What now?

The Lord has been gracious to us. He heard our cry for help and sent relief to His people. He has stopped government overreach and given us a season of rest. I am grateful, so very grateful. God came down into our mess and intervened. I have been thanking Him all week, while fighting to keep my attitude right and my words kind. 

God has delivered us, but a greater deliverance is yet ahead. We have been given a moment, a pause, a cease-fire from the battle we face every day. The great battle to remain the beloved of God in a world grown dark and more anti-Christ moment by moment. So this is not ordinary time, it is extra-ordinary, a supernatural moment in which God has drawn near and is—like Aslan—on the move. When the long winter begins to break in Narnia, the animals know that is it because Aslan is on the move. The signs were unmistakable. I urge you, my friends, to consider that this political miracle is not so we might be free to return to our lives and live them as before. It is not so America can have high standing in the world. It is not so our rights are confirmed. It is not so we can blithely wander in our own way, paneling our own houses, gathering things to ourselves and building our own kingdoms. I believe that we are at a fork in the road moment of decision, a Joshua 'as for me and my house' season. 

God is always about the big picture...even in the smallest of details in the most individual of lives. He is working toward the conclusion He ordained from the beginning. A time so long ago that it nearly seems a fairy tale to us in the twenty-first century. God made Man and placed him in a garden that He might be with him. The earth is a garden made for us, but in a greater sense it was made for Him. It was made as a place in which we might discover our great purpose. It was made that we might know and love Him. A place in which we might learn what it means to belong to God and become prepared to live with Him forever. We've been given space to consider what that means to us and how we go forward from here. 

God works in our lives in seasons that come and go. Therefore this season of rest, however long it might be, is a blessing we must not waste. The election is a megaphone, reminding us that there is a God in heaven and He does whatever He wants, urging us to draw near and hear His voice, warning us to disentangle ourselves—not from the world, but from the love of it, inviting us to seek Him particularly, asking us to set our faces toward Him as a Bride coming down the aisle. Though the church be full of people, she has eyes only for her beloved. 

My heart longs that He might bless us once again with revival. Not so we can have great meetings and feel good about ourselves, but that He might fill us up with Him. That we might be equipped for the greater deliverance still before us, when we are stripped of our own way and baptized into His. A deliverance from ourselves that we might behold the fiery One, enthroned among the cherubim. That gazing at His inexpressible beauty, we might be changed. I want that for me. I want that for my friends. I want that for a world tearing itself apart chasing fulfillment it can never find, because it exists only in the place of surrender to the One who made it. I long for the transformation of the church into doorkeepers who cry out, "Here! Here is the way! What you most long for—the beauty and the satisfaction and the rest for your soul—it is in here! HE is in here!" Beholding Him and letting Him fill us will equip us to be His doorkeepers, His voice, His body on the earth doing the works of Jesus. His dealings in our lives will activate in us Jesus' calling to 'bring many sons to glory' (Hebrews 2:10). His love will empower us to overcome the world. He is worthy and we are privileged. Maranatha!

"May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering." 

John Leonard Dober and David Nitschman,the first Moravian missionaries in 1732