Deflating the Religious Bounce House

Today, I saw the image of a large colorful bounce house. A bounce house is one of those inflatable rubber devices that are brought to life by a motorized air pump. Kids jump and bounce around in them at birthday parties.

When I first saw the image, I simply thought it was a random thought. I saw it a few more times during the day. Tonight, the image appeared once again and this time it carried a message. When the image appeared, I saw the Lord walk over and pull the plug. The structure slowly deflated and lay on the ground in an unrecognizable pile of plastic. People started crawling out from beneath the deflated bounce house with shocked looks on their faces.

I said, “Lord, talk to me.” I really wanted to understand what He was saying. Immediately, He took me back to the image and I saw the bounce house disappear. The people who had crawled out from under the deflated bounce house had been transformed. No longer was gravity inhibiting them. They began to bounce, but there was no bounce house in the scene. They looked like the astronauts jumping on the moon taking exaggerated leaps of faith flying ahead in large bouncing steps of Kingdom advancement.

The Lord said, “I am deflating religious structures that have falsely promised life to My people.” As I tried to unpack what I thought I heard the Lord say, I understood His words to mean He was coming after our methods of fellowship and even our preferred styles of worship. He will deflate what we have used to fill us at the expense of hosting His presence. God is deflating those things because they will not be able carry us into the future. They have kept us isolated in religious bounce houses not engaging culture in a significant way.

When the collapse takes place people will crawl out from underneath the weight of what no longer works to receive a fresh personal infilling and inflating of God’s Spirit.

As the word came to an end, I saw thousands upon thousand of believers bouncing to the tops of each mountain of cultural influence. When they landed at the summit they would deposit their footprints at altitudes previously thought to be unattainable.  That is why He is deflating what is no longer working.