The Roaring Twenties are nearly here! The greatest decade in history will begin in a few months. The greatest harvest of souls will start coming in. The greatest showdown of spiritual kingdoms will be on display.
Do you have your priorities in order? Are “first things first?” Do you suffer from “distraction creep” that exhausts your highest on lesser pursuits?
Or, do you have the highest in your life focuses upon the priorities of Divine purpose?
Remember, what is obvious to God will only be obvious to you when you are seeing what He sees from His perspective.
Remember, what is important to God will only be what is important to you when you are sharing His values.
Remember, what motivates the heart of the Father will only motivate your heart when you share His passion.
As we approach 2019 and the countdown to the Roaring Twenties, you need to make radical adjustments to your preparation, positioning, and posture.
1 Come in for a major tune-up of your submission systems.
No matter how pure and powerful your fueling, you will spit and sputter along with jerky motions, jump starts and pauses, abrupt halts and starts, and jittery responses at the stop and go lights without a finely-tuned submission system.
The submission system responds to your positioning, so it is a posture of your heart to assigned and aligned leadership relationships.
This is the worst time in the history of the world and your life to be out of alignment with your assigned leaders.
Submission means “the posture and practice of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the positional authority of another person.” Your submission system automatically parks you in the space reserved for you. Your submission system automatically steers you into alignment with the directives of your leaders. Your submission places the entire vehicle of your personal purpose at the disposal of the King of kings where He places you in the battle plan.
Submission is not obedience since a person can obey without submitting in a “go along to get along” mode that breaks down suddenly in crisis. Submission levels are revealed in harsh conditions when your submission is tested by environmental extremes.
We are coming into a season of contrasts so stark that the grey areas disappear in harsh light and deadly darkness. The wind speeds are picking up. The sudden changes in spiritual conditions require responsiveness in the submission systems of your soul.
You submission system will save your neck several times a day in 2019 and save your purpose in the Roaring Twenties.
Submission can be immediately recognized and discerned by the level of peace and rest in your heart. Submission rests before the decisions and directives of the authorized leaders of your life.
When you are angry or anxious, your submission system needs adjustment. You are angry or anxious because of frustration, and frustration is the consequence of assuming responsibility for something over which you have no authority.
You can be as mad about the weather as you wish but you cannot change it. It is beyond your control. You submission system seeks to adjust your forward motion according to the environment into which you are sent. In turn, you can be as anxious about what other people think or say as you wish but you cannot change what they think or say. Your submission system steers you away from their distraction and sets your heart condition to what is consistent with your assignment.
When you are fearful, you are not trusting the assignment of the King. When you are angry, you are responding to the assignment of the King. You are, in each case, wasting a lot of fuel on doing something contrary to the route you are supposed to be running.
Whatever is less than healthy and strong in your submission system, get a professional tuneup now.
2 Get your strategic relationships into kingdom culture normal.
Jesus invested Himself in strategic relationships assigned to Him by His Leader. Father gave Him the disciples that He turned into representative leaders. At one point, He rolled His eyes and said, “How much longer will I have to be with you?” In all this process, He knew that one would betray Him.
Your relationships should be just as strategic as the ones Jesus was assigned by His Leader.
Kingdom culture has principles, processes, and protocols for all human relationships. Jesus who creates, redeems, and restores humans, designed behaviors for humans. He included relationships designs for personal and kingdom lifestyles. These relational dynamics are part of the culture He designed for His kingdom citizens.
Jesus is very serious about relational dynamics.
All your relationships will be tested to the maximum in the Roaring Twenties. The time to get this right is now, not during the stress tests of the greatest decade of history. Learning how to make it work with the people you must depend upon for life and breath should not be left to the moments of crisis.
Do not learn how to respond to a person choking when you see someone choking. Learn how to before the crisis comes. Do not learn how to restart someone’s heart when they are dying in front of you.
On a practical note, do not attempt to teach your children to obey while you are walking in the mall or eating dinner at someone else’s house. Do not start parenting when your children are in a teenage crisis. Start now. Do it right today. Stop rebellion before the issue is premarital sex or drug abuse. Stop that surly attitude before the issue is about their choice of friends.
Combining this with submission, do not make a critical decision when the crisis comes. Make up your mind today about critical decisions that will come tomorrow.
I do not have to make a decision about cheating on my wife with another woman when some floozy or whore tries to capture my imagination. I already made that decision.
I do not have to decide about how I will respond to a man attacking my spiritual children when someone attacks them or tries to move them away from purpose. I already made that decision, and I have practiced my moves. I already perfected a fast draw. I didn’t wait until high noon for some gun-slinger to strut down main street bow-legged and boastful.
I do not go to critical meetings hoping for a revelation. I walked into critical meetings with a revelation. I do not wait for someone to spring a surprise on me. I know who I’m meeting with before I agree to meet. I make a decision about my relational responsibilities before faced with the decisions of relational accountability.
I do not pull a gun on a wolf to find out if he is a wolf. I do not pull a gun on a wolf unless I intend to fire that gun. I do not fire that gun unless I intend to fire a fatal shot. I do not fire warning shots at wolves because they come back when I’m not around. I pull the gun to guarantee that wolf will have no access to the sheep for which I am responsible.
Get your marriage where it needs to be for the Roaring Twenties. Get your intimacy intimate. Get your attitude loving. Get your heart back in the game instead of in our job or your gaming. Get your marriage on track for its kingdom purpose, not your delusional bucket list.
Get your relationship with your leaders on par with the assignment and alignment of your purpose. Get your heart where your head and mouth think and say what they should. Get your money where it is supposed to be going. Get your priorities back in order for marriage, children, kingdom, and purpose. Get your body back on the altar of sacrifice.
If you have more affinity with friends and family than the priorities of your kingdom purpose, change your priorities in relationships. If you continue to eat and associate with a person claiming to be a brother or sister who commits sexual sin, idolatry, defrauds people financially or personally, engages in perversion, or says things that damage your leaders or other believers on a consistent basis, stop the association. If you continue to lend your ears to a slandering tongue, you are complicit in murder.
Most importantly, right now consider how you can move in closer, engage more significantly, bond more fully, and trust more deeply with the people with whom you have proven relationships. Be strategic, intentional, and committed at a new level with the healthy relationships that feed your life.
3 Walk away from all lukewarmness in ministry, relationships, and activities.
Just say no. Do not go. Change the destination of your kingdom connectivity if necessary. Drop friends like hot potatoes. Dismiss the invitations to glamourized spirituality. Just stop attending any church presentation where the leaders refuse to change.
Get out of abusive networks where Pharaoh’s cash in on your flesh. Kill the demanding desires of your flesh that seek personal promotion through marketed leadership schemes that use Bible terms and apostolic titles to titillate your delusions.
Stop going to hear immature prophets. Stop engaging in the prophetic circus where you pay for a word. Stop listening to any prophetic voice that has no accountability, offers no opportunity for the words to be judged, and gives everybody in the building a word.
Walk out the places you connected because of prophetic recruitment. If the leader prophesied you into his house, leave that house. Walk out. If it was God, you will be walking back in. If it was manipulation, you will not be a victim of witchcraft anymore.
Stop chasing the hype-machine revivalists. They are revival frauds. No revival at all. They manufacture a show that the normal kingdom meetings would have when the least mature are leading. They act as if healing is rare, only through them. They make a show of people with demons when that should never be a circus act. They enable people with false manifestations who are as fleshly as a pagan. They encourage these people to show up in different cities for the revival jamboree.
Lukewarm is neither cold nor hot. The point of Jesus’s words to that Ecclesia was not about cold being obviously wrong and hot being obviously right. Cold and hot were not wrong and right. The point was that lukewarmness is neither cold nor hot, but an attempt to appear to be both. It is the effort people make to be what will fit the moment. It is an empty sacrifice made for the show. It is what it takes to be acceptable without extreme, what costs nothing, only what is forced.
4 Begin your journey out of modern church-anity and into regional Ecclesia by finding an authentic kingdom-centered ministry where all the kingdom leadership dynamics are in operation.
The New Era Reformation will challenge “deacon-ized” church-anity. It will put eldering leaders under a microscope to see if their qualifications are spiritual or carnal. It will ask challenges questions about the five dynamics of kingdom leadership Jesus bestows upon the kingdom Ecclesia. It will ask you to mature before you participate in the building, body, and bride.
It will strategically prepare you based upon the position for which the Architect, Head, and Groom has created you. It will not train you in spiritual gifts and ask you to work the parking lot as a ministry. (Someone will certainly do so, but it will not be described as “equipping the saints” or a dead end detour in which you remain for seventeen years of faithful service.)
The failure of church-anity is already on display. The end game of church growthism plays out before our eyes. What we thought about old-line denominations is what we need to think now about church growthism.
Insist upon something more Biblical, spiritual, powerful, and transformative. Do so immediately! Find leaders who teach kingdom and kingdom culture, lead by its principles, processes, and protocols, and insist that people grow up.
This is a followup to the previous point of “strategic relationships.” If you are sacrificing your destiny to the convenience of “attending church with my friends,” you are infantile and lack the urgency needed for the Roaring Twenties.
5 Make a radical shift in your financial priorities so that you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His culture with your ten-year financial goals.
First, set 10-year financial goals in response to your kingdom priorities. Be willing to throw everything in your life on the altar of kingdom purpose. If that means your career is sacrificed to your calling, so be it. It that means you drive the same car until it dies, so be it. It that means you start saving 10% of your income, so be it. If that means you start giving 20% of your income, so be it. If that means you are living on 70% of your income, so be it.
Second, be certain your wealth or estate will remain fully involved in the kingdom of God, not be wasted on the world – the enemy of Father – by children who have no heart for God. Do not assume the world determines what is appropriate for your estate planning. Previous generations planned for God to have a complete partnership stake in estate planning, and most of the great moves of God were underwritten by the sale of land and houses, wealth transfers to the kingdom.
Third, simplify your life. Allow God to set your lifestyle level. He will. He will tell you, “You are going to live at this level of lifestyle. You will be comfortable there.” That level is different for each person, and some live very austere lives while others enjoy a different level of expenditure. Do not measure your God-set lifestyle level by comparison but by assignment. God will set your levels consistent with your metron, or measured sphere of kingdom leadership.
You can be a vessel of honor as a salt shaker, not a main course presentation platter. Contentment is a great gain. God has a level of lifestyle for you that you will enjoy. Break off any other delusion, desire, measurement of contentment, and embrace the level of lifestyle God sets for you. Then, all the wealth and income of your life remains at His disposal without a sense of bruising sacrifice. It becomes a joy to give freely when and where God directs.
Get your passport up to date. Anticipate international assignments for prayer, team ministry, and kingdom expansion. Believe God for all the resources to participate in what He is doing in the great harvest of souls in history, as well as, your assignment in the greatest decade of history.
Function form a position of financial strengthen.
6 Mature your worship and intercession far beyond the presently accepted levels.
As I share in my book, Spiritual Worship, I carry us through the difference between entertainment and authentic worship to the difference between the worship of David and the Tent of David, from personal to corporate to prophetic to kingdom to Glory. In the process, I intend that we blend our intercession and worship to the point we cannot tell the difference between the two.
Short of a polemic about current mini-movements of intercession or worship, or even a discussion of whether there can even be such a thing as “the prayer movement” or “the worship movement,” I call you to a prioritization of intercession and worship unlike any you have experienced in the past.
We must have a new sound in the Roaring Twenties.
I stood in the CityGate service in Atlanta December 9, 2018, during the time when music was part of our worship-intercession and saw an open vision of the paper scroll that played a player piano.
As directed, I looked up “player piano” on my phone. I discovered that the player piano entered its heights of popularity in the Roaring Twenties of the previous century and died of sudden death syndrome with the Great Depression and the Collapse of that decade’s delusions.
I immediately realized the parallels God was revealing to me for the Roaring Twenties of this century!
A player piano was so popular in the Roaring Twenties because that decade had a particular sound. It was pervasive because that sound became available everywhere a player piano was installed. In short, everyone could have that sound in their home, party, restaurant, club, bar, or street corner. The player piano installed a sound into a decade.
Consider who God will install a sound into His kingdom in the Roaring Twenties that will make that sound pervasive. The scrolls are being distributed even now. No skill set is required to have this sound available because the scrolls make it available at the present level of technology.
A new sound is coming. Embrace it. In this sound, you will hear songs you recognize from the previous decades refreshed with a peculiar tone. You will hear sounds you have never heard before that excite a response within you that will manifest in your physical body in worship and intercession. You will dance a new dance. You will look for a new look. You will feel a new feeling.
The sound will release the roar of God. I write about the roar of God in the book, Overshadowing Glory, so we will recognize it in the Roaring Twenties.
7 Prioritize your highest specialization by entering into a greater focus on fullness and fulfillment in 2019, in preparation for mobilization in that special aspect of your calling in the Roaring Twenties.
As we move into our life’s work, we narrow our focus to greater specialization. We train others, handoff more general aspects, and take a more defined role in kingdom culture. We can provide oversight of what we have experienced while specializing in something higher within our calling.
I am watching God focus a territorial apostle upon his life’s work with increasing intensity. Narrowing his focus sounds like a limitation. It is not. It is an intensification of all he has experienced in decades of apostolic ministry. Intensification comes from narrowed focus. All the energies of this man’s calling and assignment are gearing down to intense application to strategic people, places, and positioning.
I expect to see apostles with blueprints with their heads down on the drafting boards fitting matured inheritors of purpose into major construction initiatives set up foundations laid for these kingdom expansions. When I say that, people immediately jump to a church growth conclusion that more churches will be planted. I do not have that in mind at all. I expect to see apostles in a more apostolic role interacting with the inheritors they are maturing so that what is being built is being built by spiritual children. I expect to the estate planning of kingdom leaders expanded by prepared, positioned, and postured inheritors. I do not see the apostolic in terms of sending. That is a particularly misleading assumption to make about representation.
In other words, the word apostolos means “representative” more than anything else. You can use the word to describe a pizza delivery boy on a moped or you can give it the technical meaning it carries in kingdom leadership. So, representative leaders must be represented in order for an apostolic estate planning effort to thrive. That means more representatives of the assignment, not the apostle himself. It is representation that matures the apostolic.
I use this one example to clarify specialization since the goal of fathering leaders is prepared and positioned inheritors, not selected successors. Now, apply that principle of specialization to your own life: mothers specialize in maturing children and participating in the rearing of grandchildren and great grandchildren. Specialization in teaching or evangelism is easier to identify than apostolic specialization, perhaps, but the principle of specialization is important.
If the Roaring Twenties is what we believe it is, Jesus has been in preparation and positioning mode for this decade for a long time, and He will do finishing work in 2019.
