On Taming Wolves

Isaiah 65:25a The wolf and the lamb will feed together, the lion will eat straw like the ox.

*In the future, when all this whole world gets wrapped up, there will come a day when the wolves will be tamed. For this girl who has felt at some times that she is more wild, unkempt, and driven with more killer instinct than what could ever be reined in by any Force of good, there is no comfort greater than knowing that if they, one of the wildernesses most deadly predators, will be tamed, then any miniscule wildness of mine has a chance, too.

I sat praying over this verse one day this summer and heard the great small voice say, “Only Jesus can tame a wolf.”

I wrote in my journal, “I cannot wait to see that, Lord!”

I would call myself a visual person, and the picture that came to my head was me standing in the middle of this forest; surrounded by wolves and having absolutely no fear. My guard was finally down in what would seem the most foolish of settings.

Wow. Life lived without the Killer instinct. Life lived without my defenses up.

I saw me then in the forest, all glorious in a green sparkling dress, looking something like Eve, having just emerged from the earth, standing amongst the pack. They are no threat to me and I am no threat to them. We are mutually unharmful. Both tamed and yet now stronger with a Strength we have never known.

“Only you can release my feet from the snare,” comes to mind; when neither of us will have to be on the lookout for traps.

Oh for the great day of the Lord to come, when the enemy will have breathed his last and all things will finally have been righted.

“To tame a wolf,” I hear Him say.

So this is what I can think: If He can tame the wolf, than what is He capable of doing in me?

I mean, do I sometimes feel like there are monsters too big; walls too thick, insecurities too long, or grasps of sin too strangling? Surely I do. But if I feel that way am I really living in the truth that the wolf and the lamb WILL eat together, rather than the wolf eating the other? Do I really believe that all will be peaceful? Can I say with my whole heart, “All will be well”? Do I live claiming that in light of Christ, all IS well?

Do I trust you enough, Lord, and abandon my fears, insecurities, monsters, walls, and sins enough to say, “He will tame the wolf; and he has broken these chains”?

I think what I love most about that picture of me standing with the wolves in that forest is knowing that both of us ARE NOT AS WE WERE. Only you, Jesus, can take someone that wasn’t, and turn me into something that is. Only you can release my feet from the snare because left to my own devices I will fall into the same traps over and over again. Only you can call me Sought After (Is. 62:12), and only you can turn my darkness to light.

By the grace of God I am who I am and his grace to me was not without effect. The day is coming that will bring my completion.

Father God, let me cling to the Perfecter; the only One who can tame the wolf.