March 31, 2010

A LIFE MARKED BY FIRE

One night I was cooking dinner for my wife. “Be careful, it’s hot,” I said to her as I served her the dish. She then went on to say something that so impacted me; “It’s so interesting that you can see heat.” She was referring to the hot food but the Lord used her to speak directly to my heart. I wondered; “Am I burning with the fire of God? If so, can others see the heat?” The Bible says of John the Baptist that he was a “burning and shining lamp”. Researchers believe that up to 750,000 people went to go see John preach within a six month period! This is before the Internet, or media existed! Trust me, he wasn’t preaching a watered down, tickle your ear, convenient gospel either! He preached, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!” So what did they go out to see? I believe they went out to see a burning man in the desert! John’s life was one that was marked with the fire of the Holy Spirit! John had an inward consecration to God that marked him as a blazing inferno of fiery zeal! John was burning with the desire to be a highway for the Messiah to ride into the earth on! He was a man of great humility! Willingly giving up his own disciples to a man who’s sandals he did not feel worthy to untie. He was the first to have the prophetic eyes to see Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” He fasted often. He was a man who stood for truth even in the face of death. He was called to a lonely life but was later referred to by Jesus as “the greatest man born of women”. He was a laid down lover. He was a man on fire. If you touch fire to something that’s not on fire for long enough, that thing will also start on fire. Fire spreads. It is a consuming force that when given the right fuel will continually expand. Are you a burning and shining lamp? Is your life marked by fire? Can others see the heat coming off of your life? If not, it’s time to press in close to God. After all, He is an all-consuming fire. Stick around Him long enough and you’ll have no choice but to burn.

Rick Pino

Fire Rain Ministries

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Poplar Bluffs Blog – 3

In January of 2009, I was given this dream from one of TheCall staff. I didn’t realize it at the time that TheCall would actually be shut down for nearly two years as we have sought to bring TheCall under the highest financial and administrative scrutiny.

So, when Dutch Sheets called me a few months later and spoke to me about a vision of a mass gathering in the wilderness of Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, (read the incredible story of why Poplar Bluffs) with thousands camping out and worshipping God 24/7 for days and consecrating themselves to a great awakening in America, the dream erupted in my spirit again. A burning witness of the spirit took hold of me as I envisioned thousands of those that received the Nazirite marking at TheCalls over the last 10 years gathering together, not for a camp, but for a consecration. It was a vision of the Nazirite ReCall.

Read this dream and if your heart burns, obey the summons to Return to the Wilderness.

Return to the Wilderness Dream

January 2009

In the dream, I was reading an email that I was copied on from Therese Engle to her husband Lou. The reason for my reading I assumed, was because I was to be helping with the mobilization with theCall, and had a door open up …

The email Therese sent to Lou said,

“Love of my life,

Don’t be surprised if we have to pull the plug for a while, because it might be time to return to the desert. All along, we were to carry the Elijah call of Malachi 4:5,6 and this might be the next step in the journey.”

After I read the email, I looked up from my computer screen and saw Lou standing on a stage and motioning for his ‘sons and daughters’ to follow him off the platform.  Lou said, “It’s time to shut it all down and return to the wilderness”. As soon as they got off the stage, they walked behind the platform to where I saw a massive gathering of young people at the grassroots level.

In a field, surrounded with woods, trails and ponds, there were thousands of tents filled with young people, parents, and families. They had come out to this wilderness for one purpose – to pray, fast and seek the counsel of the Lord before going before the kings of the earth.  This massive army of young people, were fasting food for several days and had unplugged their phones, iPods and computers to be in the middle of no-where to simply pray together.  It looked like an atmosphere like Cornerstone Music Festival…very grassroots in nature.  However, there was no sense of entertainment – it was an extremely holy feeling in the air.  There was repentance mixed with mass celebration – but there was such substance!! Such true sorrow and such powerfully expressions of JOY!

It was shocking to me to see so many people going with out technology to simply seek God in the wilderness.  The massive area was like a camp divided up into 12 sections, having TheCall leaders in each section, who were camping with everyone else.  It seemed very well organized for such simplicity – like a well oiled machine. There were camp fires and stories being shared, fathers teaching the sons, and mothers establishing the daughters – all in the context of the wilderness.  There was hardly any technology or electrical in the entire camp.

I looked and saw a TheCall assistant who was frantically working on a laptop and was concerned about changing a few last minute details to keep the atmosphere set.  She kept saying, “I forgot to change the one sign.  It is supposed to say, ‘It’s not a time to camp, it’s a time for consecration.”  Therese Engle walked up to her, put her arm around her and said, “It’s the right time to call the Nazarite’s back together.  It’s been too long, and now we can go together with our children into the wilderness.”

The messages being preached on stages seemed to include a diverse set of patriarchs, but each of them preached like John the Baptist, saying, “REPENT – TURN – and RETURN to the LORD!”  It was the message of the Call, that inside I knew resonated in my DNA, but this time around it had the backing of signs and wonders fueled with night and day prayer. It was as though the 2^nd wave of the Nazarite army was finally gathering together, but the context had been radically transformed.  There was a pause in the stadium events, and it seemed that we had fully returned to the wilderness.

It was a level of unity and consecration I had not seen before in any such context.  It was so much more than a conference…

A few of the key phrases I remember over hearing in the dream repeatedly were:

“It’s not a camp, it’s a consecration.”

“We have to go to the wilderness before we go before the kings.”

“There is nothing like the wisdom produced in the desert to turn the kings of the cities”

“ Repent – Turn & Return to the Lord”

Lou Engle

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Poplar Bluffs Blog – 2

“And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the rebellious to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” – Luke 1:17

There are moments in history when a door for massive change opens. Great revolutions for good or for evil occur in the vacuum created by these openings. It is in these times that key men and women, and even entire generations, risk everything to become the hinge of history—the pivotal point that determines which way the door will swing. In the Scriptures, some of these key men and women were Nazirites.

During Israel’s darkest hours, and in the times of their greatest moral decline, God raised up individuals and prophetic companies of young people called the Nazirites. These men and women of God were greatly used to stem the tide of apostasy. God spoke of this through the Prophet Amos saying, “I raised up some of your sons as prophets, and some of your young men as Nazirites. Is it not so, O you children of Israel?” (Amos 2:11). These Nazirites stepped onto the national scene as a countercultural resistance to the prevailing sexual immorality and idol worship of the day. These consecrated ones, by their lifestyles and anointings, shook people out of their complacency and confronted the religious status quo with a burning zeal for the name and fame of God. The Nazirites became the hinge of history. They were raised up and called to bring national deliverance and revival to Israel.

The Nazirites actually thrived and multiplied when the nation faced impossible situations and crises in which its only hope was divine intervention. It was in these kinds of times that people made extreme vows to God to be set apart for His purpose in an extraordinary way. Theirs was the Nazirite vow. Samuel, Samson and John the Baptist were divinely set apart as lifetime Nazirites and were mightily used through supernatural prophecy (Samuel), supernatural power (Samson), and supernatural passion and preaching (John the Baptist) to shift the course of a nation.

In the days of John the Baptist, thousands went to the desert to be baptized in his preparatory fire. We believe in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, on June 14-18, God wants to baptize a new generation of Nazirite-type consecrated ones again into a renewed fire and expectation of the coming of the Lord in revival power to America. No commission burns brighter in my heart, “Summon the consecrated ones, the Nazir.” Jesus said of John the Baptist, “he was a burning and shining lamp.” Oh, how I pray that God would raise up burning and shining lamps who are jealous for God and his name in America, whom the media cannot ignore, and who can fearlessly confront with love the entrenched demonization of the culture with the power of the gospel and with reformation authority.

We are believing for a divine commissioning from heaven during three days of day and night worship in the wilderness. Woodstock released a new sound in a generation that fueled a 40-year rebellion. But, 40 years are up and maybe a new sound of God’s sons of thunder could be released that’s more powerful than the rebellion.

Lou Engle

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Poplar Bluff Blog – 1

“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants. They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams. One will say, ‘I belong to the LORD ‘; another will call himself by the name of Jacob; still another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s,’ and will take the name Israel.” – Isaiah 44:3-5

“America is receiving her apostles, prophets and evangelists, but it has not yet seen her Nazirites!” These audible thundering words shook me from my sleep at four o’clock in the morning in January 2000. It was God. It was a promise. It was His explosive response to the heart hunger of a 13-year-old’s desire to be completely separated to God. That young man was my son Jesse. That evening, he had come to me fervently expressing his desire to be a Nazirite until TheCall DC; a massive prayer gathering that would take place later that year in September. He told me that he didn’t want to cut his hair until TheCall. He wanted to fast forty days on juice. He was determined that, following the fast, he would not eat meats or sweets until TheCall. He said, “Dad I don’t want to play baseball this year”—he was the best pitcher on the team—“all that I want to do is run with you, Dad, and pray for revival in America.”

I went to bed that night pondering what response I should give to such an extreme request. I didn’t have to ponder long. God responded for me. It was almost as if He couldn’t contain Himself. He couldn’t wait for the morning dawn to give His own response. He was looking for someone. He was hotly pursuing a completely abandoned heart upon which He could send His holy fire. He had found His Nazirite.

Eight months later, on September 2, 2000, when four hundred thousand young people gathered in Washington DC, not for a festival, but for a fast, Jesse stood on that great stage and cried out to God for the Nazirites to arise in America. When he prayed, it was as if his words gave articulation to what was already subterraneously rumbling beneath the soul-surface of a whole new generation. When he cried out, “Let the long-hairs arise!”, it was as if a volcanic eruption occurred. That great assembly released a roar that I believe is still reverberating today, not only in America, but also worldwide. Something is coming that we have never seen.

It’s been 10 years since TheCall DC. Now, this summer we are releasing a Nazirite ReCall. There are moments in time when the Lord summons us to the wilderness again to renew our vows, rekindle our fire and listen to the Voice. In Poplar Bluff, Missouri, we are calling all those who received that Nazirite mark to gather in the Missouri wilderness, sleep in tents, and seek God in four days and nights of worship. We are calling those hearts that have burned from every Call to come and unplug their electronic devices, shut off the static, and be sealed again with extreme consecration. It’s not a camp, it’s a consecration.

The property has been supernaturally marked with the scripture Isaiah 44:4. This was the scripture that was prayed and pleaded that opened up the great revival in the Hebrides. We believe two generations gathering can unleash something in the spirit of a great awakening in America. I am going with my sons and daughters believing that God will cause them to write on their arms spiritually, “I belong to the Lord. I am a possessed one.” Could it be that America is going to begin to see her Nazirites appear on the national scene with a voice that can shake a nation? God promised this to me in an audible Voice 10 years ago. I still believe.

Lou Engle

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Can A Nation Be Changed . . . ?

As we met to pray and plan Wilderness Outcry last October, an interesting phrase came to us:  “can a nation be changed?  No, it must be altared.”  Not altered – altared.

When significant encounters occurred between God and individuals in scripture (dreams, covenants, etc.) the person involved often built an altar. This represented several things:

1) It was a reminder to both them and their descendents of what occurred;

2) Sacrifices were sometimes offered on the altar as a covenantal sealing of what occurred;

3) The altar was a sign of surrender to God and acceptance of His terms.

In many ways the altar “sealed the deal” and “tethered” the person and promises to God.  In a sense, it sanctified and made the occasion solemn.

America is a nation of dreams without altars.  We love the promises and provision but we have forgotten our commitment to Him. Though it is no longer something we need to necessarily do physically–the cross is our altar and we’re to live there daily – we should still build altars in our hearts and minds.  All that we have, are, or will ever be should be laid on the altar of commitment and surrender to Him.  Our founding fathers in America knew and practiced this, that’s why they planted a cross on the beach at Plymouth Rock.  As this understanding and practice changed, God’s dream for America was transformed into “the American dream,” which is all about materialism and love of self.

President Obama promised change. We are naive, at best, to think a person or political party can give us the change we need. Nor do most of us want the type of change he is suggesting.  No, America can’t be “changed,” it must be “altared.”  Only the power of the cross can bring the transformation we need!

With our prayers and worship we will be building an altar at Wilderness Outcry and we will lay the American dream on this altar.  As a symbolic act, we’ll build a literal altar with rocks from every state.  Please bring one, roughly the size of a baseball or softball, with the name of your state and a prayer or Bible verse on it.

Together, we can altar America.

Dutch Sheets

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