The Spirit discloses the things that are to come, the things that want to emerge. It takes a company of influencers who can combine what they see, by the Spirit, what wants to emerge with words that captivate hearts to join in the ushering in of a day and an hour of new wine for the 21st century. I have something absolutely important and exciting to share with you. I urge you to prayerfully approach what you are about to read.
In every generation the hand of the Lord moves on some to move the heart of nations. They have a desire to be a redemptive influence in large sectors of the culture. They carry an intense passion for His glory, and have been moving His heart in the secret place long before their public appearing. They have learned how to feed on “honey from the rock". The meat is to do the will of the One Who authorizes and sends them.
They have embraced their season of isolation, humbling, and hiding, as a gift from the hand of the Father of Lights, the Giver of every good and perfect gift, in whom there is no shadow of turning. They trust the process God is bringing them through in preparation for their life’s work. They feel the weightiness of the hand of the Lord on their lives, the chabad, the weighty thing, His glory!
They cannot shake the growing conviction in their spirit that they have been called to the “work”, the Great Work! While there was only a remnant that returned from Babylon with Nehemiah, Nehemiah knew he was doing a great work. When his enemies wanted him to come down off the wall and meet them on their turf and in their territory on the plains of Ono, he said “OH NO,” actually he said, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down off the wall.”
There is a generation alive right now, irrespective of age, they have the heart of God for this hour, and they are rebuilding the walls of the Church, the Heavenly Jerusalem seeking to see a great recovery and restoration of the testimony of Christ in this hour. They feel a profound sense of inadequacy for the task that lies before them. The work seems overwhelming. Yet there is within them such a compelling sense of purpose, and the powerful pull of the future, that they know in their spirit that destiny stands in need of them!
Early on in their journey they sacrificed their limited and less than powerful will for the Grand Will of God Himself. They live the Book. They eat the Book. They speak the Book. Christ is their all-consuming passion. The cry in their hearts is the cry of the young warrior David “Is there not a cause?” Their dreams are far from small. They see the fields white unto harvest. They see multitudes in the valley of decision. Their hearts burn within them. Their eyes are indeed have been opened and the invisible world is more real to them than the one in front of their eyes. Once they have seen the light, the cannot un-see it!
They long to release the power and the presence of God in the demonstration of the Holy Spirit, with signs and wonders following. They make no apologies for the supernatural dimensions of the Kingdom. They make no apologies for the moving of God’s Spirit. They are Presence-Driven in everything they think, say, do, and feel. Anything less, as far as they are concerned, dishonors the Christ Who paid the price for His Spirit to be poured out on all flesh.
They humbly embrace the conviction that greatness awaits them. They aren’t looking for the accolades of the world. They aren’t driven by selfish ambition or greed. They value compassion, grace, mercy, authenticity, integrity, honor, and valor. Like Joseph, commissioned to seek out the welfare of their brothers, they are right now wandering in a field as Joseph was, intercepted by a messenger who has asked, “What are you looking for?” And even as Joseph answered, their answer is, “I am looking for my brothers.”
When you understand the nature of Jewish wisdom as revealed in the rich nuggets that God has hidden in the Word, you realize that this passage of Scripture isn’t simply a declaration that Joseph is looking for his flesh and blood brothers. This passage of Scripture speaks to the hunger, the cry, and the need, to find those Kingdom connections that will lead to a greater release of both personal and collective destiny.
Joseph carries a significant dream that includes others who are to be connected to him for great purpose. These men and women, from every generation alive on the planet right now, are not ignorant of the devices of the powers of darkness. They have moved from the early stages of their walk with God into realms of revelation and the Word of God that have served them well against the onslaughts of hell and the fiery ordeals they have had to walk through that others who have chosen the easy road would not understand.
While they know their names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, they also know that hell has marked them and taken note of their presence. They are a threat to the kingdom of darkness and as a result they face mountains of satanic oppression as they move forward into greater dimensions of intimacy and authority in Christ. Yet they are learning more and more how to stand their ground until these demonic mountains of opposition yield to their authority in the Spirit because of the Finished Work.
What these individuals are looking for are a few seasoned warriors who have already been on the path that they are now on, and who bear the scars of many battles with the powers of darkness. They are looking for those who wear their wounds from war with honor and dignity. They are looking for those voices that can speak to their destiny and impart greater confidence and assurance with affirmation to their own spirits that indeed they are on a foreordained pathway. They are also looking for those who are hearing the same things from the Spirit about what wants to emerge and come together with them and function as a single-collective intelligence that brings the future into the now by faith.
They have known a dimension of the baptism of fire that has made them disillusioned with the status quo. They are looking for an expression of genuine apostolic and prophetic authority and power without fads and trends to manipulate the masses. They want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They want the Spirit, the fullness of the Spirit, and nothing but the Spirit. They have grown weary of that which is inauthentic, as well as that which is immersed in the traditions of man rather than the traditions of God.
If what you have just read speaks to something at your core, if it speaks to something that you have actually uttered in prayer to God, if it speaks to something you have longed to hear, then these words have served my purpose and objective.
For a number of years, I have kept a distance from re-immersing myself in the popularity of prophetic training schools. In fact in the early 1980’s, I was one of the voices in my generation that sparked a flame on a national level for the need for apostolic and prophetic mentoring. We did a number of very successful prophetic training seminars when there were only a handful of voices doing them on a national scale.
The Spirit of the Lord instructed me clearly to pull back and lay down my desire to be involved. I obeyed, not fully knowing and understanding the reason. Over the years, I applaud some of the great servants of Christ that have poured their lives into mentoring others in the prophetic. However, I have also seen the excesses, the extremes, the things that are nothing more than hype and sensationalism that have produced anything but the kind of fruit that remains that the Father is longing for.
In the past few years, I have personally been through a time of deep processing, and intense warfare and testing. My faith has been tried in about every area of my life. I found myself in a very challenging and difficult place. I knew enough about the dealings of God to know I had to embrace the prolonged season of warfare and transition in faith. What I went through made no sense to me at all.
As I began to come out of that three and a half year period God began to stir up fresh passion within me. He summoned me to summon others who are part of an emerging company of men and women who have a clear sense of what wants to emerge in this season. They hunger for the genuine, authentic move of God with the accompanying power that Christ promises. They are prepared to experience the new wine, and be a part of the new wineskin that can contain the potency and power of that new wine.
They have watched as ministries have crashed and burned. They have watched as many leaders have succumbed to the pressures and temptations of the powers of darkness and have found themselves painfully caught in what has been a diabolical spider’s web designed to render them powerless and ineffective. They have seen through the façade of ministry as entertainment, and want a return to ministry as a demonstration of the Spirit and power.
The truth is that genuine, authentic, apostolic and prophetic ministry brings reproach, as it is, without the help of the inauthentic adulteration of the Word of God that often parades as what God is doing. Paul clearly lays out that the apostles and prophets are foundational to the building of the called out company and the increase of the government of God. He also says that they are considered “least of all”.
Apostolic and prophetic ministry isn’t about being at the top of the pyramid, having arrived at a place of success. Genuine apostolic and prophetic ministry is about being on the bottom and pushing the saints up to the top. It isn’t about polishing their own ministries; it is about polishing the saints. In fact, authentic leadership is servant leadership. It isn’t about leaders who serve; it is about servants who lead.
Yet it is in this hour a step beyond servant leadership. It is about moving into a realm of transformational leadership that knows what wants to emerge and brings people together to operate together as a single intelligence, operating “as one”. It is about bringing the future that wants to emerge into manifestation and existence by co-creating it with each other under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The principle that was established at the beginning of Creation is still essential today: “It is not good for man to be alone.” There are joints and connective tissues that cause the bones in the body to move in a coordinated and unified fashion. In Ezekiel 37, the bones came together after Ezekiel prophesied to the wind, and they came together “bone to its bone”.
In Ezekiel’s day there was a radical disconnect of the people of God in Babylon. They felt and behaved as if their hope had perished, EVEN THOUGH, Jeremiah spoke to them prophetically about a “future and a hope”. The dry bones scorched by the intense heat of the sun were crying out to God that they were “cut off from their parts”. Their sense of connectedness to each other and to a great eternal purpose needed to be restored. That required a prophet who knew what wanted to emerge. Ezekiel had to evaluate what he says in the valley of the dry bones and come to the realization that something wanted to emerge. By the Spirit he began to realize what wanted to emerge, and yet it didn’t just “happen” because he knew it needed and wanted to happen. It required that Ezekiel prophesy to the WIND, to the BREATH, to the SPIRIT.
It takes courage to prophesy to the Holy Spirit and command the Spirit to begin to move. However, when the Spirit has already disclosed what wants to emerge, the commanding of the Spirit by someone in the earthly arena is essential. God will not bring it to pass without the cooperation and the invocation of those anointed with the power to decree, the power to declare, the power to create worlds with their words.
All of us have seen abuses in the move of God. All of us have seen the excesses. All of us have seen those things that have brought added unnecessary reproach to what God is doing. All of us know that there is no redemptive value in some of the imbalanced things that have been released to the unsuspecting and to the unstable and unprincipled who want to run with what they believe is revelation. Those who have no accountability either to those who can speak into their lives, or even to the Spirit Himself and the Word, often bring disgrace and unholy reproach on the move of God, so that observers judge it all as foolishness.
When the gifts of the Spirit are misrepresented, abused or used for personal gain and personal advantage, it sets the move of God back whether we like it or not. It causes the untaught to run wild after that which is unhealthy, not realizing they are being led astray. It does very little for the reputation of the people of God in the midst of our multiplying enemies in the secular culture.
Yet, there is a desperate need to explore the dimensions of the genuine supernatural. There are essential dynamics regarding direct experience with the invisible world, with God, with the angelic, and with the demonic that bring a level of stability, authority, and power to God’s people when they are understood, valued, and embraced.
We are living in an hour when we need a compelling, hope-filled vision of the future. Either the future is as bright as the promises of God or it is not. Either God is going to have a prevailing company that brings to bear the authority of the Finished Work and the Kingdom of Heaven in every sphere of society, or the move of God will be stunted and thwarted because of our lack of cooperation with Heaven.
There is in this hour a desperate need for the recovery of the integrity and authority of genuine apostolic and prophetic ministry with the signs of true apostolic and prophetic men and women confirming their words with miracle working power. There is a desperate need for a greater expression of the primacy of preaching, and that preaching centered in the apostolic preaching of the Cross, and the Person of Christ and His Finished Work.
There is a need for a company of faith-filled, passionate, men and women who truly believe they have been brought to the Kingdom for such a time as this. There is a need for that company to lift their voices in the assurance that their words can shift atmospheres and change environments. They have to have a firm conviction that their words can create worlds for others to live in that transcend the limitations of the secular culture, and bring a dimension of healing, empowerment, and transformation.
A company needs to rise in this hour that holds a deep conviction that it is no longer sufficient to simply respond to forces at work in the culture and do our best to adapt. Either we have the capacity to shape the future (and Paul clearly says that the future belongs to us in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23), or the best we can do is keep reacting to the forces at work in the culture. Isn’t it still true that the One who lives within us is greater than the one who is in the cosmos (the present arranged order)?
While the natural eye has not seen, the natural ear has not heard, and the natural heart has not known, all that God has prepared for those who love Him, God indeed HAS REVEALED IT TO US BY HIS SPIRIT! There is within us the TRUE SOURCE of our capacity to influence and shape the future! The Spirit knows what wants to emerge, yet He cannot accomplish His intended ends without our cooperation. That requires that we access, from a deep place, what it is He is seeking to reveal to us that wants to emerge, and then reveal to us the strategies to bring those things to pass.
I know firsthand the attitude and reproach that comes with moving in the prophetic dimension, and yet I also know what it is to have the smile of God on what God has given me to do, while there are others who have stood back, passed judgment, and devalued something that Christ has said is foundational to the building of the Body of Christ. There are things that the people I lead are living in that would have never been realized without them being taught how to access their capacity in the Spirit, to know what wants to emerge and then act in faith, co-laboring with the Spirit to bring it into manifestation.
There is a company of prepared Josephs, Daniels, Esthers, and the like who have been brought to the Kingdom for such a time as this. They refuse to believe that hell is going to win, and that the antichrist is going to prevail. They have a deep conviction that God has something greater in store for them and for the nations. They have a deep conviction that we need to offer the followers of Christ more than an “any minute Jesus is coming back” message. They have a conviction that they are to occupy until He comes. They have no desire to passively allow things to happen. They want to actively participate in what wants to emerge. They passionately are crying out for “as in heaven, so on earth”.
I am not ashamed of the Gospel I have been called to preach. I am not ashamed of the Holy Spirit or His manifold gifts and expressions. I deeply cherish and value what the Blood of Christ has purchased for the elect. We cannot hope to win the world without the demonstration of the Spirit and power. I am persuaded that the future belongs to a generation that has been through the processes of God and is ready to come out of hiding and shift atmospheres and change environments in every sphere of the culture and society.
For that reason I am going to “throw my mantle” on some select individuals in the coming days in order to obey the Lord and be part of a generation of leadership that recognizes, affirms, and evokes the new and emerging leadership to come to the forefront in the courage and power of the Spirit to lift their voices like a trumpet.
Much love in Christ,
Dr. Mark Chironna
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