I had a prophetic encounter with one of our prophetic people here at IHOP-KC. He told me that God wanted to use me in freeing people from the slave trade. He said he saw God using me in deliverance and that people were in shackles and that I was being used to free them. What he didn’t know was just the night before God was speaking to me through Romans 6 about those who are slaves to the sinful nature. Paul speaks of those who are slaves and in chains to the sinful nature.I then saw the movie Amazing Grace. In one scene of that movie William Wilburforce is shown the shackles of the African slave trade. He is shown chains that fit around the neck, around the wrists and around the feet.
Friends, many in the body of Christ are bound in their relationships with Jesus to the slave trade of the sinful nature. They wish they could get free from whatever controls their actions (shackled hands); their will to choose (shackled necks); and their walk with God (shackles feet). Jesus is coming to free many from the shackles of a life longed for but not lived. I see a great deliverance coming to the church but at a deep cost.
We are about to face the relentless pursuit of the love of Jesus Christ. I have had this phrase in my heart for a month now and don’t know really what it means. ‘The terror of his (Jesus’) love.’ It’s not a biblical phrase and you may tell me why meditate on it. Isn’t his love tender after all, you may say. I agree his love is tender. But I am feeling the gaze of the Lord in this season in life. I am feeling the pleasure of the Lord in this hour. If you only knew where I have come from you would understand the utter gratitude that overwhelms my soul. I was so discouraged the other night wrestling with my human nature wondering if I would every win victory over envy and anger. ‘God’, I said, ‘Evil is constantly pursuing me. It is relentless, it never gives up!’ LIke the black riders of the Lord of Rings movies they never give up. How can I contend with that Lord, I thought.
Then I heard this phrase. ‘Dale, there is something worse than the relentless pursuit of evil. There is something worse than the black riders of the Lord of the Rings.’ God, there can’t be. What is more terrible? What is more relentless? ‘Dale, my love is more relentless than any evil imaginable. Dale, you don’t know terror until you see the effects and pursuit of my love for you.’ ‘Dale, you are afraid of the events of the end-times; you should be afraid of the relentless pursuit of my love.’
When I heard that, I was shaken to the core. I could hear the shackles of the slave trade (slaves to the sinful nature) beginning to shake. Friends, the secret to unlocking and breaking the chains of bondage is the confidence of Jesus’ relentless pursuit of us in his love. We have yet to touch the depths of God’s love for us. We have yet to see the manifestations of love he has planned for those who reach and love him in return even in their weakness.
His love is excellent. HIs love is wholehearted. His love is trustworthy. His love is real and powerful. His love inhabits the human heart with strength for our weakness.
I can hear the shackles of the slave trade falling off. It’s time for a deliverance session. It’s time for the cross to have its effect on the sinful nature. Sins (acts committed against the law of God) are washed away at the cross; but the sinful nature (that human propensity to turn our own way) that is killed on the cross.
We are to reckon ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God. ‘You have been crucified with Christ…’ (Gal. 2: 20). The shackles fall at the cross. There is only one place that deals with the shackles and chains – the cross and love of Jesus demonstrated to us there. It is the relentless pursuit of his love.
