Wake Up, Church!

12.20.19

Sometimes God lets us come together for one reason, so that He can use our contending for another. When praying for Olive, I have spoken very little English. Instead, all week I have been in constant intercession in tongues. The beauty of this is that it prays God’s will into the earth, regardless of our human will, intellect, or desire. I’ve seen something incredible happening in the global church as the hashtag #wakeupolive has been trending across social media platforms. We’ve been crying out for natural resurrection of a little girl named Olive, but simultaneously, the Holy Spirit has been calling forth the fruit of the Church as we cry!

Did you know that olives are classified as a fruit? Even more interesting than that, they are the key component in making oil. If you read my previous post, I mentioned that one of the things the Lord spoke to me was that, "Olive’s pressing circumstances will produce oil, and where anointing oil is paired with prayer, miracles happen!" (If you haven't had the chance to read part 1, I encourage you to do so, to gain important details.) I've meditated on this thought for days, wondering if God was referring to the miracle of this little girl’s resurrection in the natural (something I whole-heartedly believe is possible if God wills it), or if He is referring to the miracle of the church producing mature fruit and allowing the Lord to press and test our faith.

For weeks, the Lord has been speaking to me about pressing past limitations and lids that we put on the power of God. In our humanity, so often, we hear God's prophetic "rhema" word, and develop our own natural interpretation of what we think it means. We limit God by only looking for Him to answer our prayers in a certain way. Like Moses striking the rock instead of speaking to it, we assume that if God did it a certain way before, He will do it in the same way again. This mentality is actually a trap of the enemy to keep us from seeing the faithfulness of God to answer our prayers in a new way. Especially when the answer comes in the form of a process of growth rather than an instant fix. If there is one amazing thing that I have seen from the way that Bethel and the global church have contended for the resurrection of Olive, it's that God is using it to start a conversation with the church about what it looks like to truly have bold faith. Make no mistake though, this faith we have must be in God, not just the miracle itself, because otherwise your faith will falter when the miracle doesn’t come the way you expected it to.

I've spent the past few days combing over stories of miracles and healings in the New Testiment, and even reading stories about more modern day miracles done by the likes of William Branham and Smith Wigglesworth. There are two specific things I've noticed in each scenario:

1. The source of the miracle was always Jesus.

2. The only formula was faith and there was always an incredibly offensive act or step of boldness that preceded the miracles. (Faith paired with works).

Especially in the New Testament, Jesus was always doing things that pressed cultural traditions and even religious norms. Just think about it, He spit in the dirt and wiped it on a blind mans eyes! Can you imagine what the blindman was thinking when he heard the sound of spit and then felt the slime of the mud on his face? In our day, this act would be seen as a sign of complete direspect and discrimination! Yet, it was the thing that most offended his flesh, that became the catalyst for his sight to be restored!

What about the time Jesus healed the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath? The Jewish leaders could not handle the thought of it, but Jesus was concerned with the heart of the matter. He knew that the principle of the Sabbath was not about the rule as much as it was about restoring man by rest, and thus to restore this mans hand (a symbol of his ability to work), was actually the very purpose of the Sabbath. The sabbath is about resting so you can be fully restored in the Lord. Jesus was always about motive before movement. Every move He made was rooted in God's will and intent. His understanding of the Heart of God propelled every miracle He performed.

More modern-day revivalists, like Smith Wigglesworth had the same mentality as Jesus. They were unafraid to offend culture or the opinions of man for the sake of seeing God's will take place. In one instance, where He saw a man resurrected from the dead, Wigglesworth picked the dead body up out of the casket, stood it up against a wall and declared, "In the name of Jesus, walk!" The corpse slid down the wall, and He did it three more times!!! The fourth time, the man jolted awake and walked out of the room with him! Can you imagine if God asked you to pick up a dead body in front of their entire grieving family and prop it up against a wall? Actually, imagining that is the problem. We think too much about what other people will say when it comes to stepping out in faith. Some have been overly concerned that offending people is the opposite of having love and compassion, but that is a false belief. Of course, we do not offend people just for the sake of offense, but sometimes it take something loud and offensive to awaken people from their slumber. It was pure love that saw the will of God to restore life to that dead corpse and reconcile that man to his family. What would have happened, if the family would have been so offended at Wigglesworth for picking up the body of their loved one, that they stopped him from doing it a fourth time? Their inability to see God’s hand at work would have been the very thing that created an obstacle for the Him to show His resurrection power.

I cannot get over this one question. Why is half the church so offended at the idea of a mother and father stepping out in bold faith and prayers to see the resurrection of their daughter? The Bible tells us that we are to, "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give (Matthew 10:8)." Raising the dead is something God does! As a mother of three children, I would want to know that I put every ounce of faith and belief out there before giving up on my child's purpose and destiny on this side of eternity. I would never want to look back with regret thinking if I would have just had more faith, maybe they would have lived. I’d want to leave all of it at the altar. Not only for the sake of their life, but also for the sake of all of the lives that God intended them to reach out to and see saved!

We Premature death does not only effect the person who dies, it effects every person who was meant to come into contact with that person. Can you see the ripple effect? This is not some selfish cry to get back their daughter for the sake of not having to grieve her loss, and it’s also not about them being angry at God if He should choose to keep her in Heaven. It is a mother and father who understand the ramifications of the enemy taking out not only their child, but the destiny of their child. The enemy doesn't want us to realize our authority in Christ to release the power of resurrection, because pre-mature death is one of the easiest ways for him to stop the ripple effect of God's power at work in us.

As I thought more about this, the Lord reminded me of a vision I had around Easter this year. I saw a lifeless body laying in a dark tomb. Then I saw a spirit looking almost like a shadow of a person, but it’s very essence was made of a bright crystal blue light instead of darkness. It hovered over the body. He started to perform mouth to mouth resuscitation on the body, and as He did, the very breath He breathed was His essence. I could see the blue light transfer into the body. Life was restored to it and the body was resurrected, but it’s resurrected form took on the shape and likeness of the Spirit it had inhaled. He came forth as an entirely new creation by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

After reading it, I closed my eyes to visualize it again, but this time I saw the same message in different set of circumstances. I saw the little body of Olive lying at the morgue, then I saw the breath of the spirit breathe his essence into her. As she awakened to new life, she began running and skipping around the morgue doing mouth to mouth on other dead bodies. One by one these people began awakening to life until I saw an army of resurrected beings standing, completely filled with the power of God.

Does this mean we will see the natural resurrection of Olive? I have no idea. If God wills it, and we partner with it, it will be. But for now, I stand in surrender offering myself as a willing vessel to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!” I do, however, see the spiritual implications of what God is doing in the church through Olive’s story. I believe Olive symbolizes God awakening the fruit of the church in this season. As we are awakened by the power of God, we will begin seeing other dead things like hopes and dreams resurrected in the lives of everyone around us. Olive’s circumstances are pressing religious mindsets and the fear of man out of the church! Even if she does not rise from the dead, it is clear that fruit has come of the prayers. People are being raised to their position and are taking their seat with Christ in heavenly places to intercede!

The Bible says in James 2:26 NKJV, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” Expressing faith that God can do the impossible is not about about holding God hostage or even trying to impede the sovereignty of God. There is nothing wrong with what Bethel has done. They have shown by their works and their worship that they truly do have faith that God is the God of resurrection. The beauty in this situation is that it is a win-win scenario for the Kingdom of God. The enemy loses either way. Olive was always either going to be resurrected into eternity, or she was going to be resurrected on earth to finish out her God-given purpose. The power of resurrection cannot be discredited here by either scenario!

God is working this for His good. He has a way of taking even our uncertainty about His will and using it for His glory. I know this first hand. Lately, I’ve been asking the Lord to sharpen the prophetic gift in me, and I have a desire to operate in words of knowledge. My first priority is intimacy with Jesus, but the Bible does tell us to, “earnestly desire the greater gifts (1 Corinthians 12:31 NKJV)” Seeing as how I’m a full-time mom who works from home, I don’t have many opportunities in this season to reach out to the community. This week, I got an hour of free time to go shop for some Christmas presents and as I was in the line at Starbucks, the thought popped into my head that I was kidless and had no excuse not to reach out to someone if God should want to use me. I prayed a quick prayer asking the Lord if there was anything He wanted me to say to the barista after ordering my coffee. The first thing that popped into my mind was “her birthday is April 4th” I sat there struggling in my head, “God is this you, or is this just me? Should I say something?” Finally I got to the counter and I said to the barista, “ Hello! How are you?” She replied with kind pleasantries and took my order. I felt my heart beating fast, because I have always been weird about talking to strangers. Finally I decided to say it, “This may sound strange, but is your birthday April 4th?”.... She looked at me sideways and said, “uhhh, no.” I immediately started laughing. I continued to tell her, “I don’t know what you believe, but I believe that God is real and that He speaks to us in an internal voice. I’m practicing discerning the difference between His voice and my own.” She replied, “ September 21st, that’s my birthday!” I laughed again and said, “Great, I was only 5 months and some days off!” She joined in with a chuckle and said something to the extent of, “What you’re doing is really cool. I admire that.” At this point I was holding up the line, so I simply replied, “Thank you, hope you have an awesome day!”

I walked away and for some reason, even though I had failed miserably with trying to operate in a “word of knowledge”, I felt something had broken off of me. I wasn’t upset with myself for getting it wrong, instead I was laughing and all of a sudden I had this picture of God in my head chuckling and saying, “Aw, you’re so cute.” Like the way I respond to my three year old daughter when she gets all the lyrics to a song wrong. I have always had a really hard time with caring too much about what others think of me. I’ve also struggled with a fear of failure. But oddly enough, it was in stepping out and not getting it right that I felt all of that break off of me. I failed, yet she responded positively. Could it be that God even used my failure to show her what it looks like to be human, while believing in something beyond our comprehension?

I’m still learning to discern God’s voice, just like everyone else. There are time when it is so crystal clear and I am certain that what I have seen or heard was from God, and yet there are other times like this when I am completely unsure. God is not angered by these moments where we aren’t sure. If anything, as long as we are postured in humility, He credits it to us as faith, because we weren’t afraid to put our reputation on the line for His. I used to think and say, “I know God is able, but I don’t know if it is in His will!” But now I know, He is alway willing to do what is in His word, it is more a matter of how He will do it than it is if He's willingness to do it. This is a tension we will live in for much of our earthly walk. We don’t always know the fullness of God’s plan and intention, but we do know that He needs our cooperation in order for His will to be done here. That being said, I think true mature faith looks like the person who goes all out in faith to believe for something extravagant, but refuses to be shaken, when it doesn’t happen the way they had hoped. I choose to believe that God is good. That is the very foundation of our faith. I encourage you to keep stepping out, even if you have to fail a few times. Failure isn’t actually failure if you learn something through it.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV

When you practice a natural gift or ability like dancing (or anything else for that matter), you don’t always get it perfect, especially the first time. The same is true for our spiritual gifts, it takes practicing our faith to begin seeing the dance between ourselves and God come together in a magnificent display of beauty. Thankfully, we have a perfect dance partner that is also our teacher! As long as we keep our steps and hearts aligned with His movement, we will continue to shine for His glory! The time is now Bride of Christ, I see Christ extending His hand to us saying, “Can I have this dance?” Will you step out in faith in the areas where you cannot see the full picture?

"And without faith living within us it would be impossible to please God. For we come to God in faith knowing that he is real and that he rewards the faith of those who give all their passion and strength into seeking him." Hebrews 11:6 TPT