The coronavirus pandemic has completely disrupted our lives. We practically have to wear a hazmat suit to grocery shop. Who would have thought that getting a roll of toilet paper would require prayer and fasting?
As I shared in the previous post, the Lord has sovereignly interrupted business-as-usual. He has temporarily put an end to our cherished idols of sports, entertainment, food, travel, vacations, financial prosperity, and even our beloved forms of doing church.
Many have wondered is this the end? Is Jesus returning soon?
I don’t believe this is the end of days nor do I believe that Jesus is returning next week or next year. Instead, I believe this crisis is a dress rehearsal for the hour of testing that is coming—a global crisis that will not end until Jesus returns.
This pandemic is “an” hour of testing but it’s not “the” hour of testing (Rev. 3:10). It’s a major birth pain that will likely lessen in severity in the weeks and months ahead (Matt. 24:4-8). And then there will likely be a relatively short period of peace and calm.
At the beginning of the year, before this pandemic spread throughout the world, I preached a message titled The Decade of Decades. The main theme was this: The 2020s are likely going to be the most tumultuous and turbulent decade we have ever experienced.
Three months into this decade, I had no idea that it would be this intense.
One thing is certain: This crisis has revealed just how shakable we truly are. Most of the church has built their lives upon a foundation of sand rather than upon the unshakeable rock of Jesus Christ.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken (Heb. 12:25-29). This “denotes the removing of those things” which are “created things,” so that what is uncreated and “cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27).
Most of us have built our entire lives upon created things—all that the world system values and promotes. Things such as money, success, comfort, the praises of men, entertainment, and pleasure. All of this is shakable material, a foundation of sand that will cause our entire house to crash when the end-time pressures intensify.
In one moment, the Lord has put an end to church as we have known it. Most of the external things that have characterized the church for over 1,700 years have come to a screeching halt. All that we have come to love about the church has vanished overnight.
The church built upon human gifts, talents, wisdom, resources, skills, connections, influence, and prowess has come crashing down.
Perhaps the Lord is trying to say something to us. Maybe He is trying to get us back to the only true and solid foundation of the church—the person of Jesus Christ. The last time I checked, the Lord still builds His church by the revelation of Jesus Christ (Matt. 16:18). Not by revelations, but the revelation of the eternal Son of God.
At least for a season, the Lord has suddenly ended church as we have known it. A church built by human charisma, spiritual gifts, leadership principles, signs and wonders, and church-growth schemes. He has interrupted the construction of our beautiful Babels, built brick-by-brick with our own creativity, ingenuity, resources, connections, influence, eloquence, and technology.
As Jeremiah Johnson said, the Lord is using this crisis as “a divine reset.” Specifically, the Lord desires to shift our focus from the external things of God back to an internal relationship with the God of all things. Oh how He yearns for us to come deeper into an experiential union with Him, made possible through the indwelling Spirit.
Leonard Ravenhill said, “We’ve got people who’ve been ‘saved’ thirty years, and they’re not a day older in the spiritual life. They’re no more mature. They’ve no more spiritual strength or spiritual understanding or spiritual revelation. Why? Because they’ve lived on meetings instead of living on Christ!”
Though spoken decades ago, this aptly describes the present-day church. Never before in human history have we had access to so many meetings, so many messages, so many books. Through the internet, we have an unending buffet of sermons, teachings, podcasts, and articles.
If all we do is read and listen to these, and never get to the person of Jesus Christ and partake of Him for ourselves, we will remain in a perpetual state of immaturity. And we will be shakable as the end-time pressures increase.
Only the uncreated One within us can survive the current and future shaking of created things. Only Christ’s uncreated, indestructible, eternal, and dead-raising life in us will get us through the greater pressures to come. The measure of Christ in us will be the measure that we are unmoved, unshakable, and steadfast in this crisis and the greater ones to come.
Let’s take advantage of this divine reset. Let’s wean ourselves from our addiction to meetings, materials, and messages. Let’s return to living and feasting upon the internal Christ for ourselves.
Don’t waste this trial. Let it be the moment you went deeper than ever before in your relationship with the Lord.