Good morning everyone, or good day. It is day 24 on our journey together, and this one
is entitled Hunger for God. Restful one, listen with your spirit to the Word of God for you.
There was great joy in Jerusalem, for since the days of Solomon, son of David, king of
Israel, there had been nothing like this in Jerusalem. The priests and the Levites stood
to bless the people, and God heard them, for their prayer reached heaven, his holy
dwelling place, 2 Chronicles 30, 26-27. This passage deals with the revival under
righteous king Hezekiah, who lived about 300 years after David. The king directly before
Hezekiah was an incredibly evil man. The Hezekiah's culture had heard of the great visitation
of God in the past. They still sang the songs of David and his worshipers. They knew the
miracles of the past, but they had not experienced them in their lifetime. They found comfort
in what God used to do. But they ached to see something more than the power of the idolatrous
culture in which they were living at the time. The remnant knew what it was to be a hidden
people and a crooked and perverse generation. God moved in Hezekiah to begin a renewal by
a deliberate and careful process withstanding apathy and opposition. He cleansed the temple,
the courtyard, then Jerusalem, then Judea, then all of Israel. He called for people who
had not celebrated the Passover for a generation to sanctify themselves and come together to
restore the righteous worship that God had instituted with Moses. The people responded
with heartfelt passion and tremendous joy. They came together and celebrated in Jerusalem
the greatest Passover that Israel had ever celebrated, because there was an open heaven
over them. When the Levites prayed, God heard, and a torrent of blessings was released in
the heavenlies upon His people, and there was great joy.
Restful one, the culture in which you live is like that of Hezekiah. Most of the culture
is saturated with sin and iniquity. There is a continual release of depraved ideas and
depraved leaders, leading people into a deeper depravity. But there is an aching among righteous
people, a hunger for a visitation of Holy God. The stories of past visitations are selling
very well, and fresh biographies have been written about great men of the past. Part
of the remnant of today is looking back, as in the days of Hezekiah, Lord, I have heard
of your fame. I stand in all of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time.
Make them known, and wrath remember mercy. Habakkuk 3.2. The remnant that is looking
back knows what God has done, where He has been, and they are looking to see the past
reoccur today. Restful one, God is not planning to reproduce the past in our generation. He
is planning to do a new thing, and there is a hunger for a new move of God in our time,
whether it is a revival in our own family, or our community of faith, or your city, or
your nation. I bless you with the joy of experiencing a visitation of the presence of God in your
life. I bless you with seeing a new move of God. I bless you with the joy of experiencing
a fresh taste of the presence and the glory of your Father God in a decadent culture.
I bless you with having a fresh manifestation of the glory and power of God in your day
and in your time. I bless you with a powerful new move among righteous people who have deliberately
and intentionally sought God, who have paid the price of doing the holy things that needed
to be done, and of destroying the altars and idols of a culture that does not want them
destroyed. Restful one, I bless you with the passion for God that King Hezekiah had. I bless
you with starting as a minority of one like Hezekiah. Very few religious leaders backed him
when he first proposed returning to God. I bless you with having the intentionality and tenacity
in your lifetime to multiply yourself, multiply the faith and the passion in your life into two,
then four, then sixteen, and more. I bless you with igniting such a measure of hunger
and holiness in your family, your community, and your nation.
many will experience a visitation of God. I bless you with knowing about the past
and knowing the hopes and prophecies about the future. In that bracket between
yesterday and tomorrow, I bless you with the extravagant joy of being today's man
experiencing a visitation of God in a fresh way in your day and in your time. I
bless you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Lord of the revived heart.
Lord, I pray today for more hunger. I pray, Lord, for an insatiable hunger for God.
Lord, sometimes the hunger leads us to eat like in the natural. And sometimes
in a spiritual way of speaking, Lord, we have to eat like in the natural. Sometimes we have to eat
even if we don't want to. But there's an aspect, spiritually speaking, where we eat to become
hungry. I pray, Lord, that you would give us the backbone and the boldness to stand up, not just
against unrighteousness to, for lack of better term, argue with our neighbor about our belief
systems or along those kinds of things, but to stand up in a way of what our life is supposed
to look like, to lead in a sense, as Hezekiah did in his time. He was the king. He had ultimate
authority. Well, Lord, we're all kings in certain fashions. We're all kings as we are co-heirs with
Christ Jesus. We are all kings in the place of the order of Melchizedek, who was, Melchizedek
was a king and a priest, and we're all kings in our own castles, so to speak, in our own places
where you've given us authority. And in that measure, Lord, we have the same ability
to be able to stand up as He did. And in that sense, Lord,
so many, so many of us
get stirred by hearing the moves of the past, whether it's Azusa Street or the Welsh Revival or
I think it's the Hebridean Revival in Scotland, Lord, or what happened in Argentina,
Lord, to read about paragons of the past, Lord, that we can glean things from,
just like there are those to say, oh, Lord, we pray for another Pentecost,
that we could go back, or to live in the time of Jesus, when you walked the earth,
when you said the greater things will now be available to us because of where you've gone,
that we live in the divine tension between what was and what will be.
In the present moment, Lord, we have everything that we need.
In this present moment, we are right where we're supposed to be.
But in that place, Lord, we have to have faith to believe for something more. Sometimes it's
doing our day-to-day, what you've given us in our assignment for this day, not knowing where
we're heading in the grand scheme of things. And there are times where we have to look forward.
Then it's difficult at times, even in present circumstances, in my own life, in a day-to-day
circumstances, in my own life, in a sense, Lord, to feel like you're living in a fogginess
of not knowing what's ahead or what's going on, or the world seems to be in such a swirl.
But just like in Hezekiah's time, Lord, we can't just look backwards to try to return to what was
when you're wanting to do something new. You're wanting to do something new in us.
So for many, in seasons of transition, in times when you're trying to move us from one place to
another, or you're trying to grow us in a place that we haven't been grown before,
the things that we did yesterday won't work today. It's not that they're not good or godly,
but they were for that season. Or maybe we've come to rely on a way of being or thinking or
a system in which you do not want us to rely because you're wanting us to move into a new place.
Sometimes you'll remove water from one place to move people to a place where there's fresh water.
In a sense, Lord, everyone has prayed for revival so much it almost became, there were
whole new positions created where people called themselves revivalists and everybody is praying
for revival.
But I'm reminded of the song that said that, you know, revival starts with me.
Lord, I do pray that there would be sweeping revival, that there would be whole moves of
God, that there would be a transcendent shift.
But today, Lord, what I pray for is that there will be revival in the individual lives of
the people that are under the sound of my voice.
I pray, Lord, that there be such a fresh, humble, anointed prayers that you would hear
from heaven, that there would be an open heaven over them, Lord, you would hear their prayers
and pour out blessings upon them.
And that, Lord, this would come in a way of honoring, glorifying you, it would come in
a place of humility in a sense, an alignment, Lord, that isn't from a system of activity
to get you to do what we want, but it comes out of a place of relationship.
And finally, Lord, I'm reminded of, please forgive me if I get this wrong, but I believe
it was Josiah.
No.
Oh, Lord.
It was a king of, it was one of the kings, and, or it was a Jehoshaphat, anyway, it was
a J, and there was a prophecy about him.
And he came to be king, and the impression is that he didn't particularly think a whole
lot about what he was doing, but he, again, like Hezekiah, turned back to the Lord, and
in cleaning out the temple, he finds the scroll of which is written and prophesied by his
own name, of him doing the very thing he would do, and from which, what would come, what
would transpire.
Now, in Scripture, it doesn't say that he was a mess.
But I think for each and every person, Lord, we need moments like that, Lord God.
Or we could at least use them, or we would like them, whether we need them, as we need
water and air to breathe and drink and live, and it's, I pray that for these ones, Lord,
for these restful ones, that they have an experience like that, Lord.
It says all of our days were written before we lived a single one, that you knew us before
the foundations of the earth, that there was some level of relationship that existed with
us, even if it was just out of your heart where it was birthed from, Lord, that there
was some aspect of relationship that existed before the foundations of the world.
You know, I've heard it said, the book of life is not just where the names of those
that are saved are written, that there's so much more to it than just that, and Lord,
I pray today that there be a reading aloud for each one of these, Lord, in the heavenlies
as a reminder of all that has been written for their lives, and that they would have
those experiences, Lord, where their present day meets a historical prophecy to which they
are now walking that gives them the courage and insight of the greater thing that they're
called to and what they're called to do.
Now we don't have necessarily scribes in our life that have written these things down,
and some of us have words, small and large, that have been written over our lives, and
some of us maybe don't feel like we have those things, maybe we don't feel like we've had
a prophet come across our path and give these things, let alone a scroll that's in a temple
has been abandoned for some time as the nation had abandoned you.
But in some form or fashion, Lord, there is a greater destiny over our lineage,
over our generation, there is some greater destiny as it is written in history.
about the greater things, about the great cloud of witnesses
which we're surrounded, Lord, where we are finishing a race the day began.
There's a baton being passed towards us, and with great anticipation,
they are cheering us on.
There was a great teaching by a man that I respect
who talked about Mount Moriah.
Moriah meaning that God is looking over with anxious anticipation,
with bated breath about what's going to happen, and that Mount Moriah
is the same place where Abraham offered up Isaac,
where Jesus, where the temple was built,
so many things, and I used to almost visually see like this
railing with people in heaven looking down to see
what is about to unfold, that there was a bated breath.
There was something happening, transpiring, that all of heaven was eagerly awaiting
and looking to see what was going to happen.
They now know the great glory. They see the resurrected Christ face to face.
They know all of the things in clarity that was in obscurity to us,
and as it has been said that all of the angels sometimes I think are
like in amazement of how apathetic or
how we don't get it, and at the same time because we are obscured by the faith
that we exhibit, but in all of that, that there are
aspects of what's happening in the world, in creation now,
and dare I say for each person under the sound of my voice
where there are Mount Moriah moments.
With bated breath heaven is looking eagerly
with bated breath about what's about to happen.
Beloved for those that I'm speaking over,
and but Lord I offer these restful ones up to you.
Lord I pray and I bless them with Mount Moriah
moments right this very second
that whether Hezekiah
who built a modern marvel of the tunnel of Hezekiah
that led and led people back to the Lord and was the greatest Pentecost
that had ever been. It was the greatest holiday, the greatest
time that had ever been up to that day.
That there be some aspect of that,
that there be some greater purpose, that there's a culminating experience
to the lives of the people that are under the sound of my voice that all of
creation, all of their generation, that the great
cloud of witnesses and all of heaven has been waiting to see unfold.
I pray for boldness. I pray for courage Lord.
I do pray for insight. I do pray for clarity God,
but in the midst of even the obscurity Lord that you would give us the nudges and the
courage and the boldness to be able to follow them and see them through.
I pray Lord God that you'd be glorified and that the greater
glory, the greater glory be released and
that we'd be positioned and aligned for it. And I pray God,
a spirit of truth to reveal all truth. My Lord, that you would bring alignment to us
in great preparation. And as Graham Cook again to borrow one of his to
say that a quickening spirit be released, that a
week can be done in a day that, you know, months be done in a week,
that years be done in months, that what would normally take years can
be done in months. Spiritually speaking, that even as we sleep,
Lord, you would prepare us and teach us that you would be our rabboni, that you would be our teacher.
Lord, please break the power where history,
our history to be the predictive
teacher to become the prophet of our life when it is
not. You are a teacher, Lord. We
bless you, Lord Jesus. We love you in Jesus name.