After relocating from Birmingham, Alabama to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 2002 to plant The Harbour Church and establish an apostolic ministry base through LIGHT International, I soon realized that I had been set up by the Lord. Set up for what you might ask? Set up to experience brokenness to a degree that would literally define my life and my calling. The Father had lured me into the wilderness and in doing so, invited me into a journey with the Holy Spirit where the Kingdom of God would become more real to me than I ever could have imagined!
It has now been seven years of a personal secret revival of sorts, where the grace of heaven has filled my spiritual DNA with whole hearted devotion, spiritual discipline, obedience and a personal call to intimacy with the Bridegroom.
What greatly encourages me is that I have recently discovered that I have not been alone on this journey. As the Holy Spirit connects me with other leaders in the Body of Christ, I am hearing testimony that they too have been on a similar pathway. There is a kindred fire burning in our hearts and a sincere belief that we are living in potentially the most profound time in human history. There is resident within us the passionate belief that God is awaking a generation in this final hour to do mighty exploits for His glory! He is placing within this generation a forerunner spirit; the same spirit that was once at work through Elijah the prophet and John the Baptist. It is a generation of hidden ones, who are coming out of the wilderness crying “prepare the way of the Lord”!
In 1997, while attending my final year at Christ For The Nations in Dallas, Texas, I experienced an open vision of these end time laborers. It was a powerful experience to say the least, being one of only three visions I have had during my entire twenty years of walking with the Lord. The vision took place during a prayer meeting that ensued amidst a week of cancelled classes, due to a Holy Spirit outpouring that broke out during one of our morning chapel services. During this encounter, I found myself engulfed in a trance where flashing before my eyes were the faces of these valiant ones. One by one, face by face, as fast as I was able, I peered into their eyes. They were burning and shining one’s, completely consumed with the glory of God. I was so overcome by the presence of the Lord during this encounter and with what He was showing me, I fell to my knees and cried out as loud as I could… “God, if You would grant me grace, I will equip as many of these laborers as possible for the end time harvest!” I specifically remember that when I fell to my knees and cried out that “a turning” took place in my heart. My heart was being turned towards these sons and daughters that the Holy Spirit was longing to raise up. I knew that they were the nameless, faceless army of the Lord, who would be the harvesters of the great and final harvest to come! For me, it was a personal and supernatural fulfillment of the prophetic declaration made by Malachi taking place on the inside of me. In that moment, I felt the reproach being rolled away. I felt a circumcism of the heart taking place. Something was broken…something was changed!
The prophet Malachi admonished us saying that if the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the sons and the sons hearts are not turned back to the fathers then their will be a curse in the land. I am convinced that the root issue of the curse in our nation is the issue of fatherlessness. This is first true in the spirit and thus made manifest in the natural. I have come to discover that over 57% of American children live in a fatherless home. Addiction, insecurity, rebellion against authority, and the orphan spirit are all symptoms of fatherlessness. There must be a turning!
Because the hearts of those who are called to apostolically lead the Body of Christ forward into Her destiny have still not been turned, we are still in many ways wandering in the wilderness of disobedience and not moving forward into our inheritance of seeing the glory of God.
Joshua had to circumcise the young adult males who were born in the wilderness because they were not circumcised by their fathers on the way. The apostle Paul also had to circumcise Timothy as a young man because he as well was a fatherless son. This is an epidemic plaguing the church in our day, where “though we might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, we do not have many fathers” and it is hindering the destiny of us seeing the earth filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord.
Because the hearts of the fathers were turned away from their sons in the wilderness, the word of God says that ALL these men of war died in the wilderness and NEVER entered the Promised Land and a fatherless generation had to be raised up in their place. There was a complete shift of the stewardship of the Kingdom being taken from one generation and given to another. The unfortunate thing was that there was no building upon wisdom and blessing of the previous generation because of this curse. God longs to build gene rationally, for He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
This is similar to the story spoken by the prophet Isaiah of Eliakim. He was given authority that was taken away from Shebna. It says that Eliakim was entrusted with “the keys of the kingdom” because he had a heart to be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Isaiah prophesied of Eliakim that upon him and his posterity would be all the glory of the Father’s house. Because of the turning of his heart as a father to the sons of Jerusalem, there was now the possibility to see a multi-generational building of the Lord’s house and one that once completed would be filled with the abiding glory of the Lord.
All of this is a prophetic picture of the rebuilding of the tabernacle of David, which has fallen down. The Lord will bring fulfillment to those prophetic promises which He heralded before the foundations of the earth! Before God swings His sickle over the earth in the final harvest of souls, a generation of fathers and of sons will be made manifest to creation, which is in earnest expectation of their revealing. They will be one’s who are no longer deadened by the lure of religious success. Instead they will be a generation of “one thing”, who will open up their hearts to allow the King of Glory to come in and in doing so will ascend the mountain of the Lord!