The Roaring Twenties are almost here.
Dutch Sheets shares with us that we have entered a time of acceleration. Knowing that God is behind this new pacesetting leads us to “behold” Providence. (I use that word in the broadest Biblical sense even though we do not use “lo” and “behold” as Father, angels, and Jesus do).
Awakening means that the general population where Awakening has begun and continues to gain momentum experience a heightened awareness of God. That is “beholding Providence.” That is, the awareness of God is an awareness of God’s involvement in human life and history. While He was never far away or less involved, people have heightened awareness of His involvement.
For the United States of America, this heightened awareness of God reminds us of our birthing. Providence was the justification for our very existence. While many people brought a variety of motivations to the table to produce a union strong enough to survive the birthing process, and some of these motivations ignored Providence, the unlying motivation, the one that created this nation, came from a heightened awareness of God’s involvement in nations.
As Awakening gains momentum, the activities of the kingdom of God accelerate. Whatever condition the kingdom is in at that moment will experience momentum.
In the generation of Jesus, that heightened awareness came through public displays of miracles, signs, and wonders so that we can anticipate the same. However, we should be cautious about how we jump to conclusions about Awakening when these displays were not the sum total of what Jesus was doing or even His enduring emphasis.
Accurate Anticipations of Reformation
Jesus says His awakened generation did not recognize the time of their onsite evaluation as a representative culture. Jesus was challenging the norms of the culture with His kingdom culture. They killed Him for doing so.
We jump to conclusions about miracles, signs and wonder with silly and straightforward solutions in mind. We wish God to guarantee that what He does will work no matter what. We want God to do something akin to the rich man in Hades about our lost loved ones and society. We wish God would have a myriad of angels write the Gospel across the sky because our efforts at preaching and living the kingdom culture have not produced what we hoped.
Jesus showed up to tear down tradition and superstition. Any Awakening will threaten the existing religious mafia. Any Awakening will anticipate the kingdom culture becoming the basis for its future expansion. Any Awakening will restore the Great Commission: all authority in Jesus expressed through a radical, representative, regional Remnant sown into that region with apostolic order. An Awakening will restore personal life change resulting in the death of the old life and the beginning of new behavior patterns consistent with kingdom culture. Any Awakening will accurately anticipate apostolic Didache or kingdom Gospel preached with the phrase “train them to obey all I commanded you” in mind.
We see the “lo, I am with you continuously until this time reaches ultimate” as the last part of the Great Commission when it is the very foundation of it. It is Providence as a heightened awareness of God. The little word, “lo,” screams like a thousand angels worshiping Jesus sort of like the fans screamed at Elvis and the Beatles in the sixties. It says, “God among us is an unavoidable reality.”
That awakens more than we think.
Incredible Incidents of Intervention
Jesus recognizes that kingdom culture no longer exists in Israel. “You have made the expectations and anticipations of God of no effect,” or as we would say it, “The Bible has lost authority in personal and public life because the existing culture has more influence than His Law and Prophets.”
God never stops intervening. In Awakening, God feeds the momentum with acceleration. What took six weeks takes six days. What took six years takes six months. The pace increases from walking it out to jogging it out to sprinting it out. The results are no less real, but the pace at which God does what He wants done increases.
We have not done in three years of discipling what Jesus did in three years of discipling. We have not turned an entire culture on its ear in a year and a half. We have not enraged every leader of the religious mafia mad enough to bite nails by public displays of Divine intervention. We have not awakened the masses with miracles, signs, and wonders.
All our social media claims to the contrary – we look like water pistols squirting anointing oil next to His twelve gauge shotgun blasts of Divine power. For all our marketing – and His avoidance of any marketing – we do not awaken our mother’s closest friends with our parlor trick supernatural shows. We applaud puppies while we await the big dogs of kingdom come.
Yet, we do see a more significant trend toward awareness of God’s involvement in history. We do recognize that God intends to do His part, with all of heaven on notice, and a general “get ready, get ready” alarm going off in the heavenlies. We do have solid, Biblical, valid revelatory guideposts pointing to the reality that Providence is again pushing the population to heightened awareness of spiritual things.
Note: the Incredible Incidents of Intervention will blow the minds of the Remnant as much as anyone else. Our feeble efforts at describing what God is going to do are finger painting colors running together and down the living room walls compared to the heavenly mural His unveiling. We are bragging about stuff that makes demons laugh, promoting our conferences and training with hyena hype, acting as if we are the new DaVinci’s with our paint-by-the-numbers Masterpieces.
When God acts, we will be bewildered because He is not going to do what we demand. He is not on the same page as we are. He is anticipating kingdom and kingdom culture with apostolic order through which blueprints leaders function at the foundational levels. Where that is available, the acceleration will sound like a rocket taking off! Where that is not available, a charismatic Woodstock will muddy the moment with messy moral failure.
God is going to intervene at the very points we think we are going to intervene. He is going to act while we stare with open-mouth wonder that we were so wrong about His heart. He reveals Himself, and all our entertainment “worship” will stare at Him and asked, “Who are You?” when He kicks the existing expectations in the patoot. He reveals Himself, and all our presently celebrated church-growthism stares Him down with “that’s not what we learned at the last conference.” He reveals Himself, and all our overt individualism and self-serving church-anity melts like wax while we face a decision about Jesus: “Are You the One, or do we look for another?”
Ready or Not
Whatever our readiness, He reveals Himself. The modern forms of church-anity will be so offended that Jesus didn’t tool His response back to their molds that they will rebel against Him. As the people of His generation, the silly-putty prophets of surface slush and cotton candy cartoon life will be exposed as the comic book characters they really are.
Ready or not.
Acceleration gives us hope. Since we have failed so miserably to get ready, we can catch up rapidly!
Ready or not.
About 80% of what we think will make Him happy will be ignored while the 20% we believe to be too radical will be His butterfly cocoon from which to release the beauty of transformation. Those following John the Baptist in the wilderness apart from the religious mafia and the charismatic Woodstock will recognize God’s Lamb. Others will remain in hesitation and “prove it” mode during the strategic acceleration.
Ready or not.
The Roaring Twenties are almost here.
