The Unexpected Connection

By Rebecca Branch

Can God cross the paths of two people long before they ever meet? 

For Atlas Merrick, the luster of being an actor was gone the moment he lost his mother. Struggling to hold on to his faith was something he wasn't sure he wanted to fight anymore. 

Then one ni

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Feb 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887384306

Rebecca Branch

REBECCA BRANCH is an avid student of prophecy, dream interpretation, and visions. The prophetic activation of her own dream life propelled her to dive deep into theology in search of the hidden mysteries of God. After a startling physical injury, Rebecca found herself deeply immersed in a unique wilderness season that drew her closer to Jesus. One of her greatest joys is seeing God move prophetically in other people's lives.

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the

unexpected

connection

Rebecca Branch

Greyscale Trilogy Christian Publishers logo

The Unexpected Connection

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2023 by Rebecca Branch

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version Giant Print Reference Bible Copyright 2013 by Holman Bible Publishers Nashville, Tennessee.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without written permission from the author. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

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Trilogy Christian Publishing/TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Cover design by Nicole McDaniel

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 979-8-88738-429-0

E-ISBN: 979-8-88738-430-6

acknowledgments

For my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Your love is unfathomable. Your compassion is breathtaking. Your sacrifice is immeasurable. Thank You for the cross and for bridging the gap between us and God. This heart is forever Yours.

Thank You, Father God, for this beautiful life. Thank You for this beautiful creation. Thank You for giving Your Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins and giving us a way back to You. Time and again, You display Your heart to us in the Bible, and it is something we constantly glean more understanding about. May the work of my hands and the work of my heart be pleasing in Your sight. Thank You for the uniqueness and precision of prophecy.

Holy Spirit, giver of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Holy Spirit, giver of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning of spirits, different kinds of tongues, and interpretation of tongues, may we feel an abundance of Your presence pour out as our need for You is so great in this hour.

To my family, thank you for every part of this shared experience of life. We have seen God move in some exceptionally remarkable ways, and suffice it to say we will continue to see Him move in even more remarkable ways. What great days these will be. I love you all more than I can adequately express with words.

table of contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

The Wilderness

The Call

The Commission

The Encounter

The Unexpected

The Connection

The Separation

The Explanation

The Transparent

The Pressure

The Reunion

The Unthinkable

The Event

The Intervention

Afterword

Appendix One

Appendix Two

About the Author

prologue

Prophecy is an interesting thing. Both mysterious and deeply revealing. Something that manifests in various ways. It is oftentimes unexpected but always needed. It is uniquely dynamic. It holds the authority of heaven and the compassion of the cross of Christ. It is predictive, yes, but it is infinitely more than that.

Much like love that has the unique ability to transcend both time and space, prophecy continually defies the limitations of the natural world. Instead, prophecy introduces the natural world to the unseen things of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Prophecy has unfettered access to all the storerooms of heaven, and it springs forward like wells of living water pouring out from the throne of the Father.

Prophecy is so all-encompassing that it impacts the broadest things to the most detailed and intricate things. From the shaping of the universe to the most subtle and nuanced events that happen in a person’s life, prophecy is that all-encompassing. From the galaxies that spin around consistently putting on display the intelligent and divine design of the universe to the broken pieces of a heart desperate for the intervention of God in its life. Prophecy reflects the authority of God, the power of God, and the love of God with such detail that when it is truly understood, it fills the heart with a sense of wonder and awe at the complex and beautiful displays of the heart of the Father toward His creation.

It is immersed within the mysteries of prophecy where this story begins.

the wilderness

Bring Back the Erring One

Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

— James 5:19–20 (NKJV)

Aria

I walked out of the movie theater in a daze. I had spent the past several months feeling numb within my soul. As I absentmindedly put one foot in front of another, I sensed the numbness was lifting.

I knew there was more to life than the constant cycles of pain and brokenness. The Lord had demonstrated that to me on so many occasions, but this season was unquestionably a dry one for my soul.

I wanted to help others, but how could I when my soul was in such despair?

I pondered on the events of the film I had just watched as I drove home from the theater. There was a shift taking place inside of me, a marker of the Lord beginning a work in my life.

I sighed.

I knew it would take some time for the work the Lord was doing to begin to truly manifest, but the markers of His work were unquestionably evident. I knew this feeling well. It was a deep sense of knowing that when the haze over my mind was being shifted, it would demonstrate the move of the Lord in my life.

I briefly wondered if this would also mean the dreams would begin again.

I knew that dreams were a tool the Lord used to communicate to His children, but I also knew not to depend on dreams as the only way to hear from God. There were so many ways the Lord could speak to His children. Dreams were simply and profoundly one of the strongest instruments of communication the Lord would use in my life.

These days, I didn’t dream much.

In a dry season such as this one, I found that I deeply missed those dreams. I missed the prophetic symbolism of those dreams. I missed searching out the meaning and finding prophetic instruction inside those night parables the Lord gave me.

It felt like I wasn’t hearing from the Lord. It became more difficult with each passing day to enter into prayer time with Him. I knew this was a wilderness season. It bore all the markers of exactly that, with the pressures mounting from all around me.

I parked my car as I arrived home. The cold December air met me with its startling touch against my cheeks. I took a deep breath as I closed the car door and paused to look up at the clear night sky. The cool air pierced my lungs as I embraced the opportunity to gaze at the stars lighting up the darkness of night.

I found peace every time I looked at those stars. The powerful reality that God designed the complexities of such a vast universe that I couldn’t understand always served to humble me. It reminded me that there was more than just this wilderness season that dominated so much of my attention.

It never ceased to amaze me how taking a few precious moments to take in the vastness of God’s creation could completely expel the ever-present components of the wilderness I was in. What a demonstration of God’s power; to cast away the burdens on a soul with the stunning display of a clear night sky.

I was thankful for these stolen moments of peace.

This wasn’t my first wilderness season. As much as I did not like them, I knew from first-hand experience that God would use them for spiritual growth within me. Each one of those seasons was uniquely designed to address roots that God no longer wanted to be so deeply immersed in the soil of my life.

He knew me well.

I never chose these seasons. They were not fun to be immersed in. They required patience and trust in the Lord. They required perseverance, as one of the dominant components of these times, to confront fear.

I lingered for a while still as I fought against the cold night air so I could gaze up at those stars for a few more precious moments. Tomorrow would have an unreasonable amount of expectations from me. It would demand things from me that would test the resolve of my spirit. It would test my walk as a Christian. Day after day, my soul suffered blow after blow.

If I had tears left to cry, I would cry those tears in this moment.

There’d been so much saturation of wickedness everywhere lately. I knew that it would be like this in the last days Jesus warned about, but being inside of it was much more difficult than I had expected it to be. I needed the Lord more and more these days because it felt like every place that I turned, I saw the advancement of the enemy.

I needed the advancement of God.

I wanted to pray. I wanted so much to connect to God, but my soul hurt so much from seeing the pain inflicted upon the world from the wickedness that abounded that I couldn’t find the words to say to God.

Even though I knew this was not how this worked, I still wanted this wilderness season to be over and done with. I didn’t want to carry this burden anymore. It was crushing me.

That’s why I started to feel so numb. Feeling numb had become like a defense mechanism; the only thing I had to fall back on at the moment. Whatever it was that God was doing, I needed Him to do it quickly because I did not like being in this spiritually barren place.

I thought about the movie I had just left and the unmistakable markers of the numbness lifting. There was a part of me that battled the fear of what it would mean to have the numbness leave me. It had felt like so long that the numbness had been my fraudulent security blanket. What would I do without it if God was indeed moving? It made sense that the first move God would have to make would be to put something in my path that would remove that security blanket of numbness away from me.

What was it about the film that had been enough to shake me so gently?

That was a question I would ponder on over the course of the next few weeks. The battles remained, but now there was the added component of God moving and shaking me awake. He clearly didn’t want me relying on the numbness anymore. He wanted me to feel what was taking place around me. I fought against it because it was a difficult thing to be an empathetic person in a world that was hurting and lashing out with rage because of that hurt and pain.

I knew the Father well enough to know that He didn’t want me to suffer alongside others who were suffering. If all everyone did was suffer, then how would that cycle be broken? God needed people to stand in the gap to help alleviate the pain. He didn’t want people to stay prisoners of pain. He wanted to show people the path to true freedom.

There had to be a remnant of God’s children ready to stand in the gap to point people to Christ and His love and gift of salvation.

While driving one morning, I broke down and cried. I asked the Lord to help me. I told Him I couldn’t stay in this barren spiritual place any longer. I patched myself up, feeling a lot like I was holding the pieces of myself together in everything I did. I wanted so much to be free from this spiritual destitution. I knew there was so much more to life than this. Knowing that made this wilderness season difficult in such a disturbingly unique way.

The answer hit me one night while I was still meditating on the film and why it had impacted me the way it did. The Holy Spirit had kept bringing it into my awareness over the course of the past few weeks, and I knew well enough by now that anytime the Holy Spirit moved in such a way, I needed to be sensitive to why it was happening.

Redemption.

I saw the markers of redemption in the storyline of one of the characters. It was the pain in his eyes that had originally caught my attention. As the empathetic person God had developed me into, I was always inextricably drawn to the markers of pain evident in a person’s eyes. I had become well acquainted with the way pain reflected itself within the depths of the eyes.

Deep in my spirit, I had a sense that this person was not simply acting a part in the storyline they represented. He seemed to be drawing from his own experience with pain. With the current state of the world being what it was, with such anger and animosity and infliction of pain, it was like a healing balm being splashed on my soul as the realization finally birthed itself inside of me that the reason why this film would not leave my awareness was because of that beautiful symbolism of redemption immersed within the storyline and the evidence of the actor’s acquaintance with pain so clearly displayed in his eyes.

And all it took was a few brief moments of onscreen portrayal to get a huge message across to whoever was willing enough to look for it and sensitive enough to see it. After seeing so much anger and hatred everywhere I turned, it was inexplicably beautiful to be able to catch this glimpse of something as profoundly beautiful as redemption. I was like a woman dying of thirst in a barren wasteland that was suddenly revived by wells of living water pouring straight from the throne of God.

I found myself immediately grateful to God for shining this light in the darkness of my night. As a born-again Christian, I knew redemption well. I had been saved for twelve years and experienced so many beautiful layers of redemption that all began with asking Jesus Christ into my life as my Lord and Savior.

But God wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot.

While the upheaval in the spiritual realm continued to amplify and pour over into the physical reality of our world, the Lord led me on a path out of my wilderness. It didn’t take long for me to discover that this actor’s pain was not only very real, but it was of spiritual origins. I found myself stunned to discover that he knew of Jesus.

Reflections of Christ were evidenced in the way he spoke. Reflections of Christ were evidenced in his humility and self-awareness. Reflections of Christ were evidenced in his kindness and his deep intuition. He openly admitted he had a relationship with Christ.

Like the world’s largest dam finally caving to the pressure of the water mounting against its concrete infostructure, the spiritual dam inside of me finally gave to the pressure that had continually mounted against me. I found myself completely shattered as I drove one morning. I cried like my world was ending, and though my world was not ending, deep down, I knew my wilderness season was.

I gazed at the early morning winter