As I am somewhat sick at present, what’s sitting in a draft state will have to stay there for now. What I want to do today is link to an excellent article over on Prophecy Today. Some excerpts here, but I do encourage you to read the whole thing.

Just as almost exactly 80 years ago the heroes of Dunkirk were the little boats, perhaps today’s lockdown heroes are the faithful small groups coming together to pray.

But more broadly, denominational leaders collectively seem to be ‘on mute’, not really sure of the nature of the crisis and possibly hoping that it will all end soon and everything will carry on as before. Except it won’t.

Local church leaders need to be challenging and encouraging their congregations (and others) to repent of sin and seek the Lord while he may be found. Concerted, serious prayer and fasting is necessary and days of prayer are to be commended – but God is looking for more than mere confession of sin. He wants us truly to repent (true repentance requires action) – whether of sins of omission or commission – and then to model biblical practice, whether in the family, at church, in the marketplace or wherever else.

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What is more, Covid-19 is only the harbinger of many more cataclysmic events to come (see Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 and Revelation) – albeit a future that will also be characterised by great opportunity. 

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I would suggest that while Covid-19 is part of God shaking all nations (including the UK), our Government in particular is also being shaken, in part because so many of us look to Government as the answer to our problems, when we should look to God.

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To whom much is given, much is expected. The UK has historically been greatly used and greatly blessed by God. We are now in a very precarious place, which could become much, much worse (e.g. with the collapse of sterling, indeed possibly of our whole economy and body politic too). The urgency of the hour is critical – but what will it take for the Church to lead the way for the country as a whole in the sort of repentance that God requires?

God has brought us out of Egypt (the EU) for more than this. Soon we will reach a crossroads, where the signposts read ‘Back to Egypt’, ‘To the Wilderness’ and ‘To the Promised Land’. We as believers need to be in the right place to pray in and help politicians make the correct decision(s).

This time, for many (though clearly not all), the lockdown has been relatively easy. It is warm and there is food and water. But if we don’t engage seriously now, will God require that we have another unprecedented crisis (in much more challenging circumstances, and sooner rather than later) to get our full attention in a way that I am not convinced he currently has?

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God will have his way in this nation, and if those who call themselves his people do not do as he requires, he will find someone else. In this war with Covid-19, it is time for the true Church to arise.

The question I have in my mind is, how to get the Church listening? Today, I was acting as technical support for a family member whose email wouldn’t send at all, but kept going to their local Junk folder.

Maybe that is an analogy for what’s happening in the Church! It feels a bit like the prophetic message isn’t even getting out of our own ‘junk folder’ to be received by the intended recipient. While we as the wider Church body are bombarded with so much mail, some urgent, some not, some true, some false, that any message may be drowned out even if it did end up in the correct inbox.

I do understand that our responsibility is to speak as we are called – and it is in God’s hands how that ends up getting disseminated. But at the same time I wonder – how should this kind of message be effectively ‘sent’ – heard – even if it is only then actually received by a few?