We must become dedicated to the violent approach. Some who are older often think, “Well, I don’t know; this is good for the young people, but it’s not too good for me.” There has to be something in your spirit which rises above the spirit of the age. The children of this age have a perverted, depraved violence in their spirits. It is surprising to note the causes they will get excited about. On the other hand, there is a general indifference and a lukewarmness that comes over this people of God.
You will either accept passivity and this lukewarmness, or you will be wholeheartedly on fire for God. Remember the command of the Lord: “Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, all thy soul, all thy mind, and all thy strength” (Mark 12:30). All of man must be sanctified before God. The whole man—spirit, soul, and body—is to be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:23). The fires of God must consume the dross, so that there is a violent dedication of the physical, the soul, and the spirit in our approach to the Lord.
Remember David dancing before the Lord with all of his might, throwing off his clothes in the process—an expression that would not be acceptable in this day. We still are conservative. We fail to realize how many things we have accepted in our modern-day life that are absolute limitations.
The disciples were free to meet in an upper room in the temple; no one said anything about it. Today the authorities would have the prerogative to evict them. Although the authorities were against Christ, they adhered to a freedom of worship in those days, even if it was for despised Christians. Today we have all kinds of problems wherever we go: zoning laws and other restrictions against meeting in certain places, various laws that try to restrict and withhold us. We are conditioned in our mind from the day we are born, and it is no wonder that young people are chafing against the establishment.
There are unprecedented restrictions in this generation, in this decade, which did not exist ten, twenty, a hundred years ago. More and more they are becoming evident, and we have only seen the beginning of the restrictions that the government and other agencies will try to lay upon us. There must be an attitude within our hearts that violently resists this brainwashing, this conformity of mind and of spirit. We must become so revolutionary that not one thing within our being will accept these restrictions the devil would lay upon us. The day of the greater works must come with the liberation of our own spirit, with almost a violence of heart taking hold of us. Each of us must say, “In this I am going to walk with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my strength.” We cannot even keep the first commandment if we have not done that unto the Lord.
At the beginning of this walk with God the worship was peaceful and quiet, but not anymore. With the singing in the spirit there is an undercurrent that says, “Prepare for war. Wake up the mighty men. Let the weak arise and say, ‘I am strong.’ Get ready for battle.” It is almost like the death hour when the Lord says, “Sell your cloak and buy a sword” (Luke 22:36).
Do you need to be more open in your spirit to respond to God? Are you aware that there is a resistance built up in your mind? You are conned into it by this age. You are afraid you may become a little too fanatical. Don’t worry, you are not fanatical yet. I’ll tell you when to worry. Do you need to be freed in your spirit? Pray for it and believe for it.
We must understand how deeply conditioned this generation is against any wholehearted expression. When do we experience the most intense emotion that can happen in this life? At death, the death of a loved one whom we loved very much. What do we do? We call the mortician and he whisks the body away. The next time we see it, it is all fixed up with wax and appears to be slumbering in a slumber room. They don’t call it a corpse. With soft music and hushed voices we evade the expression of emotion.
What did David do when he had sustained the loss of a friend? He tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes. In his grief he lifted up his voice and wailed all day until there was no more strength to cry. We don’t do that today. We don’t express ourselves. That was another generation; maybe they were less inhibited. Today we stifle emotions until we produce all kinds of neuroses. We stifle our children. We stifle ourselves in our home. We stifle ourselves in our worship.
There must be a reconditioning. How can you recondition a man? By letting him become intense in the things he feels and in the way he feels. Let him go before God and pray with all of his heart. Then the truths and prophecies he is believing will go right down to the depth of the subconscious, reaching the very core of his emotional life. He will begin to feel it; he will begin to react to it.
That is the way we ought to prophesy over people. That is how we should worship the Lord. Such an intensity goes beyond the conscious mind. After all, the conscious mind has its own mechanism. It reasons things out, but it cannot continually hold before itself all the attitudes it has picked up through the years. These attitudes are on a subconscious level, where they have swept through, so that we are constantly reacting to them. Even when we have consciously changed our mind about a reaction, we have not changed the reaction deep within us. We still react. We don’t want to, but it has become a habit. How do we break those reactions? How do we change? We accept the fact that we are going to change by the grace of God.
Someone should take Psalm 103 or portions of it and write the proper type of music for it. David was not singing a lullaby: “Bless the Lord, O my soul; and let me go to sleep.” He did not sing it passively. He must have been violent: Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. He was commanding everything within him to respond. It was not a quiet whisper. It was a demand, something that would come with a flourish of drums. Command yourself, “Bless the Lord, O my soul!” Command your spirit, “You are going to worship the Lord!”
God is not deaf. You know He isn’t deaf. There is no verse in the Bible that says He has an ear problem. Then why do men lift up their voices and cry aloud? Why did even Christ lift up His voice and cry aloud during the Feast of Tabernacles? For only one reason: the intensity of a man’s being, the intensity of his soul requires that worship come forth within him. It cannot be as only a soulish emotion, nor can it be a shallow response that is born from a physical exercise of his voice. It must come from hearts that are open to worship God. People whose hearts are that open find that everything within them has to respond. It starts on a spirit level. It goes into the mental and emotional levels of your soul, and then into the determination that your soul is able to generate. There is a dedication you have in your spirit and a dedication you are capable of in your soul. Then there comes the discipline of the flesh which shows that the dedication has reached every area of your life. You command your heart to worship the Lord! You command everything within you to respond, and you do respond to it, right then and there.
Are you too conditioned? Most people are afraid of intense emotion. If they meet someone who is very expressive, they freeze up to him and turn him off immediately. The average person does not want to be intense in anything he does. He cuts it down and turns it off. He wants to have everything so well under control that he will not have to feel anything too deeply, whether it is sorrow or any other emotion. Of course, emotional expressions are acceptable sometimes. You can shout at football games, but not in the house of the Lord. If you are a student, you can express emotions by having a riot and getting all excited, but don’t get excited about the Lord. Do you see the irony in that?
Satan is producing the same trends that were seen during the time of Noah when violence filled the earth. What does Matthew tell us? The Kingdom of heaven is suffering violence, and all the timid ones are taking it by force? No, the violent will take it by force! We must recondition our thinking to this violence of spirit that will rise above everything this world has. The world’s violence is from a depraved and degenerated soul, and ours is from a spirit, a soul, and a body that have been sanctified by God and prepared for His coming. There is a great difference.
This violence that takes the Kingdom is a violence that comes with humility out of submission, not rebellion. The Lord says, “Jump,” and we are already in the air before we say, “How high, Lord?” The Lord commands us, and we command everything within ourselves to respond to His command, to His will. God is preparing to turn us loose for Him. We want to be loosed from the deep conditioning of restraint, of indifference, and of conservatism. We must be wholehearted for the Lord.
“Father, You’ve said, ‘Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently. Cursed be he that holdeth back his sword from blood.’ You said that You came not to bring peace, but a sword. You came to kindle a fire. O God, kindle a fire and a flame within the hearts of Thy people, that they would put down every other concern.
“There shall not be the leaven of the Pharisees in our midst. We shall be a people who are prepared to do all things, who are possessed with the Spirit of God and consumed with the zeal of the Lord. Let Thy people be filled with Thy violence, that we may stand out as a rebuke and a contradiction to every custom and tradition of man. O God, let our conscience smite us every time we give in to passivity. Fill us with Thy zeal and Thy violence, O Lord.”
“How long will you look upon affliction as though it were a permanent state in which you are to abide? How long will you allow the distraction of the evil one to keep you from moving into the fullness that has been spoken? How long will you permit the enemy to snatch away a prophecy that comes to you? There shall be a release. With a violence thou shalt lay hold of it and snatch it by force. Behold, the Lord shall loose the fullness. Thou shalt take the Word which the Lord has spoken to thee in secret and proclaim it upon the rooftops.
“Let the magnitude and the enormity of all that God has spoken fill the hearts of the people and thrust them into a realm of Spirit and a plane of immunity which they have not known. Believe that the miraculous power of God shall be released unto thee.”
“Lord, Thou hast set watchmen upon the walls who will not hold their peace day and night until Thy Word is established. As a company of watchmen we shall go forth with a violence and a fullness of faith. Let everything within us respond and come under subjection for the fullness of the things that we are believing. Let us remind You, O God, of those promises that You have laid before us. We speak them unto Thee. Those things which Thou hast spoken, bring to pass in this hour.”
“Lord, we fix our heart and set our will on Thee. We will to do the will of God. We will to believe. We will to bless and to love. We will to rejoice. We will to be violent. We will to walk in greater works. We will to be a remnant to shake the earth in this hour. We open our hearts to it.”
“Thou shalt cry this day before the Lord, ‘My heart is fixed, O God; my heart is fixed.’ Thou shalt have upon thee the spirit of Elijah that crieth unto the Lord day and night. In the name of the Lord thou shalt cry and intercede. You shall prophesy. You shall lift up your voice like a trumpet and cry unto the Lord to send rain upon the earth, until there shall be the sound of an abundance of rain on the vineyard of the Lord. The restoration shall come forth. A house of God shall come forth walking in purity, because a people of God arise in one spirit and contend for it.”
“We are becoming a company that is trumpeting and heralding forth a new era. When the Word speaks about the Lord descending from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, it is not speaking about a rapture that will pluck us from some snare or tribulation and sovereignly deliver us from all problems and difficulties. The army of God will arise and hasten the day of the Lord. A people will arise and begin to contend, prophesying the victory and the liberation of everything that God has spoken and ordained to come to pass. They will not be passive in their spirit, waiting for something to happen sovereignly.
“In this hour God is raising up the apostle to be the commander, the captain of the army of God. Directives shall come to the house of God before that great and terrible day of the Lord.”