Re-emergence (calling out the prophetic!)

The view from the Mersey-rail underground train was clear enough.

Rows of new low cost housing stood in the once congested streets that at one time hosted thousands of run down terraced two ups two downs.

The area still didn't look too good.

Still congested.

A bit overcrowded.

Still with a run down feel.

I was looking at the very streets I grew up in.

A tough area, an area where probably my inner resolve developed into an essential strength for the rest of my life.

I looked at a group of kids kicking a football around on the same bit of Tarmac that I once kicked a ball on.

I saw my first school, still with the barbed wire protecting its perimeter. I was never sure whether that was to keep people out or to protect the public from us kids!

I thought back to a time in my early life where I thought I would live forever in those streets.

I never even imagined there was a world outside that one.

Peering out of the train window, my life kind of flashed forward through many years of my life to the now.

I have come a long way since those early days.

Last night I was reading scripture. I read Jeremiah 38.

I was struck by the fact that Jeremiah, a major prophetic speaker into the times that he lived, was thrown into a Cistern, and sank into the muddy base, for speaking a word that the King and his officials didn't like.

So he was trapped.

But he did get out.

A guy called Ebed-Melech convinced the king to have a rethink and get Jeremiah out of the Cistern, because he knew that Jeremiah's word was a serious word from God.

This action by Ebed-Melech, allowed the prophetic voice to be brought back into play.

Those streets I grew up on seem just like that, a Cistern.

Cisterns were really just spaces for holding water. They were often pear shaped and very deep. They usually had a kind of three foot diameter opening in the ground.

If you, like Jeremiah, were ever thrown down one? Unless an Ebed Melech was around, you wouldn't be able to get out.

There was a time when I really thought that I wasn't getting out of the life I led back then.

But I did get out.

Not only from those tough streets and an equally tough life, but from a life that was heading nowhere that is until Jesus, came and rescued me.

I guess there are resonances here.

Yet that's not what I want to write here in this post.

Lately I have been thinking how my own denomination, the Salvation Army in the UK, really needs a release of the prophetic. It kind of feels like many voices are trapped in the cistern so to speak. Things are hotting up, prayer is doing better, people are understanding worship much more deeply, social action is being taken very seriously, all positive great things and we praise God for that. Yet alongside everything we do? The prophetic has to be released. The voices have to speak out. Right now the Salvation Army needs to listen to what God is speaking into our times and act on it.

Maybe this post is a bit of an Ebed- Melech word? Calling the prophetic out of the cistern?

So if you have something to say and you believe it is from God? Speak it out.

If you feel you have something to share ? Share it.

I am speaking out tonight that God is calling out the prophetic from out of the cistern, do not stay there. However hard it is to speak out, however people receive it, be strong and raise your voices.

I believe God is calling for a re-emergence of the Jeremiah's!

For a time such as this.