I got a chance recently to pray for a woman, of whom I knew nothing of her past.  When I sought the Lord for what to say, I immediately saw her face, in a vision, as the sinful woman caught in adultery and with Jesus pronouncing the phrase over her,"Woman, where are your accusers?" To be fair, God wasn't telling her she had the same checkered past as the woman from this story. It was just that God was letting me know, through this metaphor, something about her mental state in struggling to accept God's grace on her life. 

This vision took me directly to the Bible story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, who was brought before Jesus. In that Biblical story, it was the perfect set up, by the Pharisees, to trap Jesus, the man of compassion. If he agreed that she deserved to be stoned to death for the sin of adultery, as stated in the Book of the Law, his compassion would be compromised. but if he allowed her to go free, his support of the law would be compromised. In the mind of the teachers of the law, it was a lose-lose scenario for Jesus. Exactly what they wanted.  

But Jesus compromised neither his compassion or his upholding of The Law. He targeted the accusers instead. "Let anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." In essence he said, "Sure, go ahead and stone her but let's begin with the sinless ones throwing the first rock." That's all he said. But within moments every accuser, rock in hand and boiling with self-righteous anger, was seen dropping their stone and leaving in a disturbing silence.  

But what about the woman caught in adultery? Was she unable to see what was unfolding behind her? Would she even dare look behind her and scan the face of her angry accusers to see how they would respond? Did she even consider any better outcome from this tense encounter than being stoned to death in the ensuing minutes?

In the light of being caught in the act of adultery, her mindset was most likely set on the expected outcome—death by stoning. She knew she would pay the price, and she would forever become the example to Israel of the evils of adultery. Yes, she heard the rocks drop to the ground but it had no meaning to her. She was waiting for her well-deserved punishment, and nothing could change her outcome... or so she thought. As I gazed at this Biblical story in my mind's eye, the short time gap between what Jesus asked the accusers and them leaving the scene, expanded in my mind's eye. It's as if I could feel a long time pass by before the adulterous woman became aware of the true happenings behind her. 

So the phrase, "Woman, where are your accusers?" took on new light for me as I now prayed for this contemporary woman in front of me. This vision from God was letting me know in this moment that this present woman was still unable to fully grasp the work that Jesus had done and is now doing, in her life. She had been fully set free from the shame and guilt of her past. Though her own accusers had been silenced, the truth had not yet sank into her mind and heart. She needed a renewing of the mind to be able to see herself in the light of what Jesus had already done for her, to no longer live in the shadow of the guilt and shame of her past. God was reassuring her that those days were over, gone and done with. And that the new life, the abundant life in Christ, was knocking on her door waiting for her to answer and host it in her inner life. 

I asked her first this to verify she connected with my sense from God, "Do you struggle with forgiving yourself for things you've done in your past?" She sheepishly admitted that this was an area of real struggle for her.  

I then relayed to her what I had heard and then shared how God was reassuring her that all the blessings, hope, and bright future He had for her, here on earth, have been available for her to lay ahold of and lived out of if she wanted them. It wasn't being held back by God, as she thought.  She then talked about how she had had a mindset that expected only judgement and shame. Her honest questions to me were, "How do I overcome this present 'wrong' mindset?"  "How do I renew my mind so that I can enter fully into what God has for this forgiven, set free, and blessed woman that He says I am?"

We talked some more on this issue, but I couldn't help thinking that God had already set into motion the strategy for renewing her mind. She was given, in that instant, a revelation of a loving God. The One who reveals things to people who know her not (in this occasion, it was I who had the privilege of being used to release words of forgiveness, freedom, and comfort), to relay to her the very message she so desperately needed to hear. God also gave her a powerful story from the Bible to anchor His view of her from here on, revealing how Jesus deals with people who have shady pasts—He forgives them and sets them free. 

And this truth also flashed through my mind: That woman in the Bible who was caught in the act of adultery was not just spared in that moment. The very ones who planned to judge her by stoning her to death had been shown their own sinfulness. I picture in the future, every time these men would see this woman around town, she would remind them of their own sins, and less about her own. And everyone who saw the commotion of self-righteous men bent on cleaning house would forever wonder, "What just happened?" And not one of these men (the ones ready to stone her) would be willing to talk about that incident.  "How did this unstoppable death-punishment get derailed?" "And how did this sinful woman come out on top, after all?"

This prayer encounter relayed the gift of a story  this contemporary woman could use to anchor herself into God's pure and unadulterated truth of forgiveness, redemption, and restoration. In the future, when she re-connects with the story of the woman caught in adultery, she will be able to forever see Jesus welcoming her into a forgiven life, setting her free to experience the fullness of all that God has for her as His new creation.