Co-written with Chris Henstone, Tania Angel + London Prophetic Roundtable
The Spirit of the Lord says,
“Japan, these are the words of the one who is Trustworthy, the One True God. I know you as a nation who values the truth about who I am. While other nations have not been able to bear substantial teaching, you are hungry to learn more about me and unwilling to compromise. Yet in your desire to learn, you remain humble. You value the realistic work of ministry and care about making my word accessible to others. Your value for the practical outworking of the gospel has created a shared vision for family and social life that will still define your future. Your hunger and relatability has been a light, drawing others to know me as the God who loves truth.
But I, the Lord, desire truth in your inmost parts (Psalm 51:6). I have come to honor your love of truth by removing some of the lies, shame, and escapism that make it difficult for you to embrace truth in your emotions. You will be a people who is unafraid of rightly stewarded, truthful emotion!
I am coming to remove the national shame that has caused you to retreat into fantasy, performance, and sexual impurity. I am coming to medicate your sense of individual unworthiness so that you will know what it is to be fully known and fully loved. I am coming to remove the self-rejection that causes you to call the Church small, valuing the number of disciples instead of the purity I have formed in you. I am coming to remove the performance orientation that strains relationships with co-workers and alienates parents from their children. I am coming to remove the culture of false honor that has become flattery and control, straining business partnerships. I am coming to remove the performance culture that remains from your traditional ties to ancestor worship. I am even coming to remove generational shame from the violent actions of your military within Asia. While bloodguilt shame has lived like a dagger in the heart of generation after generation, I, the Lord will remove it. The enemy told you that your shame is unmovable. You have tried anything and everything to numb the sense of pain and pressure. But I, the Lord, have come to set you free from weights that you cannot lift on your own.
The enemy stands mocking at the gate. He has told Western nations that at the core, you are a mannequin: numb, broken, and only fit for display. The rest of Asia has joined the West in mis-identifying you. He has enticed them to exploit your vulnerable women and youth through pornography. In exchange for acceptance, he has fed you with materialism. He has misdirected your creativity in Media, and enticed you to construct fractured worlds where you and others can escape. He has sewn fear, self-rejection, emotional distance, and loneliness in marriages. He wants to corrupt your senses so that you can no longer discern truth from lies.
I am making you well in your emotions! Yet you say, “How can these bonds be broken?”
Truth and Beauty
Beloved, I am meeting you in your place of need. I am inviting you to crave after the pure spiritual milk that will gradually bring your heart into maturity (1 Peter 2:2-3). Look at how your mind gradually grew to love sinking its teeth into my word. I took you from ignorance to adulthood as I revealed more and more of my character. Will I not do the same thing for your heart?
I am calling out to whoever will receive my invitation to truth telling (Proverbs 1:20-33). Who among you is tired of pretending? In secret, come to me. Begin to confess the areas of your heart that feel tired. Speak honestly to me, I can handle it. Be my conversation partner and learn what it feels like to not just know, but feel the truth. Can you sense the purity in speaking openly? Let me water the seeds of truth that are growing on your insides. Before long, you will have the boldness to speak and exemplify emotional courage. I will show you how to abandon your false image of how things should be, and elegantly talk about how things really are. You have worried that emotional courage will put you out of control and that you will be ashamed in public. Beloved, there could be nothing further from the truth. You will be called Deliverers in your nation because of your courage to speak openly. The same practicality that you have been known for will shine even brighter as you speak with your emotions fully engaged.
Oh beautiful nation, I will use your love of truth to show you the depth of my beauty. You have been so afraid of losing control, of coming out of your safety seeking traditions and structures. Today, I am coming to captivate you so much that you no longer fear looking undignified! Look at me and my beauty. I will give you the courage to enter in while the fear of exposure unravels off you.
Preserved During Disruption
Come with me into a season of internal truth telling. I will remove your hunger for food, for sex, for materialism as you find yourself already satisfied in me. Linger with me a little longer; I will make your friendships bear new fruit and your relationships come alive. If you do not come to me so that I can purify you, the outside world will only increasingly relate to you in pantomime. They will expect you to be perfect and composed, even as I send increased shaking on the Earth. Let me come to medicate your heart before it is exposed through Earthquakes and Storms! I already call you worthy.
I am coming to wash you in simplicity again. Do you remember when life was so simple that you could savor each part, like sensing the taste of each ingredient in a recipe? Coming alive will feel like retraining your senses. Come to me, I will make it easy. As I bring you into the light, I am with you to overcome. To the one whose heart receives my love for truth, I will give a silent noble strength; you will be unshakable in days of shaking.
Your willingness to emote truthfully will prepare you for international shaking that God will send within the decade. Combined with your sense of responsibility, cooperation, and uprightness, this capacity to bear the depth of God’s emotions elegantly will breathe new life into government, family, church
If you receive a deeper revelation of truth in your emotions, I will empower you to keep your tongue from divisive words as the enemy sows division. You will have a pure heart to honor your neighbor, to honor your friends, to reject evil and fear the Lord (Psalm 15). Like Psalm 15, you will overflow with the life of Christ and be generous in your thoughts, words, and actions.
Psalm 15
1O LORD, who may abide in Your tent?
Who may dwell on Your holy mountain?
2He who walks with integrity
and practices righteousness,
who speaks the truth from his heart,
3who has no slander on his tongue,
who does no harm to his neighbor,
who casts no scorn on his friend,
4who despises the vile
but honors those who fear the LORD,
who does not revise a costly oath,
5who lends his money without interest
and refuses a bribe against the innocent.
He who does these things
will never be shaken.
Psalm 15
Shepherds During Shaking
Because you have withheld yourself from evil, I will give you a greater capacity to minister to the vulnerable. I will make up for the times in the past where you have seen the people’s need but felt so utterly unable to meet it. I will be the one empowering you to empathize with people’s great needs. The change in how you communicate and are received will feel like I have given you an entirely new language. Vulnerable people will see you as noble because of the gentle, delicate way you have spoken to them. Just as I patiently seek out the lamb who is lost and carry it gently around my neck, the light yoke I am giving you will restore those who even you yourself previously said were unsave-able. I will teach you how to carry them and lead them beside still waters. You will be a nation whose love of truth compels you to shepherd with an upright heart.
I will refresh you by a fresh revelation of my grace and acceptance. Chosen nation, even the blood of Christian martyrs is already crying out with my Spirit from the ground on your behalf. You have never been alone, and you can put away your striving! I am reforming families on mutual acceptance, sending grace for this acceptance to transform social attitudes on interracial marriage. You will make me known among Asia as a God of gentleness and solidarity. Japanese Church, from the eldest to the youngest, I call you my “Strategists”. I have listened to the intercession of women crying out for not just their families, but their nation. My Japanese Bride, I have so loved your purity that I am sending a fresh grace upon you for evangelism strategy. Their intercession has shaken loose the remaining religious restrictions and loosed innovative creative apostolic strategies, many of which will model my radical acceptance. Because of the way you radically accept others, I will send an organic multiplication effort with signs and wonders, where individuals who have never even picked up a bible will have a spontaneous awareness of the character and mystery of Jesus. Their courage in public preaching will so shock outsiders that many will come into the Kingdom because of their boldness.
Not an Enemy, but a Friend
While your neighbors have known you as a self-pleasing, violent nation, my gentleness will cause you to relationally invest in the nations who you have alienated. As you look to honor and serve the nations who have only known you through conflict, I will open your eyes to their value and unique gifts. Out of recognition for these nations’ strengths, I will give you the grace to develop alliances with like-minded locals. I will create a relational network through the Church and the Business sector that will displace your nationalism and put the oneness of the Body of Christ on display in Asia. I am coming to create a spirit of truth and adoption within symbiotic business alliances. Through the outworking of the humble attitude I develop in you, some Asians will be inspired to imagine the flag of the Kingdom of God in greater detail. The outworking of this revelation will influence partnerships in the Media and Communications industry from Japan and throughout Asia.”
Age of the Unexpected 