‘Sup skillets. I’ve got a news flash for ya’ll. I know it’s long, but it’s about your calling, so skim it and see if you’re a watchman.

Now, all of you know me, and I’m very fun and light-spirited and I love the bridal paradigm between God and his church (Isaiah 54:5 and all of SOS), but every once and a while I end up in the Psalm 104:4 reality and now here I am. Both realities are the church: the warrior bride, but let me be a warrior for just a moment:

Joel 2:2: “Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come.” The whole book of Joel is a complete story, end to end, of this generation and our children after us. So if you wanna know what the world will look like in 30 years, the book of Joel is your answer. Joel 2 talks about the church in this generation, and this is his opening line to his description of our generation, and the events therein.

Isaiah 42:13: “The LORD will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his enemies.” Isaiah had a vision tucked away in verses 10-17 about a generation thousands of years in the distance. Most of Isaiah 43 is about Christ in AD 30, but there was no way Isaiah would ever write about the first coming of Christ without hinting a measure at His second coming (hence this snippet). How do we know this references the second coming? Answer: Isaiah 62 and Revelation 19-22. How do we know this hints at our generation? Answer: our nearness in current events to the completion of all the prophecies concerning the Day of the Lord (and Joel 2… and the prayer and worship revolution). You’ll read these passages and feel something tugging you just a little. Let me explain:

Jeremiah 4:19: “Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry.” Jeremiah had many of the same snippets that Isaiah had, and he, too, wrote concerning the second coming of Christ and about THIS time in history concerning current events. This verse perfectly captures the tugging (or even yanking) that happens to those who God is calling to be watchmen. Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel (and Jesus and Paul and Timothy and the Disciples and Martin Luther and Zinzendorf) were all watchmen for the Lord, and the Lord is calling forth watchmen for this generation:

Isaiah 62:1-7: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent… 6 I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” Here are the watchmen. How do we know this is about this generation? Psalm 132:3-5, David makes a vow to the Lord while he started a worship and pray revolution that has carried to this day: “I will not enter my house or go to my bed- I will allow no sleep to my eyes, no slumber to my eyelids, till I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob." When David said that, God raised him up to be a watchman, and David himself prophesied about the second coming of Christ (Psalm 2, etc.). David built a house of prayer and staffed it with 5,000 musicians and singers who did Isaiah 62:6-7 day and night, 24-7. Every once and a while, that calling returns, and it did so throughout the kings of Israel. Then the Moravians answered the call to night and day prayer, and Zinzendorf led a prayer revolution. Thousands of years later, that same call has erupted all over the earth today. Unknowingly, in 1999, several different parties received a calling on different sides of the earth, and they all made the vow in the same month and started a 24-7 house of prayer according to David’s vow. Since then, 24-7 prayer has been igniting revivals all over the earth, and you and I are currently witnessing the greatest breakthrough in missions work EVER! All of this coincides with God’s building watchmen all over the earth.

Now, I’m not calling for a 24-7 house of prayer in Olathe, but I am searching out the watchmen. There are already houses of 24-7 prayer all over the earth, multiple in all 50 states, so I’m not looking for a 24-7 house of prayer in Olathe, but I know the watchmen are here. You look at this generation and you see something different that you can’t explain. You hear the word “revolution” and you heart skips a beat, and you believe that this generation will see a huge shift in how Christians live. You may have even heard about it from the Lord, or seen it in a vision. You’re willing to die for the Word of the Lord because it has consumed you, and you’re ready to see the church unite and become the bride she was called to be in this generation. Guess what! You’re a watchman! And you’re definitely not alone! Adults and teenagers all over the earth and discovering an outpouring of the Spirit of God over this generation, and watchmen and being set up all over the earth!

What the heck is a watchman?! A watchman is straight up crazy. Not really, but if you ask the world, we’re straight up crazy (1 Corinthians 1:25)!

1) Watchmen are prayer warriors. We pray from sun-up to sun-down, and even then we love praying at 3 AM in the sweetness of God’s heart in the morning. We intercede for just about everything, meaning we stand in the gap and add our prayers to the incense rising to the thrown in Revelation 4-5. We pray with boldness for our schools, and for our peers, and our jobs, and our churches, and for the random waitress at Applebee’s, and for the dude that just flipped us off in traffic. We pray like Jesus is coming! Ha ha ha!

2) Watchmen are lovesick worshipers of Jesus. The church is the bride of Christ, and watchmen set the example for extravagant longing for the heart of God. We do the Psalm 27:4 thing “one thing I seek, to dwell in the house of the Lord and gaze upon his beauty, etc.” We are the “greet one another with a heavenly kiss” people, and dramatically in love with Jesus.

3) We are the “Hey I quit my job so I could be a watchman” people. Plain and simple. Being a watchman is a job, and David paid for 5,000 singers and musicians to serve as watchmen in his house of prayer. So, do not quit your job today (unless you read that statement and heard the voice of God say “quit now.”), because you can be a watchman and still work (be a watchman at work), but as time progresses, and you become more and more consumed, you’ll discover that your calling is way far away from McDonalds and is more geared towards carrying crosses around the world (kind of thing). Do you want to know what Ezekiel’s job was?

Ezekiel 33:7-9 “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. 8 When I say to the wicked, 'O wicked man, you will surely die,' and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. 9 But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.”

And from that point on, Ezekiel was a living dead guy (Galatians 2:20), and he started to see things like Ezekiel 37 (Ezekiel 37 spawned the current 24-7 prayer movement in Europe with “you see dry bones, but I see an army”), which is directly tied to you and me. Which leads me to my next point:

4) Watchmen are messengers. Watchmen aren’t always Ezekiel kind of messengers, but they are messengers. Watchmen don’t always hear the audible voice of the Lord, but many of them do, and perhaps you have. What does this mean? In reality, you get attacked a lot more. No one listens to you, you struggle lots with porn and lust, and you struggle with your thought life, and you struggle with your reputation or appearance, just to name a few. Why? Because Satan doesn’t want anyone to hear the word of the Lord through you, he wants to destroy your eyes so you can’t see the Lord, he wants to corrupt your thoughts so you can’t connect with God, and he wants you to look like a fool so you won’t be taken seriously. But you hear God, and what he was to say for this generation, and you say it, some of you with a “Thus says the Lord” attitude and some of you with a “the Lord has been highlighting this…”

Why would Satan sacrifice 40,000,000+ unborn babies to heaven through abortion, just in the U.S.? If you really think about it, such destruction among infants has only happened three times in history: Moses, Jesus, and now. Moses: the Jews were overpopulating Egypt, and Pharaoh was scared so he killed off a bunch of babies. Jesus: Herod was scared of an old prophesy about the Jew’s Messiah supposedly taking his thrown, so he killed a bunch of Jewish infants. Both of those times, God was sending a great deliverer to his people, Moses and Jesus, and Satan tried to kill the deliverer early on. So what about today? Now: Satan is scared out of his pants because this generation is going to witness the ultimate deliverer’s second coming, Jesus Christ, and Satan’s ultimate destruction, and he wants to thin our ranks. Satan doesn’t want watchmen on the walls that pray his demons out of schools, or that worship God day and night, or that pray for Jesus to come back. Satan doesn’t want generals in the Lord’s army to lead revolutions on earth that lead to his downfall. Satan would rather see billions of babies worldwide go to heaven than see then enter earth, because we are his last generation, and he knows it.

So I’m looking for more the watchmen in Olathe. Who hears the voice of the Lord for this generation? Who sees what’s happening in this generation? Who feels that tugging on your heart? You may have never heard of this stuff before, but you feel the tugging anyway, and that’s perfect too. You may hate the term “watchmen,” and you’d rather say ‘revolutionary’ or ‘Gideon’ or ‘Jesus Freak’ or whatever; doesn’t matter.

And not everyone is a watchman… well I take that back, sort of. There are different watchmen, such as prophetic watchmen, intercessory watchmen, healing watchmen, demon-killing watchmen, song-writing watchmen, tongues-speaking watchmen, etc. You’ll find that a lot of these dimensions overlap.

What I’m really looking for is an intense prayer network. If all of the watchmen find each other in Olathe and start praying together and calling each other with prayer requests and speaking the word of the Lord together, Satan will get really pissed! Demons will get driven out of our schools if the watchmen rise up and say “HEY! God is bigger than these lies and I’m speaking and praying for truth!” So I’m looking for other watchmen who know they are going to be set on the wall as intercessors and warriors (and brides) of Christ. Alright watchmen (or whatever you are), let’s come together and start discovering who we really are…