Skydiving
I read this story, maybe a week or a week and a half ago where a man was going to attempt a skydive that no one had ever attempted before. He was kind of a dare devil guy and he had spent a lot of time in his life doing risky things, dare devil kinds of things. A lot of tests had been done over a period of months, to make sure someone could survive the kind of skydive he wanted to perform. What he wants to do is to skydive from 23 miles up in space, at the very edge of outer space and the expectation is that he will travel at a speed of about 760 miles per hour and will possibly break the sound barrier. That is his goal to break the sound barrier so of course, they have tested and prepared equipment for him that he can wear so as to survive the dive.
The Lord began to speak to me a word, that so many things he wants to do through us and do with us he cannot, because we are not willing to take risks and we are in a season now where God is teaching people to walk by faith and to walk by faith at such a level and to risk so much, that they are going to be like the skydiver; they are going to move in the spirit, on the edge of the spiritual outer space, they are going to move faster than they ever have before. They are going to break holy sound barriers in the kingdom of God, because of their risk taking. The sound barriers are things that few people have heard God speak before because few people have been willing to walk in that kind of faith, people are now going to hear more and more; it’s going to become more common; you are going to have these holy skydivers who are willing to risk so much in faith, willing to walk in faith at such a high level that God is now free to speak to them things, kind of like breaking the sound barrier, so the voice of God can now be heard speaking extravagant stuff. We all want to hear God speak, we all want God to use us in a powerful way, but most of us are just afraid to walk in faith at the level where God wants us to walk. God won’t speak things to us, extravagant things to us, if he knows we won’t step out in obedience and in faith in response to what he says. God is not going to waste his time saying things to us if he knows we are too afraid to own this from him because we are so afraid of the consequences, we are so afraid of falling on our face, afraid of being embarrassed, of being humiliated.
Well, we are at a time where we are going to have holy dare-devils, holy ones who will just be willing to fall, to skydive from the edge of spiritual outer space and travel at a speed they have never traveled before.
When the Lord called Israel out of Egypt, it says in Deut 6 that he brought them out to bring them in. His intention wasn’t to just bring them out of Egypt and for a whole generation to die in the wilderness, but his intention was to bring them into the land of Canaan, the land of promise, the land of their inheritance, flowing with milk and honey. It was only an 11 day trip from the Red Sea that God parted in Egypt to Kadesh Barnea on the edge of the Jordan to enter into the land of Canaan. But because of the report of the 10 spies who saw themselves as grasshoppers in the sight of those who lived in the land of promise, Israel spent 40 years wandering around the wilderness. Now understand, they didn’t go back to Egypt, they didn’t go back to a place where they were lost, but they never entered into all God had for them, they never experienced their inheritance. There were only 2 of those spies, Joshua and Caleb, who were willing to believe God because God had already spoken he had already given them the land, it was already theirs. It was just a matter of them stepping in by faith into the land and claiming what God had given to them. Joshua and Caleb were the only 2 of the 12 spies, who believed and a whole generation died out and Joshua and Caleb were the only fathers of that generation, who entered into the land, 40 years later. When they came into the land after Moses had died, the Lord spoke to Joshua in Joshua 1 v 3 and said to him, “every place that you put your foot, in other words, every place you walk in faith, I have already given to you”. And again, that is a resounding promise that God spoke in the book of Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and again in Joshua, that it was already theirs, it already belonged to them. Even the people in Jericho, Rahab said had been waiting for 40 years because their hearts had melted, they knew that God had given the city to them; the enemy knew, but it was the people of God who wouldn’t own as substance what God had already spoken. In chapter 1 of Joshua, there are 3 different times the Lord says first, “be strong and courageous”; again he says, “be very strong and courageous” and then a third time, he says “be strong and courageous, do not be afraid and don’t be dismayed”. In all those places, he told them to be strong and courageous, he also said “I will be with you, I won’t fail you”.
But now hear what the Lord says here: instead of giving in to fear, you are going to have to walk in the kind of faith that’s going to own, that’s going to possess all the inheritance I have already given to you and possess it by faith. If you do that, you will have to walk in courage instead of fear and being dismayed by what you see and the opposition of the enemy, and the circumstances. You’ve got to walk in courage, to walk in the kind of faith that God wants us to walk in that will bring in the harvest that God wants to bring in both our own soul, for the purposes of God, and in the kingdom of God on the earth. We are going to have to be a people who don’t just walk in faith, but walk in courageous faith. We’ve got to be willing to risk failure. We’ve got to be willing to risk everything and if we are willing to be that kind of skydiver, who will skydive from the edges of outer space, we will break the sound barrier, if God will see in us the courage. Courage is not the absence of feeling that follows fear, courage is stepping out in faith regardless of how you feel and regardless of what you see. And if God can find a people, find a person who is willing to hear anything, they will break the sound barrier. God will speak to them extravagant things like, “say to that person,’ get out of your wheelchair’, or call a person to be raised from the dead, etc…etc… If you will look throughout the history of the church, look at the autobiographies of great men and women God used in extravagant ways, in great signs and wonders, every one of them was willing to be foolish, every one of them demonstrated in spite of fear, the courage to believe God for anything, to own as substance anything God said. Those are the ones who break the sound barrier, who hear God say to them the extravagant stuff. Remember: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, but the Lord won’t speak extravagant things or words if he knows we are not willing to display and demonstrate the courage to step out, even though we may hear something that’s audacious and to the natural, seems ridiculous.
This is a time, brothers and sisters, for us to skydive from the edges of outer space; this is a time for us to be prepared to break the sound barrier. It’s time for us that in faith, we step in those places and take those things that God has already given to us, time that we are willing to demonstrate the kind of courage that will allow God to speak the kind of things he wants to speak but couldn’t until now.
