Week 2 we move on to the broader move of God – Christ preparing His Bride as He begins to call His church into her identity as His beloved and His friend.
40-Day Focus – 3/11/10 – A Bride Made Ready / Praying for the Church (7.0MB 15min)
John 17 Mission
That the love the Father has may be in them
Posts Tagged ‘present move of God’
40-Day Focus: Week 2 – A Bride Made Ready
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40-Day Focus Week 2: A Bride Made Ready
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As we begin looking at the broader picture of what God is doing and where it’s all going, we are zooming out from what is taking place immediately in this nation and the nations of the earth. There is a broader move of God present in the earth that is global in its scale and decades in its duration. As I mentioned in introducing this topic, the better way to define this move of God is not by what people are doing, but by what God is saying. Hearing what the Spirit is saying is our means to get our hearts ignited for what God is doing, then the activity will surely follow. On the other hand, we can push ourselves to fast and pray, to worship, to evangelize, to do works of justice and every other activity that God is emphasizing right now, and still miss getting touched by what God is actually doing.
The Heart of the Matter
One of the most common stated or unstated missions among church communities these days is to recover what the Acts church looked like, which is certainly not the worst of aspirations. Our tendency, unfortunately, is to go about that by attempting to copy what the Acts church was doing (i.e. their method of ‘doing church’). When in reality it wasn’t the methodology of the Acts church that made it so dynamic. What defined and empowered the apostolic church in Acts was how they understood and lived their relationship with God, and the power of His presence in their midst. The apostles carried a deep-seated revelation from years of being with Jesus as to who He was and what His purpose was, and therefore who they were and what their purpose was. They oversaw a church born in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and continually lived in a consistent pattern of being filled with the Spirit day by day. These were the realities that made possible both its inward success as a community and body, and its outward success in winning souls.
The point being to attempt to imitate the activity of a move of God without giving ourselves fully to the heart of it effectively separates the move of God from God Himself. In doing so, the purpose and the power behind it are lost. We lose the relational aspects of what God is doing – what He’s revealing about Himself and about us – and we lose the priority of His presence. Hence our focus in these 40 days is on the heart of what God is doing and on the presence of God Himself. As we watch the “prayer movement” begin to sweep the earth, it’s easy to say this move is about prayer, but it’s so much more than that. This is not simply an increase in the quantity of prayer going on around the globe. God is revealing something about Himself and about His purposes that is motivating believers to pray like never before, and God is calling His church into a new revelation of who we were created to be that in turn is causing us to find our corporate and individual identity in the place of prayer. When Isaiah prophesied about God’s house being called a house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7) it was more than just a promise that God’s people would pray. It was looking to a day when the church would find it’s identity as a house of prayer – when connecting with God would become the center of who we are and what we do. And it was looking to a day when God would make us joyful in His house of prayer – when we would so connect with what prayer is really about that we would find fullness of joy in that time in His presence and that connection with His heart.
It’s About the Bride
When I look at what God is doing I am convinced this move of God has Revelation 19:7 squarely in its sights – “the marriage of the Lamb has come and the Bride has made herself ready.” It’s a promise echoed frequently throughout Scripture that is the final climactic conclusion to the story of redemption. All of human history marches towards that day, creation longs and groans for it, and Jesus Himself awaits it with great expectation. There is a real day coming in which Christ will return to claim for Himself an inheritance from the people of the earth – a pure and spotless Bride fully given to Him in love. As Revelation 19 makes clear, though, His return does not happen in a vacuum. The marriage of the Lamb is waiting for something… the Bride is going to make herself ready. As we look around the world, we see much that indicates we are drawing near to the end of the story, but this one sign seems noticeably lacking. At least in the Western world it would be hard to point with any confidence to a pure and spotless Bride appearing on the scene. More than that, though, we seem to have lost our motivation – rarely can you find anyone who is even consciously working towards that goal. Before that day can come something has to happen – God has to stir His people to begin making themselves ready as a Bride for her Bridegroom.
What would such a move look like? What would stir the Bride to begin making herself ready? Two simple revelations: the Church beginning to see herself as a beloved Bride, and seeing the beauty of her Bridegroom and longing to be with Him. All across the earth and in all different streams, a common theme is beginning to be heard. It sounds different when spoken by different voices, but its heart cry is the same: God delights in and is jealous over humanity, He made us for Himself and is drawing us to Himself, and nothing will satisfy as much as being with our glorious Creator – it is our purpose and identity now, and our destiny at the end of the story. And increasingly alongside that cry you hear another: the wedding day is coming soon and it’s time to make ourselves ready.
This is what’s at the heart of what God is doing on the earth right now: the Church catching a revelation of God as a jealous Bridegroom, and the Church stepping into her identity corporately and individually as the Bride of Christ. It’s not that either of these revelations are new, but that He is preparing us to begin understanding them and walking in them at a new level as we come nearer to the day when the Bride welcomes her Bridegroom as He returns. It’s not the language of the Bridal relationship that’s important but rather the reality behind it. It is a description of God that reveals Him as passionate and purposeful: He loves, delights in and is jealous over those willing to be called His, and He is relentlessly in pursuit of love – drawing hearts into it, bringing hearts to fullness in it and preparing for the day when God and man will be fully joined in it. It is an identity for the Church that reveals who we are now and forever as the one creature made to be joined with God: in intimacy as we delight in Him and He in us, and in partnership sharing in the secrets of His heart and the labors of His soul.
Catching the Vision
We want to set ourselves before all of those revelations over these next weeks, but for this week I want to ask God to seal us with a vision:
That He would mark us with a vision for what He longs to do in the earth. That our spiritual eyes would be opened to see a glorious Bride made ready, a great harvest from every tongue and tribe and nation, and a people prepared for the Lord. Let our hearts be stirred for God to move in a way that touches all flesh – not one stream or movement, not a remnant but from weakest to strongest every believer swept up into knowing His love and walking in the kind of relationship with Him that He created us for, and from one end of the earth to the other every heart hearing the invitation “come to the wedding!”
And may He mark each of us deeply with a personal vision to lay hold of the invitation that God is extending in our day. That our hearts might yearn to go deep in the reality of His love and enter into a relationship with Him that brings us the heights of joy and the heights of fulfillment. May we enter in to living as a Bride being made ready for Jesus – allowing Him to draw us in His love and wash us with the water of His Word. May our vision and ambition in life be no lower than His vision for us – going on a journey of love that leads us into the depths of relationship with Him.
Some Scriptures to meditate on: Eph 1:17-19, 3:14-21, 5:25-32; Rev 19:6-7; Isa 62:1-5; Jn 17:21-26
As we begin looking at the broader picture of what God is doing and where it’s all going, we are zooming out from what is taking place immediately in this nation and the nations of the earth. There is a broader move of God present in the earth that is global in its scale and decades in its duration. As I mentioned in introducing this topic, the better way to define this move of God is not by what people are doing, but by what God is saying. Hearing what the Spirit is saying is our means to get our hearts ignited for what God is doing, then the activity will surely follow. On the other hand, we can push ourselves to fast and pray, to worship, to evangelize, to do works of justice and every other activity that God is emphasizing right now, and still miss getting touched by what God is actually doing.
The Heart of the Matter
One of the most common stated or unstated missions among church communities these days is to recover what the Acts church looked like, which is certainly not the worst of aspirations. Our tendency, unfortunately, is to go about that by attempting to copy what the Acts church was doing (i.e. their method of ‘doing church’). When in reality it wasn’t the methodology of the Acts church that made it so dynamic. What defined and empowered the apostolic church in Acts was how they understood and lived their relationship with God, and the power of His presence in their midst. The apostles carried a deep-seated revelation from years of being with Jesus as to who He was and what His purpose was, and therefore who they were and what their purpose was. They oversaw a church born in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and continually lived in a consistent pattern of being filled with the Spirit day by day. These were the realities that made possible both its inward success as a community and body, and its outward success in winning souls.
The point being to attempt to imitate the activity of a move of God without giving ourselves fully to the heart of it effectively separates the move of God from God Himself. In doing so, the purpose and the power behind it are lost. We lose the relational aspects of what God is doing – what He’s revealing about Himself and about us – and we lose the priority of His presence. Hence our focus in these 40 days is on the heart of what God is doing and on the presence of God Himself. As we watch the “prayer movement” begin to sweep the earth, it’s easy to say this move is about prayer, but it’s so much more than that. This is not simply an increase in the quantity of prayer going on around the globe. God is revealing something about Himself and about His purposes that is motivating believers to pray like never before, and God is calling His church into a new revelation of who we were created to be that in turn is causing us to find our corporate and individual identity in the place of prayer. When Isaiah prophesied about God’s house being called a house of prayer (Isaiah 56:7) it was more than just a promise that God’s people would pray. It was looking to a day when the church would find it’s identity as a house of prayer – when connecting with God would become the center of who we are and what we do. And it was looking to a day when God would make us joyful in His house of prayer – when we would so connect with what prayer is really about that we would find fullness of joy in that time in His presence and that connection with His heart.
It’s About the Bride
When I look at what God is doing I am convinced this move of God has Revelation 19:7 squarely in its sights – “the marriage of the Lamb has come and the Bride has made herself ready.” It’s a promise echoed frequently throughout Scripture that is the final climactic conclusion to the story of redemption. All of human history marches towards that day, creation longs and groans for it, and Jesus Himself awaits it with great expectation. There is a real day coming in which Christ will return to claim for Himself an inheritance from the people of the earth – a pure and spotless Bride fully given to Him in love. As Revelation 19 makes clear, though, His return does not happen in a vacuum. The marriage of the Lamb is waiting for something… the Bride is going to make herself ready. As we look around the world, we see much that indicates we are drawing near to the end of the story, but this one sign seems noticeably lacking. At least in the Western world it would be hard to point with any confidence to a pure and spotless Bride appearing on the scene. More than that, though, we seem to have lost our motivation – rarely can you find anyone who is even consciously working towards that goal. Before that day can come something has to happen – God has to stir His people to begin making themselves ready as a Bride for her Bridegroom.
What would such a move look like? What would stir the Bride to begin making herself ready? Two simple revelations: the Church beginning to see herself as a beloved Bride, and seeing the beauty of her Bridegroom and longing to be with Him. All across the earth and in all different streams, a common theme is beginning to be heard. It sounds different when spoken by different voices, but its heart cry is the same: God delights in and is jealous over humanity, He made us for Himself and is drawing us to Himself, and nothing will satisfy as much as being with our glorious Creator – it is our purpose and identity now, and our destiny at the end of the story. And increasingly alongside that cry you hear another: the wedding day is coming soon and it’s time to make ourselves ready.
This is what’s at the heart of what God is doing on the earth right now: the Church catching a revelation of God as a jealous Bridegroom, and the Church stepping into her identity corporately and individually as the Bride of Christ. It’s not that either of these revelations are new, but that He is preparing us to begin understanding them and walking in them at a new level as we come nearer to the day when the Bride welcomes her Bridegroom as He returns. It’s not the language of the Bridal relationship that’s important but rather the reality behind it. It is a description of God that reveals Him as passionate and purposeful: He loves, delights in and is jealous over those willing to be called His, and He is relentlessly in pursuit of love – drawing hearts into it, bringing hearts to fullness in it and preparing for the day when God and man will be fully joined in it. It is an identity for the Church that reveals who we are now and forever as the one creature made to be joined with God: in intimacy as we delight in Him and He in us, and in partnership sharing in the secrets of His heart and the labors of His soul.
Catching the Vision
We want to set ourselves before all of those revelations over these next weeks, but for this week I want to ask God to seal us with a vision:
That He would mark us with a vision for what He longs to do in the earth. That our spiritual eyes would be opened to see a glorious Bride made ready, a great harvest from every tongue and tribe and nation, and a people prepared for the Lord. Let our hearts be stirred for God to move in a way that touches all flesh – not one stream or movement, not a remnant but from weakest to strongest every believer swept up into knowing His love and walking in the kind of relationship with Him that He created us for, and from one end of the earth to the other every heart hearing the invitation “come to the wedding!”
And may He mark each of us deeply with a personal vision to lay hold of the invitation that God is extending in our day. That our hearts might yearn to go deep in the reality of His love and enter into a relationship with Him that brings us the heights of joy and the heights of fulfillment. May we enter in to living as a Bride being made ready for Jesus – allowing Him to draw us in His love and wash us with the water of His Word. May our vision and ambition in life be no lower than His vision for us – going on a journey of love that leads us into the depths of relationship with Him.
Some Scriptures to meditate on: Eph 1:17-19, 3:14-21, 5:25-32; Rev 19:6-7; Isa 62:1-5; Jn 17:21-26
40-Day Focus: Week 1 – The Hour
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Week 1 was focused on what God is doing at this present time – in our nation and in the nations of the earth. The Lord is doing such a significant work in our day – and it’s a most needed one. We’ll be looking a lot more at its contents and where it’s going in the weeks to come, but we wanted to simply recognize what God is doing and praise Him for it, as well as throw ourselves into asking Him for more – to complete the work that He has begun.
40-Day Focus – 3/2/10 – The Hour / Praying for the Nation (12.8MB 28min)
40-Day Focus – 3/4/10 – Haiti Update / Prayer for the Nations (12.7MB 28min)
Week 1 was focused on what God is doing at this present time – in our nation and in the nations of the earth. The Lord is doing such a significant work in our day – and it’s a most needed one. We’ll be looking a lot more at its contents and where it’s going in the weeks to come, but we wanted to simply recognize what God is doing and praise Him for it, as well as throw ourselves into asking Him for more – to complete the work that He has begun.
40-Day Focus – 3/2/10 – The Hour / Praying for the Nation (12.8MB 28min)
40-Day Focus – 3/4/10 – Haiti Update / Prayer for the Nations (12.7MB 28min)
40-Day Focus: Week 1 – The Hour
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While most of this 40 days is going to be spent focused on the heartbeat of the broader move of God, I want to take this first week to lay hold of the significance of this current window of time. There is real reason to enter this 40 days with tremendous urgency… and with tremendous expectation. This is a critical hour for our nation – the signs of spiritual crisis abound, but so do the signs of a Holy Spirit answer.
Our hour of need
Opening our eyes to recognize our hour of need is not our favorite part of revival, but its a critical one. When God wants to give birth by the Spirit, He searches for the barren. It is the poor in spirit who receive the kingdom of heaven. When we are desperate for something that we have no means of obtaining except by the grace of Another, we are in the right place for God to show Himself strong. We may be in favor of revival, but are we desperate for it?
Kenneth Copeland prophesied on July 4th, 2009 that a ‘Great Awakening’ is hanging heavy over America, but it will come to the praying churches first. “And they’ll say, ‘My, revival broke out over there.’ ‘No, answered prayer broke out over there.'” This current outpouring in Kansas City can be traced back to 10 years of night and day prayer in a community that, even while ministering faithfully in the day of small beginnings, refused to quiet the cry that there must be more and instead diligently pressed in with a cry for more of God. More specifically, it came on the tailwinds of a spontaneous movement of prayer and fasting among the IHOPU students that started following a blunt analysis of America’s spiritual crisis and desperate need for revival by Daniel Lim (read a summary article here or the full transcript here). Staring in the face of our hour of need is often just the incentive we need to drop our crutches, our good ideas and our stable attendance and admit that we need God.
There is no doubt that our nation is in a moral crisis: rampant consumerism, abortion, sexual immorality, humanism and relativism have not only been fighting to define our culture, they’ve become our primary export. The most terrifying signs, though, are not the direction of the culture, but the direction of the church. As darkness in the world around increases and a generation desperately needs the light of Christ, they have not found it. The statistics on church engagement reveal a terrifying reality – church engagement is steadily and rapidly declining. Generation after generation is failing to find answers inside the church and is turning to other sources.
- Builders generation (1924-1944) – 65% church engagement
- Boomers generation (1945-1965) – 35% church engagement
- Buster generation (1966-1983) – 15% church engagement
- Bridger generation (born after 1984) – 4% church engagement
Every generation faces its giants, but for this generation staring into the face of a culture that bombards it with false ideologies on every side the real crisis is not that they are faced with problems… it’s that they have not been able to find answers in the church.
God’s provision
I am completely confident that God has the answer to the cry of this generation. More than that, I am confident that God is the answer to the cry of this generation. God wants to give this generation something more than the answers that have been offered – a smoother presentation, a friendlier theology, a more comfortable structure. God wants to give a generation the supreme answer – Himself. The power and presence of Christ is the only real answer to this generation’s problems as God is powerfully demonstrating in Kansas City. Since November 11th, the Spirit has been moving in a powerful way there particularly among the students and interns. God is delivering a generation: from low self-esteem, depression and anxiety, from addictions, sin and condemnation, from physical and spiritual bondage, a generation is experiencing the love of God and finding the freedom that comes in walking in that love.
Already, this move has touched places all across this nation and the globe through the webstream. Several college campuses have experienced the love of God, healings and boldness for evangelism as they join in. Now, after a series of prophetic leadings, IHOPU leadership is sending out the third and fourth-year students for a ministry trip among New England colleges. Over these forty days as many across the nation join in prayer and fasting for an awakening to hit America’s campuses, they will be leading prayer meetings and awakening services, and witnessing on the campuses of the Ivy League schools (more info). It is a strategic assignment from the Lord: to redeem the Ivy League schools many of which have Christian roots from the strongholds of intellectualism that have been prevailing there. What if the next generation of lawyers, doctors, politicians, teachers and leaders of all spheres walks away from their time in college having encountered God rather than high-minded humanistic philosophy? What if they take their place in society filled with the Holy Spirit rather than the empty philosophies of men?
Standing in the gap
Rarely do we get to see our options for the future so clearly – the direction this nation is headed absent a move of God, and what it would look like if a generation experiences the touch of God. It’s gaps like these that are our natural home as a kingdom of priests – to stand between a nation in desperate need of God and a God desperately longing to reach out to a nation, and to cry out for a move of God in our day – with urgency, and with expectancy.
Understanding that another Great Awakening hangs over this nation both as its desperate need and God’s chosen answer, it is not a time to sit and wait but to set our face in prayer and fasting as Daniel did (Dan 9:2-3). First because the promise is real but not yet realized, and we stand in a transitional time for this nation where we could see the great shift we need, so we press in for all of what God would give. Second because it is a transitional time for us as well – it is a time to position ourselves to be touched and to be used as the Lord moves in our day.
Lets start this fast allowing God to grip us with two realities: that we are in desperate need of nothing short of a great move of God, and that God desperately wants to give us nothing less than Himself.
These are not new, but lets focus for a week on the God who longs to answer: Joel 2:12-17,28-32; 2 Chr 7:14; Luke 11:9-13; Heb 4:1
While most of this 40 days is going to be spent focused on the heartbeat of the broader move of God, I want to take this first week to lay hold of the significance of this current window of time. There is real reason to enter this 40 days with tremendous urgency… and with tremendous expectation. This is a critical hour for our nation – the signs of spiritual crisis abound, but so do the signs of a Holy Spirit answer.
Our hour of need
Opening our eyes to recognize our hour of need is not our favorite part of revival, but its a critical one. When God wants to give birth by the Spirit, He searches for the barren. It is the poor in spirit who receive the kingdom of heaven. When we are desperate for something that we have no means of obtaining except by the grace of Another, we are in the right place for God to show Himself strong. We may be in favor of revival, but are we desperate for it?
Kenneth Copeland prophesied on July 4th, 2009 that a ‘Great Awakening’ is hanging heavy over America, but it will come to the praying churches first. “And they’ll say, ‘My, revival broke out over there.’ ‘No, answered prayer broke out over there.'” This current outpouring in Kansas City can be traced back to 10 years of night and day prayer in a community that, even while ministering faithfully in the day of small beginnings, refused to quiet the cry that there must be more and instead diligently pressed in with a cry for more of God. More specifically, it came on the tailwinds of a spontaneous movement of prayer and fasting among the IHOPU students that started following a blunt analysis of America’s spiritual crisis and desperate need for revival by Daniel Lim (read a summary article here or the full transcript here). Staring in the face of our hour of need is often just the incentive we need to drop our crutches, our good ideas and our stable attendance and admit that we need God.
There is no doubt that our nation is in a moral crisis: rampant consumerism, abortion, sexual immorality, humanism and relativism have not only been fighting to define our culture, they’ve become our primary export. The most terrifying signs, though, are not the direction of the culture, but the direction of the church. As darkness in the world around increases and a generation desperately needs the light of Christ, they have not found it. The statistics on church engagement reveal a terrifying reality – church engagement is steadily and rapidly declining. Generation after generation is failing to find answers inside the church and is turning to other sources.
- Builders generation (1924-1944) – 65% church engagement
- Boomers generation (1945-1965) – 35% church engagement
- Buster generation (1966-1983) – 15% church engagement
- Bridger generation (born after 1984) – 4% church engagement
Every generation faces its giants, but for this generation staring into the face of a culture that bombards it with false ideologies on every side the real crisis is not that they are faced with problems… it’s that they have not been able to find answers in the church.
God’s provision
I am completely confident that God has the answer to the cry of this generation. More than that, I am confident that God is the answer to the cry of this generation. God wants to give this generation something more than the answers that have been offered – a smoother presentation, a friendlier theology, a more comfortable structure. God wants to give a generation the supreme answer – Himself. The power and presence of Christ is the only real answer to this generation’s problems as God is powerfully demonstrating in Kansas City. Since November 11th, the Spirit has been moving in a powerful way there particularly among the students and interns. God is delivering a generation: from low self-esteem, depression and anxiety, from addictions, sin and condemnation, from physical and spiritual bondage, a generation is experiencing the love of God and finding the freedom that comes in walking in that love.
Already, this move has touched places all across this nation and the globe through the webstream. Several college campuses have experienced the love of God, healings and boldness for evangelism as they join in. Now, after a series of prophetic leadings, IHOPU leadership is sending out the third and fourth-year students for a ministry trip among New England colleges. Over these forty days as many across the nation join in prayer and fasting for an awakening to hit America’s campuses, they will be leading prayer meetings and awakening services, and witnessing on the campuses of the Ivy League schools (more info). It is a strategic assignment from the Lord: to redeem the Ivy League schools many of which have Christian roots from the strongholds of intellectualism that have been prevailing there. What if the next generation of lawyers, doctors, politicians, teachers and leaders of all spheres walks away from their time in college having encountered God rather than high-minded humanistic philosophy? What if they take their place in society filled with the Holy Spirit rather than the empty philosophies of men?
Standing in the gap
Rarely do we get to see our options for the future so clearly – the direction this nation is headed absent a move of God, and what it would look like if a generation experiences the touch of God. It’s gaps like these that are our natural home as a kingdom of priests – to stand between a nation in desperate need of God and a God desperately longing to reach out to a nation, and to cry out for a move of God in our day – with urgency, and with expectancy.
Understanding that another Great Awakening hangs over this nation both as its desperate need and God’s chosen answer, it is not a time to sit and wait but to set our face in prayer and fasting as Daniel did (Dan 9:2-3). First because the promise is real but not yet realized, and we stand in a transitional time for this nation where we could see the great shift we need, so we press in for all of what God would give. Second because it is a transitional time for us as well – it is a time to position ourselves to be touched and to be used as the Lord moves in our day.
Lets start this fast allowing God to grip us with two realities: that we are in desperate need of nothing short of a great move of God, and that God desperately wants to give us nothing less than Himself.
These are not new, but lets focus for a week on the God who longs to answer: Joel 2:12-17,28-32; 2 Chr 7:14; Luke 11:9-13; Heb 4:1
40-Day Focus: This Present Move of God
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As we enter this 40 days of fasting, one of my primary objectives is a heart awakened more fully to what God is doing in our day. One of the great prayers of my life is that my heart and the hearts of everyone I know would be caught up in the story of all that God has done, is doing and is going to do in the earth – the grand drama of redemption. The human spirit was created to be a part of something bigger than our own self-preservation, we long for a sense of purpose and significance that’s meant to be found in the plans and purposes of God. It’s in setting ourselves in that story that we’re prepared to see it unfold with no offense and no confusion, just a heart in awe of what God is doing and a life lived in partnership to see it done with Him.
Though we’re prone to live without giving it a moment’s thought, we are living in one of the most significant hours of history. The Greatest Story Ever Told is unfolding before our eyes its final climactic chapter… and almost nobody is paying attention… yet. What’s beginning to unfold will demand the attention of all in time, but for now it is an open invitation for any who are willing to stop what they’re doing and ask the Lord what He’s doing. Now is an opportune moment for us to step back and take in what God is doing in the earth and to not let it pass us by unnoticed. It is a glorious time to be alive and in Christ, and we are robbing ourselves if we carry on business as usual and miss what God wants to give to this generation.
When I’m speaking of this present move of God, I’m talking about something bigger than the outpouring that began in Kansas City and is now touching different places across the nation. I’m talking about something bigger, even, than what we have seen to this point of the global prayer and worship movement. There is a move of God stirring in the earth right now that promises to be one of the most significant the earth has ever seen, filling the body of Christ and the ends of the earth before it has run its course. It’s been called a prayer movement – and it is… it’s been called a worship movement – and it is… it’s been called a missions movement, a justice movement, a prophetic movement, a signs and wonders movement – and it’s all those things… but it’s bigger than that. What really defines this present movement is not what the body of Christ is doing, but what the Spirit is saying that is stirring us to do all of those things. Proverbs tells us “for lack of vision the people cast off restraint,” but let us catch sight of a little of God’s vision and you will find laborers rising up in all spheres longing to serve God’s purpose in their generation. The lifestyle of prayer and worship, and the outworkings of evangelism, prophecy, healing, missions and acts of justice are all symptoms of a particular heart condition that is beginning to spread throughout the body of Christ.
Without a doubt, it is spreading – at an “only God” rate. In 10 years time with no human oversight or planting program we have seen the emergence of hundreds if not thousands of houses of prayer where previously the concept was virtually unheard of. In 10 years more time the major missions organizations are telling us that over half a million houses of prayer will be planted throughout the earth. As we watch night and day prayer begin to cover the earth we naturally make the connection to verses like Isaiah 62:6-7 that promise the coming of watchmen who “give the Lord no rest day or night.” What’s happening behind the scenes, though, is hearts getting struck with the revelation contained in Isaiah 62:1-5 – the God who “will not rest until,” burning with a glorious agenda for the earth and its inhabitants; and the Bridegroom God who rejoices over His people, delighting in them and longing for them to be with Him in His zeal and in His rest. It’s that revelation that produces in us a burning heart, and it’s that burning heart that thrusts us into the heart of God in intimacy and into the activity of God in partnership.
This move of God is about “until.” It’s about a Bride made ready, a harvest from every tongue and tribe and nation, and a people prepared for the Lord. Its heartbeat is a fiery core of revelation: of the Bridegroom God who is zealous for His people, of the Church’s identity as the Bride of Christ, and of where it’s all going as the King prepares a wedding for His Son. It’s that Spirit-breathed revelation, identity and purpose that is sparking what is taking shape in various streams all across the earth… and it’s that same heart that has the power to touch and shape not just a minority movement of intercessors and worshipers, but the entire body of Christ and the whole of church life… and it’s that heart burning within the church that then equips us to begin lighting fires of change in our communities and our nation. For these 40 days we are setting ourselves before those fires of revelation and asking the Spirit to breathe upon them that our hearts might burn still more and more.
As we enter this 40 days of fasting, one of my primary objectives is a heart awakened more fully to what God is doing in our day. One of the great prayers of my life is that my heart and the hearts of everyone I know would be caught up in the story of all that God has done, is doing and is going to do in the earth – the grand drama of redemption. The human spirit was created to be a part of something bigger than our own self-preservation, we long for a sense of purpose and significance that’s meant to be found in the plans and purposes of God. It’s in setting ourselves in that story that we’re prepared to see it unfold with no offense and no confusion, just a heart in awe of what God is doing and a life lived in partnership to see it done with Him.
Though we’re prone to live without giving it a moment’s thought, we are living in one of the most significant hours of history. The Greatest Story Ever Told is unfolding before our eyes its final climactic chapter… and almost nobody is paying attention… yet. What’s beginning to unfold will demand the attention of all in time, but for now it is an open invitation for any who are willing to stop what they’re doing and ask the Lord what He’s doing. Now is an opportune moment for us to step back and take in what God is doing in the earth and to not let it pass us by unnoticed. It is a glorious time to be alive and in Christ, and we are robbing ourselves if we carry on business as usual and miss what God wants to give to this generation.
When I’m speaking of this present move of God, I’m talking about something bigger than the outpouring that began in Kansas City and is now touching different places across the nation. I’m talking about something bigger, even, than what we have seen to this point of the global prayer and worship movement. There is a move of God stirring in the earth right now that promises to be one of the most significant the earth has ever seen, filling the body of Christ and the ends of the earth before it has run its course. It’s been called a prayer movement – and it is… it’s been called a worship movement – and it is… it’s been called a missions movement, a justice movement, a prophetic movement, a signs and wonders movement – and it’s all those things… but it’s bigger than that. What really defines this present movement is not what the body of Christ is doing, but what the Spirit is saying that is stirring us to do all of those things. Proverbs tells us “for lack of vision the people cast off restraint,” but let us catch sight of a little of God’s vision and you will find laborers rising up in all spheres longing to serve God’s purpose in their generation. The lifestyle of prayer and worship, and the outworkings of evangelism, prophecy, healing, missions and acts of justice are all symptoms of a particular heart condition that is beginning to spread throughout the body of Christ.
Without a doubt, it is spreading – at an “only God” rate. In 10 years time with no human oversight or planting program we have seen the emergence of hundreds if not thousands of houses of prayer where previously the concept was virtually unheard of. In 10 years more time the major missions organizations are telling us that over half a million houses of prayer will be planted throughout the earth. As we watch night and day prayer begin to cover the earth we naturally make the connection to verses like Isaiah 62:6-7 that promise the coming of watchmen who “give the Lord no rest day or night.” What’s happening behind the scenes, though, is hearts getting struck with the revelation contained in Isaiah 62:1-5 – the God who “will not rest until,” burning with a glorious agenda for the earth and its inhabitants; and the Bridegroom God who rejoices over His people, delighting in them and longing for them to be with Him in His zeal and in His rest. It’s that revelation that produces in us a burning heart, and it’s that burning heart that thrusts us into the heart of God in intimacy and into the activity of God in partnership.
This move of God is about “until.” It’s about a Bride made ready, a harvest from every tongue and tribe and nation, and a people prepared for the Lord. Its heartbeat is a fiery core of revelation: of the Bridegroom God who is zealous for His people, of the Church’s identity as the Bride of Christ, and of where it’s all going as the King prepares a wedding for His Son. It’s that Spirit-breathed revelation, identity and purpose that is sparking what is taking shape in various streams all across the earth… and it’s that same heart that has the power to touch and shape not just a minority movement of intercessors and worshipers, but the entire body of Christ and the whole of church life… and it’s that heart burning within the church that then equips us to begin lighting fires of change in our communities and our nation. For these 40 days we are setting ourselves before those fires of revelation and asking the Spirit to breathe upon them that our hearts might burn still more and more.
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