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Pioneers, December and January are a strategic time of healing and detoxing, a time when God is doing a deep healing and deliverance in those of you who have been in a pioneering and ground-breaking season.
You have been in a season where you entered the battlefield, and it's felt like you haven't left, and it's taken its toll on you. You feel battle-weary and in need of an internal overhaul.
Many of you have felt like you've hit a wall in your spirit and mind, and also physically. Unless you are healed and refreshed, you won't be able to step into anything in 2024.
Pioneering Trauma
The other week, as I was praying, the Lord said to me, "My pioneers need to know when it's time to stop and rest." Then He said, "My pioneers need to know when it's a season to BATTLE and when it's a season to SETTLE."
I began to think of our journey and how it's been a dance between the two, but the last three years have been a BATTLE, and pioneers have been severely wounded in the process. The battle has been fierce, and the casualties have been high. Many pioneers who started out fresh-faced and full of life are now depleted and dealing with the long-term effects of continual hard ground and repeated wounding from the dangerous path.
It's begun to create a trauma mindset in pioneers and pioneer families. It's begun to affect how you see and respond to life and shut down the faith and ferocity you need that fuels your journey... But then I heard the Lord say, "Pioneers, I am healing your wounds!"
"'But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,' declares the LORD, 'because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.'" (Jeremiah 30:17)
Nomads Finding Rest
Right now, many nomadic pioneers are in a place of feeling spiritually and mentally dizzy. You had been on the risky, "pay whatever price" faith journey, and it led you to many strange and obscure seasons that don't yet make sense. It was a wild goose chase, where things didn't always work or come together, but you knew God led you there. And now, after many years, it feels like you have stepped off the merry-go-round, and your spiritual equilibrium is out. Your head is spinning, and you don't know how to put your bags down. All you have ever known is the "GO," and now you are in the place where God is bringing you into a landing, and it's hard to do.
After your head stops spinning, what happens is that you begin to see all the things that need attention now that you have stopped. Your heart needs time to be still. Your soul is crying out for refreshment and rest. Nomadic pioneers, choose to rest. Don't run into your next thing just yet before you get refreshed. (Photo via Pixabay)
The Darkroom Season
Pioneers, I know you have been in a darkroom season. It's a season where the enemy has not only been raging hard against you, but also where it feels like the lights are out; Heaven seems quiet; you are dreaming less, and you have no idea where you are going. It is like you were paving a new path, then someone turned the lights off. Now you can't see, and you don't have any insight into where you are going or what God is saying.
This can easily be diagnosed as a "failure season," but isn't a darkroom where photographs go to be developed? What if this darkroom is not a dead end but the beginning of a new chapter – perhaps a revealing? Regardless, the darkroom can often multiply the state of woundedness in the pioneer.
The Detox
The eunuchs who do nothing (those who produce no spiritual fruit, or leave no spiritual legacy) have dragged your name through the mud because your "yes" exposes their disobedience. The Athaliahs have come after you because you are pure-hearted and without guile. Jezebel has been after you because you can't be bought and don't dance with culture. The secret saboteurs close to you have created campaigns to discredit you and shut doors. And, well, let's say it: Some family and friends think you have lost your marbles, so they have been throwing daggers and doubts at you the whole time. But... you have kept pioneering anyway, mighty warrior! Wow, what a feat! But, let's be honest, it has taken its toll, and right now you are feeling like a boxer the day after a big fight. You didn't feel it months ago, but today you do, and the Lord is now DE-SLIMING you and healing your wounds.
He is pouring His oil and wine over you and restoring you to total health. He is breaking soul ties and strongholds you didn't even know you had, setting you completely free, so that you can be UNLATCHED, UNHINGED and UNLEASHED for tomorrow's assignment.
Turning Back the Clock: Old Triggers and Crisis Response
On the 1st of December, I had a dream where I was reliving a painful memory I had forgotten from my childhood, and in the dream, God redeemed it and spoke new life over it. When I woke, the Lord said, "I have to go back to launch you forward."
Right now, many are feeling the sudden influx of triggers and past pain and PTSD coming up out of nowhere.
"Didn't I deal with that?" Many are saying. But this is a deeper cleanse to create a greater capacity inside of you for the days ahead. There have been some subtle, sabotaging mindsets that have been clinging to you from those memories, and you won't be able to move ahead effectively while still thinking in that way.
"But why am I being triggered the way I am? It feels like everything is erupting inside of me!"
Yes, it's all coming to the surface right now, because God is not only healing you of your wounds, but He's also recalibrating your emotions and mind, and retraining you in how you see and respond to things around you.
A battle season can teach you to react in a non-Spirit-led way. You swing your sword at anything that comes near. You rush to put out every fire you see. You have been cursed and betrayed by so many people that you begin to see everyone as the enemy. Your heart gets burned so often that you hide it behind many layers of self-protection. Essentially, you live in a constant state of fight or flight. The fight-or-flight response refers to the physiological reaction that occurs in the presence of something mentally or physically terrifying.
You have lived in that place long enough, even for decades, and the Lord is healing you from the triggers of the past and the reactions they cause in you now. It's survival mode at its finest, and that MUST BREAK BEFORE YOU CROSS OVER!
The Threshold
Many pioneers have been at this threshold for too long. It's the place of tension between the new day and the night of the soul. You have been stuck, feeling broken and battered, knowing morning is coming, but unsure of how to get there. (Photo via Pxhere)
Many have been like Jacob wrestling the angel, and now daybreak has finally come, but your hip is out; you are walking with a limp. And while your name has been changed and your new day is before you, you need to heal before you can even take a step.
Not Alone in the Fire
To end this word, I want to share an encounter I had with Jesus last week, which I believe the Lord gave me for the pioneers. I went into a vision where I was standing in a furnace with Jesus, but it wasn't hot or scary. It felt like the safest place to be. Then I asked Him why I was in there. He looked at me, smiled, and replied to my question, "You and many are in the refiner's fire because you have asked for more than most."
"What have I asked for?" I asked, needing to know specifics.
"All of Me and none of the world."
Then I broke down. I could feel the fire hitting my heart and soul. I could feel it breaking down the trauma and weariness that had come from being in the battle for so many years without seeing an end. I could feel it tearing down constructs I had built in the wilderness over the past three years, where I had believed it was on me. I could feel the fire hitting the fear and anxiety that had started to build up, causing me to hold back instead of step into new frontiers. I could feel the toll of the nomadic years beginning to kindle like a slow burn, but one I didn't realize needed to go. I could suddenly feel the blows I had taken from principalities but had just ignored them. I could feel the fire of many words burning away; at first there were only a few, then they streamed in like a dirty river of curses and judgments.
As this happened, I began to say, "My life has been a long battle, and I need rest!" Then something happened that I didn't expect. Very simply, and smothered in so much freedom, He said to me, "What makes you think this life is your own?"
Then He started to laugh hysterically, and I came out of the encounter.
I feel like I had this encounter for those of us who are pioneering and have been doing so for some time. This is a message that's on the Lord's heart for us, showing us why we are in this process. We are in the fire with Jesus – the good kind, the freeing kind; the kind of fire where wounds are healed, hearts are reconnected, and the road ahead gets cleared while we linger there.
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Nate Johnston
Everyday Revivalists
Email:Â everydayrevivalists@gmail.com
Website:Â nateandchristy.co
Nate Johnston is a prophetic voice and worshiper who has a heart to see sons and daughters unleashed into passionate friendship with God and an effective supernatural lifestyle. Through his ministry school "Everyday Revivalists," he leads people from the basics of the Gospel through to being sent and released into their mission field, as well as championing and raising up emerging prophetic voices around the world. His burning cry and desire is to see the Body of Christ become a beacon for the lost by raising up a generation that walks in the love and power of God, representing Him well. Nate and his wife Christy have three daughters, Charlotte, Sophie, and Ava and live in Colorado Springs, CO.
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