Lighthouse

“We are born to burn.” ~Bill Johnson, Hosting the Presence

There is one house that is built to burn. It is the lighthouse. It’s whole design is for that one function: to burn with intensity, fierceness, and purpose.

It’s commonplace to look at a lighthouse and think: yes, a fire burns inside it. But what a fire! It’s a fire that burns day and night, in the blistering heat of summer as well as the deadly blizzards of winter. This fire blazes so high and so fierce that small pieces of kindling from the forest just won’t cut it. No, this fire requires massive logs, severed by the sharpest axe and carried by the strongest lumberjack up grueling flights of stairs to the highest level of the lighthouse.

A lighthouse is also a glass house: a house that everyone else can see through. It’s windows around that fire are transparent and clear. They have to be because the light is meant to pierce storms and ink-black darkness. This light is so strong and fierce that going near it could mean death, but to those at sea, it is life-preserving and even life-saving. It’s a light that illuminates the way.

A lighthouse without a fire blazing is an ornament of the past. A lighthouse with pulsating flames serves with relentless determination its greatest purpose. The lighthouse keeper lives within this house, may even have a family in its abode. But if the fire goes out, the lighthouse keeper no longer operates in his true identity and calling.

Jesus called us to be consumed with Him. He is the fire that burns within us. His presence is warm and comforting, but He desires us to remember that He is meant to be more than a fire that flickers in an interior hearth. He designed our lives to be demonstrations of His love and fierce desire. He gives us His Holy Spirit to live within us as the Master LightKeeper, to empower us in our identity and teach us the skills necessary for the trade. Even our successes—those great oaks that are monuments of our most diligent efforts in God’s field—must submit to the Holy Spirit's greatest purpose: keeping the fire of abandonment ablaze in our hearts.

The One Thing

"Rejoice! Rejoice!
Everywhere you see the fires.
Don't ask: Why not me?
Don't look at yourself.
Don't fix your gaze on anyone but Me.
I'm the One who does it.
And I choose--I choose what anointing to pour through each of My vessels: My Beloved children.
Striving. Fighting. Envying each others' gifts. Stop it!
I can't spread My fire when you're constantly looking and comparing.
Look at Me!
I'm the One you need.
I'm the One you've got to fix your gaze on!
Daughter, get this!
Church, get this!
What do you have that I haven't given?
And if it's Mine, why do you judge and compare as if it's yours?
I want My Church pure, blameless, spotless.
You are Mine!
There should be nothing more important than this one thing."


One thing only have I desired, oh Lord, to abide in Your house forever, to gaze upon Your beauty, to be captured by the love in Your eyes, to be enraptured by the glory upon Your face. (Psalm 27:4, my paraphrase)

Breakout!!!

Wow. Saturday night's church service was  SO powerful. The Presence of God was so thick, all I could do was keep trying to soak in every drop.

It made me think of double-the-atmospheric pressure. Science has researched how creation would have to have been to keep dinosaurs alive because they are these mammoth creatures with nostrils no bigger than a horse’s. The larger the creature, the more oxygen it needs to live, but today’s level of oxygen wouldn’t be sufficient for muscular health. It would be like breathing through a straw for them. However, the giant plants, bugs, and animals that have been found fossilized show that the atmosphere back then would have had double the amount of oxygen in it.

That’s what I felt like at Faith Center this weekend: like I’ve been breathing in Jesus at home, soaking in Him, and then bam—when I enter church, I get hit twice as hard. Wow! There is something to the whole thing of gathering in one accord, with every heart and gaze focused on adoring Him.

Interesting too, because when people are placed in a hyperbaric chamber with double the atmospheric pressure, guess what happens? Healing!!! Intense, saturated oxygen enables the physical body to rapidly replace damaged cells. A little girl had fallen down a pipeline years ago and by the time they rescued her, one leg had turned completely black from the lack of blood flow. Instead of cutting off the limb, they placed her in a hyperbaric chamber. They saw pink flesh return and soon her entire limb was functioning in full strength again. Isn’t it amazing?

I think God’s doing the same thing with His Church. He’s upping the level of grace-filled atmosphere, flooding it with His Presence, like Bill Johnson at Bethel Church has said, bringing more and more into the House. And He’s going to keep bringing more, filling the place with His glory, flooding our lives with His peace, saturating our hearts with His presence so we can’t help but “leak all over the place” (Kevin Dedmon, founder of FireStarters) and people who just walk into Church will be smitten with His love and healing power.

Last night, the Lord kept soaking me at home as I meditated on what we’d prayed over at Corporate Prayer, and I saw fires breaking out all over. Not literal ones but symbolic of the Holy Spirit in people who are saturated with Him, and then all the sudden in the midst of our everyday stuff—bam! God is going to strike us with supernatural anointing. He’s already doing it! He’s breaking out in our midst.

I heard Him say in my spirit, “A wave of My Spirit is going to hit My church and it will be like the breaking of a dam or like the leaping out of flames from a wildfire that can’t be contained. In that moment, the last shall be first, the first last. Those who joined late will see the same effects of My Spirit as those who have been toiling and learning. Don’t let jealousy, resentment, grumbling, or complaining overtake those who have worked long and seen little. Now everyone will see together the results of the fire of My Spirit on a people dedicated to worshipping and adoring Me. Don’t dam it up or try to contain it. Young and old, men and women, learned and unlearned will all be hit by My Spirit together—an outpouring of My passion and goodness that will sweep across America, breaking asunder the religious spirit that has plagued this nation for generations.”

I can’t even imagine what this is going to look like! But I’m all in!!!