Let me go back and tell you a little more of our first time together:
How does a group go about waiting on God for three days? What do you do?
For a while, we all waited in silence. Then W.S. suggested that we let the Lord give each person an identity by allowing the Lord to present them. Each person was introduced using prophetic words God gave to others, and by faith we took up our new identities. Then we waited. And God spoke Psalm 24 to us along with a picture of a very ancient gate.
Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty;
the Lord, invincible in battle.
Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
Who is the King of glory?
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies—
he is the King of glory.
We understood that God had given us the authority to open and close gates in the spiritual realms. But we also understood that we weren’t ready to take on that authority until we were willing to surrender ourselves completely to Him. We were particularly struck by verses 3 and 4: “Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.” So the Lord led us to surrender our own agendas, deliberately laying down our reputations and dying to the things we stood for and represented—the things that we love the most. Each person placed on the floor in the center of the room items that represented their ministries, their strongly held convictions, anything in which they had put their identity apart from God. We were empty—nothing was left that was our own.
From that position, Jesus continued to speak to us about Psalm 24 and gates. God showed us that He has given us keys that will only turn the locks of those gates as they are wielded corporately. He told us we had authority to declare what the church is to be. And so, looking out over the city and the plains beyond, we declared the different attributes of the church that God longs to see.
2 replies on “Gathering to Listen #5”
I was really struck by the 2nd to last paragraph in which you talked about surrendering to God. For the past week or so, God has really been dealing with me in this area. He has reminded me that there are so many things I want to do or areas of my life that help define me that are not submitted to Him. These things seem to happen so slowly at first. We talk control of a little area of life and that snowballs until we are trying to hold together the world’s we’ve made for ourselves. Thanks for your post.
Surrender seems to be a once-in-a-lifetime decision when we say the “eternal yes” to God, and then a series of decisions when we become aware of areas of our lives we still “own” that need to be given over to God. Like you say, the things that define us, the things we hold most dear, have to be submitted to him.