Recently Monika shared with us the following prophetic word. As you read on, ask God to soften your heart to hear what he wants you to hear from it and do in response to it:
Recently, while praying, I asked God what church he wants to see.
A few seconds later I saw in my mind's eye a small beating heart with air moving around it – almost like 'visible' sound waves. The heart looked small but it was full of life and its beat was loud.
Monika then writes:
I believe that God is saying to us: “I am after REAL people with REAL hearts – honest, open, kind, with the emotions as they come, with joy and laughter, grief and cry if needed, depending on a time/season."
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace."
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
Nothing hidden, nothing pretended, nothing fake. I want you to be perceived by the others as ‘naïve’ meaning unusually open, good, kind & loving beyond limits.
All these characteristics will be interpreted by the WORLD as ‘Naïve’.
But this will be the thing that will make non-believers astounded or curious and eventually will bring them to me. So be authentic therefore, be different.
I want you to be a people who live 'against the flow', against society norms. We must not hide ourselves behind polite prayers, but must be authentic, expressing honestly how we really feel – whatever it might be, then collapse and surrender to me and I will give you rest.
Next I asked God: "What's wrong with us as people that makes this hard God?"
The little heart wasn’t there anymore, and I saw a bigger one with a white layer that looked like a salt crust, slowly becoming thicker. Its beat was muffled it seemed to be coming from a distance, and gradually faded away.
I felt God say to us:
We start well with a healthy childlike heart, but then through life - being shaped by life's circumstances, personal successes & failures, expectations & disappointments, our upbringing, other peoples’ opinions, approval & criticism, personal drive for acceptance - our hearts become less responsive and open to what God provides us with (his love).
For this reason we pull away from God’s plans, his gifts and HIS presence in our lives.
Our faith should be enough to break the crust, but sometimes it is not. The best-case scenario is that it only starts to crack the crusted layer away, but we stay like this for years, not moving forward in deeper relationship with Jesus and partnering with the Holy Spirit.
BUT GOD IS LOVE AND HE WANTS HIS BRIDE- THE CHURCH TO THRIVE IN IT.
Gods wants the church to go back - to the original one we read in Acts of Apostles – full of miracles and wonders, operating with the fullness of His gifts. He gave us Holy Spirit and we are not fully in Him.
All the gifts are available, nothing has changed, God hasn’t changed, and He will not change as He is UNCHANGABLE, EVERLASTING GOD....
Let's step back and bring our hearts to their AUTHENTIC originally created -God’s state.
Amen.