Prepare the way of the Lord

Lately I have been hearing these words from God--"Prepare ye the way of the Lord." Isaiah 40:3 reads "Prepare the way of the Lord; Make straight in the desert a highway for our God." We must prepare the path of our hearts for the Lord through repentance. Even as John the Baptist preached in the wilderness, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" There is a call to return to the altar while the season of repentance is still with us.

"Repentance prepares us for His presence. In fact, you cannot live in His presence without repentance. We need to repent for designing services that men like instead of yielding to what God likes...we have wanted 'life' in our services when God was after 'death' in our gatherings. It is 'death' through repentance and brokenness that ushers in the presence of God..." (The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney).

I believe God is going to bring a new wave of revival to the Pacific Northwest that will sweep across the nation. This revival is going to flow from the altar, first. Ezekiel 47 tells us of healing rivers that flowed from the sanctuary of God. These rivers began as water flowing from the altar. We as the church need to get back to the altar. The altar was a place of death and sacrifice, but it was also a place where the fire of God would fall.

Too many times we as Christians are guilty of "Sunday religiosity"--we go to church, get our ears tickled, fulfill our religious obligation for the week and walk out the door the same way we entered. As a result, we have had no impact on the world around us. The world is not impressed with our piousness or spiritual gifts. They are looking at our quality of character.

"The Church has lived in self-righteous smugness for so long that we stink in God's nostrils." (The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney) God is not impressed with our good works. He judges our hearts and motives. For too long, the church has had a "form of godliness" but a lack of power. Could it be that we have turned the House of Prayer into a clubhouse for the saints? We need to repent of our lukewarmness and mediocrity and begin to seek the Lord with all of our hearts once again.

Prepare the way of the Lord! "Now, therefore," says the Lord, "Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." We need to begin to lay a trail of tears for the feet of God to walk upon. As we do, we will see a visitation like we have never experienced.