"Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth;

shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the

wilderness, and rivers in desert."

                                                                              - Isaiah 43:19

       God has always prepared his people for things he was about to do. When he sent his angels to deal with the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, he first discussed it with his covenant friend, Abraham. Amos, chapter three says, "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). In every Old Testament book of prophecy, the Lord provided his people with a warning to prepare for impending judgment, or for them to lay hold of a promise of some sovereign move he was about to bring. It is no different in our day. The voice of the Lord always precedes the move of God. If you are truly listening, then you know that God is speaking, and his voice is declaring the need for our renewal. This renewal has a prophetic signature - it is a call for change - it is a call to be awakened to a life of preparation.

       The problems we face, within our own human nature, are often founded upon our desire to stay within our own comfort zone. For the most part, we find it very difficult handling situations that demand sudden change or life's unwelcomed or untimely alterations. Instead, we seek the solace of knowing what to predict and what to expect. You can see how this occurs even in the way folks sit in church. It is very rare to find an individual seeking to sit in a different seat each week. Most people will seek to sit in a familiar location. If it is not the same seat, it is the same row or section.

       Amazingly, our lives have become very systematic. We repeat things over and over again, many times without even realizing it. We form routines, which for the most part are relatively harmless, but all-too-often become a deterrent in our pursuit of a new adventure in God. If there is any weakness that we all face together, it is our inevitable predictability. We are creatures of habit, and that in and of itself, can become the obstacle that stands in our way of change!

       One thing I have come to realize about our adversary, the devil, is that he preys upon our predictability. He will strategize around the hope that in our routine we become dull of hearing. It is like the young shepherd boy that cried, "Wolf!" There is a tendency to dismiss the meaningful when we have become so conditioned by the inconsequential. This is what I believe is beginning to surface within the church world. There is a spiritual conditioning that is occurring where people have heard "Jesus is coming" so much that they have dismissed the need to seek after renewal.

       Samuel Croxall (1690 - 1752), who was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his work of Aesop's Fables, once asked the question, concerning the political alarmism of his day. He said, "When we are alarmed with imaginary dangers in respect of the public, till the cry grows quite stale and threadbare, how can it be expected we should know when to guard ourselves against the real ones?" How relative this is to our spiritual condition, even to the state of our own country! Friend, if we aren't listening to the true prophetic voice that beckons us to live in a constant state of readiness and renewal, but rather heeding to the false pretenses of those who promise a life of compromise without consequence, then how can any of us expect to be prepared for the new thing that God wants to do in our lives?

       Any true prophetic unction must point to the revolutionary change associated with renewal! If it does not produce a fresh walk, a penetrating change, or an acute awareness for renewal, then I question its authenticity. If you want to avoid the mistake of so many, who have been lulled to sleep by assuming that what is yet to come is either so far in the distance that we don't need to concern ourselves, or who have disregarded it as insignificant, then you will have to make renewal a primary issue. Without renewal in your life, you are destined to stagnation, and stagnation is the real cause for unbelief and hardness of heart!