Three Timely Conversations on Perseverance

We are, believers around the wor;d, in the midst of a “kairos moment” that has been unfolding since fall of 2018. From the Summer/Fall of 2018, the Lord has been moving in unusual and unique ways to capture our attention and shift us into a mode of urgency with faith in regards to our spiritual vitality and interior life. As the Lord moves, intervenes, or releases grace in unusual or unique ways to speak to us corporately, it is most often for the cause of bringing us into a necessary conversation for the sake of heart preparation. We are in the middle of a very unusual story that is connected to very unusual promises for the Church worldwide. The intensity and scope of the promises is connected to the longevity of their fulfillment and the necessity of our preparation to step into them. 

 I said these things in the fall of 2018: One of the great benefits of being a fasting and praying community of believers is the manner in which lifestyle can position us for partnership and engagement with what the Lord is doing in key moments. One of the reasons that we pray and fast is to both ask the Lord to move powerfully while simultaneously preparing our hearts to engage with the move of God we are asking for. 

The Greek word “kairos” means “an opportune” or “right” time, in which things waited for are brought to pass. These are the moments in which God acts and His people respond to His sovereign activity. Peter spoke of revival in terms of a kairos moment: 

“Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times (kairos) of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord…” (Acts 3:19)

I believe that we are in a moment right now (Fall 2018) in which the Lord is moving sovereignly and we as a family are being invited to respond. The beauty of these kinds of small but very significant moments is that they serve as critical learning moments to grow in our ability to respond to and engage with the leadership of God wholeheartedly. This is the spirit of Jesus’ parable of the wise virgins in Matthew 25: 

“But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves…Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.” (Matthew 25:9-13)

We “buy the oil” of intimacy and keep watch as a means of keeping our hearts alive and connected to the Lord so that we can respond to Him together in various ways at key moments. One of the primary points that Jesus was communicating in this parable is that it is possible for the people of God to miss key opportunities to partner with Him in seemingly small but very powerful and significant ways. 

Therefore true divine moments are both rare and precious, as they give us a wonderful opportunity to gauge our own internal condition of readiness and responsiveness to the Holy Spirit’s leadership and make tender adjustments in prayer, repentance, and connection with the word to align ourselves with Him. The Lord can turn all things for our good because of love and jealousy for our fullness, therefore, while it is possible to come short and “miss the moment”, our Father who loves us can still meet us and help us learn and grow to engage in the days to come. 

 I said these things in September of 2019: God “went out of His way” to get each of us into a long-term conversation with Him regarding what He is going to unleash in the days ahead. He started “small” (fulfilled promises and confirming signs and wonders) to get our attention and help us work our way into the more “audacious” and grand promises that are ahead for the people of God. 

Along the way, I believe that God is looking to deliver some from the sentiment-driven, self-exalting romanticism of the present spirit of the age and into true, transformative faith that leads to the kind of wholehearted abandonment and immersion in God that helps us to step victoriously into the promises yet to come. He is also seeking to deliver others from “prophetic storyline / end-times agnosticism”that accompanies truths too big for us to truly grasp or believe. 

This is the big question that is being set before every single one of us: Is God speaking and preparing the Church for real, and His spiritual preparation is real, what are we going to do about it? My hope and prayer is that we as a spiritual family genuinely connect with clarity to what is actually unfolding in this season and in the days ahead. Then, by the grace of God, persistently respond with biblical faith: believe with sobriety, contend with humility, and endure with stability. 

The end-time promises of God were exciting to me at one point in my journey because I thought that they were promising a fundamentally different kind of Christianity than the boring, simple, mundane kind of Christianity that was my “normal”. I understand it quite a bit differently now, years later. The prophetic promises of God are an urgent call to get into biblical Christianity now so that I can be anchored in mature love to persevere and prevail in living that same small, simple biblical Christianity then. 

 In the Spring of 2020, prior to the pandemic and quarantines, I said, we are in a moment where God has taken a long-term conversation and captured our attention to have an immediate one. This is often where I struggle. The nature of the “marathon pace” of locking in, staying faithful, and not quitting over “a long obedience in the same direction” (Eugene Peterson) has forced me to adjust from my younger days to embrace the long way around. The challenge is to lock in long-term while not losing the “now faith” and the expectation of the “suddenly” of God. 

We are in a moment where God is calling us to prepare diligently for the long-term promise and the any moment “suddenly”. This is not an easy tension to live in, and it specifically challenges the unperceived areas of unbelief in my heart. This is what the Lord has been identifying in me at the beginning of this fast: do I really believe that what I am praying for and laboring for will actually come to pass? Do I really believe that the rain will come?