What can we do to help bring and sustain Revival in Amrerica?
God knew before the foundations of the earth what the world would look like in 2021. Certainly, he is not in heaven wringing his hands nor is he wrought with anxiety. If God’s not worried, I shouldn’t be – but I was. I was concerned about my finances, about my career, about being a “good enough” Christian, about whether or not I was doing enough to be who I should be according to society.
I repented and focused again on who God said I was. I knew he wasn’t stressed about the state of our world (or my life) so I asked him how I could partner with him and thus began a conversation I didn’t expect. We walked and talked for what seemed like hours and in this conversation, he shared many things about the Church, including the intentionality and heart behind our actions.
Without a doubt, God has been moving in the prophetic in ways that are unprecedented. While it has historically been the church relying on one person/Prophet/Pastor to give a word, we are now walking in a place where God is speaking directly to each one of us – and it’s just the beginning. No longer will we be dependent on a specific person to hear from God but we will all learn from God himself, and as initially intended, we will all teaching each other the different things we’ve been learning.
God showed me that the prophetic is what will break open the hearts of this generation. Before we get into the why and how of it, come with me on a quick detour to explore the emotional and mental health of our nation as it stands. I’ve been working in the Mental Health field for over 10 years and I’ve been working on my own mental health for the last 20 years. Without turning this into a research paper, I will simply share a few statistics. In 2019, the United States had 23% of children (0-17 y/o) growing up in single-parent households; highest percentage internationally. Add to this the outrageous impact social media has on this generation. Cyber bullying and trafficking happening over a T1 line and most of us are blissfully (?) unaware of it. Simply put – this generation is CRAVING identity. They want to be seen, known, and valued (hence the copious amounts of social media posts as well as time spent on said social media apps). When you don’t know your identity, you are far more vulnerable to all the things vying for your attention.
The prophetic is used in order to exhort, edify and encourage the hearer. When God uses us to give words of knowledge and speak into the core things of people’s lives, God is saying, “I SEE YOU! I KNOW YOU! I LOVE YOU!” On the other end of the spectrum, we have many people going to psychics, palm readers, mentalists, etc. trying to understand what to do for their future or how to proceed. They are very much the counterfeit to what God has to offer. God wants to break in to this generation with a greater move of the prophetic than ever before because he is jealous for His people and he will take it back.
So where do we come in? Obviously we have our Sunday night prophetic services, we have our Thursday bible studies and now we have our Wednesday nights in person in Pasadena but many of our faithful Practical Supernatural crew are not local. How can we be part of what God is doing in the nation? You are situated exactly where you’re supposed to be (West Coast, East Coast, even across the pond) and you can help usher in this new move of the prophetic right where you are. One of this things we can do is to prophecy every chance you get. James challenges us to do this all the time and I’ll admit, it was a struggle. It wasn’t even a fear of man of getting it wrong, or looking like a fool. 90% of the time, I just couldn’t be bothered to. I was in my own headspace and either I didn’t see them or I didn’t want to. I was more worried about myself and what I was doing/thinking about to make space for God to move. God has been praying for a long time that we would have eyes to see, ears to hear and a heart to understand.
“Their minds are dull and slow to perceive, their ears are plugged and are hard of hearing, and they have deliberately shut their eyes to the truth. Otherwise they would open their eyes to see, and open their ears to hear, and open their minds to understand. Then they would turn to me and I would instantly heal them.“
-Matthew 13:15 (TPT); emphasis added
How long have we been walking around blinded TO the glory of God, instead of being reverently blinded BY the glory of God? The prophetic is the opening act. An accurate prophetic word is just a shoe in for God to do the rest. This encounter with the very heart of Love Himself will break down walls and just like that – God has access to a part of their heart that he didn’t before. But He does this with great gentleness and kindness. God will never embarrass you or expose you. The best way I’ve heard it say is that God reveals to heal. I had an experience recently where I was truly terrified that God would reveal this really deep, scary heart issue to someone so they could pray for me. This person prayed for me but did so only in tongues because God wanted to respect my choice for privacy. God’s kindness is almost offensive. If you’ve experienced his kindness, you know what I mean. He is extravagant in his love for us and relentless in his pursuit of our whole heart.
This is becoming a 2-part blog so I’ll round it out here but I will leave you with a few things to consider. The world is starved for identity, attention and belonging and they are finding it in many places but unfortunately the church is not one of the top go-to’s for that in America. They join a club, athletics, or even a gang to validate who they are and their experiences. Why is the Church not a go to? Let’s be honest; the Church in America has been so quick to judge and even in their best efforts, sometimes the Church has hurt more than helped those who are already hurting. By judging them we have invalidated them. We have told them we’re better than them. We’ve told them that they have to be a certain way in order to belong. If this has been your experience in the Church, I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.
In my next blog, I’ll talk about some ways that the church can be better at loving and healing this generation.
Prophetic Encyclopedia 