On New Years day I was in that half asleep-half awakened state and a man came into my room and sat in my chair and began to talk to me. Because I thought it was a dream it did not startle me. As I began to grow more aware of this person, I realized how strange it was that I would be talking to him as I was getting up because no one ever enters my room to wake me.

This is when I became fully awake and the man disappeared. I believe he was a heavenly messenger. As I rehearsed the whole scenario through my mind over and over I could only remember the scriptures we were discussing. The main scripture was Isaiah 43:18-19:

Forget about what's happened; don't keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new. It's bursting out! Don't you see it? There it is! (Message translation)

Embracing the Coming Changes

I believe God's covenant people are on the verge of the greatest change that has ever occurred since the resurrection of Christ. At the same time, very often our past experience can be the enemy to future glory. Sometimes we look back and become jaded about change because we want a reoccurrence of something that we experienced before.

We must leave the past in the past and press on for the future glory. The greatest test of maturity in the western church will be its ability to embrace change. The Gospel never changes but the methods and institutions must.

Revelation Is Coming

When Paul shared his revelations, one of his primary mandates was the inclusion of the gentiles in salvation. Although all of the mature of the church eventually agreed with Paul, the change was very slow with respect to the attitudes towards the gentiles.

Paul even acknowledged that he had to confront Peter who was favoring Jews over the gentiles. (Galatians 2). God is going to release revelations that are fresh about how to advance the kingdom inside and outside of the institution of the church. He is going to do a new thing. When God speaks these things to an audience, we can literally put ourselves behind if we do not embrace the revelations from trusted vessels who speak into the culture of our churches.

The New Takes a New Mind-set

During the artistic renaissance period, God longed for the church to embrace arts so that the Gospel could not only be heard but seen. Art was in some ways looked down upon as an occupation as it was considered worldly; but in the renaissance period God raised up powerful prophets called artists who painted pictures that were worth a thousand sermons.

A whole society was able to wrap its heart around the gospel's message as God and His word became real through art. The church did not champion the artists, only their art that was produced and continued to look at the profession of art as more worldly than godly.

This is an example of how, even in this day, there are many occupations that God desires to use in this new instillation of kingdom activity. In the midst of this, many of these occupations are still judged by the religious community as more worldly and un-beneficial.

An example of this is the video game industry. I believe God is about to unlock anointed entertainment that will give the younger generation a walk-through of Biblical figures lives as well as showing the truths of the Bible in a current cultural way.

The church has an opportunity to partner with heaven's agenda and endorse the young people who want to be missionaries into this industry; but many people are criticized for even thinking about becoming programmers or graphic designers for video game companies. Unfortunately some parents and leaders look at this vision as an ungodly or worldly ambition.

How Do We Keep From Getting Behind?

I am going to unravel another scenario as an example of how we get behind as the church. I believe that hundreds if not thousands of people began to be sent as secret missals into the Hollywood industry in the early to mid nineties. Many of them went with prophetic promises and visions that were straight from heaven. I believe that there was a window of time in the nineties that God desired to anoint these people to bring some television shows and movies that would prepare peoples hearts for Jesus.

I also believe that when it came to finding finances for these projects that many churches and ministries shut their doors to these anointed ones because it was so different and new that the church at large did not know how to get on board with what God wanted to do there. The church knew how to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to do missionary crusades that affected a few thousand people, but didn't know how to raise the same amount or more to affect millions.

God had a message He wanted delivered and anointed chosen vessels outside of the institutional church to prophecy those messages. This special anointing would make certain television shows and movies prophetic in their message to the world even though they were not stewarded by the church.

How do we keep from getting behind? We need to be expanded by His heart and vision to see a bigger picture then we presently see. Many ministries will raise large amounts of money for projects that have low risk potential but also low fruit yield; but not many will raise money for high risk potential projects that can potentially give the highest reward potential. Look at the history of “The Passion of Christ.” We have to allow our vision to be enlarged.

I believe Isaiah 54:1-4 speaks to this scenario. (The Message Version)

Sing, barren woman, who has never had a baby. Fill the air with song, you who've never experienced childbirth! You're ending up with far more children than all those childbearing women." GOD says so! "Clear lots of ground for your tents! Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big! Use plenty of rope, drive the tent
pegs deep.

You're going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You're going to take over whole nations; you're going to resettle abandoned cities. Don't be afraid--you're not going to be embarrassed. Don't hold back--you're not going to come up short. You'll forget all about the humiliations of your youth, and the indignities of being a widow will fade from memory.

What happens when those who were sent begin to birth their promises?

How Do We Prepare for the New

God rarely did anything with His covenant people twice in the Bible. He led them in new ways although the guiding principles and standards never changed. We can't expect to look back into the past to see how the future will unfold because God is going to do things we can not expect. We can expect the nature of God behind the unexpected though; He never changes. His love is always the same.

If we want to prepare for the new we have to be willing to endorse and champion the new roles and occupations that God is sending the church into. We are going to have to be willing to take great risks as communities and as individuals. We are going to have to realize we only have a small window of time to bring Him the fullness of His reward.