Kathy and I are experiencing a level of spiritual warfare that is blatant and aggressive. Hostile to our rest. Mostly interrupting our dialogue with the Lord early in the morning and throughout the nights. Monday I woke up with the Holy Spirit speaking the phrase: “You have sown the wind and you will reap the whirlwind”. It was a conversation that I had to fight for… Constant interruptions. Thoughts. Distractions (at 3:00am!). Even demonic manifestation…

I knew the phrase the Lord was using was significant because in 2019, the word He gave us to proclaim was “The wind of the Lord is coming.” A wind that would shake the infrastructure of the Church and the world. I believe 2020 was the year of the beginning of that wind.

Beloved. You don’t want to sow to the wind. You want to sow to the Lord of the wind. There’s a difference. If you sow to the wind itself you let the wind take your seed, your thoughts, your focus, your energy, your hope, your passion etc. and it does what wind does in a fallen order. It scatters the seed so that it lands in unfruitful places – and your efforts come to nothing.

This morning, Bob Sorge writes: “When you devise plans independently of consulting the Lord, your plans are likely to eventually come to nothing.” Psalm 33:10

If you sow your seed (that which is most precious to you) to the Lord Himself, He will guard it, protect it, and plant it safely – but He’ll do it in His timing, and in His way. It takes great faith to entrust our seeds to the hand of the Lord – especially in an hour of intensifying wind. If He doesn’t plant, you don’t eat. Your family doesn’t eat.

This is what the Lord is saying, “Give me your seed. Trust me with your heart for the wellbeing of your nation, your church, your industry, your mission, your health etc… There’s a storm raging and you don’t have the ability to protect your seed and sow it on your own. It’s only safe with Me.”

The Lord has been evaluating (“judging” is the Biblical term) how His Church has responded to these past 12-16 months. He sees how we have made great strides to protect our own seed, and little strides to seek His face, humble ourselves before His fierce and loving reality, and entrust our seed to Him. This type of response to the increasing judgements of the Lord in our world will not keep our seed safe. It will do just the opposite. It will actually make sowing the seed futile, and us, the sowers, frustrated. And the world will look on and view our efforts as foolish and our frustrated hearts as “angry”. Sound familiar?

This isn’t the way to weather the hour of tribulation. This also isn’t a pathway to revival. (Truth-be-told, in many instances, we evangelicals have stopped worrying about sowing the seed at all, and have gone directly to “sowing wind” – which is the intended interpretation of this scripture…) Consequently. And out of great love for us, for His purposes, and for the well-being of the Kingdom seed that He’s entrusted to us, the Lord is saying: “You who have (unwisely) sown your seed to the wind – I will now send you a whirlwind. I will send you an increased storm that will cause you to reconsider your ways, and hem you in to My original invitation to hold, protect, and plant your seed Myself.”

“You who have sown your seed to the wind – I will now send you a whirlwind. I will send you and increased storm that will cause you to reconsider your ways, and hem you into my invitation to hold, protect, and plant your seed, Myself.”

Truth-be-told, this is the only way we and our seed will bear fruit in the hour that’s upon us: by coming to Him, pouring our hearts out before Him, good. bad. fearful. angry. hopeful. tearful… beholding His response to our hearts – and beholding His character to secure our hearts and trembling while rejoicing as we entrust our seeds to the Only One strong enough to keep that which is most valuable to us safe. (For us Christians that’s our love for the Lord, our tenderness toward His Word, our compassion for others, and our fruitfulness within His Kingdom.)

Beloved. A whirlwind is coming upon us. What He is urgent for us to know is that He, Himself is releasing it for our (the Church’s) own good, and with great love! If we don’t understand that this is what’s in His heart, our penchant for cursing the wind AND SOWING TO IT (condemning the socialists, the CDC, the race-baiters, the media, the democrats, the deep-state, fictitious principalities, as well as fighting battles that don’t need to be fought, denigrating others, and dividing friendships where there should be no division etc.) will only increase – and our seed will be rendered useless, and our hearts all the more embittered.

Make sense?

Monday morning, after the Lord was speaking to me in the silent darkness. No writing. No reading. Just warring for the little word I sensed He was giving – “You have sown the wind. Now you will reap the whirlwind” – I heard Him say: “Jon. Do you trust that I am speaking to you? Do you trust that this is a word I’m giving you to share?” (To be honest, I’m a little fatigued – scratch that – A LOT fatigued. I’d rather not bear more difficult words from the Lord. They’re heavy. They make prayer and relationships more complicated and painful than I’d like. Just being honest…) I could feel He was testing my truster mechanism… I also knew that if I didn’t let Him put weight on the muscle of trust, I would not grow, and I would not carry His word faithfully. (I am thankful that the Holy Spirit has faithfully made this course grievous to me.)

Later in the morning, I was still in the throes of deliberating my response to the Lord about carrying this word when I went into our Prayer Room for our morning prayer sets. (FYI: We pray from 7am to 12pm every day…) I sat down in “my spot” with my Bible next to me. I heard the Lord say, “Let’s look at Hosea.” I said, “OK. What chapter?” He said, “I want you to read chapter 8.” I said, “Great.” Eager to discover what He had for me in chapter 8 of Hosea…I’ll let you read verse 7 for yourself.

Honestly. I had no idea.

Now I do.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Thursday morning, after four nights of intense warfare, Kathy and I compared notes. Wednesday night, the Holy Spirit woke her up at exactly 11:30. She spent the next two hours looking up all the passages in the Bible with a 30th verse in the 11th chapter. To be succinct, the word the Lord was giving her was, “You need to know how to sow in this season. I’m bringing you into the land of promise and, although there is going to be much work in this new season, you’re going to need to know how to work. You’re going to need to know how to keep your eyes on Me, and not the storm around you. I want you yoked with Me, looking to Me in this season.”
One of the main passages she was led to was Matthew 11:30 – “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Beloved, we need to be yoked to Him as we sow in the season of the whirlwind.

It will be both great. And terrible.

Hosea 8
¹ “Set the trumpet to your mouth! He shall come like an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed My covenant and rebelled against My law.
² Israel will cry to Me, ‘My God, we know You!’
³ Israel has rejected the good; the enemy will pursue him.
⁴ “They set up kings, but not by Me; they made princes, but I did not acknowledge them.fFrom their silver and gold they made idols for themselves, that they might be cut off.
⁵ Your calf is rejected, O Samaria! My anger is aroused against them. How long until they attain to innocence?
⁶ For from Israel is even this: A workman made it, and it is not God; but the calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces.
⁷ “They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no bud; it shall never produce meal. If it should produce, aliens would swallow it up.
⁸ Israel is swallowed up; now they are among the Gentiles like a vessel in which is no pleasure.
⁹ For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey alone by itself; Ephraim has hired lovers.
¹⁰ Yes, though they have hired among the nations, now I will gather them; and they shall sorrow a little, because of the burden of the king of princes.
¹¹ “Because Ephraim has made many altars for sin, they have become for him altars for sinning.
¹² I have written for him the great things of My law, but they were considered a strange thing.
¹³ For the sacrifices of My offerings they sacrifice flesh and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins. They shall return to Egypt.
¹⁴ “For Israel has forgotten his Maker, and has built temples; Judah also has multiplied fortified cities; but I will send fire upon his cities, and it shall devour his palaces.”