Hang up Your Twenty-Year Mantle
While messy awakening is shaking the world stage, there is something more personal taking place that the Lord keeps speaking to me about. Right now, the personal process many are going through is the hanging up of a twenty-year mantle. Yes, it's that specific. Trace back your years. Look at your timeline.
When the Lord spoke this to me, He said, "Will you hang up your twenty-year mantle?"
Instantly in my spirit the name "Laban" came to mind, and we know the story of Jacob serving Laban. He served him for seven years for Rachel but was deceived and was given Leah instead. So he served another seven years and received Rachel. Then he served a final six years to get the flocks he wanted and the ability to COME OUT FROM UNDER LABAN (see Genesis 29–31).
These timelines are key to this message and prophetic for what many have been through. Here's a prophetic snapshot to give you more insight.
The First Seven Years: The "Saul Years" (Genesis 29:18–25)
These were the years where you gave your strength and best years, expecting a reward, but woke up to disappointment and deception. You were faithfully serving leaders who appeared godly, but they manipulated, controlled, and gaslit you. Your loyalty was met with betrayal, often by Christian brothers you trusted deeply.
These years felt like they were stolen, as if your youth and energy were cast like pearls. The labor was intense but bore no lasting fruit, because the soil was defiled with spiritual abuse. You began to question your own discernment, wondering if your sacrifice was in vain.
These were years of being in the atmosphere of leaders and brothers who were insecure and jealous of your anointing. This was a season of invisible warfare, disguised in spiritual language, yet marked by internal suppression over time. The betrayal cut deep because it was from those closest to you, even family. You were building something you thought was righteous, but you were actually building man's kingdom.
The Second 7 Years: Wilderness and Pressing Into Obedience (Genesis 29:27–30)
You stepped out in obedience to God's voice, leaving behind the old system, but walked into a wilderness of the unknown. These were lonely years marked by deep consecration, where the motives of your heart were tested in fire. You chose purity over platform and hiddenness over hype, and it cost you relationships, reputation, and comfort.
The fruit you saw felt significant and foundational but not yet the fullness of what was promised. People you expected to stand with you slowly withdrew, as the refining fire exposed them and your path with the Lord. These were the years where survival and obedience coexisted, pushing forward in passion and worship.
Your reward was not recognition but closeness with God in secret, and the oil of intimacy produced isolation to protect you. It was years of good fruit but still felt limited.
The Final 6 Years: Preparation and Impending Exodus (Genesis 30:25–43)
You began to see visible fruit and multiplication, but it came within a system that couldn't steward your calling, so God started preparing you to break free. Your labor was blessed by God, but the structure you were under placed a ceiling on your destiny. You were still under someone else's authority, building something that could not carry your future, so God started showing you how to dream. (Photo via Unsplash)
Then the warfare started, because the enemy could see what was coming. There was an internal stirring that you couldn't ignore, the sense that this wasn't your final destination and something drastic was coming.
There was clarity that this season was transitional, a place of survival, not legacy. God began to whisper to you to step out and leave everything you knew behind.
Can You Relate?
I believe these three seasons can speak so much into the periods of time we have been through. So, whether you've seen the full twenty years or not, can you relate to any of these?
This is not just personal but corporate. We have been at a threshold, and God wants to lead us out from under the religious era we have been groomed in and in bondage to.
Think about the name Laban, which means "white" (Strong's H3837), and (in Laban's case) can symbolize purity on the outside but represent false systems, hidden motives, and casting your pearls aside to build man's kingdoms. This is a picture of man-made systems that look holy but are built on control and drain you of your pure anointing.
Right now, that is why God is delivering you. Leaving Laban is about more than leaving a person or place; it's about leaving behind performative Christianity, people pleasing, and the systems that use your anointing but never recognize or allow you to step into your fullness—much like the Church, which has been held back and going around the mountain and not advancing.
It's all led us here, a very messy and chaotic threshold moment. People feel lost because they have let go of the old mantle, season, and even people. But they feel vulnerable and are left asking, "What is this? This makes no sense. Where do I go?"
Crossing the Jabbok Brook
You see, Jacob's true destiny wasn't activated until he crossed the Jabbok brook, and that's what the twenty years of training was for: wilderness and battling for the promise. Then he finally came into his FULFILLMENT.
But to even get there, Jacob had to leave Laban behind and spiritually detach from everything—the manipulation, control, and performance. He had to deal with his head, his mindsets, his hurt and pain, and his trauma. He even had to deal with his deeper wound of betraying his brother.
You see, this is a deliverance moment for you and me and the corporate Body of Christ. Messy doesn't even cut it. Moments of crossing aren't easy. They are painful, risky, and lonely. It's endless warfare.
In Jacob's story, he was wrestling with the angel of the Lord until daybreak. What if that's your "dark night of the soul," your wrestle, and your Gethsemane? It either takes you out or makes you.
This is the moment where identity shifts, where we are no longer Jacob, the striver and survivor, and we become Israel, the one who wrestles with God and overcomes and inherits the full promise.
This is where many are standing right now. They are standing at the banks of Jabbok, in between who they were and who they're called to become. The Laban years are behind you—the pain, the waiting, the obedience, the shaping, and the warfare. But now you're at the place of wrestling and unmantling so much of what you have been carrying, and you are being recommissioned.
You can't take old names into this next season. You can't take the striving, the labels, or the lies. It's deeper than just a spring clean. It's a death. Let me say that again: It's a death, because the kingdom many of us have been serving has been compromised. It's man's system that has come with heavy yokes. Your mantle has been graffitied with man's labels for so long, it's even hard to recognize what it once looked like. (Photo via Unsplash)
Right now, God is dealing with more than you can see. He is dealing with cracks, chasms, deep ravines, and massive cancers of the soul; demonic assignments that have been choking you, holding your voice for ransom, and robbing your home, your marriage, and your kids. It's been a subtle yet murderous spirit sent to take you out slowly. The remedy? Take off the old. Face it. Cast it off. Cross over.
You see, God sees that these mantles that we are wearing are carrying bondage with them, as well as authority mixed with error and chaos... And so, when God is removing an old mantle from you, it also removes the snakes. Let me say that again: God is exposing the snakes. He is exposing the faults of your foundations.
When God removes an old jacket from your shoulders, He's also removing pain and trauma, all in one movement.
Prior to the Hebraic new year, I kept seeing that Rosh Hashanah would be a massive trajectory shift for so many people, with an era's worth of bondage being released but also authority and unction, where we would step out of one thing into another—a limited anointing into a double portion.
Lastly, on the 22nd of September (in Australian time), I was up watching the memorial service for Charlie Kirk when I saw 4:14 on my phone and heard the Lord say, "You have pierced through the veil."
What did this mean?
Instantly, I saw a vision of people breaking through this film of sorts—an invisible barrier. They looked ferocious and were breaking past so much religiosity and lies that had been holding them back.
The veil? It was the veil torn in the temple when Jesus died. It represents the finished work.
John the Baptist caused the Church to take Heaven by force, and that's what I was seeing.
We have been in another season where God has been awakening the Church to what is available through the finished work, and it's led us here, to an unshackling moment.
So, throw off the mantle of the past two decades and let's cross over with the Rock of Ages. There's a new mantle waiting for you.
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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 Orange County, CA.
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