I have been writing for almost 20 years now, in one form or another.

I don’t write for me, for hits on a blog, or because I have nothing else to do. I write because it is a duty. And because I cannot do otherwise.

For some reason, God called me (from my perspective a rather unlikely choice) at the turn of the millennium to be a voice speaking something of His heart in this season.

What is that heart? That His Church, the Bride of Christ be ready, to have oil in our lamps, to see the signs of the time and not be lost in the mists of the world.

So, how is that different from any other time, surely this has always been the call? Indeed! But it has a different resonance at the close of this age.

As I’ve said in so many places, what we have become used to, we will have to forgo in the times to come. In the arc of the Church, we are returning very much to the times of the first century, when we were no more than a despised and potentially dangerous cult.

Many of my third world brothers and sisters may look at this with a wry glance. For sure, but I write mostly into the culture in which I am placed, and it is this part of the church that so desperately needs to be fully awake and cognisant of the season.

He does not desire any of us to be caught unaware and be swept away. To be a Christian is now often regarded as a little quirky. What will happen when we are perceived as something profoundly dangerous to the powers that be? Will we acquiesce, bowing the knee to Baal? Will we panic, fleeing to the the mountains? Will we betray our brothers and sisters?

Or will we be fully awake, sober and ready – afraid yet trusting in the One who casts out all fear – to face the day which is coming and is now here? Will we be ready for persecution – real persecution and the conterminous revival of the very ‘least of these’, those whom society casts away as of no value? Will we be ready to be the army of the Lord, having nothing other than Him, and thereby possessing all things?

This is why I write. This is the field I am called to tend, and I do this to the best of my ability, leaving everything in His hands.