Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well;
Ezekiel 33:32a NIV
The hand of the Lord is raising up a prayer army across the nation. As the psalmist wrote, “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” (Psalm 144:1). Warriors, champions, and men and women of renown are being raised up all across the planet, preparing for a great showdown in this day and age.
Already, you can hear the voices and strains, as prophetic musicians and psalmists everywhere are practicing, and fighting, by lifting up their voices and instruments to the Lord Almighty in praise and adoration. A new prayer army is arising, and it is multiplying in great droves.
But, as we look forward to the future, we may wonder what is next. Certainly, God’s house will be a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:7), and, by God’s Grace, may prayer never leave the forefront of the church. But, is this all?
Many see great struggles coming soon upon the Earth. Many of those see these as the part of a larger End-Time drama that is soon to be or beginning to be played out. But, regardless if that is the case or not, there is a war in the land, that only the blind could miss. For not too much longer can the strain between light and dark, and the willful denial of righteousness and holiness by God’s people be ignored.
Yet, in the midst of this, we must recognize a pattern. Looking backwards, we see throughout history, revival and various tribulation often coinciding with each other. They often overlap each other, one preceding the other, or vice-versa. But, in the midst of it, whether it is through great revival or great trials, God’s heart has always been that He might have a people’s heart all to His own. He has always desired, and provided a means, for His people to come to Him.
But, the End-Time church need not necessarily look like the prayer rooms of today. There is something grander, something deeper, and something more elaborate that God has intended for His people, if only they could see it. It is called the Kingdom.
Yes, many people take up the stand that the Kingdom is “Now and Not Yet”, a clever little way of saying that, while the Kingdom was “at hand” in the days of Jesus, its fullness will be realized in the future, perhaps in the millennium with an earthly reign. But, be that as it may be, let us never forget about the Kingdom Here today, for if Jesus said it was at hand in His day, and of its government and increase there shall be no end, it surely is here today still, for us, if only we will have the eyes of faith to see.
So, imagine, if you will, a new kind of prayer ministry. We tend to think to small when we think of things in the natural. We tend to be limited to our natural understanding, unless God opens our eyes to His higher ways, but we have the mind of Christ! Imagine what it would be like as two, three, five, or fifty people begin to come into a reality of the wholeness described in John 3:19-21, living in the light and in the Spirit of Truth. Imagine a people beginning to corporately come into a revelational understanding of faith, so that, like Jesus said, if they wanted to, they could speak to a mountain and have it move (Mark 11:23). Jesus said it, so it must be true, but even He didn’t do it for them, because it wasn’t what the Father was doing. Imagine, if you will, a congregation or congregations all over the nations of the Earth that began to understand their governmental authority in the heavens now, where we are currently seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6).
We might think, at first, that this would be the most dynamic and engaging thing in the world, and, for a measure, it would be. Even the early church was rocked by the power of God as the place they were meeting was shaken. But, it never took away their need to walk as their (and our) Lord did. It never took away the need to live with a servant’s heart. It never changed the fact that it was living in simplicity and singleness of heart that is what the Lord looks for day after day after day (Matthew 18:1-4).
It will be glorious, of course, but just as the miracles will follow the believer, they have become a distraction if they take our focus off of the King and His Kingdom.
But, what is this great thing that the Lord is building towards? Jesus said His church would be known for their love for one another, not our blessing and our bank account. Jesus said that the greatest love we can have is to lay down our life for a friend. It isn’t just when times are good that the church is glorious, but the brightness out-shines the darkness in the worst of times. No one need die for someone else, when that other person isn’t perishing.
I spent a while in a prayer room a few years back. One particular day, when the group I was with came into the room to pray, the air was heavy with purpose. I couldn’t not discern what it was, but it was there already when we came in, as if waiting on us. Over the course of prayer, one of the other members had a particular idea of how to pray, and we followed it. As we followed her lead, the atmosphere opened up, and a tremendous spirit of prayer came through the meeting, and, as it did, that that particular thing in the atmosphere was prayed through.
You see, we were in a consecrated place for prayer, with set times. For whatever reason, God opened up my perceptions to perceive that that particular prayer burden was in the room, as if waiting for us. Whether it was an angel, a realm, or other heavenly thing, I do not know, other than that it was there. It was intriguing to me, later, to observe the same prayer group come in another time and attempt the same physical method for prayer. I can’t say I haven’t simply tried imitating a form, even knowing it isn’t the form, just because I want God to show up so desperately. The same form was adopted, but that particular presence was not in the room to begin with. We had a good time in prayer, and every real prayer is profitable, but it wasn’t the same as the other day. And the reason? The unseen. The invisible. That first day, a burden of prayer came to us to pray it through. The second, we simply were one who “sang a pretty love song”.
You see, it isn’t about the forms that we employ. It isn’t about the particular “model” we use to keep all the musicians on the same chord progression for a two or three hour set. It isn’t even about the sets.
No. Prayer is the heart, the soul and spirit of a man, connecting with the Almighty, and Him hearing our cries.
It starts with faith that He exists, and that He hears us. That He is the good Father, the Almighty creator of heaven and Earth, who created our hearts in His image, so that we might tug on His. Any time we forget that, we have simply entered into another form.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1).
Imagine, if you will, a people that lived, breathed, and had become so accustomed to functioning by the Spirit, they responded to the slightest flutter of the wind of His movement. We wouldn’t be hitting and missing nearly as much; we wouldn’t be guessing and trying to hard. At rest in His peace, yet alive, active, and purposeful, we would follow His commands, as best we could understand them.
In the depths of the flows of the Spirit, fueled by fully engaged and alive hearts, cleansed of bitterness and filth, a people might arise that was holy. A people that was mighty, that was fearless, because they they were holy with His Holiness.
From that place, though it seemed weak to those who could not see it, it would be alive in the power of God to heal, save, and deliver. In that place, sin would have no place, and lust would not rule over the congregation. In that place, a young man could find deliverance in a prayer meeting in your city.
Without a vision of the future, we often may find ourselves building only for today. Beyond the scope of the horizon, lies a realm in the Kingdom the church has not even imagined.
Will the church tomorrow simply be little Houses of Prayer all over the place? Probably, but probably not the same way we think of them today. There will be more dynamic, more power encounters, and more direct intervention of the heavens upon the Earth than we give credit to Heaven today. Visitations will be common. Angelic visions will be more expected than the natural at times (think of when Peter was let out of prison, they more expected that the knocking at the door was Peter’s angel rather than Peter himself! What does that mean for us?!?). Young men will dream dreams and old men will see vision. The Spirit will be the supreme law of the land for the church (even as Peter spoke, and two of the early members, Anannias and Sapphira, dropped to the ground dead).
Indeed, the church will be much more focused on the things that are unseen, than the things that are seen, even as Colossians 3:1-2 exhorts. For, our citizenship is in heaven, and even if there is a “not-yet” portion of the Kingdom that awaits, the only Kingdom we have, the same Kingdom that broke the power of Rome in its day and shattered it, so that the empire fell apart and was blown apart by the wind across the face of the Earth, is the one that Jesus said was not of this world (John 18:36). This is the Kingdom that healed the sick, raised the dead, cleansed the lepers, and cast out demons. This is the Kingdom in which Jesus told Nathanael that he would see angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. This is the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed that if He drove out demons by the Finger of God, then the Kingdom of Heaven had truly come upon them (Luke 11:20).
There is no other Kingdom available to us, other than the one Jesus brought. There is no greater power that God has in store for us, other than the one He already gave (Matthew 28:18, Ephesians 1:19-21). We are not, in this day of the Church, waiting for something fresh from Heaven as if the power and defeat of satan at the cross was not enough. But, rather, as in every generation of the last two thousand years, God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are looking for one thing, the heart that believes, for simple faith.
When the church begins to believe again, the world will change. Not that it hasn’t in a measure, but through the repentance that leads to faith, the church will arise from her ashes, and rise up over the world once again. Not to rule it as the pagans do, but rise above it in its hearts, so that sin and wickedness and sensuality do not sit in its thrones, and rule any part in the saint’s hearts (1 John 2:15).
Then, and only then, will the apostolic preaching of the delivers bring down satan like lighting (Luke 10:18). Only then will the back of iniquity be broken over entire regions. Only then will the great net of ingathering truly be full to breaking, as the blinding and inhibiting forces of darkness that have kept the Gospel veiled from the unbeliever is slowly pulled away.
And, as the greatest miracle power in quantity and probably quality breaks forth, it will be in that day that men will be forced, by the greatness of the signs and the light of the Gospel, that they will either be forced to believe, or hate the light to the point of murder, because their deeds were evil, even as they did to the Perfect One, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Then, and only then, will the great harvest of souls come in, and the great purposes of God be demonstrated throughout the cosmos.
But, what of the church? Of what will she resemble? Where will she be situated? For, surely, so long as there are salvations, people will need to be delivered, trained, equipped, and qualified for service in the nations. So long as there is a church door, there will be someone who will have to be a deacon. But, there is a vision, called the “unity of the faith” (Ephesians 4:13), of which Paul wrote, where we are no longer children, and no longer tossed about. There is a place so firmly planted upon His rock, that as false teachings and heresies and false prophets abound, that faith holds the mature saint rooted and unmoved.
It is here, dwelling in the heights, while still living in the Earth, that the church was called to rule. Not as a dictator, but as a slave, humbly offering herself in service to her Lord, the God of the whole Earth, always following Him, that she might be with Him wherever He goes.
It is here, in humble service, and in the maturity of holiness that only comes by a life lived by the Spirit, that Emperors are brought low, and even principalities are bound and restrained. It is here that God’s vengeance and punishments, His written judgments are loosed upon the world. This is their glory, not of their own righteousness, but of His, to their glory (Psalm 149).
This is the glory of the church, that in humility and the bowing of her head, in purity and purpose, she has crushed all other Kingdoms. Not by might, not by power, but by His Spirit. That she might a praise for the glory of His name, a jewel in the crown of Her husband, and a praise in the whole Earth.
By a simple song, sung by the lowliest of all, all the world came down.
