Don’t Try To Go It Alone

It’s been a funny week. My prayer times with God have been running along quite different lines to what I had been experiencing until recently, and I can’t quite tell if that’s because of a season-change, because God is calling me to dig deeper, or something else. Probably all of the above. But the things He is speaking to me about do seem to have quite a different and less clear focus, so if you’ve noticed I’ve been quieter than usual on here, that’s why: I’ve not had much clarity to offer, and have been waiting to discern if this is part of the “new normal”, or just a temporary pause.

But today God did speak a couple of more clear things that I felt to share, so here’s the first:

Just before I woke this morning I had a brief dream/ picture. It was taking place out at sea in night-time, in the midst of a storm.  There were several lifeboats (the large inflatable kind found on ships) and those in the lifeboats were roping themselves together for safety, so that they looked like one large lifeboat made of many connected ones. 
Joined together, they were searching for survivors in the water, to pull them on board.  And as I woke I heard the clear words “Now is not the time to be trying to go it alone”.

Firstly I felt that the dream was for my church. He has been leading us not to meet as a whole congregation yet, but instead to focus on our small groups as the main expression of our church family right now. The life boats represented those small groups, all linked together by the common thread of the messages that are preached for our church on YouTube, while at the same time all focusing on rescuing people.

But I also feel that the dream has a wider application, for those people who have been functioning outside of church fellowship for a while. In the last couple of decades there have been many people who became so disillusioned by church as an institution, rejected or hurt by the churches they were part of, that they have voted with their feet and stayed away, doing their best to serve God independently of any church body.

I believe the statement “now is not the time to be trying to go it alone” is for these dear ones too. There is no judgement for having been out of fellowship thus far – that’s not what I’m saying. Church as it was had become something very different to what God intended, and many of those who left were justifiably disillusioned. But now we are entering God’s new season I believe it’s time to get on board again. The true Church – the Bride of Christ – is rediscovering her mission, and as with the picture God gave me a couple of weeks ago, when the coming revival is released we are going to need “all hands on deck”. Every born-again believer is being called to co-labour in bringing in the harvest of fish, to connect their life-boat to the others out in the storm, and to join in rescuing people from their current state of being overwhelmed by sin & darkness. And to do that, we all need to be operating in fellowship with other believers.

As it says in Psalm 68:6, where God also took me this morning,
“God sets the solitary in families” (NJKV), or as TPT says, “God makes a home for the lonely“.
There is a call going out for the prodigals to return home to family (Luke 15:11-32), for the burnt stones to take their place in what God is building (Neh 2:4), for the dry bones to have life breathed into them once more and take their place in God’s army (Ez 37:1-14)

The rescue mission/ great harvest about to be released is going to require us ALL to be in position, all working in unity, like the miracle catch in Luke 5 when Peter’s crew had to call James and John to come and help. We are ALL needed to pull together – not a single person will be superfluous. But just like the fishermen immediately before Jesus released the fish, we need to make sure our nets are clean and intact (those nets being our ‘networks’ – our relationships). We have to all be in relationship and in position, holding ALL of our gifts and ministries in equal tension, in order to be able to hold and bring in the fish about to be released.

So I want to encourage anyone reading this: if you are already part of a local church, that’s great. Press in to the relationships and small groups there, so you can be united and ready for the rescue mission that is about to take place. And if you are not part of a church family but have been going it alone, it’s time to find the tribe where you belong. The old lonely season has finished. God’s Church is no longer what it used to be, and I want to encourage you to ask God to show you the local body He has marked as your home, where they have left behind the old wine-skin and are pressing in to the new that God has called us all to. You have a part to play in this end-time fishing harvest/ rescue mission too – and it’s about to get exciting!