Waiting to Exhale

As we enter the final hours before the election results are known, we are holding our collective breath. We are like someone who was handed an envelope with an important notice inside. As the envelope is placed in our hands and we begin to open it up, we draw in our breath in anticipation of discovering the hidden message inside. Once the message is read our inhaled breath will be released to empower the first words that come from our mouth.

The words that ride upon your exhaled breath the day after the election will inform your hearers where your hope has been deposited.   As prophetic as many people have wanted to be in this pre-election season, it will be what we say when the winner is finally announced that will reveal the real prophetic content of our message.

Prepare for your coming exhale by reminding yourself who you are and where you are currently seated. You are seated with Jesus at the right hand of the Father in a place not controlled by events that transpire on Earth. In that unchanging position of authority all forms of human government and every dark spiritual force are positioned under your feet. The outcome of an election cannot change that reality.

The choice in this election, whether defined as good or bad based on your personal interpretation of the results, should not be used to create the content of the first sounds that come from your mouth once the results are known. You have been called to speak from heaven to Earth releasing words of life and hope. Any other sound will be a waste of your breath.

A Last Minute Intervention

We are in the final stretch of a spiritual conflict that resembles a relay race. A baton is being delivered to the final runner who will carry it across the finish line. You are the final runner in this race. A baton of truth and a baton of error are both fast approaching your outstretched hand. 

I saw the image of a relay race taking place in a large stadium. You have been watching the other runners on your team make their way around the track. The race has been playing out as a neck and neck sprint. As the third runner approached your position for the final handoff, you saw that someone had switched the baton somewhere during the race. You no longer felt you could carry that false baton across the finish line, but you had already begun to pick up speed to match the incoming runner for the handoff. 

As you were struggling with the approaching hand off you saw another runner running toward you who was not part of your original team. The new runner was rapidly closing the distance and would arrive at your position at the same time as the original runner. As the new runner sprinted forward new lanes formed on the track beneath his feet. In the new runners hand was a baton called, “Original Intent”. The runner with the false baton stretched out his hand in a desperate attempt to thrust the false baton into your hand at the last moment, but the other runner arrived first and delivered his baton. When the replacement baton hit your hand a supernatural infusion of power entered your body helping you complete your final leg in record time and cross the finish line into a place of spiritual victory.

Many have been running an assumed race with a baton and lane designations that are not God’s original intent. Changes were made mid-race and without your participation or input. The race organizers had assumed you would continue to run without interruption or correction accepting whatever baton was placed in your hand. A spirit of inevitability was being used to cloud the mind of your fellow runners and assumed you would do the same. 

A critical race is being run and God is laying down new lanes on a new track for the final leg. God is about to bring unexpected intervention. A last minute baton pass will come out of “nowhere” entering the current delusion without notice changing what appeared to be an inevitable outcome.

Bunkers of Fear or Bridges of Hope

We are at a turning point in our national history. The direction we finally take at that turning point will not come from a perceived victory in a political battle.  It will be the outcome of the highest form of spiritual warfare. How we wage this battle will determine our future and record our history.

I have had the honor to visit many nations, each with a diverse history. One of the more unusual histories was found in the nation of Albania. Albania was a very restricted and closed nation within the old Communist Bloc. Today, the nation is reinventing itself through trade and diplomacy.

Under Communist rule, Albania was led by Enver Hoxha. Hoxha was a very a repressive and paranoid leader who governed one of the most depressed and poverty-stricken nations in the world. Hoxha used fear to control his people trying to convince them they had it so good the outside world was about to invade Albania at any moment and take their meager portion.

As a result of this delusion, a campaign began to construct defensive concrete bunkers to repel the invaders. To this day, scattered throughout the landscape of Albania, are thousands of military bunkers strategically pointing outward toward the borders of the nation in preparation for an imagined invasion. In 1983 there were 173,371 of these bunkers in a nation with a landmass approximately the size of New Hampshire. Many of the bunkers still remain to this day.

When I recall the mental image of the bunkers I saw in Albania twenty years ago, they remind me of where our nation finds itself at this point in our history. There is a great deal of suspicion coursing through nation. Bunkers of distrust and fear are being erected in each political camp facing outward toward the opposing party. This is being fed by the seductive words being offered to us by a political spirit. God is asking us to build bridges, not bunkers. When fear is allowed to run rampant imaginary enemies created by our partisan politics cross our mental borders blinding us to the invasion of the real enemy - fear.

There will come a day when the remains of our fear will appear to those who study our history like the abandoned concrete bunkers I saw each time I visited Albania. Each of us have limited time and resources. Use those gifts wisely to build bridges of hope, not bunkers of fear. The bridges you build will be used by God to usher in the hope required to accomplish God’s will in our nation and in every nation on Earth. The bridges of our hope or the bunkers of our fear will become the record of our history. The choice of that history is ours to write.

Your Extra Inning Has Arrived

As I was reading through all the morning after comments about the Chicago Cubs win during an extra inning at the World Series, I could not help but think the win represents what God is about to do in some of your lives. When all the superstition and disappointment has had its say, an extra will miraculously appear to give you an opportunity to change the course of your personal history and silence your detractors.

Some of you have been in a long battle. It took the Cubs 108 years to win the World Series. It feels like that for those of you who have faced challenging issues in your life and on top of that, you have tried to righteously deal with the comments of other people as to why "it" hasn't happened for you.  You know you had the talent and the resources, but the opportunity for victory has continued to elude you.

Things are about to change. God is releasing an unexpected extra inning where your victory is waiting.  You need to stay in the game and keep playing, fully engaged in faith.  You have kept your game face on through it all. God is about to reward your faithfulness. 

Kingdom Cartography - God is Redrawing the Maps

Recently, I heard the Lord say, “I am redrawing the borders”. As I continued to listen, He said, “I am redrawing the borders of your spiritual authority and revealing new spheres of influence. The resulting realignment will reveal lines of authority only seen in the spiritual realm and not limited to the national borderlines depicted on your maps.” The Lord went on to say, “Ask Me for the discernment needed to see what I am doing. With this expansion will come the release of apostolic teams I will use to establish My reign within these newly formed jurisdictions.”

When Jan and I lived in Europe, I read and studied the history of the nations on the European continent. The borders we see on our current maps were not always the historic borders of the European nations.  The borders in Europe have shifted many times over the last 1,000 years. The same is true for other regions of the world. Nations and empires were constantly redefined and redrawn as the result of wars and alliances formed by marriage and commerce.  

God’s map is drawn differently. Underneath the migrating borders of each nation there exists a spiritual map drawn by God that reveals a deeper spiritual reality. That map is the one God wants us to use to direct our effort and energy.

Whenever I drive or fly into a new region, I always pray when I cross a defining border. Even a sign noting a new county line or city limits prompts me to pray for wisdom and discernment to see beneath the natural border to understand what is taking place in the realm of the Spirit.

God is realigning His Church. Realignment in the spiritual realm precedes realignment in the natural realm. Understanding God’s strategic plans for conducting spiritual warfare and cultural transformation helps us see the border of the real conflict that is often hidden from undiscerning eyes.

New apostolic blueprints are arriving from Heaven. These blueprints will be used to redraw the maps of our spiritual authority and reveal God’s plan. God is assigning cartographers to use these blueprints to redraw the map. These cartographers are those in five-fold ministry who will bring new clarity, understanding and simplicity to our mission.

The five-fold equipping gifts have a distinct and collaborative function in the process of redrawing these maps. Apostles receive the blueprints for cultural transformation and Kingdom expansion. Prophets announce the arrival of the new blueprint. Evangelists recruit the human resources needed to accomplish the blueprint. Pastors create environments where these blueprints can grow and flourish. Teachers expand the concepts contained in the blueprint like an engineer would create a detailed schematic drawing of a complex machine to explain each part and its relationship to the whole in understandable detail and terminology.

Discern these new borders with expansion in mind. God’s Kingdom is always advancing, never retreating. God has assigned ever-expanding borders of influence for His Church and His Kingdom. This expansion will not go challenged because the salvation of people and the transformation of cultural institutions are at stake.

When Luke wrote the opening lines of Acts (1: 6-8) he shared the words of Jesus that addressed that expansion. “So when they had come together, they were asking Him, saying, ‘Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’”

The disciples initially saw the Kingdom confined to a single area defined by existing and familiar borders. Jesus was telling His disciples after the Day of Pentecost the Spirit would have them step through the restraints of existing national borders and cultural prohibitions to move into new territory already mapped out by God as a place of expansion.

Do not allow the outcome of an election, an economic downturn or an avalanche of sin to divert your attention from the larger work God is doing. A temporary skirmish at a wrong border will be a waste of your time and energy and will not put you on the cutting edge of spiritual conflict. Kingdom expansion is an aggressive and forward moving endeavor. It does not park at a false border and exchange fire with a diversion tactic. While in Jerusalem the disciples were asked to look to the uttermost parts of the Earth as their ultimate destination. They moved under the direction and definition of God’s unseen Kingdom map.

The apostolic teams God is raising will act as spiritual cartographers who will redraw the lines of our spiritual authority on Earth creating new borders of influence in all areas of culture. These redrawn map lines will take a foundational position under our natural maps of human influence and demand their realignment to the will of God. This coming realignment is where to invest your time and energy for the greatest return on your Kingdom investment. With that investment will come a blessing to see what is taking place on Earth with the eyes of the Spirit.

“Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” (Luke 10:23-24)