There are some words God gives that are words for months, or even seasons, and others that are more. Words that you carry with you because you were branded by them and you know they won’t just be something you pour out for a season but for a lifetime. The word I’m about to share feels personal to me, and I’ve been processing it and wrestling it, and while part of a much larger conversation and deeper revelation I feel this is a word for the hour to the church because He is readying his bride for incredible and crucial days to come. Get ready church, God is getting us into shape because our greatest days are truly ahead of us!
A NEW ERA & A CALL HIGHER
Two words that have been burning in my spirit for months now is FAMILY & NATIONS as God has been downloading the most glorious heavenly blueprints of the churches “Isaiah 60” era in action. It has caused a new hunger and passion to rise up in me for what God showed me is coming. God kept saying to me that this is the time of family and nations as if they were the same entity. I think we as the body of Christ have always put family on one spectrum and the call to nations on the other but He was saying to me to stitch them back together where religion tore them apart. This is an hour of FAMILY & NATIONS and God is both breathing fresh upon families and the family of God (the church), bringing maturity, healing, and authenticity back, and He is also igniting the call of the ECCLESIA to the NATIONS!
In my heart this call is the one and the same. Imagine if the same presence and glory that we experience around the kitchen table gets released to the nations and affects whole cities? What if the conversations with our kids to God at bedtime become prayers that spark global movements? What if the nights of laying on our backs in the lounge rooms and church floors worshiping become the revival that sends the lost to their knees?
There is a commissioning happening right now but there is also a deep preparation-taking place to ready us for the days ahead. That’s what all the warfare and opposition you have faced has been over! This is the commodity that is worth so much and this is why you as a child of God, a royal priesthood and holy nation, royalty, and heir of nations have been in the battle of your life and the greatest preparation season we have known!
God is calling the lost home, the orphan home, the exiles home, the outcasts home, and He has been bringing great reformation to the family of God to accomodate them. The harvest will need a home to belong to! But equally God has been arming the ecclesia, readying the troops, and calling us higher from a local “metron” mindset to a global one. From discipling communities to preparing to disciple and influence nations.
This is not just the hour of the family unit but also the hour of unity in the churches where God is healing divides and causing the family of God to come together which will unleash a blessing so we will see the nations come to Jesus!
THE RULING SWORD & THE RENDING SWORD
A month ago I was in worship in my room when I went into a vision and saw myself holding a sword out as you would do in battle. Instantly I thought “Wow this is the reigning sword for the nations!” and I felt the power and authority in it. This was the ruling sword God was placing in the hands of the church to bring nations into alignment and see injustices fall. But then I watched as in the vision the sword began to turn anti-clockwise towards me until the point was pressed up against my heart. Suddenly I felt like the fire of heaven was hot on me and God began speaking” Will this generation be a lover of themselves or will they be a people set apart unto me?” “Who will be my Holy ones, my separated ones? Who will defy the culture of today and stand apart? Who will choose my mountain over the mountain of man's achievements? Who will be my Holy ones?”
After this night I truly haven’t been the same since. This deep cry of the Lord's desire this generation was revealed as plain as day. God wants to use this generation for great governmental and cultural change, walking in power and miracles, signs, and wonders, but first He is looking for a people who will say yes to the RENDING sword of Holiness. Those who will choose to make themselves low so he could be made great.
“Rend your heart and not your garments and return to the Lord!” Joel 2:13
So let the cry of this hour be “God rend our hearts! Have your way in us!”
THE GREATER GLORY & THE WHOLE BRIDE
Two weeks ago I was in church when I had an encounter that was unlike any other I have ever had. I had my eyes closed when I saw in a vision the king of glory walking through the middle aisle of the building. It was the King in all of His majesty and glory. The train of His robe was filling the temple and it was majestic, and for a moment I was just in awe and wonder over what I was seeing. His presence was so thick and weighty. Then my awe and wonder began to turn to this incredible fear of the Lord and reverence that I haven’t experienced like that before. I could barely breathe. It was more than I could handle.
I remember similar moments back in 2007 and 2008 when I was working for Pastor Benny Hinn and the Glory of God was so thick and weighty and the reverential fear of the Lord was so intense in the room you didn’t want to move a finger and all you could do was weep in his presence. This was like that. As I was kneeling on the floor all I could do was sing “Holy, holy”, I kept hearing these two passages of scripture resounding in my spirit;
“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke” Isaiah 6:1-4
“And to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” Ephesians 5:27
I went home that night and I was a mess, and felt the cry of the Fathers heart to see a WHOLE bride, a spotless bride, one that was not in bondage to this world and one that was deeply and madly in love with the bridegroom, not the things of this world. Since that night I have been experiencing the reverential fear of the Lord on a daily basis and daily hearing the song “I’m coming back to the heart of worship” as God right now calls us back to a deeper place of intimacy and shedding of the war wounds and the contaminants of the past. I knew what I experienced that night was a holy moment but it was also a declaration over the season that God was coming in might and power and glory to ready us for the days to come where we need to be whole.
God is bringing great deliverance to the house of God right now because we can’t keep being the broken, battered, down and out bride, beat up by the enemy and more experienced with defeat than in victory. No, that’s changing in Jesus name!
THE SHAKING AND THE RISING
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘And in this place I will grant peace,’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Haggai 2:6-9
Many have been prophesying for a while now that this is a greater glory season in the same way this is a new wine season. But in the same way the new wine ruptures the old wineskin, the greater glory not only causes us to arise and shine as Gods glorious church but it reveals the lesser glory we have been building upon. His greater glory in this season is coming to reveal faulty foundations and give us strong foundations for us to build upon in the days to come. Just like the verse above says “the doorposts and thresholds shook”, God is shaking, shaking, shaking all that needs to be shaken so that all that remains is what is beneficial for us as His bride to see His kingdom done on earth as it is in heaven! It’s a tall order if you are comfortable and complacent but right now God is releasing the invitation and stirring up his church to abandon the safety of the shore and choose Him at all costs.
We have to divorce our love with self, with this world, even with our consumerist Christianity and worship of celebrities. We can’t keep making golden calves out of people. God wants to be our only love and focus and He is calling us to leave the burning ship of religion behind for the greater glory - for the KING of glory. But this shaking is only causing a TSUNAMI OF GLORY to fill your life as you have allowed God access and full abandon to the process. The same goes for the nations; there has been a shaking but His Glory is flooding the earth in a way we have not seen before. It’s a shaking that has caused false or weak structures to fall, a major changing of the guard, and the restoration of the simplicity and power of the gospel, but the fruit is that the nations are beginning to the taste of the majesty of Jesus!
The greatest export of this shaking season is the refinement of Gold, the purity, and the rising of an army of holy lovers, a whole and free bride, and an ecclesia with fire in their eyes with their eyes set on their inheritance. NONE of the shaking has gone to waste but has only produced in you the fruit you are about to see. This is a new era, and you can either be bedazzled and distracted by the chaos of the shaking or you can fix your eyes on Jesus and celebrate what He is doing in the earth. It’s time for the greater glory!
RISE UP HOLY ONES, RISE UP MIGHTY ARMY, RISE UP FAMILY OF GOD, THIS IS YOUR HOUR OF COMMISSIONING! THIS IS YOUR ERA TO ARISE & SHINE!