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A View from the Pew
004
A View of 7/7/07
I love big Christian gatherings. Well, there are lots of things about them I don't love, like the inconveniences, expense, discomforts. What I love is the anticipation of the event, the expectation of what I will witness and experience from the Lord while I am there. I love being in the middle of impartation, proclamation, calls to both personal and corporate repentance, intercession, and of course worship on a massive scale. There is nothing like being in unity with thousands of people in worship. My observance over the years at some of these functions is that the amount of people who openly and expressively worship God with raising of hands, shouts, dancing, bowing, etc. is no longer the minority. I smile when I think of the people witnessing this kind of worship for the first time. Those of us in churches that encourage expressive worship need to take care that we do not take this privilege for granted. Most American Christians are thankful for freedom to worship, but how many of us worship freely?
Several from Community Church had the privilege to be present at The Call, a Joel 2:15-16 sacred assembly held in Nashville, TN on 7/7/07. The Call was a birthing, an outpouring, a genesis of something very significant in the Kingdom. It was a calling out of the next generation. It was about standing in the gap as multicultural and multigenerational prayer warriors (many who had been fasting for the previous 40 days) for our nation, for our children, for coming against the tide of evil threatening to overtake this land, for humbling ourselves before our God in repentance for personal, generational and national sin, for seeking His face in prayer and asking for Him to heal our land and truly be our Lord, our Savior, our Deliverer, our Friend, our Husband, our King. We were His instruments that day; instruments of prayer, proclamation and praise. Instruments that bowed, wept, leapt, joined hands, sung, shouted and sweated. It was all about Him.
Here are just a (very) few details from the 12-hour day: Abortion, sexual perversion (including the scourge of pornography) and Baal were three of the major principalities over our nation that we specifically addressed. We stood for 10 minutes of silent intercession with red tape that said LIFE as we prayed for abortion to be stopped in our country. Senator Sam Brownback led us in repentance for several national issues. We repented for a generation which lost its virginity beginning with the summer of love in 1967. We repented for allowing a religious spirit into our churches, and we bound that spirit. It was declared that this was "day one of a new covenant for North America" and "day one of the recovery of America...in the Name of Jesus, freedom has come to America." A letter from President Bush was read. He closed by blessing us, and we prayed for him and all of those in authority in our nation. We repented for rebellion, hatred and a critical spirit toward authority. We repented of and broke the curses of witchcraft, idolatry, violence and covenant breaking. We broke the drought off this region and decreed water and life over our land. Joel 2:28 and Song of Solomon 8:6 were spoken over us. We prayed that the first commandment would be restored to first place in the church. Luke 1:17 and other words were declared over both the older and younger generations. The church was admonished to begin adopting children. We renewed our covenant with the Lord, shared communion and witnessed three marriage ceremonies. Near the end, 300 shofar blowers, a picture of Gideon's army, marched into the stadium to release a sound that was joined by a deafening shout from the stadium.
I expect to see and experience the effects of The Call for years to come. Some declared it the beginning of the Third Great Awakening. Ray Hughes stated, "Something marvelously holy has happened today." Whatever it was, it was the start of something big. Church...we have work to do. We have to get our houses and our churches in order if we are going to be available to serve the King at this hour. Think about it...how much do we really intercede for the nation or reach out to a neighbor in kindness when we have strife in our homes, when we're depressed or addicted to something, when we have financial problems, when we're full of worry, fear, doubt, unbelief, bitterness and unforgiveness, when our lives are full of compromise and co-mingling with the world's systems? It's time to put aside the distractions and prepare for our King.
Ready or not, here He comes!
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