Please hear this in the context of Isaiah 58:
My People, My Living Body – Listen to Me.
Many of my people are gathered in churches but many more are scattered in small groups or alone and belonging nowhere;
So many have lost their way or stay, feeling confused and trapped.
Because of so much disappointment and powerlessness,
you my body have become dysfunctional and disjointed.
How I fulfill my mission is multi-facetted and complex. Only I can bring it about.
While you complain and condemn and devour each other your mind and heart is only on yourselves. While you worship me without doing my will, the world that I love and died for is hurting and not being loved by me, through you. The world is waiting for me and I am waiting for you, my body, to line up with my purposes.
Sound a warning trumpet –
I sent you out but you have stopped going.
I scattered you to be seed in my land but instead you have huddled together.
Who told you to sit and wait for the lost to find their own way to Me?
Who told you to indulge and preen yourselves?
My life is in you to give you the strength to go out. If you eat of me but don’t act – the food of my life will turn sour in your stomachs.
Hear what I hear! Love what I love!
Pray, weep, mourn. You have dug your own wells. You have lifted up your own banners! Stop celebrating!
My body is broken, yet again.
I have given you My standard – burn your banners, pull down your walls and let the people come to Me.
Hear what I hear!
LISTEN!!! Can you hear them?
The beggars, the homeless, lonely, the lost are moaning at your doors. Turn and embrace them.
Be my people!
Blow the trumpet – a great warning is being declared across the land.
I charge you this day to look only to Me. Take off your old worn ways and be clothed in My goodness and humility, My great power and My love.
Gather to be filled, taught and nurtured and then GO, pouring out My strength and My hope.
Be my welcoming arms for this land.
These people are waiting, dying and lost! Then I your God will celebrate!!
Hear the drum beat. Get ready Now!
I your God declare “Now is the time to be clean, strengthened and equipped to ARISE”.
Received 12/8/08 by Lois Isaachsen and released 2/6/13.