“My soul is consumed with longing for Your judgments at all times.” (Psalm 119:20)

Let there be no doubt, beloved. The hunger the Lord is releasing on the earth right now is both a judgment upon HIs household (1 Peter 3:17), and the world (1 Peter 3:18).

When John the Baptist came before the Lord, his first words were alarming words of prophetic judgment.
“10 Even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:10-12)

The living Lord was making Himself known to a kairos generation (Galatians 4:4) that needed to know that it was a transitional generation. It was a generation that was being invited into nothing less than releasing God’s strategic, redemptive purposes on the earth. 

Would that generation ANALYZE and take a “wait and see” attitude?
Would it CRITICIZE and condemn a paradigm that didn’t fit the religious conventions of the day?
Or would the generation dare to leave their home, like Abraham; come out to the wilderness, like Moses, and be BAPTIZED into hunger for the One Who was coming?

You and I, our families and our churches are in the process of being brought into this judgment of the Lord.
Truth-be-told, this judgment is being sent as an invitation to participate in His Isaiah 40:3-5 procession:
“Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; 5 The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:3-5)

This judgment is also being sent for the purposes of our protection; to secure our hearts into the only stable reality that will prevail through the mounting tribulation that’s coming: the God/Man Christ Jesus.

How do we succeed in this judgment?
We cry. We cry out for Him, along with all the nations (peoples) of the earth. (Matthew 24:30)

As we learn to cry out for Him, we are actually doing four things: 
A. We’re producing the Spirit-borne cry of the Bride at the end of the age. (Revelation 22:20)
B. We are inoculating ourselves from the parallel cry that the deceived world will soon issue for the deceiver’s man of unrighteousness.
C. And we are releasing a witness to a world that we are in league with a God Who rewards the hungry and the thirsty.
D. We are giving the Son what the Father says His Son is worthy of on the earth. (Psalm 2:8)

This cry is at the heart of the Lord’s process of changing the understanding and expression of Christianity in one generation.

The transition is stark, but it is also strategic and Spirit-empowered. It is the necessary transition from a people who are content to live disconnected from the intimate Presence of their God, filled with formulaic principles, ruled by dogma and bent on condemnation; riddled and compromised by false and inferior forms of power and exhilaration – into a Bride who leans into the tangible Presence of her Bridegroom, living authentic lives of Word-based trust, walking in real authority, exhibiting Spirit-borne joy, and redeeming souls from real darkness, making herself ready for the real-time arrival of her Blessed Hope.

This is where the prayer movement has always been intended to go: to produce a full-fledged cry of desire (Haggai 2:7) in the world-wide Bride. This is true and mature intercession. “Jesus, we long for You to reign on the earth in tangible ways.”

But make no mistake: we won’t automatically cry out any more than the people in John’s day were automatically baptized. It will require a humble, hungry step of faith to break from our detached analysis, and our cool conventional ways, in order to walk to the Jordan, and be baptized into the parade of the returning King.

Will we come? 
Will we cry out to Him for His glory-filled increase in our lives?
THIS is the terms of this current judgment of the Lord.

As in all judgments the reward is vastly greater than the rebuke and the punishment.
But reward and the rebuke ARE both real; as real as the Reign that He is bringing to the earth.

Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:30)

Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen. (Revelation 1:7)

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JSB • February 26, 2023