Going Forward into 2016 and Beyond….

Looking back at 2015, I see one of the worst years in my memory for the world stage. Darkness. Great darkness. Depravity. Hatred. Riots. War. Sickness. Division. Lawlessness. A rise in the Occult activity.

Isaiah 8 “When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God’s instruction and the testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness.”

HOWEVER, I can also see a great outpouring of God’s Spirit in my life, on our church and county. I saw many lives begin a road of healing in Christ. I saw relationships reconciled and strengthened. Old wonderful life chapters abruptly ended while new beautiful chapters opened.

While we are living in harrowing, apocalyptic-“esque” times, we need to see that while The Lord’s judgement is inevitable and God is removing his hand of protection, he is also still shining his light in the darkness.

God is looking for people who are ready for a real work of his Spirit in their lives. He wants to pour out his Spirit on all flesh. It’s easy to get caught up in fear-filled headlines, get into a place of despair and miss what God wants to reveal to us in our prayer closet.

The enemy wants to steal from our hearts the peace of God that we find when we actually believe that God is STILL working and STILL able to do something amazing in our lives, in spite of the ever-increasing darkness in the world around us. In fact, The Lord is calling up his own personal resistance to stand in times  of trouble and to intercede for the hurting, lost, and broken. He is calling up intercessors to pray for marriages, to pray for healings, to pray for prodigals, to pray for our nation, to pray for the persecuted church, to pray for revival and for repentance.

In the place of worry and fear, dread and calamity in 2016, go to your knees! Even if the headlines this year proclaim things we never imagined could happen here on our soil, even if everyone around you seems to be losing faith, do not let your faith be sapped from you. Go to your knees!

Find your prayer closet. Find your prayer partner. Find a place where you can bring your most desperate thoughts to the Lord and where you can listen to what he wants to tell you. Find renewed strength at the mercy seat in 2016.

My challenge to you, whoever you may be, wherever you are going, no matter how much you know the Lord or how little…make 2016 a year of prayer and a year of faith!

Isaiah 9

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—The people walking in darkness  have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.