Word for the Church: Weathervane or Signpost?

I'm sure y'all remember that scene from Mary Poppins where Jane and Michael are trying to go to sleep, but they've got questions. Primarily, they want to know how long they have with their nanny who is amazing and wonderful and takes them on adventures and gives them the love and the attention that their little hearts so earnestly desire.

So they ask with all the raw honesty and innocence of childhood how long Mary Poppins will stay, and she answers with no ceremony: "I shall stay until the wind changes."

Significantly, near the end of the movie, the wind does change, and we know it changes, because the weathervane atop the house turns from one side to the other, flip-flopping directions... and Mary Poppins leaves. It's a beautiful story, because the children now have the love and attention they've so long desired from both of their parents, and Mary Poppins' job is done... but it's also a little sad, because she now extracts herself from their lives and shuts the door on that relationship.

This morning, instead of going to Romans, the Holy Spirit gave me a word for the church, and He took me on a tour through Scripture as He showed me some vivid pictures to accompany them. I sensed that this is a word for now, and it's why I feel the urgency to give it this morning rather than waiting until I finish Romans.

As I was praying, I saw a black weathervane with a rooster design situated atop an old farmhouse in a desert. The wind was blowing hard and had kicked up quite a sandstorm. The sand beat and battered that poor rooster weathervane so that it practically rocked on its post as it spun crazily, first one way and then the other. 

In the same desert, amid the same sandstorm, I saw scattered signposts spiking out from the ground, rooted deeply into the soil. The sand was blowing so thickly, that you couldn't see what the writing on the signs said until you moved closer, and even then, all you could see were arrows. But the arrows, even though they rocked a little bit in the wind and were scoured by sand, all pointed steadily in the same direction without turning, or shifting, in any other direction.

The Holy Spirit said: "This is what is happening right now in the world. Some will turn. Others will stay deeply rooted and point the way to Me."

He led me to these verses: Psalm 102:7-11: "I lie awake; I have become like a bird on a roof. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse. For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears, because of Your great wrath, for You have taken me up and thrown me aside. My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass." The Lord showed me that this bird on a roof is the rooster weathervane. Those who turn with every direction of the wind, rather than pointing to the Savior, will taste the ashes of judgment. The Lord has warned us to stand firm, and as we have ignored Him, we will find our fire that used to burn... has turned cold, and all that are left are the ashes of it. 

Y'all, that's hard to hear. It's hard to hear, and when we have a culturally-shaped Teddy Bear version of God who rains only sunshine and roses and puppy dogs on His people, it's nearly our undoing. It's only when we can see both the astonishing love of the Lord and the faultless holiness of the Lord that we can accept this thing. 

So does this mean there's no hope for a church that struggles to understand this? No, not at all! The Holy Spirit led me to Isaiah 43:19: "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

He showed me another picture: I was still in the same desert, but now there was a hillside with baked red clay, hard and unyielding. Cracks spread across the surface, and the brutally hot sun baked my back as I stood near it, looking at it. There was a rushing sound, and the hillside began to move. What was dry and cracked started to slide down the hill. The dirt built on itself as it slid, because cacti were caught in it and sagebrush and desert plants and sand and dry grass -- all of it collected in this huge jumble as the hill slid. And you could see water beneath the dirt, pushing through, the dirt piled at the base of the hill in a massive collection of debris, while clear, fresh, beautiful water began to spray out into the sunshine, and a river formed through the sand at the base of the hill.

And He said again: "See, I am doing a new thing!"

I looked back at the signposts that had stayed steady through the sandstorm and continued to point, and I realized they were pointing toward this hill from which the river now flowed. The signposts were battered and scarred, and the paint was completely sandblasted off of them, but they didn't turn in the wind. They still pointed to the river.

These signposts are the withstanders. They are the ones who stand in the maelstrom of what is happening, the spiritual warfare being fought right now for each person on this planet, and they are the ones who faithfully declare: "This is the way; walk in it!" (Isaiah 30:21), no matter how defaced they become, no matter how battered by are. They do not turn. Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful!

The signposts were rock-solid, steady, and deeply rooted, and the Holy Spirit showed me Habakkuk 2:2-3: "Then the Lord replied: 'Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."

Here's what I believe the Holy Spirit is saying to the church: 

We feel battered, we feel storm-tossed. There has been a lot of sand tossed into our eyes, so much so that without awareness of our spiritual fight, we feel blinded. Some of us have capitulated, have allowed the winds of the world to turn us from the rock-solid steady Truth found in the Word. Some have remained rooted and steady, pointing the way to Jesus, despite the sand and storm, despite even being stripped of paint -- just the fact that they are still pointing to Jesus is the witness.

The Sovereign Lord is doing a new thing! He is bringing a fresh wave of His Spirit across the world, and in the process, He is scattering the debris that has tried to keep Him confined, underground, under -- just under. But sand cannot stand against the cleansing water He sends. He is the Water that brings Life. Whoever drinks the water He gives will never thirst (John 4:14). He will renew His church in the hard times, He will refresh His thirsty church in the dry desert. 

The Lord will have His way in the desert. He doesn't wait for us to march through the desert before He shows up, and that, y'all, is significant. Because the desert stretches on for a long while, but He has promised never to leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6). He is with us in the desert. The dry dirt cannot and will not keep out the movement of His Spirit.

And I believe this is appropriate to share: Yesterday in my prayer time with the Lord, He showed me a picture of a globe dotted all over with horns, shofars. Each one was held by men (I believe the men were angels), who stood on their own portion of the globe, and each one held a shofar high above their heads. As they did, they began to tilt the shofars down. Oil poured out of them onto the heads of people within the church all over the earth. The oil poured and poured and poured, long after the shofars should have been dry. 

The Holy Spirit led me to Acts 2:17-21: "'In the last days,' God says, 'I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on My servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and glorious Day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved." 

The Lord reminded me of the widow's jar of unending oil in 2 Kings 4, and the Lord showed me that this outpouring of His Spirit for these days and these times won't stop until He comes. He has opened a fresh wave for these last days, and "everyone who calls on the Name of the Lord will be saved." 

Y'all, it's time to get right with Him. If you're not rooted, deeply, you can't withstand the sandstorm. Don't be the rooster on the roof. "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the Law of the Lord, and on His law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree, planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

"Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish" (Psalm 1:1-6).

Praise God that He is our Rock! That we are rooted in an immovable foundation. That He does not change with the seasons or the shifting sand or the turn of the wind. Praise Him that He does not leave us "when the wind changes," but that He is enduring for ever and ever, and no matter what storms come our way, "Your path led through the sea, Your way through the mighty waters, though Your footprints were not seen" (Psalm 77:19). Praise Him that He walks in the storm with us. That He pulls us out of our sinking doubts with: "Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?" and He helps us back onto the boat.

Praise Him that He is coming again and "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father!" (Philippians 2:10-11)