We Must Leave Our Comfort Zones, and Compel Them to Come In!

Yesterday in our staff meeting my daughter in-love (Cassie) shared a dream in which we (our family) were being shown a beautiful old house by a real estate agent. There was water running in every room, and it was beautifully decorated. However, in the back yard there was a toxic lake. The animals who had been drinking from it were diseased and dying. There were people allowing their children to swim in this toxic water and they were sitting in lawn chairs watching, clueless to the effect it was having upon them. There was a long hallway from the main house area that lead to an area full of dead bodies. Even though the house was wonderful there was death and destruction all around it. As Cassie described this dream I began to look over to a collage of pictures in my prayer room that were taken at the home I grew up in. The home that my parents chose to build in the poorest neighborhood of my city. I began to weep. It was a home where worship, prayer, fellowship, and love was constantly flowing. However right outside those doors were families that were addicted, abused, impoverished and dying. My mom and dad invited those on the brink of death into that home and many were resurrected by the living water of the Holy Spirit that constantly flowed from their lives. They went out after people. They brought them to church, they knew that if they could get them inside where the living water of the Holy Spirit was, they had a chance at life. There were countless lives and families that were saved from ruin and destruction because of my mom and dad’s love for God and people. I’m one of them. The impact of Soul Harvest Worship Center is part of their legacy, and the legacy lives on. I told the staff, “Let’s skip my leadership module today, and go on a field trip.” We piled into several cars and drove to my old neighborhood with my grandson Ira Oliver Brown who bears my daddy’s name. What we witnessed was heartbreaking. The evidence of death and destruction was everywhere. It was a reminder to me that many of us have the living water in us, in our homes, in our ministries, in our churches, but right outside our doors are toxic situations that need our prayers and our influence. We must get outside the house and start bringing those that are on death’s door inside to experience life, then send them back out to release that life everywhere they go! Jesus said, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23)

God is calling us, those with the solution to ruin and destruction, to leave our comfort zones and start reaching out more. Spiritual apathy causes us to get comfortable with toxic environments right outside our doors and settle into our own beautiful homes, churches, and routines.

While the life-giving water of the Holy Spirit is in us individually and corporately, it’s not always flowing FROM the house like it could. Those outside are left to sit in their stagnant, toxic, situations and die. They are right outside our doors. It’s time to blow the doors off and let it out into every crack and crevice of our neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations. Jesus said, “He who believes in Me [who adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Me], as the Scripture has said, ‘From his innermost being will flow continually rivers of living water.’” (John 7:38 AMP) We have the power to turn our families, cities, and nations around, but we’ve got to let what we contain out of the house!

I love you all! PV