CHECK POINT

A Leadership and Intercessory Letter written to those who desire Integrity in the Inward Parts  (Psalm 51:6)

Matt 12:10a

And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered…

 

The Holy Spirit pressed into my spirit a picture, a scripture and a revelation at 9:00 A.M., July 26, 2006. 

 

I saw a strong, healthy right arm, tanned, shiny and well muscled, from the shoulder to the hand.  The whole arm was perfect.  I knew that it had formerly been weak and impotent, atrophied, but had been healed. 

 

I knew that a powerful work had been done to bring this arm and hand to restoration.

 

As I looked at it, in my spirit I felt a sense of urgency for this whole arm. I knew that Jesus had touched it as a witness to his healing power but I also was concerned that if it was not used it would wither again.

 

In all this I knew that the Holy Spirit was giving an urgent plea that this arm must stay strong and that it must be used.  I knew that the use of the arm was not for the arms pleasure but that it was healed to touch others in the same healing it had received. 

 

I knew it was the arm of the revival church.

 

I knew a supernatural impartation was being nurtured in this arm but also knew that at the strategic time of release the enemy was determined to return it back to its withered, atrophied condition.

 

I also felt a great deal of demonic activity trying to bring this arm down.  I sensed a grave danger of all that had been gained being lost if it was not moved soon.  I could feel surrounding it, as it were, a kind of hopeless, apathetic spiritual cloud trying to settle in. 

 

I had the sense that a dullness of passion, (but not dullness of desire), had tried to overshadow the joy of the restoration.

 

That may sound like an oxymoron, but I could feel the desire in the depths of the revived heart still pulsing through to the body. Look at the definitions of these two words:

 

DESIRE

To wish or long for; to want.

To express a wish for; to request.

 

PASSION

A powerful emotion, such as love, joy, hatred, or anger.

An abandoned display of emotion

Intense, driving, or overpowering feeling or emotion;

 

Synonyms: passion, fervor, fire, zeal, ardor
 Passion is a deep, overwhelming emotion:

Fervor is great warmth and intensity of feeling:

Fire is burning passion:

Zeal is strong, enthusiastic devotion to a cause, ideal, or goal and tireless diligence in its furtherance:

Ardor is fiery intensity of feeling:

 

Though the passion (the deeper of the two emotions) had been overshadowed by seeming failure to perform - desire, (the lesser of the two emotions) to be used had not died out.

 

The feel with it was that “the arm” had attempted to reach out with minimal results and now it had retracted back to the body. Where it at one time reached out in anticipation of great miracles of salvation, healing and deliverance being released, it now had “quit trying.”

 

The “restored arm” seemed frustrated at not being fully used to the potential that was resident in it.

 

• All the muscles were in place.
• The bones were strong.
• The arm could flex in a show of strength.

 

…but where was the release of the resident power?

 

I feel Holy Spirit had used this spiritual typology to speak a truth to remind us to strengthen the things that God has given us and to be diligent to keep pursuing the release that we first believed for.

 

The scripture that overlaid the picture released a revelation to my heart for the “revived arm of the church.”  I would like to take just a moment and speak what I sense God has spoken to my heart from His Word to me.

 

Matthew 12:10 - And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days?” that they might accuse him.

  

In Jesus day He was under constant scrutiny.  Everything He did was dissected and searched for any legal loophole for the sole purpose of accusation.  Their biggest problem was legalism.  They always asked, “Is it lawful?”

 

They sought out every opportunity to accuse Jesus of doing wrong by holding up their strict, unyielding legalism that excluded any compassion for people.

 

People all around them were hurting, bound up in satanic webs of lies, sickness and many were oppressed and possessed of devils and yet they stood in the way of the move of God to save, heal and deliver. 

 

Every move Jesus made was countered by human mindsets, mental plots calculatingly laid to entrap and accuse the Lord.

 

• One would think that the church would love to see people set free, to actually be a part of ending human suffering. 
• One would think that any movement from heaven would be welcomed by the church.
• One would think that anything that would bring a healing and refreshing to the human spirit would be readily blessed by the church. 
• One would think that any semblance of restoration or hope for a brighter future for the church would be met with acceptance. 

 

One would think that people of the church would stand in line to be touched by Jesus, but not so....

 

Jesus asked of them a very probing but pertinent question – a question that maybe should be asked in churches everywhere today…

 

Matt. 12:11    And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?

 

Jesus is addressing the obvious – the church has a lack of compassion.

 

Their eyes are inverted to themselves so much that they fail to see the need at hand. He is appealing to them on a very basic level – they have no problem with having compassion on their animals that they will pull from a pit, even during the Sabbath.

 

The loss of a sheep impacted them personally, so they made that legal to do, but the hurting people in a similar pit was illegal to do – revealing how self-centered out religion can become.

 

The point He is preparing to make is not that they are kind to their animals but that they treat their animals better than they do their fellow human beings.

 

Look at the next verse…

 

Matt. 12:12    How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days.

 

It is sad how skewed our vision can become when we lose focus on what is precious to God… 

 

Jesus asked this poignant question and pointed them in the right way – to understand that we are to touch the lives of people, to take compassion on them, to take pity on the plight they find themselves in and to reach our hands out to them, to pull them from their pit. 

 

He is saying, “This is legal movement in the church – right in the midst of our religious protocol and beyond our legalistic perimeters.”

 

The truth is, their hearts were more withered than the man’s hand - which was obviously withered – but, he recognized his weakness and had a desire to be made whole whereas their withered minds could not grasp the reality of their need.

 

Jesus then turned, in a full, authoritative demonstration of the power of God, and spoke these words to this man while standing in the midst of the church…

 

Matt. 12:13a - Then saith he to the man, “Stretch forth thine hand…”

 

We were as that man with the withered hand. The opportunity had presented itself to be healed and to have our spiritual hand revived. 

 

• When a world of naysayers’ is looking on, what did we do? 

 

There are many of you that have gone against the tide of opposition and all attempts to stop you from embracing Jesus who entered into His Church in a wave of revival for “whosoever will.”  You stood, as the man with the withered hand, and heard all the controversy, but you, like him, pushed past all the “religious rhetoric” and received healing and revival in your spiritual body. 

 

You have watched as your arm, which was formerly drawn inward began to stretch outward in anticipation of being used.

 

It takes a people who are tired of the “introverted arm of the church” to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are crippled in their reach to the hurting.  Everything around you has become centered within the confines of the ideas of the church and you too had been trapped in the endless cycle of church life.

 

Oh, yes, there are committees to feed the hungry and send the missionaries to the field, but it is all done under the auspices of the guiding, religious rules of order.

 

• While none of this, in and of itself is bad, it is not enough!

 

The realization that “there must be more” moved to touch every phase of our religious order of the church – worship, the preaching and teaching of the Word, the conduct of God’s people, the prayers prayed by the church…and it did in the places where the doors were flung open for the move of the Holy Spirit - but we still knew “there is more than this…”

 

As you were spiritually revived, you also had a growing zeal to be used of God in ways only talked about in Sunday school lessons.

 

You have seen it – the divine disorder of God – people jumping for joy when healing comes; the shouts of praise from the lips of ones who have been healed of blindness and deafness.  It was a beautiful sight for hungry hearts but appeared as disorderly conduct to others.

 

Spiritually many have been restored as the move of God has swept through areas and you know it is real.

 

The cry for revival, a pleading with heaven to touch the church and restore it, entreating Jesus to come and stir the waters opened the doors in many places. 

 

Thank God for the places who are still contending for the “rest of the story,” that belongs to a faithful people.

For years many of you have served God in faithfulness in intercession, following hard after God and His Word to you, repented deeply and are living a life of holiness.  You have watched as heaven opened up and poured into the lives of hungry and thirsty people.  And though you have received so much, and though greatly refreshed, you realized that your hand was still withered.

 

• You could look down and see the paralysis and know that you could not touch anyone in this withered state. 

 

Though the waves of refreshing washed over your spirit, you knew that you were still spiritually crippled in a very important part of your faith. 

 

You were not content to just be revived – you wanted a full restoration of everything God intended His Church to be…

 

…to fully return to what the early church and the great revivals of the past experienced as normal though supernatural, and what you are hearing God is now doing through yielded vessels all over the world.

 

You became a people who had a heart who for once, in the history of your generation, would give Jesus…

 

…The Church He’s always wanted!!!

 

You have been willing to lay it all down – to go beyond the religious clichés to have the fullness of the Spirit of God. Thank God there are a people who are willing and have a desire to step over the threshold into the world to seek the lost.

 

I know in my heart that there is a mighty army of people making up the strong arm of the revived church ready and prepared.  This has been about a church in full agreement with Jesus and His plans for His Church.

 

Will the real Church please stand up!