What's Going On...Again?

I have been pondering the events of the last 7 months as I have been working from home and monitoring them world-wide. I have continued to seek God's purpose in all this. One of the biggest things has been a renewed sense of keeping my heart and my mind clean before the Lord and being ready for His calling upward,  The calling of His Body - the Bride of Christ. A renewed fear of the Lord has overcome my waking hours and has become my first priority.

In my quiet time this morning I heard the Holy Spirit recall the blog I started a long time ago - "Preparing the Bride". I was stunned...I had forgotten all about it! I do lots of online work and it somehow got lost in the focus of pressing and distracting things. I wondered if it was even still alive and online anymore.

I dug into my blog files and found it! I had written 3 posts in 2010-11. As I sat and re-read them, I was blown away. I could have written them this summer - so much is still fitting and aligns with what God is doing. The posts even bring out threads of things that I have learned since then and didn't really understand 10 years ago .Ten years have gone by and God is still on track even if I forgot and let it go. 

The events I shared about in my first-ever post January 2010, have only intensified, and with a world-wide pandemic, protests, riots, fires in major cities, events moving us into a darker period of U.S. history - "What's going on?" still seems an appropriate question, so I added, "Again".

I think a lot of it is timing. For some reason maybe now is the time to pick it back up and renew my efforts to share what's on God's heart as I hear Him. I have gone through some difficult times and persevered. God has been purging me of sin, breaking bonds and teaching me to let go and let Him lead me. My faith has been strengthened. The Holy Spirit has been bringing more teaching, speakers, websites, books, etc. across my path over the past 9 years that have inspired and broadened my understanding of what God's plan is and where things are headed. These things aren't revelations of man - they are sound Bible-based teachings.

I am going to begin to share some of these resources with you that have brought me closer to Jesus. I hope they will do the same for you.

Abide in Him,

Lon

What is Going On?

I was asked this week by someone who has a surface level understanding of scripture and prophecy: "What is it with all the stuff going on everywhere right now? I don't want to think that it is the end of the world or anything but it sure makes you wonder!"
I responded by saying that I am being very careful about the choices I make these days, that I am thinking twice before I do something that moves me out from under the sheltering wing of God and throws me into the open where I can get picked off. I belive that we are in a time where we need to make sure we are walking upright in humility and being prepared for the worst even if we don't actually need it - (which unfortunately I think we will eventually.)
How about you? What do you hear from folks? What do you think? I think this person put into words what many out there are thinking these days with all the dead birds that fell out of the sky in January and February, the millions of dead sea life and fish in streams all over the world that continue to collect on shores, earthquakes in Christchurch, NZ and Japan, volcano eruptions more and more, the reported movement of Magnetic North - so much so that airports are having to re-align landing strip marks. What is going on?
God is beginning His wake up call. He is also beginning to allow the birthpangs of final judgement to increase on a planet with Powers of Hell fighting to take it over.
Believe what you want, but know that the day is coming when the athiest point of view will fall on deaf ears as the weather worsens, wildlife keep dying, the earth crumbles around us, tsunami waves crash and Nuclear power plants melt down.
I received Jermiah 18 in a quiet time this week and I share a part of it here. The Lord is the creator of the earth and he can do what He wants to destroy nations who will not heed warnings to repent from evil ways.

Jeremiah 18: 5-10:
5 Then the word of the LORD came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
If you read on Jeremiah 18 it will tell you more on this subject - I encourage you to do so...

All the best to you,

Lon

Angels 101: The Truth About Angels

The new Legion movie has taken the angel topic and totally warped and mis-construed it to new heights. We think of angels as humans transformed and sent to do errands, chubby cherubs with wings or rebellious foes of God in some dark video game. I was reading an article today that I just had to link to. It discusses the mis-understandings that we all assume are truth because media protrays a distorted image.

What does the Bible say?

Check out The Truth About Angels

Lon

God is Shaking Foundations

God gave me a vision a few months ago. I saw the world through His eyes. I saw all peoples from all nations. There were soccer moms herding kids, Wall Street Investors in power meetings, Masai herdsmen with sticks walking parched ground, orphans in Asia, farmers on tractors, teachers, sports stars in training, laborers in the fields, on and on. One thing struck me - none of them were truly taking time to seek God, pray, interceed, read His Word.
Then the Holy Spirit began to nudge me. "The people in this world that truly are seeking me and know my voice are very few. In light of the whole world's population, my bride is a very small group."
I was burdened and grieved by this. I was thankful that I felt that I was one of the few on my knees in prayer, but I have been in the other crowd much of my life. Busy with job, career, raising a family, paying bills and too busy to spend time with my saviour. I have flirted with sin and had my share of vices in life I have had to lay at the foot of the cross.

God is speaking to His church. There are those that are listening to His voice and reading His Word, finding agreement between the two and what others in the Body of Christ are saying. There is a global continuity coming from watchmen, intercessors, prophets, worship leaders and pastors.With blogs, podcasts and websites we can access a global community instantaneously. (I have listed many I read on my sidebar that I feel are safe and can be trusted to be from the Lord.) With a prayerful and discerning ear, we can hear what God is saying to us. The word is good or bad news depending on how you want to look at it.

The Bad News:
God is beginning to bring judgement down on the earth, but especially right now to the "Christian nations" that have progressively gone astray, turning their hearts and minds to materialism, sliding morality, pornography, the killing of the unborn, making excuses to justify a selfish and busy life that has no place for God in it. Sadly, this is the state of the church as well in many of these countries. There is a feel-good, positive thinking, "God - wants - me -to - succeed" type of teaching that takes us away from the cross and a hunger and thirst after righteousness. It allows us to create outreach and church planting ministries that have a goal to bring in numbers of people that never move past the baby-Christian walk. Our "Body" has many members that are worn out, in-debt, busy people, doing the social church scene but denying a life of true intimacy and fellowship with God.

Isaiah 1
This morning I was given Isaiah 1 by the Holy Spirit to read and hear what God might be saying through it:
"Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: "Sons I have reared and brought up have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my people does not understand."
Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.
Why will you still be smitten, that you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and bleeding wounds; they are not pressed out, or bound up, or softened with oil.
Your country lies desolate, your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence aliens devour your land (think of the debt we owe our allied nations now!) it is desolate as overthrown by aliens."
Isaiah 1: 1-8
Revised Standard Version

I would encourage you to read the rest of the chapter because no one reading it can deny that the passage is addressing God's people, not the heathen nations. It goes on to discuss vain offerings and trampling His courts, having unclean hearts, hands full of blood, evil doings, rebelling, companions of thieves, running after gifts and bribes. God calls to wash ourselves, get clean before Him, remove our evil ways, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless and plead for the widow.

Repent and get right with God:
God says in Isaiah 1: 18 -20:
"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

You might say, "Yeah, yeah. that isn't me, that is for all those really bad people. I am good. I go to church, I accepted Jesus a long time ago. I am "safe". I will challenge you with this: Do you have a passion to be in the presence of God more than ANYTHING else in your life? Do you get on your face and repent and ask for mercy, keeping short accounts with Him daily? Do you truly grieve and feel separation from God when you deliberately choose to sin? Do you spend time reading His word because it is food for your soul - not because it is something you should do out of discipline that is a chore and an inconvenience?
I could go on with many more questions. Let me make something clear. I am NOT saying that if you are not living in close relationship with God that you will be condemned and go to hell. No man can judge another and say that - what I am saying is that if your walk with God is only superficial and you really have no initimacy with Him, when hard times of judgement fall on our nation, you will not be able to survive. You will not be under the shelter of His wing.

I would urge you, brethren, to spend some time with God in a private place of prayer where you can pour out your heart to Him, allowing the Holy Spirit to bring to you the areas that need to be surrendered. Repent of the choices you have made, the things that have stolen you away from your first love.
Make no mistake about it. If we are not tethered to God, our foundation, Jesus Christ our rock, when the winds of judgement begin to blow and the foundations begin to shake, we will be swept away and lost.


The Good News:
I could start sharing specific examples of what is going on in our nation that shows a hand of judgement going on already. Maybe some of you are unemployed, risking losing your home or car, not knowing where you will go or how you will eat when the unemployemnt benefits run out. For you, it feels like God has already started to act. Well, you are right! But he wants to shake YOUR foundations in order to draw you to Himself. He wants to purify your heart and bring you through a sifting and purging so that you might truly become part of the Bride of Christ. Not everyone that is in the church right now will ultimately be a part of the Bride. Remember the parable of the virgins and the lamps and oil? Some were ready and some were not.
Know that what you are going through can be the catalyst to draw you back to that place where you will find true peace and even joy in spite of tribulation.

Don't let God's shaking catch you unaware. Repent, seek God and draw close to Him. He is calling out to you even now.

In Christ our Lord,

Lon