Outpouring

i'm not sure how to begin this, but to say praise God, the King and Savior, for His word and the fulfillment of His word in our world today. Every day we wake up to a new sunrise which indicates a new playbook for the Kingdom of God to be advanced and God to be glorified. We are the body, the blessed vessels of His grace, and when a hungry and thirsty generation arises from the ashes of a fallen culture, this is where it begins...an outpuring. The greatest truth about God's word aside from its redemptive truths, is the constant reality that God uses the unlikely and the strangely peculiar to fulfill His plans and establish His throne in nations and communities. And this is so beautiful because it is so true still today.. John Piper says "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." It doesnt necessarily take a religious elite or "super-christian" to be His hands and feet. 2 Chronicles 7:14 says, "and if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then i will hear them from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land." So this is it, God is after a people who humble themselves before the throne of a Holy God and who are desperate for His presence and His grace, ...and healing comes. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus challenging the religious and pious leaders who clung to their knowledge and yet their hearts were so far from the Father. Jesus paints a portrait of His people who were so hungry and desperate for Him that they choose sitting at His feet over sitting in the courts of kings. We must reclaim this identity as followers of Christ, that our set-apartness doesn't necessarily depend on our outward appearances as it did with the Jews, but rather the conditions and motives of our heart determine our identity as co-heirs with Christ. What a fascinating and terrifying revelation, that the Lord sees our hearts in all their dirtiness and yet still He remains with us, begging for us to approach the throne of grace with confidence. It doesn't take a genius to notice that something has gone terribly wrong in the church, and you know what that's okay, i mean it's prophesied in the scriptures that this will take place. Now, we must do something with this truth, there is two paths to choose from. 1) Accept the flaws of the church and continue to play our part blaming everything that goes wrong on the eschaton of it all, and therefore exclude God's divine intervention OR 2) We, as the body, seeing Christ as the head of the church, humble ourselves and go back to the basics. Examine the text and see where we have gotten off and dedicate ourselves to prayer and fasting in confidence that God is true to His word and that He truly wants to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, to infiltrate the kingdom of darkness and overwhelm hate with love, take root in a hungry people, who desire nothing other than seeing God's Kingdom be illuminated and God be glorified. ...I think #2 is God's will. (My interpretation of His word) The Father has established His throne in His Son, and it shall never be destroyed or even be tested. The God of Israel has poured forth His Spirit on all mankind (Joel 2:28) and as the body, we have been given a stewardship of the Gospel, and it is our destiny, our purpose. No longer can we be satisfied with sunday service and singing songs, we must open the eyes of our hearts to see how God sees, open our hears to hear how He hears, and allow His Spirit to guide the steps we take. As we begin to cry out for Him, our hearts groaning (Romans 8:22) for His presence and healing to sweep across the land, we will see an awakening, an outpouring that Joel might have seen in His visions.. Awaken O Zion, arise. Let us weep in the arms of the Savior, may the tears of the saints saturate the throne of God. Let the hunger pains groan inside for the revealing of the King, labor with a pension raining from the Hands of grace. Let desire flow through our veins to see Jesus worshipped. May our prayers pledge an allegiance to the Lord alone, and the meditations of our heart fix their gaze upon the Lamb. Awaken O Zion, arise.