I apologize aforehand, for this posting is a long one. I am a new member and hope that I am doing this within protocol. If in error, please forgive me, dear brethren. This discussion reminded me of a word God gave me in church 10/30/07. (Luke 3:4-6, Hosea 10:12). "I am present, here in this place, for one reason. I am 'the voice of one crying in the desert.' I am an envelope that must be opened; for hidden within my heart burns a message that is imperative for the church to read."
The Body of Christ cries, "Revival, revival! We want revival. Where is revival? Why the delay?" I say to you that you are the problem, and I am the problem. As Isaiah says, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips." (Isaiah 6:5). You do not really want revival, for it is not what your perception of it is. You want a goosebump experience, to get high, to feel my presence and the heat of anointing.
Here is what I speak to you in response: I have withdrawn and withheld my presence and anointing to cause my people to thirst for me. I desire that you want to know me, and not just what I can bless you with or do for you. My heart is this - that you desperately seek to know my heart and the concerns that I have.
My heart is heavy at the altar; it is covered with a cloud of tears. I know the multitudes that are more eager to respond to my directives than you are, my flock. My heart is a cup of tears, not joy. I seek to indwell my temple within you in holiness, with my train filling and pouring out through you - the train of my royal presence.
Have you dared to reach up to heaven and ask to receive my cup of sorrows and travail over a world lost and rebellious? My Beloved Bride, I have given you all things pertaining to life and godliness. Yet you choose to not adorn your neck in public with my gift of pearls. Pearls of holiness are more than what you do or do not say. You have taken no time to perfume and clothe yourself with the strong, unseen presence of my Holy Spirit. To me your cloak is tattered and in need of repair.
Do you desire to please me? Then come unto me that I may share my burden of intercession for a lost world in this late hour, a burden of penitence and submission. Through the heavy incense of fragrant prayers the last great cloud of outpouring will arise.
Think on this - your wet tears create the anointing cloud (glory cloud), as they are poured upon the white-hot altar of sacrifice. Your tearful prayers move the glory cloud and precipitate (?!) revival. A cup of tears poured on the coals of the altar stained with the blood of the Lamb. A cup of tears with no thought or shadow of turning. Can you bear to look upon the heavy hand of this God, your God? Can you open your heart to me...that I may pull out with a quick cut all things divisive and cruel? Will you allow me to plough up your fallow, worthless ground in the unkempt garden of your heart to prepare for myself a habitation?
Will you let my patience have its perfect work in the dark shadows of your hidden things? Treasure? - you cling to the very things that soon will mean nothing in light of the eternal. Those things would be put to better use on earth now, for the souls reaped would be of much value. Whereas your 'pretties,' your treasures, mean nothing to me. You have taken on yourself that adorning which causes my presence to search for you and not find you. Your form of godliness mirrors the world and not my holiness and separateness that reflects me.
Come out from among those things that would tie you to old ways and to the past. Lay down the ugliness, like a worn-out cloak long ready to be discarded. Seek me, seek peace, seek separateness from the world but unity in the Body.
