Prophetic Word by John Dawson

SHARPER FOCUS

Undergirding the list of characteristics Dawson sensed would serve as the DNA of this people as they move into their future, beginning even now at the threshold of 1992, were two specific declarations. One referred to our place in God. We were reminded first that God “rules in the affairs of men and nations.” This is the broader sense of our placement under His sovereignty. More specifically, however, we were brought to think about God’s personal desires for us as a people in relationship. This was summed up in the response of the Holy Spirit to Dawson’s prayerful questions, “What do You want to say to the Pentecostal Holiness movement?” The answer was simply, “I want to mark them with a new name.” Dawson did not infer that this was literal but to be contained in “A NEW IDENTITY,” an identity that would be confirmed by expressions of our inheritance. Dawson continued, “One of the things that the Lord said is that He wants you to be seen by others as a people that are secure in God’s affirmation.” The challenge is that we would move in certainty of the Lord’s words, “You are My people and I have chosen you!” This challenge was then expanded in the statement, “God wants to give you a wider inheritance than you now have!” Thus, in the extended blessing of God’s love we are chosen to receive under His sovereignty an ordained, gracious inheritance! Praise His Name!

However, our focus needs to be sharpened as we move forward by the Holy Spirit into this designated place, this “large room” according to Psalm 31:8. As an assistance in this process, I believe the characteristics the Father pin-pointed for us through John Dawson are significant. These are given below for the purpose of motivation. PRAY that we might corporately embrace 1992 as a time for pressing deeper into the heart of God where our character is being rightly formed, and as a time for greater victory in the conquest of divinely appointed levels of inheritance. Scripture passages for meditation are Jeremiah 30:18-22; Jeremiah 31:16-18 and Isaiah 41:10-18.

1) The prophet Isaiah wrote, “The afflicted and needy are seeking water, but there is none and their tongue is parched with thirst. I, the Lord, will answer them myself…” Today we stand in a season of grace. According to Dawson, over recent months “thousands of pastors have cried out to God in harmony with one another.” Such tears and repentance have “caused the face of the Lord to turn toward us. And we are prepared for harvest. And we are to ask for great things!” We are to find our place in this moment.

2) You are, as a movement, to be characterized by joy. You are to be “a people of celebration,” and “happy in the work that God has given you to do.”

3) “The third thing is that you are to have an identity in encouraging and serving the whole Church, an ambition for the inheritance of all the tribes…There are many times in which you will labor and travail for victory and the harvest will be received to the increase of other tribes, and your are not to be insecure about that; but you are to be secure in the identity God has given you.”

4) “The fourth characteristic is that you are to be…a tribe that raises up leadership for a vision as big as the world. You are to expose those being trained to the great diversity of ministries and movements. You are to know the Church…This movement is not primarily a nursery…Our success is always to be seen in terms of what is happening in the kingdom, not in the isolation of our circumstances.”

5) “The fifth characteristic God wants you to have is to be a House of Prayer for all nations. You are to be strategic, informed intercessors, intercession by those who know the nations…From this time forth, according to the Word of the Lord, you are to be a people who go to and fro in the earth with nations in your heart…You are a doorway to the nations.”

6) “The sixth characteristic is that you are to be seen as a people who are poor in spirit, humble and grateful for God’s mercy, the fellowship of the rescued …be as those who are quick to confess, quick to humble themselves, those who always seem to have a desperate sense of need and a hunger for more of God…quick to serve, poor in spirit because ‘blessed are the poor in spirit.’”

7) “The seventh characteristic is that you are to be a people that condemns no man, having a spirit of adoption to the rejected and unlovely…You are not to be a people defined by standards, but by a spirit of adoption.”

8) “The eighth characteristic is that you are to be a container, as an extended family in the kingdom of many cultures and nationalities…Your movement is to be a fellowship of peoples…This is not to be a denomination and movement associated with one nation…There is to come a point when the balance of those who are in this tribe are not found in this nation, and that the governing body of this tribe is to be a circle of nations.”

9) “The ninth characteristic is to be a people of liberty, a people characterized by the liberty to create without fear forms of worship and ministry that releases the full personality of the Creator…Sometimes the enemy of tomorrow’s inheritance is today’s possession. And so we need to take all that we have possessed and put it on the altar…There may be painful things with which to deal, but God calls for everything being placed on the altar.”

10) “The tenth characteristic is to be that of radical generosity. You are to be a people called to pioneer again and again, calls which will require your giving more than you have, doing bigger things than your resources allow you to do. And each generation is going to see the miracles…”

11) “The eleventh characteristic is to be that your leaders are known in heaven and on earth as people who follow the cloud, as people who are reporting a story of divine direction…”

12) “You are to have the ministry of encouragement in discipling the nations and in discipling the church. Discipleship, after all, is 90% encouragement. You are to call forth Christ in others. You are to apply the gift of faith to their future. You are to train your eyes to see that which is fearfully and wonderfully made. You are to establish loving accountability and weep with those who weep, laugh with those who laugh.”

In the broader perspective, we understood that as a people God was requiring us to be set free from any sense of defensiveness birthed out of our past. We were instead being called to a new place of dependence upon the Lord God Almighty. In Dawson’s words, “You are an older tribe now, and you are to behave as a responsible adult…There’s to be an ambition that’s as wide as the kingdom that characterizes this movement…Let me command you in Jesus’ name, DO NOT FEAR!” From the Isaiah passage already mentioned we hear again the words, “I will help you. Do not fear…I will help you, declares the Lord…Behold, I have made you a new sharp threshing sledge with double edges.” Dawson referred to this as the “winnowing work of intercession. That means that in this season of your life as a movement, God is saying, ‘I have given you authority before My throne to ask of Me for great things, and I will do them!’” Truly, “you will thresh the mountains (of Satanic resistance) and pulverize them.”