We’ve lived in our current house for 3 years now, and, over those 3 years, our boiler has consistently needed repairs. We have intermittently gone with no heating or hot water (a trivial inconvenience in reality) and have had to find creative ways of staying warm.

Every time our boiler broke down again, we’d pray that the boiler engineer would quickly be able to find the issue and repair it. However, this year I started praying that the boiler would just break down properly so that it couldn’t be fixed, and we’d need it to be replaced.

In the beginning of autumn this year, our boiler broke down. I remember being really thankful that it happened just before the cold season so that it could be fixed ready for when we really needed it. And it was. For about a month, it worked great. Praise God, we were warm. But then it broke down again, and, as literally all the parts have been repeatedly repaired or replaced, the decision was made that it’s time for it to go. Praise God!

.

Anyway, in view of all this, I was thanking God tonight during our prayer meeting that our boiler is finally ‘properly broken’ because now it can be properly fixed (or replaced in this case). Dad chuckled at my random prayer, but then responded by thanking God that He’s breaking the Church in this nation so that it can be renewed.

He’s right. We’ve cried so many times over the past few decades for Jesus to bring revival and have cried, fasted and interceded on our nation’s behalf. I believe Jesus has heard and acted on each of those prayers, and is doing just that. Revival necessitates death. It’s time for us, the Western Church, to learn what it looks like to pick up our crosses. It’s time that we learned how to count the cost and watch beauty spring up from the ashes as we bury our old and water the new.

This season is an opportunity for exactly that.

I believe right now is the time for us to crumble all our idols of comfortable worship and religion and reassess everything we believe and know God to be. This time is a precious, precious gift that God is giving us to strengthen our faith and prepare us to stand firm on His Word and goodness.

He’s doing it.

He is preparing His Bride.

Take heart. He knows exactly what He’s doing.

.
.

 “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it —  lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,  saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’?  Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.  So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”
Luke 14:27‭-‬33 NKJV