AN URGENT CALL! PROMOTION PENDING! 

Jonah 3:4-10 KJV

4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. 6 For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 10 And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.  

A message was brought to our church by Min. Dayna-Lee Spencer from the book of Jonah, but this particular portion shared above hit me very firmly as I had gotten the following verse a few days earlier as I prayed for myself and the church:  

Joel 2:12 AMPC  

12 Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and keep on coming to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning [until every hindrance is removed and the broken fellowship is restored].  

The Lord is calling His people to a place of deep cleansing and sincere repentance through fasting and quality time spent in His presence.  

From the portion of Jonah shared, my heart was moved at the response of a very wicked nation whose stench was so great that God decided it was better for Him to wipe them out than endure this foul odor to continue to come up in His nostrils. Nineveh was a really wicked place, and the people had a level of cruelty that was barbaric. Bible-History.com shared that the military rulers burnt their victims on stakes, impaled some, flayed their skins and spread it out on a wall, cut off their hands, feet, fingers, and noses, etc. They were merciless, yet one man of God spoke one sentence and a whole nation turned because of a king who believed, humbled himself with fasting, then gave the command to those in his kingdom to follow suit. In my book, “The Secret Ingredient to Sustained Relationship and Power with  God”, I shared how God finds humility irresistible. This king acknowledged the superiority of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and humbled himself.  

What I was getting from the Lord was that too many leaders in His Kingdom have become so prideful or busy that they are no longer hearing His voice and are walking in the deceit of their own hearts. They believe that because He still uses their gifting that all is well. If many leaders would stop and examine their hearts and works, they would recognize that they have fallen. They feel something missing, and they feel a disconnect but still continue in the same way and miss the signals. The Lord is saying humble yourself with fasting because He wants to cause light to shine in your dark areas of deceit, pain, uncertainties, and unresolved matters. He wants you to steal away with Him so He can clear up your vision that you may walk more surefootedly. The scripture quoted above from Joel 2 said we ought to come with all our hearts, with fasting, weeping and mourning until every hindrance is removed. I believe that God is looking for a person, a church, a nation to carry a new wave of revival fire, but it will begin where there has been deep sincere repentance, cleansing and a death to self.  

He also said to remind us that judgement always begins first in His house. We bash the world, but His house does the same things secretly and forget that there is absolutely nothing that can be hidden from Him. We slander and hate each other which is like murder (1John 3:15), people in the five-fold ministry have become extortioners and pursuers of gain (Is. 56:11), hearts have become rebellious against God which is a form of witchcraft (1Sam. 15:23), and persons have become so stubborn and set in their ways which is likened to iniquity and idolatry (1Sam, 15:23). The heart of the Lord is not impressed with outer workings, but about the condition of the heart.

Psalm 24:3-4 says, “3 Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.”  

A hill is a place that is elevated, so who can move into an elevated position in the Lord. The Hebrew word for hill is “har”, which also is translated as promotion according to the King James Lexicon. It is heavily on me that God is seeking to elevate and promote. The criteria, however, is that:  

Let’s examine ourselves. Let us humble ourselves under the mighty Hand of God with fasting and weeping. Let’s turn from our sinful ways, back to a Holy God, to that secret place, with all our hearts in Jesus’ name!