Diary of a Land Guy, Part 1: Land Assignments and Structures In The Spirit

So, yesternight, I and a friend went to a Switchfoot concert in Birmingham at Avondale BrewCo. What I originally thought was this was a concert. What it turned out to be was an assignment to understand some land dynamics present.

While I did enjoy the music a LOT, there were some aspects of this city that captured me, especially given my grandfather was adopted in Birmingham.

Sometimes I am in a place and the land speaks to me. Other times it feels like the land is receiving from the King.

In the case of Birmingham, there as an aspect that felt like home.

But that was not all that’s as there.

Instead of being in the middle of the crowd, we were on the edge of the crowd, and the people around us ended up moving away from us.

Further, in the course of the evening, the people moved from a disorganized crowd to arranging themselves in concentric circles around the stage as if they were in an amphitheater.

In the spirit, however, on the ground of the location where we were, I actually discerned the presence of a sound portal that was built into the ground and part of which was arranged like an amphitheater.

Grass terraces and concrete steps for the levels.

Sound portals parallel the Redemptive Gift of Giver, and they focus the sound of Heaven, and especially the star song that is communicated by the Sons of G-d in an area to resonate the sound of G-d’s justice in a situation: Justice and dominion as embodied in the Son, Yeshua. When they are misaligned, a number of bad things happen, much of which can be chalked up to an increase of lawlessness. When they are aligned, they cause the area in which to resonate with frequencies that are Kingly.

Also, beer as a industry and beverage strikes me as Giver, and in Giver communities like Charlotte and blue-collar communities, beer has a heavy presence.

And, in brewing companies, there is usually live music as well as lots of SOUND and carrying on, and people generally enjoying themselves in conversation or connection of some sort.

That was no exception in this case.

Pondering what this means, I am certain the King was doing things with us there to bring cleansing to the land.

Further, I also became aware of what I can only classify as a portable fire portal, as there appeared in the spirit a column of fire around us. My friend also had relayed to me that there are times when they are frequently in a place and people will not be seated anywhere near them. In those instances, the King is at work.

And that night was definitely an occasion for us to go vertical. And the words to Dare You To Move definitely hit differently, and they felt like exhortations to sonship and building the thing or engaging with the thing you have always been intimidated to build or engage.

“I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before”

“Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be, yeah”

Also, Switchfoot concerts have punctuated SIGNIFICANT events for me, marker stones at intervals of about 10 years. The last time I saw them live was July 2013. And that preluded a significant season then, as now. A transition is taking place.

From this, I learned a very valuable lesson.

Sometimes, the reason the King sticks us in a certain place is completely different from the reason we originally planned on in going to a place.

So, gang, I will share more on this as the days progress, but I share all this to say, the reason you are in a place may not be the reason you originally went to that place. Find out what the King wants you to do in this season, and go do that.

-Avondale, August 26, 2023-

A Paradigm For Which The Church Has No Grid

Gang, when you hear about the end times and the end days, what do you typically hear from when speaking with the standard prettiness rapturist as it pertains to nations, governments, and land?

“This nation, all nations, and this earth are going to one day burn up and be consumed by fires, so there is really no point in doing anything except trying to win as many people as possible to Jesus.”

And yet, one of the premiere scriptures that is used for revival is 2 Chronicles 7:14.

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their people.

“Wait a minute!”, you say. “That’s not the verse!”

It ends with the phrase “heal their land”

And we missed the punch line, so much that Rebecca St. James has codified everything BUT THAT PUNCHLINE into a really catchy cut.

Jesus I am broken now
Before you I fall I lay me down
All I want is you, my all

I cry out from the ashes
Burned with sin and shame
I ask you Lord to make me whole again

For you say if I will come and will
Pray for you
There’s forgiveness when I
Turn from me and pray
For you say if I will come and will
Pray to you
You hear me and heal me when I pray

Your ways are not my own
But I long for them to be
So this what I pray
One with you you’ll make me

Melt me away ’til only you remain

For you say if I will come and will
Pray for you
There’s forgiveness when I
Turn to you and pray
For you say if I will come and will
Pray to you
You hear me and heal me when I pray

Did you see it?

Read the verse again.

If they will Humble themselves And pray And seek me face And turn from their wicked ways Then I will hear from heaven Forgive their sin And heal their land.

Now the sin being forgiven is one thing. Even being healed is another. Us redeemed? No problem.

But land that will one day burn up?

That land being healed?

That’s a bit outside of our zone, comfort, and theology.

How many sermons have you ever heard preached about revival in this age before the age to come that involve the land responding to revival?

Not many stories of how the land reacts are our there.

Of those those that do get told, the land often doesn’t fare well from our consumer-oriented, human souls-first-or-only revivals that focus on building buildings by taking on further debt.

Such as the Brownsville Revival.

But G-d wants to impact more than just healing, delivering, saving, and redeeming humans.

He wants to heal the land as well.

Whether or not you like the idea of believers interacting with land, that is a missing part from much of the current teaching on revivial.

I pray that changes.