Fight to Possess Your Mantle!

We became frustrated as leaders of our church about eight years or so into our journey.

In 2005 my husband was involved in a serious motorcycle accident that resulted in the amputation of his lower left leg. While that story could probably be a book, the bottom line is, this is where the significant warfare against revival began. While the accident itself was evidence of the warfare, the impact of the spiritual battle related to the accident wasn’t fully understood for many years.

Present Pain is About Future Purpose

My husband, as well as our daughter and I, navigated several years of personal adjustment while also attempting to facilitate a revival mantle of which we did not yet realize the value of or the potential.  What we couldn’t see then was that our pain of the moment was leading us to an authority of a mantle. Never forget, your present pain is always about your future purpose. It’s not about the moment it’s about the momentum that God wants to launch you into. 

 It took almost a decade for us to make the full turn into revival.  By 2013, all of these unrelenting attacks set us back physically, emotionally and especially corporately in our church body. The enemy’s warfare against revival is strategic.  He recognizes mantles of grace more than we so he will formulate a battle strategy to take you out before you arrive.  

The spirits of Jezebel (an intimidating, manipulating spirit that’s after your spiritual authority),  and Korah (the uprising of people that believe they know more than you and want to usurp your authority). As well as an Absalom spirit (sent to divide in order to build Satan’s own kingdom), a Python spirit (sent to restrict and constrict in all areas, especially prayer and the prophetic). Last, but certainly not least, a religious spirit (an anti-freedom, settling spirit, acceptance of the status quo) were consistently arising in our corporate midst to bring a push back and resistance to the release of revival.  

Many times it would take us long periods to recoup personally and corporately from these attacks.   All of these attacks are launched to wear you down and make you quit. During those years we repeatedly faced them all. What we realize now is that every battle was training us to wear a mantle of revival that would host His presence, take territory, touch nations and train doorkeepers of revival. 

Never Settle

Before arriving at that point, however, we had reached a very low place in our resolve. Many times, it is at the point of desperation that revival is released. Our defenses are down and we come to the end of ourselves, we finally realize that we’re desperate for God to intervene. Unfortunately, our thought processes as spiritual leaders often become tainted to settle for anything that will bring a significant crowd and give the appearance of success whether it has a move of God on it or not. You don’t need to be a revivalist to make this happen, just a good CEO. This takes low-level spiritual sacrifice and usually brings more glory to us than God. So, desperation, depletion and digression are, unfortunately, how God must get our attention to make us choose Him and the move of His spirit above all the other things that bid for our attention to achieve success. 

 The manifestation of His sustained presence that continually results in transformation is undeniably the only way that Jesus wants to build His Church. My prayer is that I can make you hungry to push aside the models of a successful church and run for the mantle…of revival. 

Some of the battles that we walked through were of significant proportion and some minor but all affect you as a spiritual leader more deeply than you realize.  The enemy wants to beat you down and, unfortunately, we didn’t understand the magnitude of the spiritual warfare in that season. We knew enough to know it was the devil, yet not enough to know how to rise above it victoriously and consistently.  

As I stated earlier, it’s very important that you understand the type of warfare against a revival culture.  The enemy doesn’t want you to press into the fullness of the Spirit, because the more you press, the more of the tangible presence of heaven you release on earth and the more territory you take.  If he can keep you nominal in your spiritual pursuit and corporate pursuit then he knows he will keep you natural.  But if we ever get a taste of more, he knows it will lead us out of natural into the supernatural.

Big Church or Big Revival? 

In the modern church era we have created a man-focused, entertainment-based, humanistic “pop” Church culture that is far from presence-driven.  There may be good music with very talented musicians and even a nice, palatable, encouraging word or “talk” given by a charismatic communicator. However, the substance and tangibility of His realm, presence and glory are missing. 

The modern church has evolved into how big we can become in name, numbers and notoriety rather than how big our hearts are in sacrifice zeal and passion for God.  While I am not opposed to big churches and believe that God wants to build and bless big churches, He also wants a big move of His Holy Spirit in those big churches.  We must never forget that before 3000 was added to the Acts Church they had a full-on Holy Ghost encounter in the Upper Room.  

Heaven opened over those people.  They found Bethel.  They found Peniel.  They found revival.  They became doorkeepers in that Upper Room. Everything that happened after that was a result of their spiritual encounter when suddenly a sound came, a wind came, and the fire came and that was when revival came.  Jesus sent them UP (to the Upper Room) before He sent them OUT.  They became doorkeepers before they became soul winners. Afterward, everything they touched had the imprint of revival on it and the result was a world turned upside for the Kingdom of God.

Mission Statement Vexation

When we came to our church in 1997, it was the peak of the “build a vision and mission statement” philosophy. The theory was: If you keep saying this vision and mission over and over to the people, they will buy into it and then your church will grow.  Everywhere you went that’s all you heard. While we believed in both vision and mission and making a statement of it, we also found that it alone was empty.  

Just working a mission statement without the Spirit behind it was draining and unfulfilling to us.  Called to be revivalists, we found that the confines of just a paragraph that contained a statement was severely limiting to what was in our spirits. These strategies seemed hollow at best and frustrating at worst. However, as young pastors we had an ambition to be successful in our own eyes and others. So, we were naïve enough to try anything that came down the pike to make that perceived success happen, even if it compromised the mantle of revival.

We began to see some numerical growth for about the first five years or so, but then things began to shift in the spiritual atmosphere over our city. The ease with which we engaged the Spirit in our services became more arduous and, at that time, we didn’t understand what was happening in the spirit realm.  We looked to the natural more than the spiritual as the culprit.  We continued to have a level of His presence, as well as altar calls for salvation and spiritual encounter.

As time went on, however, we were digressing from the spiritual press that it takes to release and sustain a revival culture. This was not intentional, but because of the demonic resistance, the personal ambition and the added trendy pressure of “this is how you grow a church now,” we began to turn away from the most crucial elements that release and sustain revival; passionate prayer, intentional altars, uninhibited truth in preaching and building a spiritual people. 

All of this was fueling our frustration in which we found ourselves just prior to the outbreak of revival. It brought us to the place where we had to decide if we were going to build this thing from a mission statement and a few good man-made ideas or were we going to pay the price to go all out for glory, revival, Holy Spirit, and transformational altar encounters? We had to wrestle with the fact that the only way we would be truly fulfilled was to go with the latter. To go with the first required good organizational skills and a corporate mindset, the latter required a complete death to self and any desire for a personal reputation. We knew we could go one route and possibly increase the church size but we could never forget that we were brought here to be doorkeepers of revival. We knew that anything less wasn’t our assignment and we had to get real honest and commit to who and what God had mantled us to be.  

What IS the Definition of “Church”?

Every believer, church, pastor and spiritual leader goes through seasons of definition and discovery of their assignment. However, the attacks we experienced were more than personal, it was an assassination attempt of the enemy to silence a revival sound that would literally impact nations. These attacks brought a personal and corporate unsettledness that resulted in a struggle with identity. Therefore, we must keep a strong resolve to stay true to what God has mantled us to be in birthing, building and sustaining a revival culture.  

Unsettledness and lack of resolve bring an uncertainty of the call. So be very aware that if you’re frequently changing your culture, trying to share revival culture with another, or have any doubts at all, it can bring an identity crisis that stifles revival.  But when you embrace the mantle and establish it, everyone is secure knowing and having found identity and that it literally frightens the enemy. The devil is fearful of the one who knows their mantle, identity and assignment. God cannot fully release you into your destiny until you have settled all of these issues. This is why we mustn’t be swayed by concepts that lead us away from revival culture. Be confident of this one thing: when you host His presence, everything changes for the good.  It may not always be comfortable, but it will always be spiritually profitable. 

While we can learn from the values and insight from certain circles and camps of the Body of Christ, we came to understand that The Church was really becoming more of a corporation than it was about camp meeting. the moving of the Spirit and an encounter with God. The praise and worship had become a performance and the shout of the Church was hollow, the prayer meeting empty and its spiritual authority low because the Spirit was not being pursued.  

Yes, there was a Church, but there was no Bethel, no Peniel, no entry point for heaven and our hearts were becoming very hungry for the open heaven at Bethel, the face of God at Peniel and the fire found in that Upper Room. We came to the place that if this is all there is to church then we really didn’t want to do it.

This Day We Fight!

So, in 2013, out of a desperation to see God do something real and authentic in our lives and church, we drove a spiritual stake into the spiritual ground as we made this declaration: “This Day we Fight for what we’re Mantled to be!” This phrase was linked to all those years of warfare that had tried to keep us from our mantle, yet it was this declaration that set the revival mantle in motion. We didn’t plan to say it, it was a prophetic declaration brought forth by the Spirit with a group of about 75 of our core leaders.  The Spirit breathed on it and we acted on it and have been acting on that declaration to this very day. 

A declaration is a powerful weapon because life and death are in the power of your tongue. Our declaration came into agreement with the mantle and assignment of sustained revival. And with that we began to fight. Why use the word “fight”? Because there will always be resistance from the enemy in pursuit of revival. The fight will never cease, and neither will we! We won’t settle. 

We were mantled to be an entry point for revival.  A place that hosts a sustained move of the Holy Spirit until Jesus comes back. We were mantled to host Him, not parties that pacify.  We were mantled to entertain the Spirit, not people.  We were mantled to wait on Him not rush Him.  We were mantled to lead people back to the fire of God, at the altar of God, worshipping the One True God. At our moment of declaration, we were finished with status quo, nominal, modern church mentality of superficial success and we engaged in a resolve to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to keep the fire burning on the altar and the door open to revival. With this we began our pursuit of HIM.