The State of OUR union
As I write here for the first time in 8 weeks please know my silence has not been because of a lack of time or subject. About mid-December I wrote about one-anothering and then I sensed deep in my spirit something closing. I sensed it was the Lord saying not to write again until the new year. Well, for the last 8 years I have started the new year with some form of fast. This year our church family did a 21-day fast and then I felt the Lord asking me for more. So, after doing a Daniel fast (basically fruits and veggies only) for 21 days, the Lord called me into a 9-day liquid only fast. Fasting always brings the greatest God-given clarity and I have learned in my own experience that there are two types of general results that come from corporate fast. (I’m not saying that others don’t exist; I am simply speaking from my personal experiences.)
The first result is the momentum-creating, promise-filled fast where dreams and visions flood the body with specific revelations for those involved in that local church family. God gives clarity to things He has already said, or He reveals what He is about to do. This first result is celebratory and empowering, with evident revelation from God.
The second, though also certainly marked by revelation from God, is a much harder fast. Not hard because I was doing liquid only over my daughter’s birthday celebrations where I missed Huey’s Burgers and an Anne Mullins birthday cake, or the fact that the Super bowl was the following night and blending up pizza doesn’t work like you would think. No - the thing that makes this fast hard is that God reveals things in the body that He desires to be laid down and sacrificed. This type of revelation is a hard diagnosis and painful surgery all wrapped into one Holy Illumination from the Father. If you haven’t figured it out yet, let me be clear: I’m on day 7 of a liquid only fast that just followed a 21 day Daniel Fast and my heart is full yet heavy because of the revelation the Lord has given me.
I took the first 21 days off of all social media and these last 7 I added Facebook back into my life. Then a couple of days ago I came across a video where I fell in. You know those videos right? This is not someone you would ever choose or search out to listen to but it showed up and I took the bait. It was this guy ranting about everything. I think I agreed with him on most topics? But in the video, he read a “prophetic word” someone had given the week before the Super bowl. This “prophetic word” juxtaposed the morality of San Fransisco against the morality of Kansas City. It went on to say that, if KC won the game, revival would breakout in America. As I began to process how that didn’t mesh with the Holy Spirit in me because of how selfish and short-sighted it was, I felt with great clarity the Lord say, “You know, you have terms you dictate to me also.”
Let me be super clear: I would love to see revival. But in an intimate relationship with a Holy God who desires for repentance and works sanctification in the individual believer, there is plenty that needs to be revived in me, much less the nation. I don’t think God minds us praying and begging for revival, but I do think He minds it when He is trying to illuminate something in my own life that needs to be dealt with and I ignore it for more time to pray for revival in our country.
Dear Church, it is like God is graciously slowing His anger while pointing out something we need to deal with and we are putting our fingers in our ears and screaming “SEND REVIVAL!” over and over again. It is so in the church and is playing out in our government as well. We are screaming at each other over policies, laws, beliefs and theologies and The Father is trying to speak. Why are we doing this?
There is another gospel that we fall into often. It’s the gospel according to me. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that as long as Godbis the majority, holding 51% of my life, me and my terms are “supposed to” live in the minority. So, in this gospel according to me, I still own 49% of the vote. I can still claim “Your will be done”, but only by a few swing states and sometimes I even claim the majority vote depending on the topic.
Let me give you a few examples. “God, of course your will be done for me and my family as long as we are protected and provided for.” or “You can have it all Lord but I’m too busy to live life with others because of work and my family comes first.”
So here is a genuine, Holy Spirit “prophetic word” for the global body of believers in 2020:
13-15 It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?
16-18 My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don’t you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
19-21 It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.
The Kingdom of God is at its most powerful when I am not gratifying my self and my own desires AT ALL! Denying self a little is great but denying your wants and desires FULLY is what ushers in God’s Kingdom. I am not talking about pizza in a blender. I am not even talking about denying yourself food like in a fast. A fast is designed to put the flesh under subjection to the Holy Spirit. This Galatians 5 passage is talking about that same thing! What you want to believe about prophesies, theologies, interpretation of scripture, Trump, Pelosi, JLo, or Shakira - none of this is what our Father is calling for us to discuss. It is this simple. Walk by the Spirit or you will gratify the things God despises. Let’s not spin our wheels with praying for revival, or fretting over how corrupt this world is . . . because I am in it. The state of our union with the Spirit will dictate the state of the union.