Don’t Misread The Moment
In the fog of war, it’s easy to become caught in a spiral of confusion, misdirection, and other distractions that keep you from the real battle that’s in front of you. I believe this is what’s happening to the church right now. I’ve watched over the last several months since the election as the church has been caught up in a season of loss, finger-pointing, demands for apologies, and prolonged introspection.
Friends, this is exactly what the enemy wants us to do.
The enemy would love for us to eat each other, while ungodly leaders inspired by demonic agendas trample over every gain for righteousness that was made over the last four years.
And we are making it so easy to accomplish.
I’m not writing this to rehash the results of the election. We’ve already done that.
I want to talk about how we move forward. To do that, we have to deal with the spirit that has caused us to misread the moment. We have to recognize that the church, and particularly the prophetic church, is under an assault from the spirit of Jezebel. This spirit is working overtime to release discouragement, silence the prophets, and unhinge our faith so that we’ll retreat from the battle at hand.
I don’t know about you, but I never heard God say, “stop attacking the enemy” once the election was over, and if we believe that the battle for this nation swings on one man being in office, we are in real trouble.
We’ve still got work to do, but too many in the church have been sidetracked, licking their wounds and agreeing with the enemy’s take on the last battle. Too many prophets are interpreting the times through a lens created by the spirit of Jezebel.
In 1 Kings 18, we see one of the greatest examples of spiritual warfare in the Bible, the famous spiritual battle between Elijah and the prophets who were led by Jezebel. It’s a classic story of God showing His power in a “you can’t miss this” way. What’s always been amazing to me about this story, though, is that fresh off of this amazing display of power, Elijah comes into agreement with Jezebel’s narrative and runs away.
How could someone who had experienced such an amazing victory, be so quickly captured by fear?
The Lens Of Jezebel
In 1 Kings 19, Jezebel sends a message to Elijah saying she is going to kill him, and the Bible says that Elijah was afraid (or Elijah saw) and ran for his life. Jezebel created a narrative that he could see, and he agreed with it, surrendering his authority for a life on the run.
Eventually, God comes to him and says, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
I don’t think he was asking him why he was in that particular cave. I think he was asking him how he went from calling fire from heaven to hiding in fearful depression?
“What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He replied, “I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, torn down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” – 1 Kings 19:10
He was looking through the lens Jezebel had created.
Sounds a lot like today’s church.
You can see the marks of Jezebel all over the church’s reaction to the election. We’ve been seduced into looking through the lens of Jezebel and the picture isn’t pretty:
- Christians pointing fingers and demanding apologies.
- Shrinking back in prolonged introspection (Stopping for a moment to consider what happened is fine. Quitting the battle is not.)
- Questioning if the church should be working to influence the Government Mountain.
- Fear and intimidation about what might happen if we speak out.
- Apathy and depression, thinking that nothing can be done to change what’s coming.
In no way, shape, or form has the battle for America, for the Seven Mountains or the identity of the next generation, been halted. So, this is the time to keep pressing – to move into a season of action. Like Elijah, we need to come out of the cave and get back to work.
When Elijah left the cave, he left with a reminder that he wasn’t alone in the battle. And he left with a fresh assignment to activate a new generation of prophets and kings into the assignment of rooting out and destroying the entire infrastructure of leaders supporting Ahab and Jezebel’s kingdom (1 Kings 19:15-18).
Like Elijah, it’s time for the church to come out of the cave and get back to work. We are still on the clock and God has assignments ready for us. This isn’t the time to hide, afraid of offending the people around us. It’s time to activate a new generation of leaders that will move into every sphere of culture with the mandate of uprooting and destroying the infrastructure of the enemy. There are more of us than we realize, and there is power when we stand up collectively and say “no” to the forces that are overriding our culture.