What an incredible season we find ourselves in as the Body of Christ. The last few years have brought immense challenges to the Body of Christ globally, yet from this place of challenge we are seeing such immense hunger for the presence of the Lord emerge in the Bride.

In October of 2021, the Lord took me into a series of visions that were ultimately about 2024, and a phrase that has stuck with me is that in this season we will see ‘a remnant rising.’ The Lord took me to 1 Corinthian 3:13-15, where Paul talks about a man’s work being tested by fire — Holy Spirit fire. This fire does consume that which is finite, but more importantly it reveals that which is infinite and eternal and that which remains is pure. When the Lord brings discipline to His children and we embrace His Fathering we realise that where He prunes, it produces greater fruit. This is where I find us now as the Body: yielding to pruning and beginning to see the hope that comes from surrendering to His ways.

This remnant rising from the ashes of the last season is a people who have welcomed the fire of God’s heart, and the purifying of this fire has created a stirring in their heart for the deeper things of God and a hunger for His ways over any other. There is a single focus coming to those who yield and that single focus is birthing a fiery and wild remnant who have their gaze unwavering on the more of Jesus, our Bridegroom. While the enemy has stood in front of the open door, in an attempt to intimidate this warrior-Bride, she is now seeing clearer than ever because her focus has been chiselled down and refined to one thing — His eyes.

The gaze of the Bridegroom is piercing through the noise and inviting us to come closer, go deeper, and give more; more of our heart, more of our lives; everything. The more we give the Lord, the deeper He will go, and the more convinced we become of His nature — ‘He is good and His lovingkindness is everlasting.’ 

The fire that tests is also the fire that protects. I have come to realise that though the welcome of the Lord costs us our lives, it brings a life that only Heaven could give. I sense in this season there is great faith available for those of us who give our ‘yes’ to His beckon. 

In seasons like this we often can become both nervous and excited, and at times in the tension of the ‘here and now’ and ‘what we sense His invitation,’ we feel the stretch of our humanity needing to yield and a temptation to dumb down what He is asking of us, to make it more ‘doable.’ It strikes me as odd how in so many moments I can be full of faith and yet, like Elijah, after some of my great triumphs in the Spirit I find myself doubting ‘if I can do this.’ This leaves me realising that when the Lord invites us to go deeper in Him, we need a greater spiritual perspective than a natural one. For that, we need the work of the wonderful Holy Spirit. 

It’s clear to me that in the Father sending the Holy Spirit, everything fundamentally changed for believers. Before Pentecost, the cross and resurrection of Christ had been completed, but the work of the Church had not yet begun. It was fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus that the Holy Spirit was sent from the Father, to not just rest on believers but to fill us with the very Spirit of God. And when the Spirit of Jesus filled the disciples they became ‘apostles.’ The humble followers had ‘Kingdom of God pioneers and builders’ added to the resume. The coming of the Holy Spirit brought to life the spiritual reality of what Jesus had accomplished for us: it brought it to the forefront and awoke in believers an understanding that we are governed not by the natural world but by the spiritual one. The infilling of the Holy Spirit infused us with the very heart and nature of God, and gave us access to understand the seated place of Christ and thus our incredible authority in Him. This authority is not a statement or a great quote, but is meant to be the Christian’s daily reality, a place of peace and future hope given to us by the Spirit of God.