For the past three days the Lord has been speaking to me in a number of dreams and visions about the state of the Church in the United States.  In the first one He showed me a baby being born.  Its mother was so consumed with herself that the baby was half delivered and she had been walking around like that for days.  When I approached her in this dream she seemed unaware of the horrifying half birthed infant but I knew that was not true because she had placed small patent leather shoes on the baby’s feet that were extending from her body.  She told me that the feet were cold so she put them on.  I told her to sit down and then I grabbed the ankles of this very blue baby, flipped the shoes off, and pulled it out.  It was very large and could not breathe.  So I picked him up and told him that I thought he would not live but that we would pray.  I gathered together with a number of people and we began to pray that God would breathe life into this baby.  When I looked at him, during the prayer, he was pink and breathing.

After the dream finished, I began to pray and ask God for an interpretation.  The one thing that He stressed to me was the urgency that needed to be taken regarding what I was seeing.  The baby wasn’t breathing and if we did nothing it would not live.

That evening, after the blue baby dream, I spoke to four different people about it.  I was hoping that God would reveal to me what exactly this baby was and how I or the Church was supposed to discover it.

Last night before I fell asleep I was asking the Lord again for more revelation about the dream.  Just before waking I had another dream.  In this dream one local pastor was introducing a national pastor.  They were having some sort of heated disagreement about the national pastor’s son coming out on the platform with him as he was being introduced.  The local pastor made a comment into the mic about the stature of this man’s son.  The kid was maybe 15 years old and was the size of an 8 year old.  When I looked closely at him he looked like he had maybe fetal alcohol syndrome or some sort of development issue and retardation.  I was horrified by the rudeness of the local pastor and for the embarrassment of the boy, but he seemed oblivious as the congregation laughed heartily.  The national pastor then, very angrily, told off the local pastor, but he turned his body so the crowd could not see him.   Then he looked back out at the congregation, smiled and waved.

Just then I woke up.  I was thinking through what I had just seen when I went into a vision, wide awake.  I saw the church again with the two pastors and small boy.  A man out in the congregation began to wave at me.  I took a closer look and he had a very small arm coming out of the side of his head, which was waving.  I was shocked and then began to scan the audience where I was seeing many malformed people.

The vision ended and the Lord spoke to me.  He told me that what I was seeing was the Church.  Not the local church only but the National Church in the United States.  He said that we were birthing “mongrels.”  We were taking in so many demonic ideas and ways and allowing them to saturate the culture of the church that instead of birthing living water we were birthing mongrels.  Many were not even alive.  While the Church stood there, deformed and witnessing a sinful display, they were actually  cheering and laughing. They were ignoring their ugliness and dressing up the horror that the Lord let me see.  His disgust over this was overwhelming.

The Lord has been showing me issue by issue, things that were birthed in the pit of hell and are effectively spreading inside the Church and are actually being called good.  As we absorb these beliefs and practices we mix with them and create mongrels.  When I looked the word up after hearing it twice from the Lord in the vision I found the definition interesting.  Here it is from Webster’s Dictionary:

“1 : an individual resulting from the interbreeding of diverse breeds or strains  2 : a cross between types of persons or thing”

The issues that the Lord has been speaking to me about and how they are seeping into the culture and fabric of the Church in the U.S. are as follows:

1. Homosexuality:  He has told me that this sin is far more about vulnerability than the sexual acts that manifest this vulnerability.   To say in the Church that it is something people are born with and that it is not a sin is the most unloving thing the Church can do to and for the people bound in this sin.
2. The worship of demons through sex outside of marriage.  This sin culminates in the blood sacrifice to the devil through the abortions of babies conceived in these acts.
3. Pigeonholing Christianity with Islam.  This act is far more serious than we can see and many in the Body of Christ are doing it with great zeal, pronouncing as loving and good, what the Lord hates.
4. Fear:  Fear of the lack of money is the worship of self.
5. Political Correctness:  Not wanting to offend; the pull of tolerance; the lack of loving enough to rebuke as we are told in Matthew 18 and I Timothy 5.
6. Engaging in reading or watching or learning in any way of those things detestable to the Lord as mentioned in Deut. 18 which the Lord has told me includes the Twilight series and those types of books and movies.

These are the highlights of some of what the Lord has been speaking to me about.  These are manifestations of a far greater problem.  They are creating mongrels.  They are destroying the Church and the witness of light in our nation.  We must repent.  We must turn to Him with torn garments and plead for His intervention; for His breath to blow upon the Church in the United States and revive us to a Body that pleases Him again.

After the vision and the time with the Lord I got up and got ready for Church.  As the worship began we sang “These are the Days of Elijah.”  When we got to the phrase “Righteousness being restored…”  a sort of deep sob began to well up inside of me.  The strange thing was in my mind, in my thoughts, I was perfectly fine.  It was as if my spirit was beginning to wail without any thought of it.  I began to cry and then for the next two songs I had to sit down as I struggled uselessly to control myself.

The pastor began to preach.  He briefly went over the state of the church and how we ended the year in the black, how the numbers have grown, how the links have spread, and how the prayer meetings have become more full, but then went on to speak of the need of repentance.  He spoke about the National Church, including us, and how, like in Revelation, God was calling us out of lukewarmness and into a hot life for and in Him!

I could barely sit there.  I was stunned.  God was screaming for our attention and I sat there struggling in my mind how and if I should share this series of dreams and the message about the blue baby.  What happened next I hesitate to share because I hear people tell me these types of things and I find that I dismiss what they say because it seems hyper spiritual and ridiculous really.  But it was so bizarre that I feel I should tell it.

As he preached I bowed my head and asked God, “Should I share the dream about the baby?  What if he doesn’t look up to see if I have anything, should I just go up there and tell him anyway?”  Just then I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye.  It grabbed my attention so I turned and looked.  There beside me was a baby’s pacifier, spinning.  I about gasped out loud.  I thought, “That is so weird, but come on.  The baby behind me probably just dropped it.  For Pete’s sake Joie get a grip.”  I reached down to pick it up and looked back for the mom.  A number of people behind me were laughing.  Here the mom of twins was sitting about eight rows behind me in the very back of church.  Somehow one of these little babies either threw or dropped this pacifier and it rolled quite a ways to end up right beside me.

As I sat there processing this very odd situation it occurred to me that what the Lord had explained to me after the vision was partly caused by people holding their tongues.  And here I was sitting there, having heard from the Lord for the Church, debating whether I should share it and how if I would that should happen.  The church had no set way of people using their gifts from the Holy Spirit in the church and I was struggling with the extreme unction to share and the knowledge that there wasn’t a smooth way to do it.  In the series of dreams I was having, one salient issue the Lord was rebuking me personally for was for not putting childish things behind me and for not rising up in maturity and obedience and walking in all the Lord has for me by obeying Him regardless of the culture the pastors and church leadership had developed that stifled the gifts.

Withholding the things that He shares with us that will help clean up the Body is just as unpleasing to the Lord as those unclean things and not having permission to do so is no excuse.

Part of being a mature Christian, a mature Body, is holding ourselves accountable and dealing with sin in a biblical way.  In the name of tolerance, in the name of encouragement and exhortation, in the name of blessings and prosperity, in the name of entertainment and fun, we have assumed many a demonic idea into the very fiber of the Body of Christ.  We have skipped the cross, repentance, and holiness.  We have cried “Grace! Grace!” when we need to be crying “Holy! Holy!”.  Church, we are sick; sick to the point that instead of living water coming from our bellies we are producing mongrels.  We must repent.  We must repent for ourselves and stand in the gap for others.  We must put away childish things and embrace the walk that Christ has for us.  We are not pleasing the Lord here in Wisconsin, nor Texas, nor in the entire nation.

Revelation 3:1-6 and 3:14-22

These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. 2Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. 3Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you. 4Yet you have a few people in Sardis who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy. 5He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels. 6He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

14″To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. 15I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. 17You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. 18I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. 19Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. 20Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. 21To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. 22He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”