I AM Shuffling the Deck

Tags

church, Injustice, Justice, leadership, Racism, Society, Voice

When you buy a brand new deck of cards, they come color coordinated. All the hearts are together, all the diamonds are together, all the spades are together and all the clubs are together. Even the hearts and the diamonds are next to one another and the spades and the clubs are all side by side in a brand new deck of cards. There is something about us as human beings that likes to be around people who have the same color as us. To take it a step further, we tend to be suspicious of people who are of a different color than us. So, this prophetic word God gave me about a month ago has finally made sense to me, God said, “I Am shuffling the deck.”

Revelation 12:7-12, says, “And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, ⁸ but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.”

Did you know the Greek word for accuser is kategoros, which is where we get the English word, categories? The enemy, the devil, Satan himself seeks to bring division by putting us into categories. Black or white; rich or poor; slave or free; spiritual or sinner; Democrat or Republican; Baptist or Pentecostal; leader or laity; the number of categories that we have been placed into us beyond naming, and the goal of categories from the enemy, the accusers standpoint is so we are divided. Division is the goal of the enemy and what we are seeing on the earth right now is the highlighting of categories or can I say division.

God said, “I Am shuffling the deck.” When we rise up in anger based on injustices we see, the enemy, the accuser is right there to egg us on to strengthen the categories. If the media highlights a mistake that Trump makes, the categorically Hillary supporters jump on the band wagon and character assault Trump, if Clinton and the DNC fire someone, then the enemy eggs on the Republicans to reinforce the belief that Democrats are not trustworthy. Now, if you are not a Christian, these divisions, party lines, attacks on one another, in many ways is to be expected, because the god of this world has blinded the eyes of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4). But as believers, as Christians, as people who claim to be in the light, we should have eyes to see the scheme of the enemy who is seeking to put us in a category and divide us as people.

God is shuffling the deck not just on the streets of America, not just in companies around this country, not just in politics but He is shuffling the deck in the church, which if we were honest is the most categorically divisive place on the earth. What we are beginning to see and will see more so in the days to come is black preachers speaking in white churches, white preachers speaking in black churches and women preaching in every church. God is shuffling the deck and the church is not going to be exempt. Leadership teams are going to be including women and men, black and white leaders, young and old, all serving together, all leading together. The revival that is coming is multigenerational, multiethnic and multi-gender, because as Paul said, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female for you are ALL one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28).

The reason the church has very little voice in the racial challenges our nation is facing, minimal authority in the political arena or in the streets of our cities, is not because we lack authority given from Jesus (Matthew 28:18); not because we do not have the truth (John 8:32); but because we are just as categorically divided as they are and Jesus said in Matthew 12:22-28, a house that is divided cannot stand. God said, “I Am shuffling the deck.” Kenneth Copeland said just the other day at his SW Believers Conferences, “thus saith the Lord, nothing is going to look like it has looked, a change is coming that is going to be so different than anything we have ever seen.” So, God is the I AM and He is shuffling the deck!

 

Speak Less, Say More

Tags

bible, Kingdom, love, power, Truth, Voice, Word of God

One of the greatest challenges people on earth face is the reality that there are a lot of people talking, but very few people actually saying anything. Pop singers have #1 hit songs with lyrics like, Watch Me, Shake It Off or Baby Baby, just to name a few and we spend millions of dollars on their albums, to tell us what, nothing. I was a teenager once before and we had some songs like this as well, where they were just to dance to, not to have some deep meaning in them, but it is not just in pop music. Worship songs are no better, we have gone from deeply theological hymns like Lift High the Cross, How Great Thou Art and To God Be The Glory to one chorus songs repeated over and over again, of which I love by the way. The challenge is we are not saying anything of substance or significance and we wonder why the wind blows or the snow falls and people are screaming it’s the judgment of God, the world is ending, or Jesus is coming back, tomorrow.

One of the greatest gifts the Bible gives us, is that it is filled with substance. It is riddled with the history of how a personal God walked and worked with people. How He took a no name group of people and made them into the most powerful nation on the earth. It is about how to live in community, how to be a family, how to work, play, teach and train. It is full of wisdom, romance, grace, consequences, choices and colorful characters. The Bible is rich in history, deep in understanding, full of mystery and glorious in expression. It tells of men, women and children, it includes the young and old, it is a book for the slave and the free, the lost and the found. People like Henry Ford found wisdom in it to invent the automobile and George Washington quoted it when he was establishing a brand new nation.

People have tried to burn the bible, kill the ones who printed the bible, destroy the followers of the bible, and to this day mock the ones who believe the bible, but it is not moved. It is an ancient text that is unshakable, unbreakable and unstoppable in its ability to inflict change. It is full of substance, secrets, mysteries, over and covert ways of doing life and it is a love letter, a manual, a blueprint for success. No wonder people wanted to take prayer out of school, change the definition of marriage, and ban Christian t-shirts, because the word of God is powerful, no matter what format it is presented in.

Matthew 24:35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” – Jesus

In a system that is seeking to dumb you down, so they can feel like they have control over you. There is one book that will lift you up, correct you up and build you up from the inside out and that is the word of God. If you want to be inside strong, you must know the word of God, not memorize it, so you can quote it or slap somebody with the truth you know, but so you can learn to be a lover of God and a lover of people. The word of God transforms you from the inside out. The world is going to shake, challenges will arise, but if you are established in the word of God, you will be immovable, unshakable and undeniably able to speak less, but say more. And we need some people who have something to say, not just people who talk about a whole lot of nothing. So think deep, pray wide, sing loud, worship hard and watch God dig a well in your life that produces the oil of joy, the rivers of the life and the power of an indestructible life.

End of the Echo

Tags

Bill Johnson, Dutch Sheets, Lana Vawser, Reformation, Revolution, Voice

For many years’ people have tolerated, promoted and even copied an echo. An echo is not taken from a source, but from someone who took it from the source. An echo is hearing something someone else said and then adding some of you to it and putting it out there as an original. The church has been notorious for listening to other people preach and then taking their sermons and presenting them from their pulpits or from reading someone else’s book, adding something to it and calling it their own message. The echo may sound original to the audience for a season, but eventually the echo will fade away and the cry for a voice will come forth.

In the days of John the Baptist, Matthew 3:3 says, “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” Isaiah 40:3-5 says, “The voice of him that cries in the wilderness, prepare you the way…” and John 1:23 says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.” John the Baptist was a voice, there had been 400 years of silence from the book of Malachi until the book of Matthew and the people for 400 years only heard an echo and it morphed into a Pharisaical religion that blocked people from experiencing the presence, power and voice of God. So, when John arose as a voice, the religious spirits began to squirm, the ground began to shake, the Messiah was coming on the scene in the midst of political upheaval, and everyone knew this man was not an echo, he was a voice.

Throughout scripture we see during times of national unrest, political upheaval and religious echoes the Lord releases a voice. We are living in such a time. The pieces are all in place for voices to rise up and speak the truth of the Word of God, a reformation of truth is coming and is already here, though many cannot hear. We will hear a new sound come out of people, it will be so unique we will wonder if it is them or someone they copied, because God is opening wide the mouths of the voices that have been trained in the wilderness. These voices are going to speak scripture in a way we had not heard it spoken before, but because it is pure truth, pure word of God, we will not be able to argue with them. The truth will set people free by the droves, it will bring a liberation like has not been seen in years.

A revolution is arising, we see it in politics, we see it church attendance, we see it in the crossing of the Jordan from the wilderness to the promised land. People will arise from various nations like Lana Vawser in Australia, Dutch Sheets in his Appeal to Heaven, Bill Johnson in Redding, CA and Christine Caine in Southern CA. Voices that are coming with a fresh revelation, a fresh word, daily bread from heaven. They are not an echo, they are a voice and we have seen some of them arise, but many more are about to hit pulpits, platforms and places that will blow your mind. They were created before the foundation of the earth to be a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. The voice will come through song, through books, through sermons, though movies, but it is a voice, not an echo. Can you hear the sound of the voice? It is the end of the echo and the time of the arising voice. It is a sound of fierce love, fearless passion and insight that can only come from intimacy. Everything is about to change, because it’s the end of the echo.