Season Shift

I wasn’t sure whether to release this today as although nothing around us seems to be changing (we’re still in lockdown, fighting a pandemic), I have been feeling a season shift recently, and I’m sensing the spiritual equivalent of a new smell in the air, like when you’re busy at home and catch a waft of something cooking and get excited because you can tell your dinner is almost ready. Or as a good friend said yesterday, like voices carried on the wind, or traffic lights about to change: there is a sense of something almost within reach, almost upon us.
But we’re not quite ready to run headlong into the new – and I don’t want to suggest that we are – I just believe we need to be aware of the change upon us.

It came out of a conversation I was having with God yesterday about the abundant prophetic flow we have been experiencing. I love the prophetic and the increase we have seen recently – and I am so grateful for all God has been saying, but I am also starting to feel unsettled, like there’s a temptation to focus so much on collecting prophetic words that we miss what it’s all about. In fact I have a suspicion the enemy is happy for us to keep chasing & receiving prophetic words (and may even throw in a few of his own just to keep us distracted – so please learn discernment!) as long as we are kept from reaching the lost.
So yesterday I asked God if I am being distracted from what He’s doing, and asking when we will be released to get on with the actual practical stuff of rescue, and to the best of my ability, this is what I felt God reply:

The rescue has already begun – keep watching and you will see it. Reach out in relationship to those I reveal around you and see who I will save. Don’t miss what I am doing because it doesn’t look how you expected. The Western Church have bought into a fantasy of cheap and easy revival, but every great catch of fish requires singleness of focus and strenuous work by my fishermen – every harvest safely gathered in owes its success to those who rose early, slept little, and were diligent in attending to the task at hand.
Experienced ones do not fish or reap out of season – and it is only I Who dictates the season to My servants. So sensitivity to the season is key. But to those who have given their lives to Me, those who belong as My beautiful bride – to those I have given the privilege of co-labouring with Me to save the lost.
Tend to those immediately around you and see how I will multiply the results.

So I asked God if that meant that the ongoing prophesying is a distraction and if we just need to get on with the work? And I felt Him say this,

It can be (a distraction), if you allow yourself to rejoice that you can hear Me rather than actually applying what I say, but no: it is still time to sound the alarm. Even now there are still some who are sound asleep and unaware that the season of harvest is upon us. There are still many harvesters and fishermen sleeping through My alarm – still those who cling to comfort and have not woken up to the time in the Spirit, that it is time to forget the former things because a new day is upon us.
So yes, continue to sound the alarm, continue to prophesy. Rouse My people; rouse My army, my Church, My Bride. The prayers of my saints are rising as a sweet-smelling sacrifice, and I am rolling up My sleeves in readiness to answer.
Are you ready?

It’s such a difficult season to discern, but I believe God has been preparing us to be ready to respond to His Spirit, ready to shift. I don’t believe it’s time to be launched fully into the new yet (whatever that looks like), but we’re so close: I am smelling that aroma of what’s almost ready, and it feels like time to ‘wash our hands and set the table’ – ie to start looking around us to see what can be done. Yes let’s keep sounding the prophetic alarm to wake up the Church to the New, but let’s be alert to the doors that God is starting to open – because as we make those small steps I believe God is going to reveal it as part of something much bigger!