Whenever Father God begins to ask His children questions it’s not because He needs help with the answer, it’s because He’s provoking us forward into new things and revealing His heart and nature to us. Jesus was the quintessential master of asking the right questions at the right time, answering questions with more questions, knowing that a look of “Huh?” on his disciples face can become a “Ah-Hah!” with a little bit of wisdom and understanding.

God is not afraid to let His questions rest heavy on us, intrigue us, frustrate us, and push us forward into a life lived differently and purposely. Questions from God are His merciful intervention and leadership, leading us forward into His satisfying and joy-filled plan for our lives.

Several years ago the Lord began to “mess with me” by asking me questions that I was not prepared to answer. I was pastoring our 7-year old church that was going very well, my wife and I just had our second daughter (which has now bloomed into a 3^rd daughter), and life was moving right along fairly uninterrupted until God’s questions began invading my heart. I continue to be challenged in my heart daily by the questions that are coming from God’s heart, and I continually pray that as the leaders during this time in history we doing our best to accurately represent and communicate what is on God’s mind right now. Today I am going to share with you two of the questions that have most changed my perspectives as a leader during this time of incredible transition of the local church.

Question #1: Are the people in your church prepared for the hour they are living in and the hour that is coming to the earth?

This question still nags me every day and provokes me to ask in return, “What hour am I living in?” Truthfully, this was the Lord gently confronting the issue of the “fair-tale” of Jesus’ return in my own heart and the coming of a King and His Kingdom to the earth. Somehow the lines have become very blurred in our western Christian culture between “Jesus is coming to be King” and “Santa Claus is coming to town”, and for the first time in my leadership life I was on a serious contemplation and review of the Bible concerning this issue. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the whole eschatology mess that all my ministry friends avoided because “it didn’t produce any fruit” and caused to many problems in their church. Not to mention, the issue of Jesus’ return “isn’t very relevant to life today” considering all the other problems people are going through right? Here’s the point, Jesus dispelled His light on the reservations in my heart about leading a church that boldly taught about Christ’s return and the establishment of His Kingdom here on earth.

Shortly into this journey came the study of end-time Babylon and the present-day strengthening of a global economic, political, religious system that is intoxicating the earth for this season and will continue to do so in the season to come. Somehow, all of my studies on the end-times were focused almost exclusively on the 7-year tribulation that none of us are supposedly going to be here for, and what I completely missed were the instructions Jesus gave to those living in the generations before the tribulation begins; the cautions He gave to them, the commissions He gave to them, and specifics about the mindset that was to be found in the people of God living during those days. This is what hit me: “I am currently a leader that is unprepared to navigate the days ahead because the return of Jesus, the establishment of Revelation’s Babylon, and the authority that we have as believers in this hour are not as real to me as they should be!”

With this conviction I quickly began to realize that regardless of people’s view on the tribulation, the global climate before this seven-year period begins will be a most deceptive and fearful time where the heart of mankind across the earth will be full of offences towards God and man, while a demonic intoxication will be globally pervasive and popular. The Church in that hour will be simultaneously experiencing intense outpourings of glory and entire movements of spiritual delusion and false teaching. And so the Lord’s question continues to grow in my heart today: “Are the people in your church prepared for the hour they are living in and the hour that is coming to the earth?” In these recent months I have become very sober to the fact that an anti-Christ establishment and the great tribulation are a reality that we must be watchful of, but not to be feared. I now refuse to be lead a church that is so focused on their trials and the activity of this evil kingdom that they lose sight of loving Jesus and walking in the grace and power that God’s given them.

My leadership world was rocked when the return of Jesus transitioned from ethereal fiction to a viable reality in my own heart…”He is coming and every eye will see Him”. Even though no man knows the day or the hour, there is a growing mountain of evidence that the transition from this age of oppression into the next age of Christ’s kingdom being established here on earth is not far away. Whether this transition is in my generation or 10 generations down the line, living with an awakened heart of true love and devotion for Jesus Christ are essential for us to possess and pass down to the generations that come behind us.

Question #2: Is your church raising up messengers or echoes?

I was blessed to be brought up in a great home with great values and a devotion to the Bible, prayer and the presence of God. The scriptures were definitely not absent from my life growing up, and even as a teenager my heart was compelled to know Jesus more through personal devotion to His Word, and those years were monumental in my personal development. I will say that as a young person who was pursuing God, even in our healthy local church, I was definitely the minority. This is not a testimony of my greatness by any means, but rather a realization early in my life that the knowledge of God is growing scarce and absent from our daily lives here in the West, and the willingness to lay down our agendas and plans for what God is doing in the earth is growing very rare as well.

God began challenging me about the “product” that our church was producing, and I realized that from a “manufacturing” viewpoint the local church in America is challenged in the area of producing a “product” that is relevant for what God is doing today. “But Jim, isn’t the church here to help people through the struggles of their daily lives? Aren’t we (the pastors) here to be a voice of encouragement to those in despair? Aren’t we supposed to extract the secrets and solutions that the Bible has and give them to people so that their lives will work better?” I think on many levels the answer to those questions is yes, but the foundational problem the Lord was addressing with me was the lack of personal revelation from God that many believers, and the growing dependency on the knowledge of God-teachers because of a lack of the Spirit’s leadership in daily life.

My kid’s were watching a television show where the cute little furry animals where exploring the Grand Canyon and singing a song called “Echo, Echo”. I had a revelation in-front of Nickelodeon… “I am doing a much better job of creating little echos who can repeat what somebody else told them than I am at building people who have a voice of authority from the God because they really know God for themselves.” Personally, I’ve become a total believer that the Anointing is supposed to be the primary teacher to all of us and that pastors and church leadership are voices positioned by God to confirm what God has been speaking to the hearts of His people while helping to bring further understanding.

If you want to freak your average American believer out completely, catch them in the hallway before a church meeting and ask them, “What’s God been speaking to your heart lately?” Be prepared for stammering lips and an unknown tongue until the person you’re speaking with can think of the last thing they heard from someone else, or until they can drudge up some spoiled spiritual manna from 6 months ago. God graciously showed me how through all of my good intentions I was inadvertently creating an environment that conditioned people for a lifestyle of minimal personal revelation and consequently set them up for the convenience of deception. I began saying to God, “Help me! I don’t want to set people up to be deceived by the intoxicating fallacies that are everywhere in our culture!” At that point God began to challenge me to father a forerunning people in my city, a church with a burning love for Jesus at the center, knowing God and loving people in a vibrant way.

Without a doubt I am far from being an expert on any subject. But one thing for sure, I am on a journey with Jesus that’s changing my life if a real way. I believe that in this hour of history God is asking His leaders some very challenging questions with the intention of awakening our hearts in a greater way to who He is and what He’s doing in the earth. My prayer is that this generation of church leadership has ears to hear the questions that Jesus is asking us and that we have the humility to respond and pursue the path of transformation towards becoming the spotless bride of authority Jesus is coming back for.

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It amazes me how loud the conversation about God is in America…”We love him!”, “We hate him!”, “I don’t know what to think of him”, “There’s no him!”, etc. And in the middle of all the dialog, the preaching, and the debate, there is still so little dialog to Him. As a pastor I strongly believe in the proclamation and declaration of who God is, what He’s done, and what He’s going to do. I also believe that the local church around the earth was created by God to be the primary vehicle for this declaration of God to every tribe and every tongue around the earth. However, there cannot be a clear and accurate declaration about a person that we are having minimal conversation with. It is the conviction of my heart that conversation (prayer) from God’s people to God has to be at the center of the church and the center of our lifestyle with Jesus so that our declaration stays true and on course.

It amazes me how many believers see prayer as a “means to an end”? In other words, “I pray to get what I want”. Local churches pray so that “the declaration” will work better and gain more raving fans than it currently is. It’s a simple progression really:
- I can’t get what I want on my own.
- God can get me what I want.
- I’ve seen God give people what they want when they pray.
- Hmmm, prayer must work.
- I’m praying to get what I want.
- If I get what I want, I like God. if I don’t get what I want my heart struggles with God.
- PS…if I’ve exhausted every other option to get what I want, and I’m bothered with God because He hasn’t given me what I want, I’ll still give prayer a whirl as a final attempt to get what I want even if I don’t believe it works, and I’ll get even more mad at God for not moving mountains on my behalf.

But seriously, when we begin to see Jesus as the most valuable and important thing in our world than our progression shifts also:
- Jesus is who I want
- I can have as much of Jesus as I desire, He is not withholding Himself from me
- I want to know Him more, I’m tire of withholding myself from Him
- I pray to know Jesus
- I can’t stop talking about Him, my “declaration” is on my lips and full of life

A prayer-centered life and a prayer-centered church believes that life begins and ends at the relational conversation with the Divine, a vibrant life of prayer between the Savior and the saved. This relationship provokes the declaration of Jesus from our daily lives because the relationship with Jesus and the revelation of Jesus are alive in our hearts.

“Jesus, we want be Your people, and we want you to be our God.”