This word is submitted by Teresa Seputis (ts@godspeak.org)

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                 For Those In Your Season Of Pruning

Child of Mine, you wonder how you have gotten to the place where you feel 
so distant from Me and so small and so helpless.  It has come upon you 
because I am preparing you for what lays ahead.  I must remove from you
the things in the natural that you depend upon, that you might fully
depend upon Me.  At this point, you still depend on yourself -- on your 
abilities, on your contacts, and on the qualifications and strategies of
man.  It is the time and season to lay all of this aside and it will be 
a time of stripping for you.  It will be a time of undoing.  You must
put off this area of self, that I might adorn you with a greater measure
of My spirit operating in you and through you.  You cannot fully yield
to the control of My Spirit while you are dependent our your own abilities
or while you draw from your own resources.

This is not a permanent state that I am leaving you in.  But I will bring
you through the same season of preparation that I used to prepare Joseph
for that place of precedence to which I had appointed him.  All was
stripped away from him when his brothers sold him into bondage.  Yet even 
in slavery, My anointing and My favor were clearly upon him, until he came 
to depend on that anointing and favor instead of on Me.  Therefore, I 
allowed him to be cast, for a short season, into prison where I stripped 
from him all that he had come to depend upon that was not Me.  

I am doing the same work in you.  For you cannot depend upon the giftings 
that I have placed within you nor can you depend upon the anointings that I 
have placed upon you.  You must depend solely on Me -- not on the things 
that I have given you to equip you.  Just as all was stripped away from 
Joseph until he had nothing but Me to grasp on to, so am I stripping 
hindrances away from you.  I am bringing you to the place where I might 
break you so that I might remold you.  

Child, I have not cast you aside and I will not cast you aside as you move
through this breaking process with Me.  I have not written you off and I
have not rejected you.  The plan and destiny that I had for you has not 
changed.  Rather I am preparing you that you might fulfill it.  

Know that My plans for you are good, however distant they may seem to you
at the moment.  I have a hope and a future for you.  This has not changed. 
I am merely bringing you through a season of preparation to mold your 
character for what I have planned for you.

The vision that I have given you will seem very small to you for a season, 
but do not fear.  For I shall once again awaken it.  Right now, this is not 
a season of building for you -- it is a season of pruning.  That is why you 
feel so small and why the vision I have given you seems so distant. But 
this season shall pass and you will enter into the season of the 
fulfillment of the destiny that I have chosen for you.

The more you cooperate with Me, the shorter this pruning season will last
for you.  However, I will get you through it whether you corporate with Me 
or not -- that I might glorify My name through you and that My plans might 
be advanced through you.  For I am faithful and I will demonstrate My
faithfulness to you even in this season of pruning.  

So do not fear.  Release the things you are hanging onto and grasp unto 
My hand.   Learn to depend solely on Me and then watch Me fulfill My
purposes in your life and thrust you into the destiny that I have
prepared for you.