I was preparing for service this morning, outside the church talking with God. Or more rightly, letting my mind wander while I listened for God. Today was the last day of a week-long prayer task God has set for me. It has been enlightening, humbling, and in the end uplifting. But, at the same time, a bit filled with something not precisely worry. A waiting for the storm.
I asked God at the outset this week to move Holy Spirit to pray for me, because I knew I should pray, but not what I was to pray for. I will not go into detail, because that wasn’t the point. The results are some though, and required to understand what I heard while I listened this morning. It began with repentance.
The longest time of prayer I was tasked with this week was centered on repentance. Not simply the basic repentance for the things I recalled I should repent of and the blanket, “Oh, yeah, and could you please forgive me for the things I forgot or didn’t know I was doing?” Instead, for perhaps the first time, and certainly for the first time in a long time, I asked to have my sins revealed so that I could repent. It took three hours to get through praying that day. And feeling led to do something I rarely do, get prostrate, on the damp ground, before the cross. But, it was a relief and a blessing to be led to repent.
That day was followed with briefer and more focused days of prayer. Those days were specifically focused on prayers for God’s people here in this country. Prayers for wisdom, guidance, discernment, courage. Prayers that Holy Spirit’s Gifts would be revealed to each of us, and His purpose for them. Prayers that sins in the whole body would be rooted out and cast out, not my personal pet sins, but ALL sins. That God would be relentless in drawing us to Him and making us holy.
I was not careful what I asked for. I do believe we have come to a time in the world where there is no longer time for caution over whether we really want our prayers to be answered. We are being buffeted by the battle raging in the heavenlies, and we must be equipped. But, while I do not feel it wise to be careful of my prayers, aside from asking always now for Holy Spirit to guide them, I do think it wise to also ask for insights on what the answers to those prayers will look like.
This morning, the words that came to me were the time has come for things to be shaken. God is preparing to shake His people so that all the things that can be shaken will fall away. So that all that will remain will be what cannot be shaken. The power, the glory, the mercy and justice of God.
I put off the prayer task for today until late in the day. I thought I was going to have to go back and walk in the woods in the dark for three hours traversing our new prayer path seven times once again. Instead, after women’s group tonight, I understood why it was I had not gone this afternoon. A time of shaking is coming. God called me to pray instead for my household, my children and my family. To seal them to Him, and call for His protection on my home as a sanctuary dedicated to being God’s house.
And as I prayed, as I have been feeling led all day, I felt compelled to share that message with you all. Battle is being joined, and the edges of that battle in the heavenly realm are coming stronger into the world. It is time for God’s people to commit to His side, repent, and seek His direction and protection. Because it is time for us to be shaken until He is all that remains.
Pray always, and glorify the Lord.