A  D a y  o f  E n c o u n t e r

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The most amazing day. The last day of a three month visit to the International House of Prayer and missions Base in Kansas City USA, where a 1000 strong staff keep prayer and worship going 7 days a week and 24 hours a day, year in and year out. This day though for me was different than the others. Allen Hood, the director of the Bible School here spoke a sincere and impacting message. He talked to us about the requirement to buy into the urgency of the hour and the requirement to not blind-side the warning of judgement but embrace the actions of God so that we are not subdued by comfort or a counterfeit culture.

The lie of peace when there is no peace is prevalent. Josiah though turning a people for a moment because of His personal bended knee could not divert the all consuming judgements of God that were sweeping in like a flood. A strike from heaven was on its way. It was going to happen but Israel's response to the warnings of impending judgements were tragically ignored. Four years later even after nation wide revival and reforms, the Babylonians were to sweep the people into devastating captivity. Even ten minutes before Allen's discourse was complete, somebody to my right in the packed auditorium began to weep and then wail. The Holy Spirit was waking up a new seeing into the deep unto deep of God's feelings. It was meant to land on a corporate people.

In a single day, a remarkable breaking in of the divine exploded on my heart. It was one of those rare times when the emotions of God are like a jug poured out water onto a table. I responded to an altar call to be one of those that do not stay deaf when the nation requires a cry for mercy and affiliation.

The entreatment came. 'Will you be a friend and ally, despite the trauma and anger that will arise against God as real people lose their lives, as systems collapse and the props to life crumble. 'Will you embrace the orchestrations from heaven to bring justice and alignment whatever the loss or discomfort?' I cried out 'yes, YES.' I will be a friend to you in this wilderness  Where man is puffed up and rises against you in great pride, I will bow low. I will be a trusted one. Even if I die in the process. God I no longer want to deny the actuality of your imminent plans to shake all that can be shaken. Take away the rags of my passive responses. Provoke me to demonstrate preparedness. I want to stand through all that You send in allegiance, staying the course, not weakening in resolve. Your judgements are good.' 

So I walked up to the front, knelt down amongst a number of people who were already weeping with the burden of a need to seek the reality of the crises in our nation and the lack of godly preparation. And my heart began to feel crushed, desperate. 

I wondered whether I was making it all up or just coming under the influence of others but I knew that this was no ordinary moment. It was no ordinary revelation about to swamp my inner man. Suddenly, from deep down a geyser of emotion swept forward, and I found myself hysterically weeping. The lament was gut wrenching. This was connectivity of a divine order that was a gift though soul shattering. The reality of a God hating nation, our nation of the United Kingdom was made known and the grief of a loving yet powerful God bought to my awareness with such acuteness that I began to wail and groan and lose breath. My lungs felt pressure of the emotion and all I could do appropriately was to press my head to the floor. It was a weird position that I could not manage without a supernatural gripping that had seized my whole frame. 

I believe this was a spirit of prayer and friendship with the heart of God. I cried like a little boy abandoned by the roadside. I knew it to be the abandonment of God by a nation that had disowned Him and therefore given Him no option but to act in judgement and power to confront the opposers who were draining the innocent of access to the beautiful God. And I am not just thinking of the leaders of the country but people like me and you – ordinary men and woman that choose to block God and make alliance with this world.

I knew in those moments too that I was called to share the pain. To go to the place of aching for mercy, yet burning for the just God to release the judgements that bring clarity amidst confusion and open rebellion. I felt my part in the stage of human depravity. I was guilty of a measure of rejection of God. My part in the revolt was demonstrated against God by a weak sign up to righteousness and a retreat that resisted full effect of the cleansing process of holiness to permeate all my actions, words and activities. I could not accuse for I was one that played a part in diluting the belief that God would act in great fury against all that hinders love by removing the securities we thought could never be removed, even life itself. I was propagating the murder of His name by my lack of love and devotion. So I wept with that too.

The weeping produced in me a turn. We need the turn. The re-signing of a statement, 'I will go after your heart with all of my heart. I will allow the burning up of even the tiniest of thoughts or actions that stains your name or is less than truth. I felt myself pleading, 'God I buy in to the upward call. I must be a crier for justice, for approval of the way you operate. If I am slain then still you are good. If my family and friends die as we stand for your name, you are still good and your ways are right and there is no contradiction. You will not be mocked, I live to be representative not of my morality but of your Holy ordering over nations. Just because I am blessed or not blessed is not the temperature gauge for the way you intend to deal with the nation. Our land is trespassed by idol worship and religious mixture that undercuts and breaks down the image of God to meet man's comfort zones and humanistic agendas. I will bow down to you, throw my crown down, seek you intently, listen to your heart only.

I couldn't even open my eyes to look at the glamour of lights in the meeting or be tickled by the musical melody. In that moment the soberness of wanting my heart re-written was all consuming. I wanted reality. I wanted re-sight. The superficial had to go. No more sermons just to tease or please men or amuse the curious. It was time to count the days and make up for the losses; with boldness speaking what needs to be spoken to alert the hooded Bride. I knew others around me were on the same journey. He was removing the veil for a moment in time and joining us to His purposes, His feelings. In the tumult of my cries I heard Him speak distinctly, “Paul, I need to speak to you. Listen.” I quietened myself down and leaned into the voice. “You are a son of valour.” I didn't feel like that, yet He was ascribing identity and I refused to treat His words lightly. “Thank you my God. I believe your account of me more than my own. Thank you.”

I saw a sword that was bright white, glowing in purity. As I knelt, I watched it in my minds eye the sword get lowered onto my left shoulder. I knew this to be my weak side. “This is for purity,” He said. He lifted the sword and lowered it onto my other shoulder. “This is for boldness.” I saw myself get up and run into battle. And I remembered when we first came to Kansas City that He said, you will, you must take on the gift of boldness I am giving you. It will come in the fall and onwards.

I saw Him take our whole family and place purple robes on our backs. Then I heard Him say, “Tend my sheep” and I felt immediately the weakness rise and a demonstration of inability contend against His request. So He quickly added, “I will be The Shepherd leading the shepherd.” 

I began weeping again. My heart was so tender. Then two leaders of IHOP, Dale and Cheryl Anderson came over and began praying. I heard Cheryl softly crying saying in a broken voice, “all I see is a golden sword. Its a golden sword above you.” I knew this was symbolic of two things. Firstly, the commission for the House of Prayer freshly assigned and a sword of the Lord that though glorious was His impending judgement about to fall like a sharp blade on the UK. I felt the pressure, the godly weight of the call for intercession in England and the UK and His escort of power on the heart to do whatever it took unto death to see a voice raised in the midst of the shakings to ascribe His works not as devil designed but as God sent that the pure in heart would see God, that the Bride could stay wed to His ways and the land could be married to His Kingdom rather than in opposition to it.

All day long I felt the tenderising residue of the Spirit's encounter. Later that day I attended the evening meeting. We had missed the worship in the morning. So I went to participate in that though I knew I would be weeping. I stood at the front in the large auditorium, on the second row back, I didn't realise it was reserved for the extreme evangelism team. I offered to move to another place on finding out but was invited to stay. Before I tell you what amazed me, let me tell you of a dream I had a little while back.

I dreamt of being driven up a hill really fast by the leader of evangelism at IHOP-KC, Hal Lindhart. As we reached the brow of the hill before it dropped to the valley below Hal accelerated and the van took off into the air. I was holding onto the car door with my right hand and the rest of my body was horizontal like I was flying.

So there I was in the meeting when suddenly for real Hal Lindhart came and stood next to me on my right as in the dream. Shirley had met with him days earlier and Hal had hoped he would meet with me. I realised God was enforcing and encouraging us with a second commission; a call to  effective evangelism. I understood by the Spirit, there will be a thrust of anointed ability to reach the lost with a team. This melted my heart all over again.

I am writing this 24 hours later, exactly. My wife and I and our children are 35,000 feet up in the air on our way back to England to continue building the Joel House of Prayer supported by some beautiful lovers of God called to the wall to pray night and day. The plane has just begun a descent into Toronto Canada our connecting airport. Toronto means the good or God meeting place. We are highly aware of an ambush being established. It is so reviving to those willing to accept the 'follow me.' It is so frightening to those who are one foot in and one foot out of what God wants.

This coming year God has directed JHOP to plough into our lives consecration; an acute sifting of everything repulsive to God. So also it will be a year of boldness. Boldness before the throne of God and boldness on the earth below. It is a fresh seizing of truth in the midst of a long and painful seizure in the church. Crippled, filled with denial and a crude and inappropriate level of response before heaven, the Body of Christ celebrates the tiny movements of impact on society rather than mourning over its lack and crying out for true partnership. The kind of partnership that can turn a nation. The UK as with many western nations are plagued with doors opened wide to demonic hosts and anti-God agendas.

We have an 'as for me and my house resolve.' JHOP and the community that grows with it will be a fire that blazes with tenacity to take hold of that which Christ has taken hold of us. I believe we will reach the poverty of communities in a new and deep way bringing restoration and Jesus focused lovers form the pit to the prayer rooms.

In my encounter on my knees, I felt like I had Esau's bowl of stew before me. The birthright was being demanded. 'Just eat,' was the taunt, 'you don't have to get all intense about that other stuff. Leave the others to it. You can get all you need with this.' It was like swopping the bowl of modern godless comfort for the bowl that would gather the prayers of the saints. To reject this worlds formulae, its bowl of stew, even in the Christian world will seem crazy, extreme, over the top, hyper. But many are grabbing a spoon and numbing down their responsibility by a casual feasting on superficial things, and there are always seconds and thirds to splosh in your bowl of carnal desire once you fall into that dangerous appetite.

A sinister exchange was being conspired in a false grace packaged so called non-fail scheme. Many Christians are going for the stew. In these end days we are pre-warned about this. It is the great falling away. The fatal deceptions is a bowl of stew i.e. comfort and temporal pleasure, in exchange for giving up the pursuit of God for ourselves and the lives of our children and their children. As I wept in that encounter, it seemed so vile, so ugly and horrible – I remember stretching out my arms and saying, GOD I DON”T WANT THE STEW – I WANT YOU FOR ME, MY FAMILY - THIS YOUTH GENERATION.”

And today, though feelings have faded, my resolve has not. It is time to allow the pain of God's heart to seize ours and drive us to action to deal head on with the corruption personally but particularly nationally and globally. Prayer provides the only pathway for the power of His presence to come in such a way where we recover enough reality over this to shift lives into Godly focus. Nothing else will will work however hard we work!! But God will not do what we are called to do. If do not arise to be His voice on earth through the Holy Spirit – then the wreckage as God's judgements fall will make us unrecognisable, a spiritual wilderness overtaken by foreign gods with church being a weak almost invisible minority in a land that is almost now submerged by other faiths.

We don't get God's protection because we believe He wouldn't dare leave us unprotected. He is not intimidated by our idea of how He should act. He is not going to pamper our arrogance like kneeling before a spoilt child. This is why we are so outside of an understanding of the government of God though a false picture we have painted, a golden calf of non-touchability - an insipid drift and collusion with darkness. No – He acts. He will act. It will have a shocking severity but pro-activity and posturing now through agreement will give us the resources at heart level not to leave in the crises but stay faithful. We are in the headlamps of His attention. If we consider Him passive, our delusion will hurl us into confusion. The lion is on your doorstep. Friend or foe He calls. It's time to adjust. Our protection is only truly in place through close allegiance and love of biblical facts about His nature and His intent in these end time chapters of history.

In a recent survey in America, the following statistics were gathered in regards to those living an authentic life in God and attending church with a vibrant faith.

Builders generation  (1924-1944) – 65% church engagement

Boomers generation  (1945-1965) – 35% church engagement

Buster generation (1966-1983) – 15% church engagement

Bridger generation (born after 1984) – 4% church engagement

These statistics show a huge decline in the church as millions through successive generations have exited the established religious christian institutions. It is amazing how many of us have been through church splits and the pain all that creates. Congregations float, devoid of youth, surrounded by individuals abused and defiled saying they will never return through church doors.

God's intent was to have a company of people that would sway governments through their fiery hearts and prayer filled lives. But the numbers of passionate believers have dwindled to such a degree that the American church in the example above is in deep almost irrecoverable crises. It is at the point of becoming so faded that all it can do is exist without a voice to change any wave of occupation spiritually and physically. What a disastrous and terrifying day.

The United Kingdom is possibly in a worse condition. The churches are being given over to mosques in our slumber. Once again, the only remedy is for the church is to re-schedule its work camp of self induced business and operate around a furnace of corporate prayer, truly hearing what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Revival looks to a preparation in advance of a war zone for the occupation of land and people. It prepares a people to stand through adversity, to love God with all their might and apply their hearts to do what the Holy Spirit says, overcoming even the darkest shadows of evil that drift over their communities. It positions us as a Bride to the Bridegroom King and judge to partner with His plans escorting His arrival as He returns to take dominion of the earth.

In our contemplations about the traumas still to occur on planet earth we can so easily become fatalistic and deeply discouraged. BUT, the Father's formulae for delighting the human heart with arranged ambushes through His and His Son's love really works to make you and I fully alive and strong. It is not faulty or false. Its only condition is we must take His words and demonstrate we treasure them through response because the life He offers from conversion to fully walking things out is by invitation and activation.

Most biblical directives still sit unattended in our lives. If you make those steps to be wholehearted, to come under the full counsel of God, to couch the burden of the Lord in your life, to consider all things loss and follow through on commitment – HE WILL empower you deeply with friendship and exhilaration. You WILL live with a luminosity of purpose that ultimately benefits thousands and maybe millions in the escalating effects of a life given over to obedience and righteousness.

But most of all, you will have knowledge and experience of your life being incense, pleasure on the heart of the beautiful God. He will reward with a downpour of affection that completes, satisfies, propels. We do our part and He always replies lavishly. Father even now, for those who are disappointed, having made steps to give all and follow hard, strengthen their hearts to continue to search you out, to discover the passion on your heart and partner with you in a giveness unmatched in any previous generation. Join them with other lovers. Heal the fractures. 

Holy Spirit instruct us all how to set our hearts in allegiance to comprehend the times and seasons. Fill us with fresh resolve to make the changes that lead to uncompromised friendship with you. Give us an understanding of your plans for the nations, the stunning nature of your judgements, the beauty of your Son, the eternity of friendship that makes overcoming all the present temptations, conflicts, opposition worth it. You are our great leader Jesus. We re-sign up to follow you through to the end. Count us in. Give us revelation truth, wisdom, love and the fire of perseverance to the day we see you face to face. In Your beautiful name we pray Amen.