The Best Is Yet Ahead

The Best Is Yet Ahead

I was hurrying off to TJ Maxx to get some items for my South Africa trip. I couldn’t find what I was looking for BUT . . .  found this darling pair of shoes just as I walked into the store. I didn’t need the shoes but they were adorable; expensive shoes selling for a kill, big jewels on the top of the toes, gold and ready for a Dorothy dance. They just weren’t red; they were gold. How could I not buy them, they were a steal. So I left the store with those shoes. I didn’t find what I had gone there to get. But then maybe it was about the shoes. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz with those shoes.

From there I went to the mall to see if I could find what I was looking for. Frustrated I couldn’t find it at the mall either. By that time I was hungry and drove downtown Ann Arbor for a bite to eat.

I didn’t know what I wanted to eat so was trying to think of some place novel to eat. Natasha and I ended up at a unique little Polish restaurant I had been noticing for years. Walking into the restaurant, I felt strange but didn’t pay a lot of attention to how I felt. Not that I shouldn’t have, I simply had other things on my mind like completing my to-do list.

As I was finishing my meal, suddenly what I thought was a bird flew in the front door. The door was open to facilitate the wait staff serving the tables on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. I yelled at the waitress and told her a bird just flew in the door. As soon as I did this, the “bird” headed my way. When it flew close (and swiftly) I then thought it was a large dark grey moth. I looked again when it got right beside me. It was a bat.

Natasha screamed, pulled her sweater over her head and ran. Everybody yelled rabies. I laughed—pure hysteria hit the place. A kitchen employee ran out never to return. He stood outside waiting for the bat to leave. He had a bat phobia. Needless to say, the rest of our time in the restaurant was spent bat gazing. That bat would find a place, hang upside down, then fly off again. It couldn’t find the front door no matter how much we tried to help it. Finally I pulled out my camera and began to take pictures.

I didn’t like the food but sure did have a hysterical time watching this bat and peoples’ reaction to it. No one left the restaurant except the employee. The patrons just kept screaming and ran every time the bat took off for a different place to hang which was about once a minute. The bat’s flights and subsequent screams from the patrons just made me laugh all the harder.  How novel!

Finally we got our check and left the restaurant. I thought, how strange! The place felt strange. Then this bat flies in and makes itself at home seemingly on a mission to scare the patrons. They responded accordingly with screams, flights from their chairs, and scrambles to safety. What in the world was all that about? The bat was trapped inside with us. Probably he was as scared as us, he was scared of us.

I walked to my car about two blocks away. Arriving there, I see little Missy waiting for me, sitting on the armrest between the two front seats. Just then I lifted up my eyes and in amazement saw this old woman riding past us on her bicycle. She wore a black witch’s outfit complete with the pointed hat and wide brim, looking just like the witch in the Wizard of Oz, I mean just like her. There was my little Missy, (Todo) in the car staring at her too. My new shoes were there too. I felt translated into the middle of the The Wizard of Oz.

Now I was really agitated. That wasn’t a chance happening—the bat and the witch. I suddenly knew God was trying to alert me to something. Whatever was going on? I knew for sure that there was some type of occultic activity going on. That’s what the bat and witch represented. I didn’t feel it related to South Africa but to something I needed to be alerted to.

A Warning

I called my friend Tim Sheets to find out what he knew. He told me that he also sensed an urgent alert for at least two, maybe three weeks. He described to me an unusual experience he had as well as several other pastors in his network. They heard alarms, sirens going off. Yet when they rolled down their windows to see where it was, there was nothing. It was in the spirit realm, inside of them, not an external siren. Some of them heard it as the old air raid sirens of the Cold War. Tim heard the words, “duck and cover.” Tim said to me, did you hear what Bill Hamon prophesied. I had not heard.

Bishop Bill Hamon is the father of the prophetic move in America. He is one of the nicest, most genuine people I know. Furthermore he is not even close to being a prophet of doom and gloom. Only once have I heard him issue a dire warning many years ago. He then made it his mission to get to those nations and warn them as well as prepare them, training them how to do spiritual warfare.

However on July 26, 2010, he issued a warning to this nation, the United States. Here is the prophecy:

“I raised up this nation to fulfill my purpose in this world. The founders and forefathers prayed and made covenant with me. As I remembered my covenant with Abraham, so I will remember my covenant with the founders and forefathers of America. But America has forsaken me, as Israel did. They have turned to other Gods. But when they cried out to me, I raised up deliverers and delivered them from the oppression of their enemies. America is not paying heed to those things that I am speaking and doing to get their attention.  Therefore, I’m going to allow a thing to happen that will get America’s attention greater even than 9/11. I am going to allow a thing to happen that will open the eyes of my people to see how close they are to destruction and their loss of liberty and freedom. Send out the message for my people to cry out to me. And I will arise as a man of war and make my glory be seen and my power be made known. I am jealous for my nation. I will fight for my church and this nation as I did for my nation Israel. I will not be mocked or denied my rightful place in my church and this nation. I have decreed and set things in motion in the heavens that will soon be manifest on the earth.”

Interestingly, the title of my latest book is, “The Cry God Hears.” I will have copies the beginning of December and you can order it from me.

But, this is a major warning from a prophet who does not prophesy gloom and doom. Other prophets have spoken:

1. Cindy Jacobs released a word in July warning that the economy is on the verge of collapsing and called for the intercessors to begin to cry out.
2. Chuck Pierce did the same thing and asked us to set aside 3 days to fast during a 25 day period ending August 15.
3. James Goll said something to the effect that he heard God saying the Fall would be filled with storms.

Amos 3:7 says that, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he reveals his secret unto his servants the prophets.”

There is a pervading sense of impending catastrophe. God’s heart is not to destroy us but to correct us, to correct our course. Furthermore He could use such an event to release an amazing harvest. One can look at the decisions made at the governmental level and wonder how have we gotten by for so long without course correction. This year even more serious decisions have been made leading us away from God. There are so many grievous things that are escalating from the proliferation of pornography, homosexuality, adultery, immorality and perversion of every kind that sometimes I just want to hold my head from the dizziness of it all. It is hard to find a “normal” healthy family. The racial tension is marching towards the tipping point. Islam is advancing. In a high school in our area the whole football program has been changed to accommodate Muslim’s religious practices. The officials would never do that for Christianity. It doesn’t feel like America anymore.

I heard a news analysis recently that claimed the anti-Semitic environment in the world is worse than it was before Hitler and WW2. All of these things are alarming.

This nation is at a critical point in its history. It could go either way. Toward God or away from God and into political, social, financial, family, educational etc. upheaval and collapse.

God Is Looking For The Bottom Line

I believe God is looking for bottom liners. Are we for Him or against Him? Not, are we sort of for Him in some areas and sort of not for Him in other areas. Are we true blue—sold out all the way?

Perhaps the bottom line is you and me. There’s a word called repentance. Are we closer to God or further from Him than when we started in the faith? I have been seriously evaluating my own life. Am I closer to God or further away from Him? What is my spiritual temperature? I have been pouring over the book of First Peter. I have been encouraged, strengthened, undergirded but also convicted. I have seen places I have wandered slightly off course; I am not spot on as the Brits say. I have had some talks with God to cleanse, purify, bring me back to passion and fervor. Home to God, home to myself!

It is time to cut to the chase. What needs to go in my life? What is cluttering it, numbing it? Where am I wasting energy and focus that need to be spent on God and His mandate for me, not something else? Where am I busy with religious activity yet not getting to the core of God’s heart and mandate for this season? Where have I been sucked in to the culture rather than become a transformer of it? Where have I bought the lie? What relationships am I maintaining that are undercutting my relationship with God and His Church? Do I love to simply worship Him? Pour out my love on Him?

I cannot change the nation, but I can change myself, my decisions, the direction I am going in, my actions. In other words, I can repent.

Acts 3:19-20 says, “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before. . .”

Before I qualify to pray for the nation, I must turn. I must have clean hands and a pure heart. When I cleanse my own ways through confession and receiving forgiveness, then I can lift up my voice and cry out for this nation. It is time for us, the Church, to repent—to correct our course; and then to lift up our voices and cry out to God. Only God can save us and this nation.

We must understand that it is the Church who through prayer can turn this nation. God’s heart is to release an awakening that causes every previous one to pale in comparison. But perhaps it will only be through pain that we finally get to that cry God will hear. That was true of the Israelites in Exodus 1-3.

But if we turn and pray, lifting up our heads as gates and doors into this nation, the King of Glory will come. He will come in glory and in war to right everything that is wrong. He will not come alone but He will bring all of heaven with Him to turn what is upside down, right-side up.

Psalms 24:3-10 NKJV

Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the Lord, And righteousness from the God of his salvation.

This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, Who seek Your face. Selah

Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.  Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O you gates! Lift up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in.  Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts,

I do not hear this as a condemning thing but as a challenge. I do not hear we have been evil and God is going to wipe us off the map. He wants to cleanse, clear out. What I hear is that the goodness of God leads us to repentance. (Rom 2:4) Sometimes His goodness is something that nudges us all the way back to Him. It may seem hard, even hurt. But ultimately it is His goodness because it takes us all the way home to Him. He is our life, our source. In Him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)

Another Bottom Line—Identity

And that just may be the point God was getting at through the bat and witch incident. The specific issue may simply be the matter of identity. A whirlwind (massive confusion) delivered Dorothy into the illusory land of Oz. Everyone was confused as to who they were; imprisoned by a false deceptive power.

In the experience I had last week, I was not afraid of the bat, I was amused. The witch totally plopped me down into the middle of the Wizard of Oz story. I had just bought the shoes. Dorothy had her shoes! In fact she had obtained them from the wicked witch’s sister. Dorothy, by taking the sister’s shoes, took the authority from her. She acquired familial authority over the witch. Shoes scripturally represent good news and the gospel of peace. (Eph 6:15; SOS 7:1; Rom 10:15)

There was a path to freedom, the yellow brick road. It was golden representing God’s divine path for us. In the midst of captivity, there was a path. Dorothy found it.

The wicked witch was trying to frighten Dorothy into captivity. Dorothy was a captive in this illusory country. But there was a door of deliverance for Dorothy. The shoes! Her little red shoes were the key to deliverance. Where would she be delivered to? All the way back home. Where was home? It was  Kansas. And the key thing was her destination, home. She was to go back all the way to the beginning, where she started, HOME! It was something so simple that would get her back home, just click those shoes together three times.

The finale unfolded when Dorothy and Todo with her three friends went to the palace of the Wizard of Oz in the Emerald City. He was the only one who could help them. The Wizard seemed like he held their destiny in his hands. He projected himself through deception as this magical power that controlled them. Suddenly a wind comes along and blows his cover. The curtains were blown back and the Wizard was simply an ordinary man, one whom Dorothy had known, who was projecting himself through technology to be someone he wasn’t. She was frightened not by him but by his imaging of himself. Once she saw who he really was, the power was broken. Now they all could go home: Dorothy and Todo, her three friends and the Wizard. Their covers were blown. They were freed to be themselves.

God is calling us all the way home. Home to Him. Home to who we are (who He made us to be). Home to what we are to do. It’s an identity issue.

In the Wizard of Oz, the identity of Dorothy’s three friends were key to their positioning. The scarecrow didn’t have a brain. The tin man didn’t have a heart. The lion had no courage. The very thing that was their core identity was at stake. They had to find what was missing to be who they were. They had to face what they lacked. Then they would overcome the witch.

It was in facing their identity crises that they found themselves. When they found themselves, they found their place. They all ended up HOME, the place from which they were to live; the place where they belonged. Home with who they were made to be. They reclaimed their lost identity.

When they were delivered, they all sang with Dorothy and Todo, “ding dong the witch is dead!” That evil occultic (unseen and secret) force that had come to destroy them was broken. Its purpose was to keep them from being who they were. Now they were free. That power which had withstood their recognition of who they were had been broken.  They were free.

You and I are being called to move into who we are, God’s identity for us. That is freedom. And in that freedom, we will be ready for the harvest, for our place in it. And God will be glorified! In the freedom houses being raised up across this nation, people will find themselves and find their place. This will break the power of every deceptive, witchcraft force operating to keep them in captivity.

Whatever happens in this nation, we will be ready for it. We will know who we are. We know who we love and whom we serve. And our hearts are alive and free in Christ to sing the song of freedom.

The best is yet ahead.