‘Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand… Now, therefore’, says the Lord, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God.’” (Joel 2:1, 12-13)

I don’t believe there’s a more important Kingdom concern for the body of Christ right now than to be responding to the Lord’s judgments over His praying church. The Lord is passionately bidding His priests, His intercessors and His prophetic messengers to be purified so He can retrofit us with His zeal, vision and strength for His end-times purposes. This is the primary lesson for us to learn from the last 6 months, as the Lord brought His swift judgment upon the largest, most far-reaching, and longest corporate prayer community in the history of our nation. Through all the contention, real, human abuse, sin, deceit, pretense and accusation the Lord is calling His house; (Isaiah 56:7) His house of prayer, to lose our pride, let go of our self-preservation, and meet Him on His threshing floor, where the abundance of “God-only” resurrection power is to be found.

“The threshing floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.” (Joel 2:24)

This is where the prophet JOEL is inviting us to go. In three chapters, the Lord gives us the most complete set of instructions on how to humble ourselves before Him that we find anywhere in the Bible. I believe these three chapters also constitute some of the most oft-neglected and needed, but unapplied scriptures in the history of the people of God.

THE JOEL ASSEMBLY PARADIGM
I’ve studied, prayed through, and taught the book of Joel intensely for nearly 20 years. The Joel assembly is not a call to a weekend festival. It would have taken Judah months to fully prepare and respond to this exhortation. This is most likely the chief reason the Lord’s summons was never heeded by the nation. It would have been too costly; too unsettling to their status quo lifestyles. Actually doing the Joel assembly would require a wholesale adjustment of every aspect of their lives. It would have disrupted the order of the temple, the administration of the government, the pattern of families and parenting, the schedules and details of commerce and the arrangements for festivals, marriages and funerals.

Any ministry, church or fellowship who wants to take the Joel assembly seriously in our day will need to face this thoroughness of application head on. Doing Joel demands a lot of time, prayerful consensus-building and detailed preparation.

Let me be REALLY clear here. There are many who are washing their hands of the #IHOPKC implosion, and moving on with their lives – crippled, stunned, PTSD, burned, disillusioned, betrayed – many in delusional denial… (I get it… I live w the same gravitational pull every day.) Because of the way IHOPKC leadership has disastrously dealt w this judgment of the Lord, MOST of us will never get the full healing we need, or deserve. This is a bonafide carnage of souls, relationships, and trust. With this in mind, let me also say to all of us: NONE OF US will come through these months walking with full hearts, in vibrant righteousness with Jesus, without doing what the Lord prescribes and provides for in the book of Joel.* This isn’t just a crisis. It’s first and foremost, a judgment of the Lord upon His people. We CANNOT circumvent what the Lord is after in this hour. We either get to the threshing floor or we will be winnowed like chaff through a thousand different personal, and interpersonal tensions attendant to this horrific episode. No matter how unjustly we’ve been treated; no matter how much pretense we’ve lathered on our ministries; no matter how much sin we’re still hiding in the dark; no matter how passionately we want to get back to our assignments, our families, and our lives… …our God is still a consuming fire preparing a bride for His Son. Large or small, no matter how we manage to engage its dynamics, Joel 2 is THE unavoidable way to participate in that preparation.

The brilliance of Joel 2 is that it marvelously empowers community to enable the weak, the young and the broken to do and receive what they need as the whole body engages the Lord. When a people choose to do Joel 2, the wounded and the traumatized are embraced, strengthened and provided for.

In chapters 1 and 2 of Joel, the Lord issues 16 specific instructions that will help Judah corporately yield their ways to HIs purging and redemptive work. In these few verses the eternal God is literally giving His people the blueprint for how to see their condition clearly, come before Him in humility, be cleansed, ask for forgiveness, receive His mercy, and be realigned to His righteous purposes.

16 ELEMENTS ASSOCIATED WITH DEPLOYING THE JOEL ASSEMBLY

“Hear and listen to the Word of the Lord.” (Joel 1:2) The call to listen and hear the Word of the Lord is at the forefront of Joel’s instructions. The God of Mount Sinai is speaking to His children. By nature of what it is, His Word demands that the people stop what they’re doing, give the Lord strict attention, ardently study, understand and meticulously obey the prophetic Words that are being spoken. The God of Genesis 1 is releasing His Words of power. This is a call for the people to wholly yield themselves to every diagnosis; every truth; every exhortation; every word of conviction; and every word of hope and promise that the prophet is declaring. “Hearing” and “listening” is a matter of life or death.

The context of (v.2) makes it clear that the Lord is also issuing a two-fold admonition to the elders (v.14) As the Word comes through the prophet, it would have first been submitted to the priests, teachers and other prophets. As it is announced to them, they would have understood that the Lord is saying:
A.) Be certain that you (elders) hear, digest and internalize these Words yourselves; correcting the deficient norms, values and ways of your leadership and systems that have become cross-purposes to My heart.
B.) Make sure that the people comprehend what I Am saying. The lives of My sons and daughters are on the line. I Am making you responsible for the sufficient dissemination of My Word. Teach. Answer questions. Cultivate applied understanding. I Am putting this obligation on you. Work toward corporate consensus and thorough obedience to My Word. I Am holding you accountable for My people adequately understanding, humbling and adjusting themselves to My Words of life.

HERE ARE THE REST OF THE EXHORTATIONS GIVEN TO US BY THE PROPHET JOEL…

“Be awakened.” (Joel 1:5) Let the light of the Holy Spirit illuminate your heart.

“Blow the trumpet.” (Joel 2:1) Declare the need to gather together corporately.

“Gather the elders.” (Joel 1:14) Share and dialogue what the Lord is saying with the leaders.

“Call a sacred assembly.” (Joel 1:14) Do the preparatory work to assemble the people into a holy convocation.

“Sanctify the congregation.” (Joel 2:16) Establish the purpose and intent of your gathering as holy and focused on the intentions of the Lord.

“Consecrate a fast.” (Joel 2:12) Focus the hearts and appetites to be fully attentive to the Lord.

“Rend your heart.” (Joel 2:13) Make your self, your ways, your history, your heritage, and your hopes exposed and vulnerable before the Lord.

“Tremble.” (Joel 2:1) Be aware of your unrighteous nakedness before the uncreated God of perfect holiness and power.

“Lament.” (Joel 1:13) Meditate upon how hopeless and barren you are apart from the Lord. Consider how you have lived so short of His glorious realities.

“Weep and wail.” (Joel 1:5 and Joel 2:17) Let your bankrupt condition bring you to tears and touch your emotions.

“Be ashamed.” (Joel 1:11) Let yourself feel the shame of your wretched state before the Holy One and all the holy ones in heaven.

“Lie in sackcloth.” (Joel 1:13 and Joel 1:12) Let your whole being be brought to nothing – to death – the grave – despair and ashes. Lie in that reality. Let it be your clothing.

“Cry out to the Lord.” (Joel 1:14) Repent out loud. Pour out your heart, your sins, your barrenness, your inability, your need, your hope, your falseness and your despair before the Lord. Keep on crying out.

“Prioritize the Lord’s paradigm.” (Joel 2:16) As you continue to listen to His Word, let Him reveal His righteousness and His righteous ways to your heart. Dialogue these righteous ways among the company of the repentant ones until they become agreed upon values and priorities.

“Gather and tell your children.” (Joel 1:3) Establish an agreed upon paradigm for teaching yourselves, and your children the right order of the Lord. This is where your repentance becomes your new cultural narrative that emphasizes the mercy and the right order of the Lord.

Each of these elements points to a relational reality that is important for us to follow in the repentance process. They are like lights in the cabin of an airliner that’s filled with smoke and plummeting into the ocean. They help us know how to navigate to safety and security in a “time of trouble” (Psalm 27:5). It’s vital that we know how to come to Him “without one plea” in wholehearted truth, and not in a superficial, religious, or self-saving spirit.

Each of the 16 elements are important, but we can’t make each element happen. Nor should we attempt to. What’s most important is that we make room for, and create corporate experiences where when these elements happen under the power of the Holy Spirit they are appreciated, encouraged and facilitated well, and not resisted and/or left unsupported.

Here are SEVEN PRACTICAL STEPS for IHOPKC, and HOUSES of PRAYER to implement the Joel Assembly:

1. STOP ALL BUSINESS AS USUAL. This includes pushing pause on all ministries, outreaches, group meetings, and administrative affairs. The world will understand something sober is happening when web-sites, and phone systems announce the Missions Base is closed for three months of “seeking the Lord.”

2. ELT, IHOPKC pastors, former leaders (AG), national House of Prayer leaders and/or even Mike himself: BLOW THE TRUMPET and call other Houses of Prayer to solidarity with a 3-month season of mourning, confession, and crying out to the Lord.

3. Dedicate 1 month to RAW TEARS, expressions of GRIEF, and stories of BROKENNESS – without judgment or correction. Agree to let the Prayer Room become a threshing-floor where there are no human fixes. Sanctify the GPR so that it becomes free space to weep, share and listen to pain in prayer. Require all pastors and leaders to be “all present”. Hire a team of counselors for the grieving and wounded who dare come, and want compassionate help re any kind of religious abuse; and/or trauma. This is seeing the value of becoming an ash-heap before the Lord. (See Ezekiel 20:37)

4. Dedicate one month to nothing but utter, 24/7, basement-level, public and private CONFESSION and REPENTANCE before the Lord. Confession needs to be specific. Repentance needs to lead to the purging of sins, and sinful ways.

5. Dedicate one month to CRYING OUT TO THE LORD, in a spirit of poverty, humility and unction, for the Presence of His Holy Spirit, and the joy of the Lord’s intervention, salvation and leadership within His sanctuary. Again. There are no fixes here. This is Matthew 5:3 posturing before the Lord.

6. Deploy a truly INDEPENDENT THIRD-PARTY INVESTIGATIVE TEAM to thoroughly analyze and scrutinize all aspects of the House of Prayer with regards to sexual, spiritual and manipulative abuse of the precious ones the Lord has sent to IHOPKC over the last 25 years.
Agree to PUBLISH THE FINDINGS as “memorial stones” of where the Lord buried our great sin, and brought us into His light in righteousness solely by the blood of His own Son.

7. RESTART 24/7 INTERCESSION with those who remain. SANCTIFY these ones to live with awareness of our great sin, but with dependence upon the greater mercy of God. CONSECRATE them into an atmosphere of reverence, humility, and contrition before the Lord.

THE DANGER IN NOT DOING JOEL
To NOT deploy Joel is
a.) to fail to give the family what it needs to authentically survive, heal and be restored to the Lord through this crisis.
b.) to call God a liar; and not employ the thorough measure that His Word says we need…
c.) to idolize the way of self; believing we have the power to “save ourselves” and do something better than what the Lord has prescribed.

In THIS MOMENT, we have an opportunity to redress months, years and decades of scandal, and the calamitous, sinful response we’ve given Him through our “hiding, redaction, shaming, image-management, and stone-throwing.”

O, the dishonor we’ve brought to His Name.

We also have a real-time opportunity to give the church, and the next generation a relevant paradigm on how to respond to the judgments of the Lord.

They’re coming.

____________________
JSB • February 2024

Jonathan Boegl has been a pastor for more than 40 years. He was trained at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA • M.Div. in Christian Formation and Discipleship • He’s been associated with the International House of Prayer in Kansas City since 2001. He served as a District Pastor on staff at IHOPKC, primarily responsible for the development of Friendship Groups and Evangelism from 2010 to 2018. He and his wife, Kathy now serve as directors of the All Nations House of Prayer Southwest in the mountains of Arizona.