Category: Uncategorized

Do you listen to what you say, to how you respond, to what comes out of your mouth? Or do you only remember what someone else says? Or for those who think it but don’t say it, are you paying attention to what you are thinking?

Proverbs 16:1 says, “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.” How we respond to things matters to the Lord, whether that is verbal or thought response. Are you listening to yourself, so you can know what is inside of you?

We think we know what we believe, what we love, who we are, but if we really listen to ourselves, we will discover things about ourselves we may not like or things we may absolutely love about ourselves. I have a friend who is a great listener and she is so good at listening and gives me so much grace, I hear things I say. When I hear things I say, I evaluate where that came from and then make the appropriate adjustments in the way of forgiveness, understanding or even a sharp course correction.

I was in a conversation with her yesterday and I realized I was shadow boxing with old voices in a new conversation. I was saddened by my response to the love that was being shown me, because I could not get past the old voices that were assaulting me. I share this because during this season there is a lot of shadow boxing we do as people and we need to listen carefully to what comes out of our mouth, for the answer/response of the tongue is from the Lord. Meaning the Lord wants us to pay attention to our responses.

If you don’t like what is coming out of your mouth, ask the Lord what is inside your heart that you cannot see. Self-evaluation is a gift we need to give ourselves this Christmas, for we all need to listen to what we say more than what others are saying, for our response reveals more about us than them. Adjustments always make us feel better.

The body of Christ is going to have a renewing of the mind, an upgrade of our spiritual operating system of the likes that is going to allow us to operate by design. There have been theological viruses that have slowed down our processing, our comprehension and our authority as His body. This upgrade is going to take some time to take root, but it is going to be such a powerful change that happens in us, that we are long overdue for.

Many prophetic voices have been declaring, new wineskins, new blueprints, new new new, yes it will be new, but it is an upgrade that is going to fix bugs, remove bad theologies and gives us new ways of thinking, processing and effectively advancing the kingdom of God on earth. There will be new teachers arising with fresh revelation; there will be new defintions of terms that we have been taught, and there will be an ease of breathing for the body of Christ. God has sent an anti-virus to the body of Christ who has been bogged down by an anti-Christ virus.

Psalm 115 says, “The heavens are the LORD’S heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.” God is in charge of the heavens and man is in charge of the earth. It is a co-governing relationship. Is it any wonder Jesus said in Matthew 6, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We are called to co-govern with God, He is governing the heavens and we are called to govern the earth. The idea of being governors is going to be a new idea for most of the body of Christ. This is not a call for certain people to govern, but for the body of Christ to govern the earth.

Remember Matthew 16:18 says, Jesus said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Then Proverbs 14:19 says, “The evil will bow down before the good, and the wicked at the gates of the righteous.” Earth is not going to surrender to the wicked any more, the wicked are bowing down before the righteous for righteousness is exalting the nations (Proverbs 14:34). This is all part of the body of Christ governing the earth, as God Himself governs the heavens. This co-governing is going to cause earth to live in the order of God just like heaven does, but it is going to take a mindset change in the body of Christ.

A brief word of warning as the year draws to an end and great things are about to begin. God has spoken powerful promises to so many in the body of Christ, hope is rising again, joy is being restored, anticipation is arising and the tide is turning. We are stepping into possibly the best days of our lives individually, as a family, as a community, as a nation and as the nations. The air is ripe with anticipation and it is not the Christmas Spirit, it is the Holy Spirit releasing good news in so many ways. I, like so many of you, are so ready for the last era, season, epoch, decade to come to a close and the new to commence.

Just like in giving birth, the excitement that this nine months of carrying this baby to term gives way to a final push, a final stage of contractions, a final stage or rushing to hospital, a final stage or tests, epidurals, c-section preparations or natural birth breathing, the final stage must happen before the sound of birth is heard. This is where we are. In this final stage, many circumstances are going to surround us, scream for our attention and try to get us to make bad decisions, say stupid things and they are coming to squeeze us so we don’t exit the old and enter the new well.

We must not deviate from the word of the Lord in this hour. It is the final hour before a glorious day, but we must remain faithful to the word of the Lord in order to end the last season well and enter the new season well. In 1 Samuel 13, circumstances got the best of King Saul and it cost him greatly, “Samuel said, “What have you done?” And Saul said, “When I saw that the people were scattering from me, and that you did not come within the days appointed, and that the Philistines had mustered at Michmash, I said, ‘Now the Philistines will come down against me at Gilgal, and I have not sought the favor of the LORD.’ So I forced myself, and offered the burnt offering.” And Samuel said to Saul, “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which he commanded you.”

The opportunity through surrounding circumstances may come over the the next month to get us to act foolishly, but this is a preemptive warning this may come and when it does, hang on with both hands to the word of the Lord no matter what the circumstances scream at you. Don’t let go, push my friends, press, endure, we are about to be birthed into the new and we are going to see and be all God has promised, but we must make it through this final push. Don’t deviate from what God has spoke to you in the secret now, for the circumstances are going to scream, the word of God is late, do it your way, but the Lord of heaven and earth is still whispering I Am Yahweh! I do not lie, wait just one more minute. Everything is about to change.

We have been told we are to lay our crowns down at the feet of Jesus. This idea comes from a scene described in Revelation 4 where it says, “Around the throne were twenty four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty four elders, clothed in white garment, with golden crowns on their heads.” The scene continues with a view of majesty that culminates with “The twenty four elders falling down before Him who is seated on the throne and worshipping Him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne saying, Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.” I don’t know about you, but I have been taught those crowns are something on my head that I take off and lay at his feet.

I am not here to tell you what to think or believe, but this morning while reading Proverbs 12, which I read every month on the twelfth day of each month and have done this for years. Today, this chapter unlocked for me a revelation I will never forget. Verse four says, “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones.” While I have always thought I was taking off some crown in worship to lay it at the feet of Jesus, the Lord showed me this morning that we are the crown, it is not some object on our head, it is us, I am the crown, you are the crown on His head.

Crown in both Revelation which is Greek and Proverbs which is Hebrew means a symbol of power and authority. This means, we, the wife of God, the bride of Christ are the crown, we are His authority and power. When we operate in a spirit of excellence, which means financial, military and numerical influence, we are the crown on His head. So, when Revelation 4 says we cast our crowns down at His feet for He is worthy to receive, we are actually laying ourselves down at His feet for He is the only King and we are His crown. What an honor to be the crown of God, an excellent wife!

I sat down to pray today and immediately I sensed the pull of the Hebrew year 5785 waiting on the Gregorian year 2025. I thought this was an odd unction, but I leaned into it and the numbers began to prophesy to me. The good news began to flood my spirit as I listened to the heart of God for this coming convergence of the two years, 5785 and 2025. It reminded me of what it says in Hebrews 11:39-40 speaking of those who died in faith before us, “And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.” God is perfecting something in the convergence of these two years.

2025 as a Strongs Concordance number in Hebrew means “mountain of God” and in Greek means “to anoint, to smear”. Immediately I hear the Holy Spirit whisper, Isaiah 2. Verse 2 says, “It shall come to pass in the latter days
that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it.” The whole chapter is powerful, the good news is beyond and the Lord is declaring this is going to be a mountain of God year for us. We can see it in the hunger of people already crying out to know the word of God, but it is going to build and build and build like a swelling wave this year.

Isaiah 2 leads to Daniel 2 which says, “As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” Oh yes, this is what we are going to see as these two years converge.

But there is one more piece to this beautiful, exciting, rejoicable puzzle. I leaned in again and the Holy Spirit said, “20 + 2 + 5 =27, Isaiah 27”. I wrote this down and then looked it up, you can’t make this stuff up friends, listen to Isaiah 27 says “In that day” is spoken five times, here is the first one, “In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.” And here is the fifth one, “In that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain at Jerusalem.” Judgment on Babylon and restoration of exiles, it doesn’t get any better than this.

5785 is converging very soon with 2025 and when they do, it is going to release a mountain of God, kingdom of God, move of God, of the likes that is going to remove wickedness, exalt righteousness and no stone will be left unturned as the presence and power of God sweeps through the nations and heals lands and peoples in a way we have never seen before. This is not local, this is global and it is beyond all we can ask, think or imagine.

When we pray without an agenda, a list, or a problem, the Lord will begin to show us things we could not know about Himself, us and others. The Lord never speaks to us in a way that tears us down, He is always correcting us up. The enemy wants to push our face in the mud, criticize us for our mistakes and have us sit in the muck and mire of madness. Knowing whose voice is speaking to us will help us resist the voice or submit to the voice. The voice we resist is to be the voice of the enemy that is out to destroy us, the voice we should submit to is the voice that is out to build us. When both voices are vying for our attention, it is important to slow down, be still and let God sift out the truth from the lies, so we can move forward not sink back into half-truths, or bold faced lies.

In light of this, the Lord went on to speak to me about us being the temple of the Holy Spirit and how just Iike Nehemiah 3 said, there are twelve gates around our temple. The Lord highlighted two of those gates to me today. One is the dung gate. This is not a popular gate for people to discuss, but it is a needed gate in our lives. The dung gate was a place of waste disposal and it was located in a concealed location. This gate is where we take out the trash in our lives. We dispose of the lies spoken over us, about us. But we don’t do it publicly we do it privately. Everyone has a dung gate, everyone has trash that needs to be taken out of their temple. When we are privy to other people’s trash we need to help them find the dung gate so they can get rid of it, for it is stinking up their temple.

The second gate the Lord highlighted to me is the East gate. This is the gate we need to open in our lives and in other people’s lives. This is the gate where the king of glory comes in. This is also known as the Gate Beautiful where the lame man was healed in Acts 4. This is the gate where the presence and glory of God comes into our lives. We need to open the east gate of our life, so the presence of God can fill the temple of our Iives with glory. We need to pray this gate open in the lives of people we love, for only the presence of God can heal us. It is time to open up the gates so the waste can be taken out and the glory can come in.

Walking the dog in our neighborhood park this morning yielded a truth I had not considered before. It rained last night, not just a mist or a drizzle but a lot of water fell from the sky. The sound of the wind blowing, the tree branches snapping and the drops hitting the window made it clear this was not a gentle spring rain. When the night ended and the sun began to rise, the evidence of the night before was on the ground all around us at the park. Puddles on the path and in the pasture both yielded an understanding of how much it actually rained. The sound of the creek to my right, which is normally a trickle was rushing water heard even though not seen.

The birds were singing, the squirrels were scampering, the sun was rising and the dog and I were just absorbing all that was around us in great delight. It is the simple things of creation that calibrate the soul to a reality that is not seen. Creation does not sin, so the pace it keeps and the consistency it demonstrates is identifiable. The reason humanity is chaotic, inconsistent and in conflict rather than rest is because of sin. Sin distorts our view of others, sin strangles us in the grip of fear, sin causes us to miss truth in order to hang on to a lie. Sin is exhausting.

Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” The truth is, when we let creation recalibrate us, we find rest we long for, we hear sounds that bring us back to truth that sets us free, and we are invited into the consistency and vibrancy that creation is declaring all around us. What we need is a walk in the park alone in order to recalibrate who we are in Christ, the sinless Lamb of God.

The Bible is like a treasure hunt, you read and read and read, then all of the sudden a jewel begins to shine and as you lean into the shining, it opens up a revelation that brings clarification to a situation. Bill Johnson says it this way, “I read until I get a revelation.” I think we as people limit our reading to how long a devotional says we should read, a bible plan says we should read, or even our schedule says we should read. Unfortunately, these do not produce the fruit that revelation produces in us and then eventually we lose the desire to read our bibles. What if we tried to read until we got a revelation? I wonder how that would change our love for the word of God.

This morning I was reading 1 Samuel 5 and it speaks of how the ark of God was captured by the enemies of God and taken into the house of their god. It says, “The Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.” While reading this the Holy Spirit showed me, one how there is no competition between the living God and the dead idols. No matter where the ark was placed, it remained superior to any other idol, even in that idols own temple. Yahweh is alive and He is powerful.

The second thought the Holy Spirit shared with me is how when we worship idols, dead things, we must serve them, maintain them, pick them up, put them back in their place. Living people serving dead idols sounds absurd, but we do this all the time. We realize Yahweh is knocking over our idols, but we pick them up and put them right back in the place they fell from and continue to serve them. Idols can’t serve us, they can’t love us, they can’t help us, yet we continue to pick them up and put them back in their place.

God is knocking over idols in our hearts, churches, cities, and nation. From household idols to national idols, God is knocking them over. Our job is to recognize what God is doing and not go in behind God and set back in place what God is knocking down, because if we set it back up, God will knock it down again but this time it is going to be broken beyond repair. “So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the LORD, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.”

May we not pick up the idols God is knocking over. May we recognize what God is knocking over and realize that God is raising up the living and dealing with the dead things in our lives, so we can truly live. He is the God of the living not the dead and He is offering us life and life abundantly.

Maybe it’s because it was 18 degrees outside this morning when the crisp cool air hit my face, my dog who was in his hoodie ready as we went for our daily walk. Maybe it’s because the theme of the fire of God has been so prevelant in the charismatic church. Maybe it’s because I love the sound of fire crackling in a fireplace or at a fire pit. Maybe it is because fire both purifies and consumes. Or maybe it is because I love the imagery of the fire of God that fell on Pentecost. Whatever the maybe is for me or the maybe is for you, the truth is today, Psalm 97 says “Fire goes before him and burns up his adversaries all around.” And I just love this truth!

We know from biblical history that when Israel inquired of God about who should go first in battle, the answer was Judah. Judah was the tribe that would lead the way in battle, not with swords, but with praise. They would lead the army into battle with songs of praise, declaring who Yahweh was, is and will be for them. Praise is a weapon that exalts the character qualities of our God; praise declares who He is to us, who He has been for us and who He will be to us. Praise makes it known we are not self-sufficient but God dependent.

Now putting Psalm 97’s fire that goes before, goes first and consumes all His enemies with Judah as praise going first, the Holy Spirit said, “Praise is the fire that consumes the adversaries of God.” I immediately saw Gideon with his army of 300 carrying torches and shofars into battle; I saw Moses at the burning bush before going to Pharoh; I saw Elijah on Mount Carmel with one altar soaked in water calling down fire. Fire goes before the Lord and consumes His adversaries. Praise is the fire of God that defeats the enemy before we even set foot on the battlefield.

I pray you can see the fire of God coming out of your mouth as you praise the Lord. I pray you can hear the crackling of fire as you sing of the goodness of God. I pray you open wide your mouth, lift high your hands and fling wide your heart as you shout praise to the Lord. For there is fire in your praise and the adversaries of God are being consumed with every word of praise you speak, sing, shout, declare or whisper. Praise is the fire of God that consumes the enemy on every side.

When I lived in Kansas City, I would pray outside in my backyard every morning. I remember the day when I was in prayer and the all of creation came alive to me. I felt like I was in a fairy tale, for the trees came alive, the birds and their songs came alive, the grass was alive, the creek was speaking life, all in unison, all of creation. I thought at that time if I tell anyone what I am seeing, hearing and feeling they will think I am new age or crazy. I kept it to myself, but will never forget that day when everything was alive in a way that I could not explain but I saw, heard and felt.

I am reading Psalm 96 and creation is rejoicing in the idea of God coming to earth to judge His people in righteousness and the question rises in my spirit, what does creation know that people don’t? What does creation hear that people can’t? What does creation see that people are blind to? We know dogs can hear sounds people can’t; we know birds can see things people can’t; we know water retains memories; creation is powerful and so when creation speaks, I am learning to listen.

Here is what creation hears in Psalm 95 “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his faithfulness.” Creation knows the judgment of God is a time to rejoice, not be afraid.

As all of this is happening in my spirit, the song Joy To The World starts going off inside of me and it echoes Psalm 95 in a way I never knew it could.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love.

When we see the judgment of God happening it is not a time to fear, it is a time to rejoice, for creation is not afraid of God’s judgment, creation actually welcomes it. Creation knows something we don’t about God and about us. It is long past time we listen to creation (nature) for it is telling us “The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” (Romans 8:20-21). We are in a season of rejoicing, let us rejoice for all of creation is being liberated from corruption, us along with creation together.