Canyon

On my trip back to Colorado I decided to finally pick up the book I have been meaning to read since I bought it almost a year ago - Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade and How We Can Fight It.  I bought this book while I was working in the heat of this world, working with girls rescued out of sex slavery.  But even as I am now living in America, this injustice beats in my heart.

Before I started I asked Jesus this simple request - Let this book impact me as if I were hearing about this outrage for the first time.  Let this not be old news to me!  And as I began to read, I got caught up in the outrage of this sick reality.  My heart broke once again for the little girls locked in brothels all over the world, for the women who despair for lack of any other options, for the men who are enslaved by the spirit of lust, and for this lost and broken world.

I would read a little portion of my book and then stare out from my window seat, lost in deep reveries.  It was during one of those moments that my meditation on slavery crossed paths with the scenic view beneath me.  The plane was flying over the huge, barren desert of Nevada.  It was dry.  It was lifeless.  It was stark.  The canyons that etched deep paths through the desert spoke loudly to me.  And I quickly jotted down these words. 

Injustice has become a canyon in my heart.  
Story after story, like a steady stream, 
injustice carves it's way through the recesses of my soul 
until the profundity of the crevices 
become too deep to ever smooth over.

How can I ever ignore the wailing of the wind
that blows through these canyons?
How could these colossal canyon walls 
ever become invisible to my eyes?
They mark me.
They ravage my conscience.
They wreak my existence.

There is no place to safely tuck this reality away;
out of sight, out of mind;
pretending to live in some unpolluted environment.
There is no way that I could ever eliminate
the searing pain of these scars.
But, you know, even if there was a way,
how could I ever choose such a thing?

This pain becomes passion.
The passion becomes fire.
The canyons are fuel.
I know one day this roaring force
will become unstoppable.

There will soon be a river of JUSTICE
that flows through the desert,
bringing life and restoration to the barren land.
I can see the dawn of such a day rising in my heart;
hope calls me onward.
But until that day arrives,
I choose to walk the lonely and painful canyon road.

A Seed to the Nations

I don't even know where to start...

There is hope for this nation.

God is on the move.

I think I more clearly understand why I have been called to the unsuspecting city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Yesterday our Burn team took a tour of the Pennsylvania state capitol building with a woman from our church who knows all the spiritual and religious history of the state and the building.  From the moment we stepped into the building I knew that the Holy Spirit had set us up for this moment.  We were about to have our minds blown.

Even to the common person, who is not even looking for prophetic meaning or anything along those lines, would see the unmistakable marks of Christian heritage that are literally inscribed into the extravagant detail of the capitol building.  But then when one takes the time to slow down and read the writings under each painting and listen to the history that inspired the art, you begin to realize that you are not walking through a strictly political building, but a building that was intended to be a seed of hope for the nation.

I don't know that I have ever encountered so much hope for America as I did while I was "walking through history" yesterday.

Just a brief picture of the insight we received yesterday from our tour guide:

Seeing the life of William Penn

There is a saying, "... as Pennsylvania goes, so goes the nation." Pennsylvania is called the "Keystone" State. The keystone is the stone, at the top of an arch that holds all the other stones together. And so it is in the natural order in the arch of the first 13 colonies, how much more so as the Spiritual Keystone State. For everything in the natural realm is patterned after something in the spiritual. The United States Constitution is modeled after William Penn's First Frame of Government written to establish the "holy experiment" which came to be known as Pennsylvania. Penn had a visitation by God as a young student at Oxford where he got his covenantal vision to create a government that would be a holy example to the nations. After being imprisoned 6 times in England as a prisoner of conscience because he believed you could not wear the crown without honoring the cross, he was sent out of England and given the land that became Pennsylvania where he would plant the holy seed of a nation and write his famous quote engraved in the capitol rotunda today:

"That there be room there for such a Holy Experiment...For the nations want a precedent and My God will make It (Pennsylvania) the Seed of a Nation.... That an example may be set up to the nations... That we may do the thing that is truly wise and just."

 - William Penn

Pennsylvania carries the covenantal root to establish godly government to be a holy example to honor all men and bring freedom and justice for all. The government of Pennsylvania is destined to serve as a holy example, to not only our nation, but to all nations.

(Abbey Abildness - http://www.generals.org/prayer/root-52/prayer-reports/pennsylvania-prayer-guide/)

And Penn's life, message and vision for this holy nation is depicted in countless paintings in the Capitol.  There are paintings of quakers doing baptisms.  There is one of trumpeters releasing a sound from the top of the Capitol as the Israelites did with their shofars.  There is another of angels of light being released to the nations.  And another of the lady of justice standing on the serpent of injustice.

The spirit of light

Justice crushing the serpent

But is was the massive mural in the Senate Chamber that did it for me.  This was probably one of the most beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen, and not because of the technique or style, but because of the spirit that rested upon it.

The entire painting is a vision for what this nation is called to be, and it all comes from Revelation 22:1-2, "And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb.  In the middle of its street  and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month.  The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

The painting depicts the river of life and the fruit being handed down to women, children and victims of injustice.  You can see those in shackles being set free.  You can see the sick dipping into the river.  There are kings casting down their crowns.  There are men with swords beating them into plowshares.  And there are people worshiping at the throne of God.

Revelation 22:1-2

This mural fills the entire Senate Chamber where all of Pennsylvania's legislation is decided upon.  The heartbeat of justice courses through the atmosphere in this room.  It is unmistakable and it is breathtaking.  We all sat in a hushed awe for a few moments, taking in the significance of what we were seeing.  It was like we were standing on holy ground.  Then we began to lift our voices in prayer, calling forth the prophetic destiny of this state and that it would become a seed for the nation.

In that moment, I could feel a holy conviction dropping into my spirit.

What we are doing with the Burn is establishing a center of prayer and worship with a missional, covenantal community here in the city of Harrisburg, where the vision is complete city transformation.  And then what we are building and establishing here will become a model for the global network of communities that have been connecting themselves to the Burn over the past 7 years.  We want to become a hub for the nations to come, be resourced, trained and empowered to replicate this in their own city.  So in essence, we are wanting to become a seed of revival and transformation for the nations.

And unbeknownst to most of us, the prophetic declaration over this land over the past 400 years has been that Pennsylvania would become a seed of liberty to the nations.  What if God has been setting up this land, even before America was a nation, to be a sending place where His Spirit could go out from and bring healing to the nations?

Talk about standing on holy ground.

If this had been all to our tour it would have been enough to send us all reeling, with all of our prophetic sensors going haywire.  But then somehow, I still don't even know, we got into these crazy "backdoor" meetings.

First we met with a State Representative who is working on passing a bill that will put "In God We Trust" back into all the schools in the State of Pennsylvania.  It was incredible seeing his heart for this nation, to see the Church rise up and combat the works of the enemy.  We got to pray over him and release God's grace and favor on his bill.

Then we met with one of the State Senators who is presenting an anti-sex trafficking bill for the State of Pennsylvania.  This man is so Kingdom minded, and has such a compassionate heart to see women and children rescued out of this atrocious industry that is rampaging all of our cities.  We had a prayer meeting right then and there in the Capitol building with Senator Greenleaf, a judge, another Senator and a handful of other intercessors who have been praying there at the Capitol for the past 50 years.  We prayed Isaiah 61 over Senator Greenleaf that the Spirit of the Lord God would rest upon him to set the captives free!

As we stood in that room, interceding over the issue of children being used in the sex industry, I felt like I was being caught up in a moment - one of those "for such a time as this" kind of moments.  Why Harrisburg?  Why did God call me all the way out to this unassuming city, nowhere near "the nations" that my heart beats for?  Doubt always seems to knock on the windows of the mind, but here I found myself in a moment of divine setup.  Everything has a purpose.  I don't have to know the reason every time.  But I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that when I said "Yes" to Him, no matter what that looked like, He took me for my word and He is faithful with His end of the deal.  He's not going to shipwreck me on an island for no reason.  He's my Dad.  He's been setting all of this up from before the time I was born.

Anyway, today 3 of us girls went back to the Capitol for a press conference that was happening for Senator Greenleaf to present his bill.  Yesterday he told us that it was a hard bill to pass and there was a big chance that it might not even make it through to a voting.  So this morning in the prayer room we had an amazing time of intercession as we released the Spirit of the Lord over Senator Greenleaf, the Capitol building and over the bill.  In our spirits was not only an intense burden from the Lord as He was marking our community with this issue of sex-trafficking, but also a joy-filled hope that God has brought us here to Harrisburg for such a time as this to release liberty!

Well it turned out that we were misinformed about the time of the press conference and we showed up an hour after it had already finished.  Feeling a little let-down, we began to walk back towards the entrance of the building.  While we were walking, I thought to myself, "Maybe we were supposed to come here for some other reason, or to pray for something."  Just then we saw Senator Greenleaf walking down the hall!  We stopped him and asked him how the press conference went.  He told us that it went surprisingly well and they unanimously agreed to bring the bill to the floor to vote on.

He invited us to stay for when he would present the bill to the Senate that afternoon.  He then asked us if we would like to see the Senate Chamber floor right then before they started.  Um Yes!  So he took us in with his special badge, showed us where they sign the bills, explained the different seats in the Chamber, etc...  Then we were able to talk with him more about our hearts for the issue of sex trafficking and how we would love to help them out in someway.  He ended up giving us some crazy connection with a District Attorney who has been largely involved in helping girls who have come out of prostitution.  He told us that she is looking to quit her practice and start moving towards doing that full time.  So he sent us to his office where his secretary took all of our information and she gave us the information of this DA.

Senator Greenleaf

This was all so divinely set up I don't even know what to do with it!  I know there will be more to this story, but right now I just feel so overwhelmed at the goodness of God and His ultimate sovereignty.  Everything is orchestrated by His hand.  I just get to step into this unfolding symphony that He has already written out.  I feel like a seed has been planted in my own spirit.  I can't wait to see how it springs up!