Tonight, I want to release a prophetic word over our community that I really believe is important and the Lord has been speaking to me about this for many months and I haven't felt the release and I felt like today there's actually a release from the Lord to share it. What I have anticipated for over these next couple months is that this isn't primarily a season where we're going to have a lot of messages about your life getting better. So a lot of the sermons aren't going to be about how you can better your life, okay? Or how you can personally get closer to God or how you can personally.
So keep on going, I think that ends in November 2nd, keep on spending an hour a day with the Lord. But over the next two weeks, the messages are really going to be for our corporate body. So if you're a guest here, you're kind of just getting brought behind the scenes of what I believe the Lord is speaking over our community specifically. And then we're going to have three guest speakers in those following weeks.
So the next five weeks, there's going to be a couple messages here and then we've got guest speakers coming in November, three weeks in a row. And that last week is Dan Moller's conference. And so the identity conference has come in, we're excited about the identity conference. But I think that each one of these guest speakers that is coming in the next two weeks are really messages that the Lord is wanting to communicate to our whole church community.
And it's a now moment as Nicole was talking about, we're searching for a space, we're searching for a building, we have about 10 months left before it's moving time. And so it's a time of faith for us to continue to just press into the Lord. But I was on a retreat, a prayer retreat. And out of nowhere, I felt like the Spirit of God bubbled up an ache and along in my heart.
And I believe that it was actually something that he was putting inside of me, but he's intending that he would actually get deposited into your heart. And that it would be an ache and a desire in your heart. And I want to prepare each of you. Some of you guys are like me, you grew up evangelical, non-denominational, maybe you grew up like Katie and you're a Baptist kid, you know, and you grew up in Baptist and you're like, you're going to release a prophetic word, huh?
Like here we go. And you're like, oh, I thought they love Jesus and this is all over, you know, like prophetic word. And I want you to know regardless of your background, if it's Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, whatever it is, we believe as a community that God still speaks today. And what we can do is as we hear the Holy Spirit speak things to us, we always test it with the Scriptures.
And if it resonates with what the Scriptures say, then that's a good bonus. And then we submit it to others around us that are wise, that have history in the Lord. And we can submit that to them and they go, yeah, that's what the Lord is saying. And then we can follow the wisdom of the Spirit and peace.
And so there's, we test things that the Lord speaks to us, okay? And so this word has been tested. I want you to know that. But as I'm releasing this, I just want you to know that it's very much so in part as I'm sharing it.
So I'm sharing some mysteries that I believe the Lord has given to me as a prophetic word over our community. But I don't know fully exactly what it means. And I think that in the next three to five, maybe 10 years, we're going to look back and we're going to go, oh, that's what that meant, okay? And so please just know that there's not, you're not going to leave today going, well, now I know exactly what I'm supposed to do and where we're supposed to go.
And I even know the property that the Lord has, listen, we're all just kind of seen in part. Right? So the phrase that the Lord gave me was this. He said, I'm jealous.
No, he didn't say this. It actually came out from me that the Holy Spirit actually put this in my heart and I like said it to the Lord, okay? So, but it was originated in him. He said, in me, I had this longing of I'm jealous for your high places.
For you, you are worthy of the high places is like the phrase and the utterance that I felt as I'm in this prayer cabin in the middle of nowhere. And you're like, okay, that doesn't seem significant. And I knew when that was a prayer that came out of me that I didn't know anything, I didn't know what it meant. But all I knew is that he was worthy and that I was jealous of him getting the high places in the Twin Cities and him having the high place.
And the Lord began to unlock revelation throughout the scriptures about high places, all throughout the scriptures. And I'm going, Lord, if you're worthy of the high places, I want to know what you are worthy of. And so he started me in Genesis 12 where Abraham is offering Isaac, his son. And Abraham has this promise that he's going to have descendants that are more than the stars in the sky.
And then Abraham is directed by the Holy Spirit to go and sacrifice his promised son, Isaac. And he goes up to a mountain, a high place called Mount Mariah. Mariah means hills. And so he goes to this high place, this hill, this land of the hills.
And he goes onto a chosen mountain that God specifically told Abraham to go to. And he took wood and he laid his son, Isaac, on top of the wood. And he tied Isaac onto the wood and he was going to sacrifice his son. And then all of a sudden there was a ram that was caught in a thorn bush.
And it was the provision of the Lord. And the Lord said, don't touch your son. I've prepared a sacrifice in this high place. Well, many years later, about a thousand years.
So that moment happened in 2000 BC. So about 4000 years ago, a thousand years into the future, David sees this plot of land. And this plot of land is the same property, the same land that Abraham had offered Isaac for sacrifice. And David looks at this Mount Mariah, this piece of land that was at that time a threshing floor, and I'll talk about that.
And he said, I'm buying that piece of land for the Lord. And that would later be the temple, that would later be the land that the temple of Israel, the temple of Jerusalem, would be built on that plot of land, the same land. That in 2000 BC, Abraham offered Isaac was the same property that David purchased for the temple to be built on. But at that time, David, as he was, maybe you can turn to 2 Chronicles 3.
This is all going to kind of make sense by the end of this, okay? David had this cry of Psalm 132 that we've been talking about over the last couple months. David had this long, and he said, I'm not going to enter my house. I'm not going to get into my bed.
I'm not going to give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling place for the mighty one. So David, as the king of Israel, he goes, I don't want to give any rest. I don't want to experience any comfort until the Lord gets his place, until the Lord has his house. Why am I living in a mansion when the Lord doesn't have a building where he can gather with his people?
And he had this egg in this cry, and he said, this is the one thing that I want, that with a company of people, we would all look at you. It's the Psalm 27 reality. This David, Davidic cry, I just want to encounter you. I want to look at you.
I want to behold you all the days of my life. That was the longing of his heart. And David sees this plot of land, and he purchases this threshing floor, this property Mount where I am. Now, what is a threshing floor?
So from 2000 BC to 1000 BC, which is when David lived, there's about 1000 years of this land kind of being vacant. Right? Within that, there's a 500 year time where the nation of Israel, 400 year time where the nation of Israel is in slavery, Egypt and different land. Moses frees them, Joshua leads them into the promised land, and the promised land is where this mountain is Mount Moriah.
And as they go into the land, there's a journey of kings and judges, and there's all of this horrible history that happens in the book of Judges and the nation of Israel and King Saul happens in King David. But in King David's day, there's this man, let's look at 2 Chronicles 2, or I'm sorry, 3. There's someone that owns this plot of land that Abraham had tried to offer Isaac. I'm taking you through history lesson, just to, we're just taking a journey.
Then Solomon began to build a house of the Lord in Jerusalem on the land that David had purchased on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David, his father, at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebusite. So in ancient times, when there was a harvest that would happen, a wheat harvest, they would bring the wheat up to a hill, and it was called the threshing floor, and they would thrash that wheat so that the outer casing of the wheat would be broken off, and so that what would remain would be the good part of the wheat that could be used. And so as they did that, as they used oxen to kind of crush the wheat, it was threshed, that's why it's called threshing floor, that wheat was threshed. Then there was fire that was used, and the wind from it being a high place would actually blow through the wheat, and it would divide the good part of the wheat from the bat, the wheat in the chaff.
So, I'm in deep. Are we okay? Are you all right? Man, I know.
I know I'm taking you on a journey. Okay? This is a journey. All right?
Keep on leaning. So, David sees this plot of land and the threshing floor that he purchases, it represents so much. The threshing floor, what happens at the threshing floor is that it's a place of harvest. That's what I just talked about, right?
The wheat, the wheat harvest gets brought to the threshing floor. And then, so the threshing floor, and I'm talking figuratively here, but the threshing floor, the high place, is representative of a place of harvest. It's a place of multiplication. It's also a place of provision, right?
Because harvest means that there's provision. Do you remember when Abraham offers Isaac and then God provides a sacrifice? And Abraham calls Mount Moriah, he actually gives it a name. That it's the mountain of Jaira, Jehovah Jaira, the provider.
So the threshing floor, that high place, represents a place of provision. It represents a place of harvest. It represents a place of refinement. Okay?
It represents where there's a division between that which is not of God and that which is of God. Threshing floors also were a place of worship. Why was it a place of worship? Well, because there was always sacrifices being made on threshing floors.
Why was there sacrifices on threshing floors? Let me tell you. Because everyone would sacrifice to their gods so that the gods would provide for them. So foreign peoples, on those threshing floors, usually there's idols and worship, there's ashrapoles, there's sacrificial things happening on threshing floors.
On those high places, there are sacrifices because they're going, God, we're going to do a bunch of things so that you provide for our needs. Okay? So it's a place of worship. It's a place of sacrifice.
It's a place of intercession because when David establishes the temple, what happens? In the temple, there's sacrifices daily being prepared for the Lord. So all of these things are going off in my mind. You're worthy of the high place.
Okay? And I'm just kind of peering in, I'm leaning in, going, there's a lot of things here. What do you really mean? And then the Lord starts unlocking a thousand years after David.
Jesus walks onto the same property. He's actually carried onto the same high place property. He's eight days old. And Simeon and Anna had been praying for decades.
And they start declaring that this is the chosen anointed one of Israel and that he's going to take away the sins of the world as a sacrifice. My goodness. And then what happens is about 12 years later, Jesus walks into the same high place, the temple. And his parents are like, where have you been, Jesus?
And he's like, I'm about my father's business in the high place, on the chosen land of the Lord. All right. Well, then Jesus has his ministry. He begins his ministry.
And his ministry, he has two moments where he prants it, he doesn't prance. He walks in, he walks right into the temple and he starts throwing tables and he starts bringing refinement to the house of the Lord. And he says, this house, this high place will be a house of prayer. And he establishes it as a place of encounter and prayer and connection.
That's what that temple was, was it was a place of encounter and connection. So all these things are going off in my mind. I'm worthy. The Lord's declaring he is worthy of the high places in our city.
There's contested ground here. You know that the enemy was always attacking the threshing floor in the high place. All throughout the Old Testament, what would happen is when the nation of Israel was in harvest season, that's when the enemy started gathering. Because during harvest season, then the enemies would go, well, it's time to attack the threshing floor because then we're going to get the harvest from them, right?
And so it's contested ground. It has value, not only to the enemy, not only to the Lord, but also to the enemy. And there's this high ground that God is actually saying, I'm worthy of that in your city. And I have this ache in my heart to say, I believe you are and I want you to have the high places.
You're like me and you're going right into what are the high places in our city. I told the Lord. I said, Lord, the Twin Cities are flat. So I'm pulling up the topographic map, topographic.
I don't even know how you say that. I'm bringing, I'm looking and scanning where are those places that are high places amidst. I'm from Colorado. So it's like, high place is 14,000 feet.
The highest place in the Twin Cities is like 1,050. Because I already know all the high places. You're not going to learn anything that I don't already know about the high places in the city. I've scanned it.
Isn't that so funny? You always think, okay, this is a prophetic word. It must mean something practical. And then I looked at all the properties that are high places.
None of them are available. I don't know. But I want us to understand that we can get into the zone. And maybe you're like me, you get into the zone of like, oh, this is a prophetic word for the Lord to show me the exact location.
But there's a higher reality that the Lord wants to invite us into. And it doesn't have to be a practical one. It can actually be a spiritual reality that he's inviting us into as a people. But won't he do it.
I'm ready for a high place if there's a plot. Turn in your Bible to Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2 is where I want to bring us here. I'm going to try to be quick.
Ephesians 2 verse 22, it says this, actually we'll start in verse 21. The Lord through Paul is talking about unity in the body of Christ. And he says in verse 21, in whom the whole structure, the whole body is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. A set-apart temple in the Lord.
Verse 22, in him, you also, the Gentiles, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. In you, in him, and in you, you're going to get built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. This is the passage that the Lord brought me to after the high place where he gave me. And he said that it's not necessarily about the physical location, but it's actually a spiritual reality that we as the people of God are becoming unified around one thing, that we want to become a corporate dwelling place of the Lord.
That we want to be a people that are becoming one and unified around having God set up his lazy boy chair among us and actually want to just relax and dwell with us as his people. And it's the Lord's desire. It's something that he wants. And now he's giving us the same desire I want it to.
I want you to have a high place of dwelling and encounter with us, your people. And I want it to not just be a place of visitation where you come and go, but I want it to be a place of habitation where you stay. I want to establish a place in the city that's actually a people, look at Ephesians 22, if you need to know what I'm talking about, that it's not just a physical reality of us finding a building, it's actually a spiritual reality of us as a people becoming a place. In other words, he's dwelling inside of us, but there's also a reality of him resting upon us as a people.
And there being a corporate reality of his manifest presence, just hanging out all the time. And I believe that we get to be a people. So this is how I'm connecting the dots. We get to be a people of the high place.
We get to be a people of the high place. What does that mean? We are to be a people that allows the Holy Spirit to refine us. That he would be a welcomed refiner's fire in our midst.
That he would be welcomed to refine us as the one that has fire in his eyes. That baptizes us in fire. It says that John the Baptist goes, behold, just the way Abraham said about the ram in the thicket, the same thing that Abraham said is what John the Baptist said when he saw Jesus. And that is behold the lamb.
Behold the provision, behold the Jehovah Jairah. That there would be a welcoming. And then John the Baptist went on to say that he baptizes you in fire. In other words, he refines you.
And as a people, we're going to humble ourselves under the refinement of the holy fire of God. And the Lord is going, I'm worthy of that type of people that would turn into a high place of refinement. He says that I'm establishing a people of encounter. Now we like this.
Some of you, some of you, Baptist and Lutherans and Methodists and all of us, right, are like, what do you mean by encounter? We're getting a little concerned, right? And that's Katie and I's background. And we want to demystify all the scary things.
But when I say encounter, what I mean is this, I want to meet him in an experiential way. I don't know if you want that. But I want to have experiences with him. It's like the Apostle Paul saying, I want experiential knowledge of him.
It's not just a head knowledge. It's actually an experiential knowledge of who he is. And most of the time it comes through a revelation of the scriptures. And it awakens our hearts.
And we are moved. And I want us as a people to be moved as we encounter the Lord. And the Lord is establishing us as a people that just like in the high places, that we be a people of the high place where there's actually a holy of holies. And Jesus comes and dies on a high place outside of the city.
And because he dies on the high place, there's a veil that's torn. And all of a sudden there's easy access into the place of encounter. And all of a sudden he's out everywhere. Holy Spirit is on the move everywhere.
And that place that killed priests because they would walk into it is actually we have free access. We have free access to that kind of encounter with the Lord, man. There's a trembling that comes with being a people of encounter. And then he's establishing us as a people of intercession in prayer.
He's establishing us as a house of prayer. That at the core of everything that we are as a people, if you strip everything away that we would be a house of prayer. That he's in some of us are like, I don't even know what that means. That's okay.
Just believe it and come along. That he's establishing us as a people that are primarily not marked with showing up to services and listening to servants. But that he's raising us up as a contending house of prayer of intercession. And that the Lord is actually putting us into a place of in the middle that we would stand before the Lord and partner with his heart on behalf of people and friends and family members and a whole city.
And that we get brought into that high place of being seated with God in heavenly places. And we get the burden of his heart and release the burden of his heart and prayer and intercession over our city. God's raising up a people of the high place and intercession in prayer. That we'd be a people of sacrifice and extravagance.
This is another mark of the high place. Do you know what Solomon does in Second Chronicles? He just makes a thousand sacrifice of a thousand bowls to dedicate the temple on Mount Mariah. David, every six steps, sacrifices being made.
Then Mary sits at the feet of Jesus, extravagant sacrifice. Then Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And the Lord is beginning to put a seek first His kingdom in us of extravagance. And the Lord is saying, would you prioritize me above all other lovers?
Would you take me and have me take first place? And that it would actually result in all of your resources and time and energy and focus. And that I would actually take the first place of extravagance in your life. Oftentimes we're so extravagant with getting things that we want.
And the question is, is he getting what he wants? And I want him to get what he wants with us as a corporate people. That there would be a whole corporate like grace for us to be like Mary. For us to have this corporate grace of extravagance and generosity to be like David.
Where we're going, oh, it's all yours. I just want you to have what you're worthy of. You're worthy of the high place. You're worthy of the high and lofty things of my life.
I know I'm declaring these things in part, okay? That we would be a people that knows him as gyra. That we would know him as provider. That we would know what is the riches of the glorious inheritance that Jesus has in the saints.
That we would know what his inheritance is, what he gets out of it. And that we would have a revelation of what we get out of communion as we take it. As we take the body and the blood. That we would have an experiential revelation of him being the provider.
You provided salvation. You provided righteousness. You provide sanctification. You provide for every single need.
You provide above and beyond. You're actually going to provide beyond what I could ask or imagine. You're going to do it. That we would know him as gyra the way that Abraham knew him.
The way that David and Solomon knew him. God's calling us into radical faith. And it comes on the heels of us being an extravagant people. Do you see that?
Abraham releases extravagance. David and Solomon releases extravagance before the Lord. And then all of a sudden the Lord just meets it with provision. He's just the Jehovah gyra every single time when we step into generosity.
All right. That we would be a people of the harvest. The threshing floor of the high place was a place of the harvest. And I believe that the Lord is calling us into not just plain church and not just having good church experiences as good Christians.
But the Lord is maturing us to get off of our eyes off of ourselves and onto the fields. The Lord is maturing us to get out of spectator Christianity and into kingdom following Jesus Christianity where we're actually at home in the fields. And then when we come to the high place and we gather as a corporate community, we're bringing babies along. And out weeping and sewing and we came back reaping and all of a sudden there's so many babies in the kingdom.
And I'm just talking about physical babies but praise God for all the babies in our community. I'm talking about spiritual babies. I'm talking about the people that just got born again that got baptized in the bathtub before they ever showed up to church because we're not going to have a baptismal because there's lakes and bathtubs in hotel pools. And the Lord's going, I want more babies in the family.
I want more disciples in the family. And I'm promising that the people that enter into the place of prayer are actually going to be the answers to their prayer. And there's going to be a marriage of missions and Mary. And there's going to be a whole corporate movement in the Twin Cities of a people that are primarily found as Mary's in the spirit but they're on mission in everyday life.
And the Lord's going, I'm raising you up as a people of the harvest. And then lastly that He would mark us with celebration and joy that we would be a people of celebration and joy. There was always praise and celebration at harvest time on the threshing floor in the high place. And I believe that the Lord is giving us high praise in the high place as a people.
And that there's an invitation for us as a people to step in to making cherubim and angels embarrassed with how they praise. That there's actually a people that God's lifting up and raising up where all the angels are going to peer in wonder and go, how are they obedient to the Lord having never seen Him? How are they celebrating Him even though they've never seen Him? How are they jumping up and down and then standing still for an hour fully locked in celebrating the Lord and there's a whole world happening on the interior of their mind and they're celebrating Him and there's a fire of love that's so great that there's a celebration that cannot be contained in them in the place of worship.
See it's not just jumping up and down, it's actually the interior world where you're not just staring around looking but there's some, there's revelation of the greatness of God on the inside of you and there's a burning and there's an ache on the inside of us. God is marking us as a people with the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of revelation and the knowledge of Him and it pushes us into uncommon celebration and praise that we'd be brought into the highest of highs in praise and that we would have an uncommon unity in the place of worship and that it wouldn't primarily be about our preferences but it'd be about his preferences, it'd be about what does he like, it'd be about celebrating his desires, it'd be about celebrating his preferences and his hooks that he likes, his choruses and bridges that he likes and his authentic melodies that he wants to deposit in our hearts so we can sing back to him and the Lord's doing it and he's doing it in cars and he's doing it in closets and he's doing it in houses and he's going to do it as a corporate body together. It's all going to be Him bringing us together and what is He going to do? He's going to turn us into a dwelling place, a corporate dwelling place.
How is He going to do it? Ephesians 2.22 says only buy the spirit. How can I strategize us into it, Lord? As leaders, what can we do to actually make it happen to the Lord's like it'll be by my spirit?
All you do is follow, just follow the leader and what we're going to do as a whole people is we're just going to follow Him and we're going to follow Him into becoming a people of the high place. I was sharing this with Mike Smith who's actually going to be coming in November and he's going to be preaching it every day. I'm excited. Katie and I were meeting with Mike and I felt prompted to share this word just in passing about the high place and I did not go into detail that I went to today.
And Mike said that's amazing. Do you not know the prophetic word? And I said what? What were you talking about?
He said the word over the whole state of Minnesota. And I said no, I don't know what it is. He said yeah over 20 years ago there's prophets that came into Minnesota and they declared that Minnesota is actually the threshing floor state. I said whoa.
I want to read just a word that was given over 20 years ago. This is a confirmation of what the Lord is speaking over us as a people. Minnesota the North Star State. This is a time, this is the prophetic word that was given over 20 years ago over the state of Minnesota.
This is a time for harvest praying. Minnesota the threshing floor state is leading the way. Watch Minnesota move the harvest from the threshing floor into the storehouse. Tuck Pierce prophesied that there would be great medical breakthroughs in Minnesota.
Sean Bull is also prophesied the same thing when he came to Minnesota a couple years ago and they declared this. I decreed that the state of Minnesota is a threshing floor and the grain will be so high that they will need help to harvest it. Blessing and fertility is coming in the favor of the Lord and you will possess the gates of your enemies. Jehovah Jaira will manifest.
Listen, that's unreal. I looked this up right before I came. None of the content that I shared was actually from this word. I found this right before I came.
What I believe we are getting caught into is not just our little small story of the little community in New Brighton, Minnesota, but that we are getting caught into a story that is bigger than us. Me and a little prayer cabin a couple months ago and us as a whole community getting caught up into a big story line that God is writing, that was before I even showed up to the state. Before I even got here in college the Lord was writing the story that we all get to be a part of, that we would be a part of the high place, the high place people, the threshing floor people, the people of harvest, the people of refinement, the people of joy and celebration, the people that know the provision of the Lord, the people that have this ache and fire of intercession and prayer. The people of extravagance and generosity, this is what God is doing and he is doing it in us before he does it in a building.
When I want to respond to the Lord that the Lord would actually mark us with an ache as we see in part, listen, I know that it's kind of swirly. I know that we just see in part, I know that there's maybe not as much clarity as we would like and we don't know exactly how it's going to happen, but I know that there's actually something on the interior of you and it's called the ache of God getting what he wants. And I believe that God has put this desire in me and he actually wants to baptize all of us in the same desire that the Lord would get the high place of our city. And he would have a house, a contending house of prayer that actually in our city, all the powers and the principalities of this dark age would be dismantled through a contending house of prayer and a contending people of intercession.
And that the Lord would be going to tear down every high and lofty thought that presents it itself against the knowledge of Jesus and that we would partner with his heart and tear down every stronghold of idea that rises against the Lord. That it wouldn't be a battle against flesh, but it would be a battle in the spirit that we would take our place, our rightful place of authority and power seated with Christ in heavenly places that we are always destined as a people for the high place. You in this room, you are supposed to be in this room today. It's 80 degrees outside.
You are supposed to be in this room. You could have been doing so many other things, but the Lord beckons you to hear this message today to get marked with the high place. Would you stand to your feet? I want to respond to the Lord.
All it takes is a little hunger. Let's just spread out. If your heart is already burning, you can come to the front and just respond to the Lord. Thank you Lord.
Lord, 20 years ago you said that this is the threshing floor state. Lord 20 years ago you said that you were going to establish the high place. You were going to call the state of Minnesota. Man, I don't know how many years ago you put a man on the Minnesota flag with a plow in his hand.
You put a man on the flag to remind us that we are the state of harvest. You put fields on our flag on the state flag of Minnesota because you said that there is going to be a harvest that is going to be so great in our state that we can't hold it with the storehouses. Lord, we thank you that you are establishing the state of Minnesota as a top 10 state. A top 10 state.
A top 10 state. A top 10 place in the heavenlies. What do I mean by that? You said that Minnesota, this is the prayer of our hearts that the Twin Cities would be your top 10 favorite place.
We'd make it into the top 10. Oh Lord, we want it. I want you to like it so much that you'd put it before so many other big metroplexes. That you would have your reward in our city, in the Twin Cities that you'd have your reward in Minnesota.