We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

In my case, I have a tendency to see where trends are headed. It's not a question of some kind of intelligence; it really does require testing things in my heart and seeing them from above, as it were. So it's not prophecy in that I can't see where it's going mixed in with everything else at the same time. What I see is a matter of, "If this keeps going on the same path..." I can extrapolate something down the road from it. I still can't see the final result, because the Lord isn't showing me the whole picture, for whatever reason.

So I predicted a few years ago that Microsoft would do something totally stupid to alienate users. It wasn't a single thing, as I had personally expected, but it was several critical things. One was the broken promise about Win10 being the last OS. It isn't going to be the last OS they release. Worse, Win11 is yet another collection of reductions in user options.

For example, I once used MS Office a great deal on my books and stuff. Not any more. Just a month ago, roughly, they removed several formatting options, especially with their online Office suite. Worse, they are now trying to force everyone to use their online engine instead of allowing users to install the apps (this happened rather suddenly with Android and ChromeOS).

Now, recently they've been getting more and more difficult about their Edge browser. You are no longer allowed to make any other browser your default for activating URLs. That is, you can set it any way you like, but Edge will still pop up when you click a link. And I know this kind of user abuse is going to keep getting worse. And I'm pretty sure most Windows users will not switch their computers to something else. Indeed, most users simply cannot. On the other hand, I do know that people are buying devices that don't run Windows more often these days. Through the school administration I've learned that an awful lot of kids now have Chromebooks. And a whole municipal government in Germany is migrating all of their computers to Linux, as have a significant small number of companies here the US.

So that much of my prediction came true. Now that we are there, I can't see where it's going from here. And it doesn't matter.

Instead, I now see that the Internet is going to become far more difficult in terms of censorship. As a separate issue, we stand to see a huge CME, maybe even a Carrington Event, that could wipe out whole sets of undersea cables because of a peculiar vulnerability they possess. At least one major CME should come soon. And every time the power goes down, it affects consumer access directly, as well as some of the stuff behind the Internet that most people don't know about. How well protected are cell towers from power outages? Not all of them have a backup power source.

I see the censorship as one trend, and the access issue as another trend. They'll surely overlap, but I get no clear image of that.

On a related note, I believe that the West will essentially die with the Boomer Generation. While a lot of features will continue, it will all be under the Networked Civilization. It's already here. And it probably won't live long. I have no idea what comes after that; it's not pertinent to my calling.

So the end of the summer I planted one last runner bean. I have watered it most every day. Not much happened for a few weeks. Then a couple of weeks ago a a small runner shot up a little ways up the side of the house. Day to day the crickets munched on the leaves, so I had not much hope of seeing the plant much longer. Yesterday I was watering and I looked, maybe I had missed it growing, but there was a perfectly mature bean just ready for harvest. Just one bean and hardly any a part of a leaf left. Well ya wanna know what I did? I plucked it off right then and sat down by the bucket and ate that bean. It was perfectly delish.
I wonder what God was telling me?

I struggle to put this into words. Someone with a prophetic gift knows the difference between a sure word of prophecy versus a conviction from God that can have prophetic implications. I've gotten only a few of the first kind, and a great many of the latter. Most of what I share is based on the latter, so that I am required to offer caveats. I know beyond all doubt what God requires of me regarding certain things, and I sense that it points to something bigger, but I don't have that overwhelming sense of God's Word blasting through my soul. Others have described the same process for themselves.

I believe there's a good reason why the Lord is working this way. Christians as a whole have for far too long neglected the teaching of convictions. While it's the same thing as being heart-led, it's more accessible for most Western Christians to talk about convictions. They can at least understand it in principle, even if they don't walk in it. And that's the problem: churches don't teach people to walk in them. We all know why; it would challenge the little kingdoms of men and women with all the attendant comforts and pleasures.

Still, I tend to believe we'll see a lot more of this prophetic ministry delivered in a very subtle way through convictions, simply because the Lord is trying to emphasize the necessity of walking in conviction. Humanity has forgotten too much about how to do that, so the only way God is going to deal with us is via the one tool we understand least, until we make it more common in our lives.

And we who are called to serve in a prophetic role must get used to doing things this way. Our primary prophetic message is the doing of prophecy via conviction, even if we don't say that directly. We aren't going to get very many firm words from God, but we will get a host of impressions about what God is doing via our convictions. God is teaching His people to learn how to use that great gift again.

Given that Jesus and His crew often traveled by boat, it's hard to estimate the location of some of the events we've covered so far. We know that He mostly stayed in Galilee, but that's a pretty large area. We cannot guess where the Sermon on the Mount was, but that it was followed by the encounter with the Centurion's faith back in Capernaum meant it was likely somewhere near there.

Luke says it was the next day that Jesus was now on the southwestern side of Galilee, a good ways inland from the shore. Nain is a village nestled on the northwestern edge of Mount Moreh, which puts it in the slender finger of the Plain of Esdraelon that reaches out between Mounts Tabor and Moreh.

So the trip out this way by boat must have included a whole flotilla, because there was an unusually large crowd of people following Him as He approached the gate of the Nain. He was confronted by the tragedy of a funeral bearing the body of a widow's only son. He died early in his adult years, and the funeral train was a substantial part of the city's population. For her, this meant her last hope of support was gone, and she would soon be in dire poverty and alone. This is not how things were supposed to go under the Covenant. How soon before the Pharisees came to pick over the carcass of her remaining property?

As the two crowds met on the road just outside the city gate, the first thing Jesus did was ask the mourners to stop the wailing. He needed for everyone to hear what He was about to say. Stepping to the litter (they didn't use coffins), the procession stopped and Jesus spoke to the wrapped body loudly enough for all to hear, ordering him to arise. The young man sat up and began to speak, probably complaining about the wrappings. From the context, we can assume that Jesus had His disciples help Him unwind the fellow from the embalming wraps and turn him back over to his mother.

Nobody had ever seen anything like that. The funeral was abruptly called off and mourning of the  people turned into joyfully glorifying God quite loudly. In the following days, the news of this spread all around the whole region.

Meanwhile, among the crowd that followed Jesus were a handful of His cousin John's disciples. Some of them no doubt had been following Jesus around since John's arrest. At this resurrection, they hurried back and reported to John in prison. We need to keep in mind that John didn't suffer much rabbinical training, so his understanding of Scripture was far closer to the ancient Hebrew mysticism. While he no doubt believed at least a part of his prophetic message was literal, he would have been one of the first to recognize it was not entirely so. The matter of the ax laid at the root of the unrepentant tree of Israel that failed to bring forth fruit in keeping with the Covenant was not as simple as Pharisaical legalism would suggest.

And John was fatalistic enough to realize that, when His cousin's ministry took off, his own was ended. So we should not read this as some kind of tormenting doubt when he sent two messengers back to Jesus to inquire about His ministry. We could get the idea that John was partly concerned that his own disciples would get the message and stick with Jesus. But we can also see that John was seeking some final confirmation that his mission was complete, that the Messiah had taken over. He knew he was close to execution; could he now depart in peace?

So, they returned and found Jesus somewhere not too far from Nain, since raising the dead was probably just the start of His work there. He had these two disciples of John watch as He healed and delivered a large number of people. Then He turned to them and quoted Isaiah 61:1-3, a messianic passage He used often in His teaching. It was like saying, "Yep, I'm the Messiah."

Then He raised the question: Who could be offended or tripped up by this kind of blessed ministry?

This led to an involved discussion about His cousin, John the Baptist. Down by the Jordan where Jesus went to be baptized, the tall reeds would wave in the wind. That's not what brought the people down to the river. It wasn't a pleasant picnic trip. They didn't expect a prophet dressed like the ones sponsored by the Scribes and Pharisees, either, with all their highly educated speech. Those kind of men dressed up nice so they could hang out in the courts of the powerful. That's not the kind of prophet John was. They knew what to expect when they went down there. He was notorious for having lived a wholly uncivilized life out in the wilderness.

They knew to expect a blunt and harsh message out in the open air. Yes, John was surely the forerunner of the Messiah prophesied by Malachi. And what did that make Jesus? He further told the people that John the Baptist was the greatest prophet to have lived up that point. And yet, those who followed Jesus as the Messiah into the Kingdom of Heaven would be senior to John the Baptist. That's because they would get to see that Kingdom born and find all the power and authority Israel had discarded by abandoning the Covenant. The prophecies and miracles were all about the Kingdom that was about to come upon them.

Within the crowd who heard this message were plenty of folks who had been baptized under John's message, repenting in preparation for the Messiah. To them, it was just one step closer to the promises they believed. To the Scribes and Pharisees, who had uniformly rejected John's baptism, because they rejected the message, it all went right over their heads, because it was not in their hearts.

The final moment of this event was Jesus offering a parable about children playing in the streets. In Jesus' day, petulant arrogance had become the mark of Judah's leadership. It's like children who can't be pleased. The normal kids ask them to come play, but the arrogant fools were never pleased with any of the games or ideas. So when John came in the austerity of self-denial, the leaders said he was crazy, demanding too much. And when Jesus came along and celebrated the joy of the Covenant, the same leaders said you couldn't take Him seriously because He was undisciplined.

Both the austerity and celebrations reflected something of God's nature. But the Scribes and Pharisees rejected it all because they never understood God's nature. They were clearly not children of divine wisdom. The children of wisdom were obvious by their wise choices.

So, this kind of spite is being vented more often these days. When you and I share the truth about the evil of our government officials and their intentions, they want to humiliate us. It has nothing to do with truth; they are determined to rub our faces in it. They are determined that we shall confess the damned lies of their pagan idols. That's what it's all about -- the prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse, the January 6 protests at the Capitol, etc. They have plans to push it farther and farther.

If you get all bent out of shape about the humiliation factor, you'll miss the point. That's what they imagine they want, but it offers no kind of joy, nothing to fill the ravening hunger in their souls. It only deadens them further. It makes them even more the child of Hell. It is their greatest weakness.

It is also quintessentially American. Our penal system has always been punitive, not recompensatory as Scripture requires. It was designed to play to the vindictive arrogance of the broader population. "You owe me!" It's the attitude of usurping God's throne of judgement. The Law of Moses was always about how you have offended God, first and foremost, and your duty to repay your brother was only secondary. God always set limits on what you repaid to your brother.

People who have been through the American prison system understand quite clearly: The only real defense against the vindictive spite is to act like it just does not matter. You can't be bothered to stir up any emotion over it. When they get what they want, they still have nothing. Don't expect the average American to understand that. Expect instead a reactionary humiliation back at those who provoke things. This is part of why we try to stay out of the way of these things.

There will be a backlash. It will be bloody, and too often, poorly targeted. It will make those leading the backlash no better than those who provoked them. There is no such thing as "human dignity." There is only repentance and redemption.

I've often raised the issue of decentralization. I am convinced that God intends to break the US apart, and that the states should consciously work toward independence from the imperial capital in order to lessen the effects of God's wrath on America. I've been praying for my own state leadership to at least be in the forefront of this movement.

So, recently our Gov. Stitt has pushed back against the DoD vaccine madate. It's a good thing, but it will be expensive. Over the past few decades, the state leadership has worked very hard to convince the federal government to invest a great deal in centralizing the shrinking pie of defense aircraft maintenance investment in Tinker AFB. Every accommodation Tinker has requested has been granted. A main thoroughfare were recently closed off to provide a secure perimeter for moving aircraft between contracted facilities and the main base. The state has encouraged a very large investment in supporting shopping and dining facilities just outside the main gate of Tinker. Tinker employs an army of residents at relatively high wages.

This is altogether likely to evaporate, and will do so all the more quickly if our state leadership stays on the current course. As the linked article says, the DoD is notorious for finding leverage to punish any resistance to their soulless policies. I hope and pray that Oklahoma's leadership will maintain the resolve necessary to absorb this kind of loss. Even if we have ways we can re-purpose all that economic horsepower on our own, it would take quite some time to get it all geared up.

Are you aware of issues in our own state that reflect this kind of challenge?

God owns your heart. I can't address your heart directly; I can speak only to your mind. I can hope that you are listening and filtering with your heart. I can't tell you what God wants for you in specific terms. All I can offer are generalities drawn from my reading of the Bible. The details are between you and the Lord.

We have a gospel message. To this message we are committed above all things, including our own survival. We cannot afford to get lost from that message, to bog down, mired in things that do not reflect that message. It's not a question of what you are actually doing in real life, but to your intentions and overall commitment.

One of the generalities is that we avoid getting involved in human political wrangling, in the sense that we never let ourselves be sucked into believing in their agendas. We might be there among them for any number of reasons, but in our hearts we are aloof from their concerns. We are Covenant people, and they are not. If they were Covenant people, they wouldn't care about human politics, either. This heavy involvement of hopes and dreams for some political outcome is a primary mark of being outside the Covenant.

That does not keep us from seeing clearly what evil people are doing on any side of political warfare. The difficulty for us is to avoid getting sucked in by the lies of the people on the ground. In the USA, it's not hard to step back and see the manipulation of political aspirations. The population is being herded into a phony left versus right conflict. Worse, the whole thing is biased in favor of the left. The people on the right suffer under the delusion that their leadership really does believe in the conservative path. This is a lie. The people running the left as their cannon fodder are the same people deciding who gets to lead the right.

It so happens that the majority of the population is essentially conservative, so what we have is a foul betrayal operation. People on the right should realize that the entire system of government is against them. You and I can see that, but most of them do not, at least not fully. It's not so much the enforcers on the street level -- most of them are conservative being used -- but the folks running the show have marked the right as an enemy to be crushed.

I've said it before: The conservatives are not our people, but they do give us more room to operate according to the Covenant. The left are hostile to us without understanding why. But the right-wing is not our people. We can try to explain to them what's going on, but they will never understand our commitment to things not of this world. They've been conditioned to believe they think for themselves, but their leadership -- being actually on the left -- have taught them to think that our otherworldly focus is a betrayal of their conservative values. Thus, they seldom accept our warnings.

Even if the right makes some kind of political comeback in next year's elections, it will not do us any real good. The same agenda is hidden behind both sides of the American political divide. They don't understand the gospel, and so don't accurately oppose it. But they do assert an agenda that will hinder our message, and bind us to human laws opposed to the Covenant. What they claim is at stake is just a wild goose chase. Any relief a conservative resurgence brings us will be short-lived.

I suspect that most of us came to Covenant faith out of some kind of commitment to conservative ideals. It's hard to leave that behind; it's hard to let go of that old loyalty. I'm praying that we will not let ourselves remain captive to chasing after the wind the way they do. The only relief we will get is the one disaster they would all hate: something from the hand of God that clobbers the system for a while.

Yes, I'm saying that the tribulation and sorrow is to our advantage. That is, tribulation is to our advantage if we are focused on the gospel message. God breaking down the devices of men to weaken their power over us is a good thing. The bad guys own the Internet, and use it control everything. Our current use of it is temporary. Even if a big CME doesn't shut it down to some degree for a while, we will eventually be forced underground, as it were. It will become ever more burdensome to use the Net without being controlled and harassed. We need to be ready for alternative means of communication, but what that turns out to be will be determined by the context at the time it happens.

Pray that your dependence on the things of this world reduces enough that you can quickly and easily move to the next thing God prospers for us. What we have now is doomed. Somewhere down the road, it will be taken from us. It's just a tool for a certain job. But anytime God comes in His wrath against sin and sinners, it's always a blessing to His Covenant people. Stir up your faith; good things are headed our way.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

I wanna just let everybody know the Father has really been enriching my prayer life. It is subtle and hard to describe. But it was probably a couple of years into my awakening I started wondering about what’s prayer all about. I wanted to have time to really get a handle on prayer. So I asked God for help on all that. And slowly over about 5 years, now that I think about it, He has answered those requests and is doing soooo much more in my prayer life. Just look how He led me to you guys here. And He has carved out a bunch more time for prayer and quiet with Him.
I just wanted Him to get Him some cheers and hallelujahs for all the greatness He is and all the great things He does. Woo Hooo!!!