God is Leading His People on an Ascent

Greetings and blessings to you in the matchless name of our Lord Jesus. I want to share the word of the Lord with you for this tremendous season of transition that we are in.

Many in England and all over the world are able to testify that over the last few months we have seen tremendous breakthroughs and breakouts of the Holy Spirit. What is happening is truly incredible. What I felt as I was praying, however, is that strategic action is needed to sustain the momentum that is building.

I want to share with you some keys with you that will help you to address the sticking points that could hinder the speed of the ascent that is taking place in your life and enable you to stay aligned with the Spirit and to avoid acting on your own strength.

Wisdom for the Ascent

In this season, God has been leading His people on an ascent, closer to Him and deeper into His presence and purposes. As many have climbed, the Holy Spirit has led them to shed the heavy loads and burdens they have carried for far too long and which have previously held them down.

As you climb and the weights are lifted from you, you will feel lighter within yourself. However, because you carried a sense of being burdened for so long, and it became so familiar to you, you may also feel unusual and somehow empty as this happens. The danger for some is that they then rush into finding something else to be burdened with, for the sake of restoring a sense of the familiar. This is a subtle trap. Don't allow yourself to fall into this temptation or let yourself be drawn into the first issue that presents itself to you, but instead wait carefully on the Holy Spirit, who will direct you to the causes that He wants you to pay attention to.

Don't try to preempt the Holy Spirit or decide for Him where your focus ought to be. Practice the spiritual disciplines of self-control and patience, and allow Him to give you clear guidance on how to launch out into the new things to come. Keep shedding the loads and keep climbing higher. After John encountered Jesus in the book of Revelation, he heard a voice saying to him "Come up here, and I will show you things which must take place after this" (Rev. 4:1b). John didn't assume what the future held but allowed God to show him. Don't look back to what you've left behind but look upwards and forwards to God. Abraham left his father's house to go to a land that God was yet to show him. But when he did, God blessed him and increased him (Isaiah 51:2).

Wisdom for the Summit

As you ascend and shed the burdens of prior seasons, you will also find yourself gaining greater clarity and perspective as your mind and heart become more free. Eventually your ascension will bring you to a summit, a place of perspective from which you can see clearly and take a full survey of your environment and circumstances.

From here you will be able to perceive what your potential is and the fruitfulness that can flow from your life. You will be able to see how God used the ascension process to soften and prepare your heart for harvest, just as He prepares the land according to Psalm 65:9-11 (NIV):

"You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly. The streams of God are filled with water to provide the people with grain, for so you have ordained it. You drench its furrows and level its ridges; you soften it with showers and bless its crops. You crown the year with your bounty, and your carts overflow with abundance."

Seeing the potential, however, is not the same as fulfilling it. Although you have reached a summit, there is further to climb, and the greater harvest is yet to come. This is where strategic prayer is key. The view from the summit is not simply about looking at how far you have come, but also about where you need to now go.

Be clear about what you don't yet have that you need for the journey ahead. Focus your prayers on the road ahead and the help you need to get there. Pray for the right people, alignments and provision. The ascension process and the perspective from the summit will give you the authority you need to legislate in prayer for these things. To legislate effectively, keep in mind the following three elements. First, state your case to God in prayer, accounting for where you have come from and where you need to go, why and what your motives are. Second, be clear about what you don't have and what you need and present your case to the Lord as to why He should provide. Third, wait for Him to respond with strategy and direction so that you do not move presumptuously.

The Wisdom to Separate

The perspective from the summit also gives you a view on what it is that you need to fix. If you are not feeling the anointing and presence of God as you used to, then this is the place for you take stock with the Lord to see what you missed along the way, what act of disobedience may have caused you to misalign or what mistake caused the anointing to hemorrhage.

Be careful to recognize that these are not things that can be fixed simply by gathering anointed people around you. This is personal. No membership of any group or cartel can make up for right standing with God. Trying to bring together something that looks like God is in it when He is not will really only hinder what He is doing and where He wants His church to go. Remember that those who stand at the summit are crucial for what is to come and for those who are to follow. The Lord is looking for elders at the gate that will permit transformation because they themselves are rightly aligned with Him.

If necessary, separate yourself for a time so you can recover your own anointing and connection with the Holy Spirit. When you have done this, then you will be able to partner authentically with those who also carry the anointing and God's authority, whether old or young. Standing at a summit does not excuse you from the need to set things right in the Spirit. Rather, it should make the need clearer. The fear of God remains the principal thing, however high you have climbed. As Psalm 76:12b says, "He is feared by the kings of the earth."

Whatever the situation, now is the time to put things right.

Bringing About the Change

In Numbers 27, the daughters of Zelophehad brought a petition to Moses concerning their futures and inheritances. Being daughters rather than sons, and given the death of their father, it had seemed that circumstances were against them and that without intervention they would never possess land among their fathers' relatives. When we operate from a certain sense of identity, the promises of God can seem far off, but yet in Jesus Christ all things are possible.

Each of the daughters' names meant something different, and each would have had her own particular character and ways about her, but they came together as one to contend for their inheritance. They didn't fight or compete among themselves but stood in unity and petitioned successfully for an act of legislation that secured their own inheritances and those of many in Israel for years to come. This is a picture of what the Holy Spirit is stirring up in believers right now across the body of Christ. His plan is that believers will not fight against each other but stand together at the summit to make petitions that bring about true change. This means recognizing the value and strengths of one another, and not just your own strength and value.

At the summit, we demand and ask for the inheritance that comes with dominion. The harvest is real, and the task of the church in this season is to ask aright and not amiss.

Free yourself from every entanglement that is hindering you from climbing. If you know that you've been stuck in a particular place for a while, you must really declare that you're looking for freedom and get up. Whatever it is, rise up by faith, face it, cut its cords off and trust God.

In John 14:26, Jesus declared that the Holy Spirit would teach us all things and remind us of what He has said to us. I pray for you that He will activate the insight, wisdom and courage you need to recover all that has been lost, to learn new things and to birth fresh ideas that will bring about change. In Jesus' mighty name. Amen.

Adored

Reverend Dr Betty King