PROPHETIC WORDS

THE EARTH IS GROANING

by Lyn Packer

June 2020

The following prophetic word is a word of forthtelling – giving prophetic insight into the heart of the Trinity and what they are doing in the world here and now.

All creation is groaning, waiting…

Can you hear it, that low underground rumble that has been growing in volume over recent decades? How loud will the sound have to get before we truly hear it and take action, before the church hears it? The earth is groaning! All of creation is groaning!

Groaning with the weight of injustice, groaning with the stains of blood spilt over the centuries, groaning over the greed of mankind, the divisions, inequalities, indifference, apathy, blatant and subtle racism, hatred, anger, rage, and murder. It’s groaning over mankind’s inability to see each other as having value, worth and equality, to honour the reality that each person alive is made in the image of God – no matter our colour, ability or disability, education or lack of it. It’s groaning over the inhumanity of people towards each other and towards the planet.

The earth is groaning over the depletion and destruction of natural resources, over the wanton consumer mentality and throw away actions of mankind. It’s groaning as it sees whole eco-systems and entire species of animals disappear into extinction. Centuries of forests being chopped down and burnt off, mountains of unnatural waste growing, and natural mountains being stripped bare.

Maybe the earth is also groaning and travailing because those who hold the best answers aren’t really listening, aren’t really taking notice, aren’t fully doing their part.

The earth, and indeed all of creation, is groaning and travailing – it’s crying out for something to take place. It’s groaning and travailing for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. Why? Because they hold the keys to unlocking the true riches and beauty of humanity – their ideas, creativity, dreams and inventions, used for the common good, for the betterment of mankind and the planet.

Many of us are familiar with the verses referred to in the paragraph above about all of creation groaning.

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.” Rom 8:18,19 (NIV)

JB Philips translation brings out something interesting in these verses

“…whatever we may have to go through now is less than nothing compared with the magnificent future God has planned for us. The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own.” Rom 8:18-19 (JB Philips translation)

For centuries we’ve read those verses and waited for the revealing, too – waited for a sovereign act of God that will suddenly pull back the curtain and reveal us in all our glory, as we truly are. But what if we have been waiting for a sovereign act when God is waiting on us to step up and reveal who we are, to do our part in the unveiling?

I believe that part of our being revealed is in us waking up to who we are and stepping into it, thereby revealing ourselves as the sons and daughters of God, walking in the glory Jesus has already given us. We are waking from our slumber to discover what it actually looks like to be sons and daughters of God, those who steward and care for the earth and its inhabitants. We are people with governmental heavenly authority, and are called to see the will of the Father worked out on earth as it is in Heaven.

God is longing for us to access the mind of Christ and get answers to the world’s problems, to release heaven into earth – more than an occasional healing here and there. He has already provided all that is needed for our glory to be seen if we cooperate with Him and walk in that provision. Love, power, healing, deliverance, insight, creative solutions, inventions – the Kingdom of Heaven is full of provision waiting for us to access it.

God is calling His church to throw off the things that have covered us – or should that be smothered us. These are the things that have stopped our glory from being seen, that have held us back from being revealed – our attitudes, our inability to see clearly and to understand that all heaven and all creation wait on us to step up and be who we are in Christ.  

God’s plan has always been to redeem both mankind and the earth back to Himself through Christ and the church working together. There is hope for the earth and we are part of that hope. What sort of future do we want for our children’s children? What sort of legacy do we want to pass on? What sort of attitudes do we want displayed toward each other?

Mankind is crying out for justice, acceptance, and equality to be their reality, but instead people are becoming increasingly less tolerant, less accepting of anyone that doesn’t agree with them, and in many cases it is because they have lost hope. As the church we have in many ways also lost hope, and in losing hope we’ve abdicated pour responsibility. So instead we sit back and wait for God to do something sovereign, to invade earth and miraculously put everything right.

God is calling us to step up, to be the children of God, filled with love and endowed with power from on high, to be solutionists and create a better world than the one we currently live in. God has given us the stewardship and dominion of the earth. It’s in our hands, He gave it to mankind at the beginning and He’s never taken that stewardship back onto Himself.

We are the children of God, sons and daughters, inheritors, ambassadors and stewards of the Kingdom. Righteousness, peace, joy, honour, feeding the poor, answers to discrimination, eco-solutions – all have a solution hidden within you and me. But if the church – if you and I – don’t know our identity, don’t know what God has placed in us, how can we be solutionists? How can we be revealed in all our glory, the glory Christ gave us? (John 17:22,23) We are not waiting for some future glory to be given to us – God is wanting to reveal the glory that is in us, given by Christ!

The world sees us as impotent and lacking relevance, and they are right to a large degree. We have spent centuries retreating behind our church walls, blaming society and viewing them as the problem. We have become less and less relevant to the world because of our attitudes.

And we have put all the responsibility for change back on God, thinking that our part is simply to pray and He will do all the actual work. The truth is we should be not just praying, but also working with God to be the change, to be the answer. We want God to do something sovereign – for Him to just come and change everything – but what have we learnt from the times when that has happened in the past, when He has graciously come and poured out His spirit on mankind in revivals? Have we stewarded those changes and built a better world as a result? No, we have not. Instead we have picked up the erroneous belief that God is the only one who can do something. We’ve simply put all the responsibility for the world back onto Him, and in so doing we’ve become dependent on Him in a wrong way. We’ve stayed as children who expect Daddy to fix all our problems, instead of becoming mature sons and daughters of God who take our place and pick up our responsibility to work with Him to steward and care for the earth He put us on.

His original mandate to His children hasn’t changed – Multiply yourself, (your abilities, knowledge and skills as well as having children) steward the resources I have given you, and care for each other and the earth. And later, through Jesus, be your brother’s keeper and carer, heal the sick, cleanse the leper (the outcast the diseased) raise the dead, look after the widows and the poor, love one another as I have loved you, and disciple the nations.

What solutions lie within you and me? What inventions and answers to the world’s needs – to relational needs, to poverty, to racism, to matters like euthanasia and abortion, to the needs for food and housing in our communities around the world, for education, for government, for the arts and religion – are within our grasp? You may not be the answer to all of it but you will be the answer to some of it.

It’s no longer enough to stay in our homes and pray and expect God to do the work for us. All of creation is waiting for you to be revealed as a son or daughter of God – one who releases Heaven into earth in many different ways.

I believe the Lord is saying that the decision to be revealed as sons and daughters of God is not just God’s, but also ours. All of creation is groaning. Will we reveal ourselves as sons or daughters of God or stay hidden, hiding our light under a basket, so to speak?

There will be areas that we are each called to, assignments we are each given that will differ from those given to the people next to us. Whatever the difference God calls us to make, whether we deem it small or large, if we cooperate with Him in it and follow His leading we will take part in a reformation that will change the world we live in, and the sons and daughters of God will be revealed in all their glory!

For a great article on the difference between a ‘forthtelling’ and a ‘foretelling’ prophetic word check out David & Greta Peter’s article in our Article section here.

BIO