Hi all,
I am writing this a day after getting back from our conference in Scotland. It was amazing and so multi-faceted. The presence of the Lord who ministered to us, the worship, the relationships, the connections, the teaching, the sharing from real-life issues in house church and faith. It was just rich in every way, ministering to the whole person. I heard from more than one who admitted thinking the word ‘conference’ met one thing, and were then just amazed it was anything but a standard ‘conference’.
Dutch/EU conference is May 2-5 of 2024. It will be held at the Emmaus retreat center near Helvoirt as we’ve done in the past. We are SO looking forward to being back in the Netherlands again! Registration will open later this year.
If you live in the EU or Nordics, you may be interested in our EU web site: www.cwow.eu. There you can find my Weekly Thoughts translated into several languages and many more things of interest.
Tulsa National Conference 2024 will be in October 2024, stay tuned for details later.
I’ll be in Lancaster, California in a couple weeks at Shekinah Worship Center, July 14-16. Visit their web site for information. www.shedkinahworship.com
The children: www.kwowi.org, I encourage you to visit the page, consider either sponsoring a child or making a 1 time donation to the general needs of the children. Last month we had a donation to be able to buy children at the Ugandan school mattresses to sleep on instead of a blanket over the bare dirt, as an example. General gifts are always appreciated.
Prophetic for the US
Most who regularly join us for our Zoom online meetings will recall one of the things the Lord talked to me about in the visitations of December 2020 and January 2021, was that the President would continue downward in his cognitive abilities, and soon all will see how he is failing, and much more about how the nation would deal with that.
He said to pray “…he doesn’t have a catastrophic event, which would be bad for the country.” This spring He spoke of political and economic troubles in the fall lasting through next spring, ‘turmoil’ He called it. He said “2024 will be an interesting year.”
And He said as you’ll recall, “As it stands now (unless changed by prayer), Harris will be President for roughly 9 months before the elections.” So we pray for our country. We will have some rest over the next 4 year administration as it stands now, but after the next administration, He has only shown me brief things, and it isn’t good. From the last year of the next administration into 2029, not good – but again, we pray. I usually only share such detail in our Zoom online meetings, but this is a season in the body of Christ to grow up, stop being afraid, stop being tossed here and there by the latest ‘hot’ teaching that comes around, and just be serious about relationships in Christ. Stop being distracted.
Remember that Nineveh though prophesied for destruction, was spared by prayer. And Hezekiah who was also told prophetically he would die, was given 15 more years after he prayed. Jesus told of anti-Christ in the temple in Matthew 24: 15, but added in v20: “Pray this doesn’t happen in the winter nor on the Sabbath.” (The obvious reasons are difficulty of travel at those times).
So pray the US can be spared some of the political turmoil that is potentially in our future. We are told to pray for all in authority “so that we may live a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and honesty.” Amen to that! (I Timothy 1: 2)
Our purpose
CWOWI is not a prophetic ministry, we are a house church network, providing teaching to further the discipleship process. That said, our very existence is prophetic. When the Lord visited me on 4 November 2001 at that church in Edmonton, He said: “I want you to start a house church and house church network. (And) Structure it in such a way to facilitate the development of house churches around the world.”
When I asked why, He said: “It’s against a time to come. Be a resource for them, for it’s against a time to come.”
I keep repeating this for a reason: – that was over 22 years ago. That ‘time to come’ and ‘be a resource for them’ we feel, is just now starting to see some degree of maturity. We have grown at the pace of relationships, but now we see so many house churches starting it is hard to keep pace with them.
We are each other’s greatest resource. People are forever, the rest will one day be destroyed. But people are forever. The relationships made now in Christ will still be in place 1,000 years from now. You’ll still know each other, we’ll still know each other for eternity.
“Against a time to come.” It means well are each other’s savings account, we are each other’s storehouse against a future time when the resources in the storehouse will be needed.
Look at times of crisis in your own life. What has gotten you through? People. A person. A family perhaps. Friends perhaps. But it was people. Not money, not things – those all came from people. When a person has a stay in the hospital they need people to bring food, to comfort them, to help. When a crisis happens we contact those we know who will pray to ask them to do so. People.
We are trying to make cwowi an organization where people know people. People, those relationships, those friendships in Christ, are a storehouse ‘against a time to come.’ The wording the Lord used when I asked ‘Why a house church network’, to respond ‘It’s against a time to come’, is very specific.
My Weekly Thoughts, monthly newsletter, my weekly short teaching videos on posted Wednesday mornings US time, our Zoom online meetings, our conferences and retreats, our travels to living rooms around the country and world, are all geared towards building up that storehouse of relationships that will be needed in a time to come.
We exist, cwowi exists, for one purpose – to be a resource ‘against a time to come’. Consider your relationships in Christ. We are doing all we can to work on ways to connect people, but the Lord ordered it be done through the development of house churches. It is it just you and a friend, meet with purpose, investing in the friendships in Christ.
For those of us who know the times and seasons, we are not moved. We don’t move by fear, but we know the times we live in. We know we have already won for Christ is in us, but we know the seasons by the Spirit.
We know how the Father has always provided for us, how He has always given peace and grace, and that He is not affected nor is our life in Christ affected by the political and economic winds that blow. More than ever it is the time to value our relationships in Christ. To invest in each other, to seek those on the ‘same spiritual page’. Some of the most exciting days of being a believer are ahead of us – let us look to what the Lord will do in our midst! Glory!
And thank you for your generous giving, prayer, and for just being in our lives. We appreciate you more than you know.
Blessings,
John & Barb, Brian & Amy.
