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Ecclesiastes 7:4 “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.”

The world again and again is calling us into mirth, entertainment and amusement. Mirth is characterized by frivolity, giddiness, amusement, recreation, entertainment, drunkenness, carousing, and partying. Mirth attracts friends–a large crowd to eat, drink, and make merry with. Mirth inebriates and intoxicates the senses until it renders you dull, sluggish, and asleep.

As strongly as the world is calling us to embrace mirth, the Lord is calling us to embrace myrrh. Myrrh is a burial spice, a bitter herb. It points to suffering and death. Myrrh repels the masses. The way of myrrh is the road less traveled. Myrrh causes men to turn away; and yet, it is what the Lord is calling us to embrace. He desires a people who will go the way of myrrh, experiencing the death of the cross until He causes light to break in and the gray areas to flee.

Song of Solomon 4:6 “Until the day breaks And the shadows flee away, I will go my way to the mountain of myrrh …”

Psalm 27:13 says that we will faint if we don’t believe we’ll see the goodness of Lord in land of living. However, if we don’t set our minds on the age to come we will also faint in this life. Though we experience momentary joy in this life, our greatest joys won’t come until the next age. On the day that we stand before Him and receive our reward, we will surely enter into the joy of the Lord. Until then, the path of this life is spent on the path of myrrh.

God wants to offer His people the gift of mourning. Matthew 5:4 declares “Blessed are those who mourn.” Spiritual mourning is not something we are to graduate from in this life. We mustn’t refuse the gift of mourning saying, ‘It’s not my season;’ when in actuality, we are using it as an excuse to hurl ourselves into frivolity, drunkenness, and carnal pleasures. We are called to weep and mourn all the days of this life until we die, until we see Him. Joel 2:12 declares that we should, “Turn to the lord with all of our hearts, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”

One of the greatest temptations at the end of the age, prior to the return of Jesus, will be the same as it was in Noah’s day—pursuing mirth rather than embracing mourning, in light of what is coming (Luke 17:26-27). Noah was gripped by the Word of Lord, crying out that a flood was coming in a time when it had never rained on the earth before. He began to prophesy with his words, and yea more than his words, but with his life as well—building an ark in the desert, day in and day out. Noah warned and pleaded, undoubtedly imploring the people with tears, all the while hammering nails into wood. He invested his life into the foolishness of building a boat on sand in the middle of the desert. His message was not palatable. It was too extreme: “Judgment is at hand; a flood is coming!” Noah did not give himself to merriment and mirth. The people of the day gave themselves to eating, drinking, carousing, and being preoccupied with the cares of this life. They continued to go on with business as usual, refusing to embrace the mourning and sobriety necessary to save themselves in the day of trouble. The message of mourning is not popular, and yet Solomon instructs the wise man to find himself in the house of mourning, for only fools live in the house of mirth (Eccl 7:4).

Who would dare to live this life soberly? In sobriety, our hearts come face to face with pain. Most would rather live drunk and in spiritual fantasy than have to look down the barrel at reality to comprehend the desperate season of time in which we live. So we give ourselves to anything and everything that drowns out the sirens. We will run after anything that silences the message that causes our hearts to tremble, and mourn, and turn to the Lord. We must cry for mercy in this hour in light of our own impotence to save ourselves.

In this urgent hour we must reject the temptation to live frivolously, given to mirth, and become those who give ourselves to embracing myrrh. What was acceptable in years gone by is not acceptable in this late hour. It is time to weep, to mourn and to seek the Lord while He may be found (Isa 55:6).

I wept and wept, I have never ached so deeply in my life. Spit, snot, and salty tears covered my chin and stuck to my beard in a gross amalgamation of sorrow. The pain in my soul was tortuous. All I wanted to do was shut myself off from the depth of the emotions I was feeling. My flesh so deeply wanted to go numb, but the draw of the spirit prevailed and led me deeper in travail. In the midst of the storm, came stillness in the inner man. In that moment I was given an understanding; this is what it means to begin to touch something God cares about.

In reflecting on my own zeal, I can recount many times when I sought to overcome challenges and obstacles by the sheer force of my will, personality, and gifting. Even in ministry, out of sincere efforts to serve the Lord, I undertook “good” things in the zeal of my flesh. Can anyone relate? The expression; “when there is a will, then there is a way” comes to mind. For a long time I have confused doggedness, perseverance, and self-effort as the defining characteristics of what it means to be zealous.

Yet, I have begun to learn that to possess the Zeal of the Lord of Hosts in my own weak frame is altogether other than the experience I have within myself, or have ever observed in the world. “For our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29)” To truly possess his heart over a matter leaves no room for the calculated efforts of the flesh, or for the wisdom of man.

Therefore, God brings us into a Matthew 5:3 reality, where we are confronted with the poverty of our own Spirits, and broken there within. It is only then that we can agree as intercessors - in faith - with the principle of Zechariah 4:6; “So he answered and said to me: “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ Says the LORD of hosts.”
When we have touched a desire of the Lord in our own souls by the Spirit, then we have stared starkly at our own inability to bring any of his desires to pass, apart from He himself doing this work through us. Thus the breaking, before His zeal can truly take root. God wants us to know that through him all things are possible, but that apart from Him we can do nothing.
It may trouble us at first that we cannot qualify ourselves to do anything for Him, but in the end, it will bring us peace. All that He requires of us, we have already been made fit for by the blood of his son; to love him, to know him, to agree with him, and to serve him in the simple devotion of sons and daughters toward their Father. We can rest in this reality, cease from striving in our own zeal, and truly begin to connect with something God cares about. With respect to seeing his zealous desires accomplished, we can trust that on the behalf of those who are willing He will prove himself strong.

Malachi 4:5-6 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. (6) And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.”
Luke 1:16-17 “And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. (17) He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

In the last days, the spirit of Elijah will be released upon the earth. It is imperative that this very spirit is resting upon the bride of Christ, specifically upon all those called to be messengers at the end of the age. Apostolic preachers must have the spirit of Elijah resting upon them. This is a foregone conclusion in the mind of God. Forerunners will mend the generational rift between the fathers and the children. Apostolic preachers will have embraced the spirit of Elijah as they father a young generation. These messengers will train up their sons, lay down their lives for their daughters, and labor with many tears that Christ might be formed in a young generation. These voices will not only share the gospel, but their lives will be poured out as a drink offering for these young ones. The jealousy of a father will burn in their hearts as they seek to present their sons and daughters as a pure bride, spotless and white, to the Man Christ Jesus. They will not lord over or seek to control these ones that have been entrusted to them. They will readily identify themselves as “eunuchs” in the spirit. They will relish in this most privileged position of being a friend of the Bridegroom. The confession of John will be the governing principle of their dealings and interactions with those that have been entrusted to them — “He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” These messengers will not attempt to steal away the affections of the bride. They will fully understand their fathering position and it will be the great honor of their lives to present the bride to One far more worthy, far more glorious, far more beautiful than themselves. As a father, it will be their moment of crowning glory to present their sons and daughters to the Bridegroom Jesus, Himself.

Apostolic fathers are entrusted with the great honor of preparing the church to become the bride of Jesus. As Gary Weins says, ‘To be well-married, one must first be well-fathered.’ Consider the unthinkable privilege God has given to us in this life — that we could make ready a people for Jesus, that we could ‘father’ a people unto them being made a ‘ready’ bride. It is inevitable that Jesus is going to marry the church, weak and broken though she may be. And the question remains - who will father her unto seeing her made ready? Oh the stunning dignity that this opportunity holds - we get to model the Eternal Father to the bride! We get to represent the character of Jesus to her! We get to treat her as He is going to treat her. We get to teach her about His character. We get to relay the burnings of the heart of this Man she has yet to see. How my heart longs to hear Jesus say on the day that I stand before Him face to face, ‘Jamie, thank you for how you always treated my bride. Your dealings with her, your affections for her, they were parallel to My own. You were to her such an accurate representation of Me. If anyone has seen you, they have seen Me.’ Paul will hear the Father say words such as these, for Paul could say ‘Imitate me as I imitate Christ.’ This had to be what was working in the heart of John as he prayed, ‘I must decrease and He must increase.’

In an age where all the rage of hell is set against one single facet, the knowledge of God, there must be a witness raised up to declare who He is. Voices must come forth from the wilderness; oracles must be raised up from the backsides of deserts. We need apostolic messengers who are burning with the knowledge of God — men and women who intimately understand the yearnings and burnings of His heart, those who know what God is saying, thinking, and feeling in this hour. We need men and women who can rightly declare the knowledge of God and His emotions toward His creation. God affords us the glory of searching out the mysteries of His personhood, of giving ourselves to pursuing the greatness of the knowledge of God that we might intimately know Him, and in turn make Him known in our generation. It is unthinkable that God would trust man with the responsibility of representing Himself in the earth. It is much more feasible to think that God would send a seraph who has been gazing at His overwhelming beauty from eternity past to the earth to represent His nature and speak of His character. Yet, God does not. He allows weak and broken humans, those who’ve been tainted with sin and who are prone to wander, those who’ve been given a choice to love Him, to demonstrate the wisdom of the cross and to manifest His character through the foolishness of preaching. He allows weak human words to reveal His nature. Oh that the church would be the ‘ecclesia’ that she is called to be! Oh that there would be ambassadors of God in the earth, those that would bring heaven to bear upon the earth, those that would set up the values and the culture of the Kingdom from whence they came in the place that they are sojourning through. As Ravenhill puts it, ‘we ought to live every day as though we’ve come out of another world into this world, but with the power of that world still upon us.’
The spirit of Elijah must rest upon forerunners. The spirit of Elijah will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers. The spirit of Elijah will turn ‘instructors’ into fathers. It will cause fathers to affectionately long for their sons and daughters with the very longing of the Eternal Father. It will cause men of God to throw their mantles on the Elisha generation and impart not only the gospel, but their lives as well. It will release revelation of the Eternal Father. It will heal the wounds of a fatherless generation. It will bring an intimate understanding of the tender heart of the Eternal Father as spiritual fathers reveal His nature.

Apostolic messengers do not come in the spirit of Elijah alone. The power of Elijah also rests upon them. Apostles must walk the ancient path, the narrow way. They must walk as Jesus walked; they must love as He loved. They must proclaim the Word of the Lord not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. Signs and wonders accompany the apostolic ministry. Apostles are ambassadors of God, authorities of a Kingdom not made with hands, a Kingdom that will never be destroyed, a Kingdom that will consume every other kingdom and stand forever; and when these ambassadors speak they release the power from this Kingdom from whence they came. Signs and wonders confirm the gospel. The apostles of old were sent out and “they preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs.” These signs and wonders are tokens from another age that testify that there is a Kingdom that is coming, a King that is returning.

In the days of Elijah, signs, wonders and miracles set this man apart. After raising the widow’s son from the dead, she declared ‘Now by this I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is the truth.’ (1 Kin 17:24) After calling fire down from heaven on Mount Carmel, the people responded, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!” (1 Kin 18:39) We must contend for the power of Elijah to be released upon messengers. The power of Elijah will turn “the disobedient to the wisdom of the just.” Peter said of Jesus, that He was ‘a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs which God did through Him’ (Acts 2:22). Both the spirit and power of Elijah are necessary to fully make ready a people prepared for the Lord. When the power of Elijah is resting upon apostolic fathers, the double portion of Elisha will be released to the sons and daughters.

Yesterday I participated in my graduation commencement ceremony at Emory University. It was a strange consumation to the “bizarre in between” that I have been living in for the past six months. It was a commencement that was fittingly disjunct, and therfore fully in step with God’s process in my life over the past six months. I graduated from Emory in December, and have been full time in the House of Prayer since then, so this particular graduation ceremony - five months out of step with my reality- was in a way a climax and entirely anti-climactic. God told me I needed to go - so there I was. We all lined up alphabetcally, black gowns, caps, 07′ tassles. I graduated from the Business School at Emory, most everyone I talked to yesterday is going to work for financial firms in New York. I was a consulting and venture management concentration, and from the outside looking in it may seem that I could have gone a very different route than the direction I have taken. It must seem to some that I must have burned out in school or gotten too “into my religion”.

To family and friends the explanation of what I am doing after graduation is admittedly a little befuddling, as we talk over Merlot and Smoked Salmon at a Buckhead restaurant, they nod and smile politely. Maybe wondering where a child with seemingly “so much potential may” have gone wrong. To them the idea of talking to God all day seems a little silly, which I can’t blame them I thought it was silly at first - at least until He started to talk back.

So as I observe the confusion of my family, the calls for the “betterment of humanity” from commencement speakers, and the dollar signs in the eyes of my peers - I consider, why did I choose to be where I am?

After the ceremony I return to the House of Prayer, tired from feeling the weight of “so much potential”. There I ask my Father what he thinks. “Dad what do you think about the decisions I have made?” He answers in the way only he can, with a fresh wind of his Spirit as sweet to my soul as a sincere smile and a pat on the back. I am so grateful to not have to worry about fulfilling any of “my own potential”. I am so thankful that to simply accept His love in all of life’s circumstances, will be both the challenge and fulfillment of all of my life’s potential.

So I sit in the room, I talk to Him, He whispers back. I feel his pleasure and pride over me, not because I have done anything particularly good, but because I am just with Him and He likes me, alot. So I praise Him that even though others (I myself included) maybe confused at times about the choices i have made, He never is. He knows my way, so I will lean on him the best I can.

Where do I plan to go with what I have choosen? Hopefully, deeper in love.