You're about to be good seed for this next season. Hold on!