Take the Trash Out, Be Still and Come Closer: A Parable on Revival

A Parable on Stewarding Revival:

Take Out the Trash, Be Still, and Come Closer!

We are in a season where every matters.

  It’s a Kairos intersection

  Where God’s plans meet our obedience.

So silly seeming instructions matter,

    And we don’t realize why until hindsight.

As we prepare for a big even and transition:

   I tell my children things like:

• Take this towel to this bathroom
• Clear these books off here
• Praise while you pack
• Clean out the chicken brooder box

   Each task seems nonconsequential to the kids

   Until they realize why it mattered an hour, days, or even months later.

There’s no time to explain each request.

   It just must be done

   In faith I’m not wasting their time

   In trust that I am setting up the next step

   In haste because each step depends on the previous obedience.

This morning, I praise, I pray in the Spirit, I listen.

   I hear: “Take the trash out.”

Because it’s me, I begin to think

   of how this a perfect parable on teaching forgiveness

   and my mind wanders…

   “Ohh! It’s 6:58am and the trash truck comes soon!”

I hustle to take the trash out.

   We are preparing for a big event and transition.

   We can’t afford to wait another week for trash pick up

   If I miss getting this out today.

Couldn’t put it out last night because bears.

Every moment matters

    And God’s timing must meet my obedience.

I wrestle 8 big black bags and all the cans to the curb

   Down the long country driveway.

I pray blessing over the garbage man and his family

   And hope dearly that he’ll haul the 25 plus bags

   of garbage and pine straw away today.

My daughter joins me to help carry

   The last and heaviest bag.

As she is walking and finishing this task,

    I call out to her from the house:

    “After that, break down these two boxes

   For recycling next please!”

She hollers down the driveway,

   “I can’t hear you!”

She can’t hear me because she’s still walking

   With that loud rustling bag in her hands, so I reply,

“Be still!”

But she keeps on walking and working.

I see myself in her.

God’s trying to help me

    Be efficient and know my next step

    As I am working to finish the last

    But how often do I just keep walking and working and saying,

“I can’t hear you!”

I watch my child finish continue walking with the bag to the curb,

“Break these boxes down next please?”

“I can’t hear you!” (It is a really long driveway.)

“Come closer!”

And I know instantly that Holy Spirit borrowed my mouth…

   “Child, I’m trying to help you

   Accomplish my good plans and purposed for you today.

   So please. Be still a moment and come closer!”

And so it is with the church in this hour,

    Where we prepare for revival and transition

    Where every moment matters

   Where little assignments are setting up big breakthroughs.

The Father is calling out to you today,

“Be still and come closer!”

   Every moment matters! Let’s bring in the Harvest!

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 

You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 

I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Jeremiah 29:12-14