After speaking at an NFL team chapel, I was invited to join the team for dinner before the game. I ended up sitting with a group that included a winner of the Heisman Trophy, the award given to the best college player in the country. The other players at the table were also some of the best at their positions. I asked all of them how they achieved what they did, and each one related how they started out very young with a devotion to be a professional football player. Then they became focused on a single position.

          I want to address three major thrusts we are now seeing that are taking place in the body of Christ. The first is unity, and this is making unprecedented possibilities unfold for the church. Those with faith will seize the possibilities. We can expect those who live by fear instead of faith to begin fading away. Benjamin Franklin exhorted the original colonies before the Revolutionary War in America to “join or die.” This is now true for the church. However, the reverse is also true—join and you will live.

    While I’m writing this, there is a great controversy with a proposal to build a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan. This growing issue has brought up other important questions. Events and issues like this can reveal much about the heart condition of a nation, and we need to understand what it is revealing.

     It was a historic brain freeze. It was so dramatic that it eclipsed the sexual harassment allegations being made against Herman Cain and child sex abuse charges that have rocked Penn State University. It was that big.

It was no accident that this was one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic elections in our history. Never have so many people come to understand how much their vote can count, and never have so many people felt that their vote may not have even been counted. In the end, the election was not even decided by the votes, but by the courts. However, there are important messages in this election.

     One of the main cauldrons where prophetic ministries are formed is the local church. Prophetically gifted people do tend to be different, and to fit into a local church setting can be one of the most difficult of all tests for them. Few understand them, and therefore, few will trust them, usually for a long time.

         Last week we began to address the “high calling” of God in Christ, and what it takes to attain to it. We will cover this more as the message unfolds in the Book of Revelation. For now, we just need to know that there is one to make sense of the biblical prophecies we must cover.

   This week we continue our study with Revelation 1:10:

      “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet.”