Social Justice and Ecstatic Prophecy

- Hi, my name is Julian Adams, I wanted to just take a moment just to share some of my story in the prophetic with you. I began to experience God in some unusual ways from a very young age. Where the presence of God will come upon me and I'd sense Him intensely in my body. And my mind would be open to visions and encounters I'd sense things, know things, feel things in the most radical way. It was incredible and the word for it in the Bible actually is ecstasy. It literally means to be caught up in a moment of joy and ecstasy and delight with God. My whole life has been shaped by ecstatic moments I love getting caught up in the presence of God. You see it in the Bible, you see it throughout history, men and women who are ecstatic prophets who get caught up in the beauty and the wonder and awe of who Jesus is and prophesy from that place of awe. And I remember growing up thinking this is the most beautiful thing. And I'd spent hours with Jesus up and by myself just caught up in His presence. And then I began to notice the separation, particularly in the body of Christ as I grew up, that there were these other kinds of prophets if I could call them that. They were kind of social justice prophets, the kind of prophets who are out there telling everyone that we needed to bring justice to the poor and to the broken. And we needed to sort out racism and gender inequality all those things. And I kind of was like, it just seems so disconnected from my encounters with God in ecstatic moments and all these like super intense social justice types. And one of the things that God has spoken to me about is seeing the marrying of those two things. Seeing how God can marry both the social justice guys and the ecstatic prophets together. They're not meant to be separate. And because of the way I grew up, I often separated the spiritual from the physical. And I place more emphasis on that which is spiritual and unseen. But actually, the Bible seems to indicate that they join that one is not more important than the other. And there really is no divide between the spiritual and the practical. One of the things I wanna say is that the spiritual must be practical, in order for it to be real. Like it's not supposed to be complicated. Your encounters with God are supposed to lead to the transformation of the world around you. And so when you having mystical ecstatic encounters if it's not changing things around you, something's wrong. We need some prophets who are engaging in the joy and the bliss of heaven. And the ecstatic moments with God that also get the burden of the Lord and are able to marry them together to bring transformation and reformation around us. One of my concerns in the body of Christ today is that there's a lot Lot of revival culture going around. We get the whole meeting big worship, smoke encounters with God. But there's not a lot of revival power that brings transformation for the world around us. The two go together that cannot be separate. We must be people who carry the heart of God for the poor, and the broken, for justice and mercy. For those of us who get strategies from heaven out of the place of ecstasy, out of the place of encounter with God. They're not meant to be different. Some of my most ecstatic moments have released some clear, helpful strategies to help bring the poor out of their brokenness, to help bring the rich out of their brokenness, to bring the standard of mercy and justice that sees people engaged with a very, very kind God. Before I end, I wanted to take a moment to highlight two amazing couples who are doing phenomenal works of justice and mercy in some of the world's most broken places. The first couple I wanna highlight are Pete and Sarah Portal who are leading Tree of Life in Manenberg Cape Town. Manenberg is one of the most violent townships in the world with more murders per capita than most places on planet Earth. They are living in the community incarnating what it means to be prophets of justice and mercy to the broken. And the second Addison and Cassandra Lee, who are doing an amazing work with Justice Rising, providing education in some of the most broken war torn places in the world. I wanna encourage you won't you click on the links below, give them lots of money, support what they do. We love partnering with these two ministries to see the kingdom of God come and to release the prophetic heart of God for the broken and the hurting.