Tearing Down Our Idols By Mike McClung

Jonah 2:8: Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. (NKJV)

1 John 5:21: Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

On June 7, the beginning of the festival of Shavaot (Pentecost), I began to have serious heart arrhythmias combined with classic symptoms of heart malfunction – shortness of breath, chest pain, etc. I believe we are entering a new season where, if we will position ourselves biblically, we will have a great refreshing, infilling release of the Holy Spirit. This is to prepare us for a new season beginning on Rosh Hashanah described in scripture as the “season of the restoration of all things” (Acts 3:19-21). I was expecting a great release of deep repentance and power to come. I still have those expectations, but with the current state of my heart problems, the Lord has radically altered my conception of what is required.

After spending a day in the hospital and gladly returning back home and to the Prayer Furnace prayer room, I spent the morning following my hospital stay seeking the Lord on what was happening to me. I sat down in my little place and prayed, “Lord, You have my attention. What is happening?” His reply was quite shocking to me….

A Fresh Look at "Desiring God," by Patty King

In Desiring God, John Piper presents his powerful case for Christian hedonism. Having previously associated the word “hedonism” with the selfish, pleasure seeking lifestyle which served as a main contributor to the collapse of the Roman Empire, it took quite some convincing to turn both my head and heart around to embrace Piper’s message.

After reading Henri Nouwen’s two books The Way of the Heart and Clowning in Rome which immediately grabbed my heart and revealed so much of my cold love towards God, there was a serious disconnect for me with Piper’s approach which largely builds on deductive reasoning.  While the first two books exposed the barrenness of my heart, Piper’s message revealed the necessary connection between heart and mind and how both are intricately connected in our relationship with God. Even though at the core of our being we were made to enjoy God and be enjoyed by Him, the disconnect between heart and mind make us err in one of two ways.

An Opportune Time of Refreshing; A Season of Restoration

Acts 3:19-21: Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.

At the beginning of 2011, the Lord gave me this scripture as a template of what would be coming over the next few months, and then afterward, the following years. The Lord indicated that the body of Christ would be entering a kairos window of opportunity to align ourselves with Him and His purposes in a greater way, which would be attended by a great in-breaking of the Holy Spirit. The word for “times” in verse 19 is kairos, or the now, opportune timing of God. It is usually a very short window of time for us to align ourselves with the will of God, or the moment will be missed and may take years to come back around. This is what happened in the wilderness when the Israelites refused to obey the Lord and enter the land of Canaan, choosing instead to cave-in to the fear and unbelief emanating from their mindsets and emotional wounds and bondages formed in Egypt. Because they refused to trust God and actually accused Him of mischief, that generation, except for a Joshua and Caleb, missed God’s plan, and delayed it for another generation. A new, kairos moment is now upon us.