PROPHETIC WORDS

DAYS OF DIVINE DISSATISFACTION AND GREAT PROMISE

by Lyn Packer

August 2022

I believe the Lord is saying that the coming days will be known for displays of glory, healing, transformation, and resurrection power that are greater than any the church have seen previously. These coming days are the days of the greater works that Jesus talked about…

• greater miracles and healings

• greater love

• greater humility

• greater character

• greater individual and societal transformation

• greater serving

• greater power

• greater inventiveness and strategic insight

• greater displays of God’s glory, signs, and wonders

• greater manifest presence!

The Lord longs for His people, His church, to shine as the light He always intended them to be, seeing lives and communities changed as the good news is shared and the realities of His Kingdom are displayed amongst them.

In His great love God has dropped a plumbline

In His goodness the Lord has dropped a plumb-line from the throne of God, a measuring rod that His love is holding against the doorposts and walls of our lives, measuring to see where things have shifted out of divine alignment. The Lord is doing this on a personal level and also on a corporate church level. He is doing this because He has great and glorious plans to display His glory through His children. Isaiah 55 is a key Scripture in this time. I won’t quote it here, but I do encourage you to spend some time reading it and praying through it. It is an invitation to turn and seek the Lord, and discover His thoughts and ways afresh, so that our going out may be in joy and peace.

In these days the Lord is challenging us to assess, to stocktake, our lives on a deep level, to recognise that some of the allegiances we have made to things – ideas, beliefs, even church models – are allegiances that are doing us harm, not good. Not only are they doing us (the church) harm and poisoning us, but they are poisoning society even more against the church and against God.

That assessment is leading to a holy, and very necessary, dissatisfaction, as we see where we have fallen short of displaying His glory, where we have allowed compromise and apathy, control and abuses, to be a part of our lives as the church, leading us into complacency, inefficiency, and impotency. This measuring, this weighing, is so that that which is out of alignment can be brought back into alignment. A repenting and realignment will happen so that we may truly be a habitation for His glory, a representation of who He is, a people who embody Him, displaying and releasing His love and power wherever we go.

Areas of realignment

One area the Lord is challenging, and bringing realignment to, is the idea we’ve had over recent years about finding our tribe. Finding our tribe is, in the end, about finding a people who think the same thing as we do, and is really a modern word for denominationalism. Denominationalism is where we gather around our similarity of belief, so we can feel safe and unchallenged, so our ego can justify having “us and them” thinking – that we have the truth, they don’t, we’re better than them etc.  In the end the thinking that caused tribalism, denominationalism, and church franchise models is being seen for what it is – a distorted replacement for God’s true intention that the church realise that it is a family, God’s family. God is bringing us back to the realisation and truth that the church is a family, full of diverse people who have differing beliefs, personalities, ways of expressing themselves etc. Family, with all its diversity and challenges, is the place where we best grow and learn from each other, with generations loving, learning, and growing, in both individual lives and in shared experiences. And within that, family working together for the good of those around us and also building legacy for coming generations.

In this season there is a stripping away of reliance on self, on franchise models, on man’s ideas of what church should look like, and there is a call to return to seeking God afresh and being led by Holy Spirit. It is in relying on Him, not in placing our trust solely in programs and church systems, that we will find how best to share His love and power where we are. God’s people are His family and His body in the earth.

New revelation will continue to come, and some of it will challenge existing beliefs. God has always worked like that, revealing more of Himself and His kingdom, its realities and ways. But God is asking us to not cause factions and dissension with what is revealed, not to label and ostracise people because they see differently from us.  We need to honestly and openly allow for new revelations to come, talk them through, weigh them, and search out whether they are from the Lord, and know that differences of perspective do not need to destroy our sense of being a family.

God is pulling down strongholds of wrong thinking that have caused unrighteous and aberrant behaviours to be allowed to become entrenched in His family, His church. God is moving us from mixture, in both our individual and congregational lives, from church structure power plays, church politics, control and abuses, to fresh reliance on the Holy Spirit’s presence and life, and releasing of destinies.

In His love for us the Lord is also revealing, and causing us to look at, the undealt with wounds and the hidden things of the heart, secret sins etc. He is wanting to bring healing, and to deal with everything that stops us from being all He created us to be.

Days of great reformation and great promise

God is also calling us back to a deeper reliance on Holy Spirit. Our personal lives must, in a fresh way, become ones where we allow Him to interrupt our schedule, to lead us here or there, to places of divine appointment for the sake of those who wait to be released from their prisons.

These are days of great reformation and great promise. God’s intent is not for the earth to descend into chaos and anarchy, but to be filled with His glory. Those who allow God to transform them will become a place of divine habitation, they will represent Him so that the earth will be filled with the experiential knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as has always been His intent. It is in following the leading of Holy Spirit that we will see His glory habitation built in our own lives, in our corporate gatherings, and released into our communities.

I felt the Lord say that in the days ahead we will again see thousands added to the church, and there will be a need for both large and small gatherings. But no matter their size, those gatherings will be ones where we must follow the prompting of Holy Spirit so that healings and deliverances can take place, so that people come in one way and leave transformed by God’s love and His power.

Rejoice in these days of much-needed adjustment and realignment, because they are also  days of great reformation and promise. Rejoice and be thankful for both! Let’s allow the Lord to do the work in us that He wants to do, so that we can see individuals and our communities changed by His love. Let’s love God, and others, as He has loved us – wholeheartedly giving of ourselves without reserve, with love, and treat others as we would have them treat us (Matt 22:36-40; Mark 12:31; John 15:12; James 2:8).

PRAYER POINTS

Prayer is not just us coming to God with a list of requests. As part of our relationship with Him, it is us having a conversation with the Lord, which involves talking and listening on both sides. The following prayer points are some things you can talk to Him about in regards to this prophetic word.

• Pray for the church in New Zealand (and globally) as it goes through this time of realigning itself to the ways, and will, of God. Don’t sit in judgment on the way things have been done, but pray with sincerity and with love, knowing that it’s God’s love and kindness that leads us to repentance and realignment (Rom 2:3,4).

• Ask the Lord for a revelation of His heart for the church. Ask the Lord where you have taken part in, and even fostered, ideas of separation and exclusivity thinking, denominationalism, tribalism, etc. Repent, where necessary, and ask for the Lord to fill your heart afresh with love for His family.

• Repent of any judgments you’ve made against other churches, groups etc. Ask God to show you how He sees them, and how He wants to bless them, and pray for them according to His heart and will.

• Thank Him for His ongoing commitment to work with us and to love us, despite our flaws, our misunderstanding of His ways etc.

• Thank the Lord for the church and the good works it has done throughout the centuries – providing for the poor, the weak, the lonely, the widows, etc. establishing hospitals and healing centres, education centres, for the inventions that Christians have made that have benefitted all of mankind. Thank Him for the love of ordinary Christians who, on a daily basis, reach out and love those around them, displaying God’s goodness, love, and power to heal and set people free.

BIO