By Debbie Desmond
Deuteronomy 4:32-34
Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created man on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by miraculous signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?
I am sure that we are entering a season where these very words that Moses spoke will be our own. It has been coming at me from all angles and through various voices that God is about to do something so amazing and out of our religious box, that we will be saying, “Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of?” Jesus spoke of something like this. He said, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12) It is debatable that we have seen anything much greater than the works of Christ up until this time. But surely as His word does not return to Him void, we shall see it!
I got thinking about this change of season a little more consciously when on my morning prayer walk a couple of weeks ago I came across a dove dying in the path in front of me.The reason I took note was because I had recently had a discussion with friends about how God spoke to them through doves about the sale of their house – first an alive dove and then later seeing a dead dove. Seeing this dying dove in my path a couple days later, I thought, “Lord what are you trying to tell me about dead doves?” I thought two things. A dove represents the Holy Spirit and I sensed that God was saying the past move of the spirit is dying/dead. God is about to do something totally new by His Spirit. I knew there was also something about houses and I thought of a scripture in Haggai 2 about the former glory of the temple (God’s house) being surpassed by the latter. This new move of the Spirit in the church, God’s dwelling place, is going to be more glorious!!! This all made me think of words Bobby Conner shared at a conference I attended recently here in Cape Town. He was saying that in this new season, ‘we had better prepare ourselves to be surprised’ for the amazing things God is about to do. He also decree that God was going to do new things. He gave the example in 2 Chr 20 where God spoke through the prophets for the people to do something that had never been done before for their deliverance. The challenge given was, “Can you do the new thing without depending on the past way of doing things?”
This has been a reoccurring theme in our personal prophetic words over the last season.
- “God is going to do out of the box things with you”
- “It hasn’t been done before”
- “He is going to be downloading blueprints”
Someone said to me the other day, “…but God never changes and there isn’t anything new under the sun”. Whereas the fact that God never changes is true, He certainly isn’t boring and I think He quite likes shaking it up a bit so that we don’t get so into the formula (religion) that we no longer have need to seek out the relationship. Also, just like our lives go through different seasons and have different emphasize and purpose, so does the God in whose image we are made. We are entering into a different season with different emphasis and purposes and as such I think we are about to get surprised by God doing things we haven’t anticipated. Entrepreneurs do old things in a new way. We are about to see the entrepreneur face of God. In fact I believe new grace for entrepreneurial endevours will be poured out. When God is doing something like this and you tap into it, you can receive that grace been released. But we are going to see it in ALL Kingdom endevours! It wasn’t long after this that I was sitting in another conference and Steve Backlund made the statement, “One idea can change everything!”
When God is saying things like this, you start hearing it everywhere as He starts announcing His purposes and declaring them into being by His servants around the world,
Psalms 68:11, The Lord announced the word, and great was the company of those who proclaimed it
Isaiah 42:9 says, “See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare”, in verse 14, God speaks of something new being birthed, “like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant...”, and in verse 16, that “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them“.
So the exhortation is to be willing to let old ways of doing things go and as Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.” Be prepared to hear of “new things, of hidden things unknown to you…”. Whether you are a minister, a businessman, housewife, teacher, tap into the new grace that the Lord is pouring out and you can have access to that “one idea that can change everything”. And be prepared to be surprised at what extraordinary things He is able to do in and through you.
Romans 8:18-21
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
