Nesting and necessary hunger.

The 2 nests.

I was at a friend’s house last week and in an unused fireplace, she had placed a bird’s nest with 3 tiny blue eggs in it.

It looked like an ornament, it was so perfect, but it was a real nest with real eggs!  She had ventured into an unused shed at the bottom of her garden, to be met with a startled and rapidly exiting blackbird, immediately after which she had found the nest. She left it untouched for a number of days; praying the mummy bird would come back. Alas she didn’t so my friend brought the nest inside. 

I felt so sad about those baby birds that had gone cold inside their shells and would never hatch and about the mummy bird who, in distress had flown away and abandoned her chicks. The sadness I felt seemed really rather disproportionate and I realised that I deeply identified with those left behind tiny blue eggs. The eggs and the rustic beauty of the nest… lovingly, carefully and diligently built twig by twig to shield, protect and comfort little ones, seemed to me to represent dreams that I have dared to dream, and whispers and promises from God that I have dared to believe. I realised that the conflict in the spiritual realm and the very real war against the emerging remnant church to stifle dreams and silence voices had conspired to write the words ABANDONED BY GOD  in bold letters over the fabric of my dreams and over the beginnings of the new life I have been nurturing. 

When I got home from my friend’s house that evening, I was having a quick catch up on instagram before I went to bed and a friend who lives in France had posted a short video of another bird’s nest (under the eaves in her home in Savoie). This time there were 3 or 4 very hatched, very alive and very hungry baby birds... mouths open as wide as they would go waiting to be fed by their mummy.

Two nests… one abandoned and one full of hungry desperate babies.

I knew the Lord was wanting to speak and as I pondered and prayed on it I heard Him say 2 things:

1. I am causing my bride to hunger

There are very many in the body of Christ right now: church members and leaders alike, who, despite going through the motions and hosting zoom and facebook church meetings are questioning God, questioning dreams, questioning the future. There is a sense of uncertainty and even feeling really let down and abandoned by God. The future of ministries that have taken time and effort to build seem unclear. Dreams and hopes seem to be dormant... if not dead or dying. 

Some are facing times of personal and relational devastation and for others, it seems as if the promises the Lord has whispered into their hearts in the moments of precious closeness are distant, unbelievable and unobtainable. There is a darkness in the atmosphere and a mocking voice that is asking where are your dreams now? Where is your God now? Does He even care!?

Beloved the Lord has not abandoned you! He has not abandoned you!!! For ...

…. the Lord says do I bring to the moment of birth and not let you see the delivery! Isaiah 66:9

He has not abandoned us! And there is profound purpose in this season of uncertainty.

I wrote a while back that we are in an enforced Sabbath.. where the routines of life and church have been stripped away. There is a God ordained purpose for this season.

One of the main purposes is for the church of Jesus Christ to come out of our churchified wilderness where we have hungered after other gods and the things of the world.. (approval, success, recognition, kudos, wealth) and where we have sated ourselves with religious activities and programmes; with the things and the stuff of God and not God himself. We have made the activity of the church synonymous with God Himself. They are not the same thing! The former should flow out of a place of intimacy with Jesus. It should not be a replacement FOR intimacy with Jesus… sadly it very often is…

We have filled ourselves up on religion (church attendance / programmes and meetings) and have thought ourselves to be full when God says we are empty. We have thought ourselves rich when in fact God says we are poor, blind, pitiful, wretched and naked (Revelation 3:17). It is time to come out and to return to Him. To hunger and thirst after Him!

Therefore, "Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." 2 Corinthians 6:17

In his mercy the Lord is stripping back the structures and the props and the padding and in so doing has laid bare our hearts… exposing lack, exposing emptiness, revealing the hungry, dry desolate places within our souls. We feel abandoned because the structure and comfort we are used to is no longer there.

Ben Patterson from his book Deepening your conversation with God says:

“We have become satisfied with mere church, mere religious exertion, mere numbers and buildings—the things we can do. There is nothing wrong with these things, but they are no more than foam left by the surf on the ocean of God’s glory and goodness.”

I believe this season of enforced sabbath is also a God appointed FAST from religion and from man-made structures and from the church fodder we consume to make ourselves feel full up.

The main objective of fasting is that it humbles our flesh and the main side-effect is that it makes us hungry!

Beloved this is a season of being humbled as we fast from the junk food of religion, (that numbs and sates our true appetite), so that instead HE can feed us… with manna, with His living Rhema word. 

He is drawing us back to His heart!!

Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Deuteronomy 8:3

The word for hunger here is raeb.. It means famished / voracious / to desire vehemently

The same scripture is quoted by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel:

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Matthew 4:4

The word for ‘word ‘ here is rhema… what is His rhema word? It is the Lord speaking His dynamic, living word in a believer to inbirth faith.

This time of lockdown is calling out the bride; calling her back to His heart; calling her to return to Him with renewed thirst and hunger. Not hungry to get back to normal. Not hungry to fill ourselves up with programmes and activities. He is humbling us so that we become famished for Him, so that we desire Him earnestly and vehemently and voraciously.

I read this recently:   Hunger is a landing strip for the Holy Spirit

The fact is God releases His promises / His Kingdom / Himself to those who are hungry; to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They are not for the peckish or for the social grazer or for someone that only wants pudding. They are not for the comfortable or for those that have it all sorted out in their own human strength and capabilities; for those who only want to sprinkle a bit of Jesus flavour on top of their ice cream.

God’s promises are for the famished and the desperate.. For those who cry out in their hearts… God you are ALL I desire! God I am desperate for more of you!! I am desperate to see you move in power. I am desperate for you to show up in my life and in the life of your church and for your glory to come!!

God is looking for hungry, thirsty people. There must come up from within us a cry that cannot be satisfied with anything but God.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst (who are famished for and earnestly voraciously desire) righteousness, for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6

Psalm 81:10 says:

I, the Lord, am your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. 

There we go.. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it! Those baby birds looked like they were all mouth. They were desperate for food.

There is coming such a hunger and thirst after righteousness in the church of Jesus Christ.

I feel it building and as we hunger and thirst after Him in desperation, and as we open wide our mouths He is going to fill them with good things. He is going to feed us the bread of heaven. He is going to move in to meet us in our hunger and emptiness; to feed us with manna; With LIVING dynamic words that truly satisfy and truly feed us.

Beloved we must know that the things God is calling us to do in this coming season are not humanly possible. They will require more from us than man made psychology, political maneuvering and well orchestrated meetings. They will require strategies from the throne room and the war rooms of heaven and a move of His power such as most of us have never seen… and its coming!!

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2. I am nesting my church

After my encounter with the 2 nests, over the proceeding week I was seeing nests everywhere... all sorts of nests. Birds nests, ants nests, even wasps nests. Nests are highly organised structures, designed to look after and protect the colony and to receive and look after the babies. 

I heard the Lord say’ I am ‘nesting’ my church’.

There is an instinct experienced by most expectant mums where they feel an overwhelming urge to spring clean their home and chuck stuff out and organise and put things in order. This is what the Lord is doing in His church. He is organising and spring cleaning. He is putting things in order.

I sometimes watch obsessive compulsive hoarders on TV. Aghast! I’m much too good at throwing things away… usually things I haven't needed for 6 years but will really really need one week after putting them in the bin! But no matter whether we have a proclivity for hanging onto stuff or throwing it away, I think internally we are ALL a bit like obsessive compulsive hoarders.

The Lord in this season is making ready His bride and He is coming in to clean and to put in order and He is asking “can we just sort out the spare room where you stored all your junk for decades? Can we throw these things away that you've had for years; that no longer serve you or have a purpose?” And no matter how tidy you thought you were you find yourself clutching onto all the useless items saying NO! I need this!

Over the last few months, before the Lord began to speak to me about nesting.. I  found myself praying this prayer over and over….

“Lord will you come in as the architect of my soul and will you change my insides so that how I look internally and in the spirit realm is identical to the blueprint you hold in heaven. Lord I give you permission to do whatever you need to do to bring me into alignment with your plans for me. Open up old and dusty rooms / knock down walls / build new rooms Lord, move the furniture around, let light in, re-wallpaper the walls… God do whatever you need to do!”

Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you. Exodus 25:9

And God responds when we pray like this.... He sends His Holy Spirit and teams of angels with sledgehammers and building equipment and drills and paintbrushes, and things get knocked down and moved around and … it's messy and it's inconvenient and it's uncomfortable!! If you've had any building work done in a house you are actually living in you will know how it feels…. BUT it is not in vain because you know it will be amazing when it is finished.

This is a season RIGHT NOW! where the Lord is releasing angels over His bride to bring her into her destiny! 

See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Exodus 23:20

He is doing a deep clean so that she will be pure. He is opening up rooms previously locked in darkness and He is flooding them with divine light. He is bringing order where chaos ruled. He is throwing away things / structures that may have served us well in the past but actually moving forwards will be useless. 

There is a generation (in the world and in the church) who have not been fed the living, dynamic (Rhema) word of the Lord. They have been abandoned and un-parented and unschooled in the things of the Kingdom and in the wisdom of the cross, but they are coming. The harvest is coming and the Lord is nesting His church so that she will be made ready for the harvest of desperate souls, for the babies that are coming, (for whom popular psychology and 5 steps to a better you will not cut it!) who are parched and thirsty for Living Water and who are hungry and famished for the bread of heaven; the LIVING Word.

This is the LIVING word, the now word, the Rhema word that comes from the place of intimacy with Him. The word that we eat and digest so that it becomes a part of the fibre of our being. Mummy birds feed their babies on food they have already eaten themselves; if we have not first feasted on Him we will have nothing to bring. He is nesting His church so that she will be ready to receive the babies and she will be ready to receive Him. (Matthew 25:40)

But He will not do any of this in our lives unless He is invited; unless He is given permission! He won’t come unless we are hungry and earnestly desiring and desperate for Him and for His Kingdom to invade our lives. 

If you are happy with how things have always been...with the status quo, If you want to keep the door locked on the hidden chaos, fear, doubt and addictions and if your only hunger is to return to “normality” then He will leave you alone.

What a terrifying prospect.. To be left alone by God.. because of pride and lack of hunger for Him and His Kingdom. 

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. John 6:35

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. Revelation 22:17