Traveling and ministering around the USA and the world over the last twelve years, I have personally experienced many movements and churches who absolutely welcome the supernatural power of God, the prophetic ministry, and prayer and worship. This journey has now taken me to more than forty states and twenty foreign nations.

However, when I am in these environments and feel the prompting of the Holy Spirit to start preaching and teaching on holiness and consecration, the air gets sucked out of the room. I have cried out to the Lord with much weeping on many occasions and said, “God, how is it possible that so many Charismatics/Pentecostals love miracles, prophecy, prayer, and worship, but they do not want to hear about Your holiness? Why do conferences fill up when we advertise the miraculous, worship, and prophecy, but hardly anyone attends if we start confronting sin and addressing character and integrity?” This is a tremendous prophetic burden upon my heart today that I want to explore deeper with you now.

Several years ago, I was a part of a conference leadership team where we were ministering on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The conference registration sold out and the first night was off the charts. There was a strong prophetic flow and signs, wonders, and miracles broke out. We worshipped for over two hours. At the end of the meeting, we announced that the next night we would be talking about living a lifestyle of consecration and the sacrifices that it takes to go deeper into God’s heart.

To our amazement, only twenty-five percent of the conference attendees showed up the next night.

Only twenty-five percent!

At the end of that night, we announced that the following night we would be doing more miracles and prophecy. What happened? The building was packed out with standing room only!

In other words, we discovered a charismatic generation addicted to the supernatural, but allergic to the word of God!

I want to be clear; this is not an isolated incident. I have witnessed this pattern all over the USA and the world again and again for years!

I fear we now have a growing charismatic generation who embraces the supernatural power of God—giftings, prophecy, evangelization, prayer, worship, miracles—but the moment holiness and consecration is mentioned, everyone flees! How terrifying! I consistently meet Charismatics around the world who are ready to lay hands on the sick, but they can’t keep their hands off a boyfriend or girlfriend. They have been trained in the supernatural but somehow missed that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life.

We have a generation of worship leaders who in too many circles don’t care if the musicians and singers are saved, let alone living holy before God. We just want to pay professionals for their skills on a stage when we should be dropping a plumb-line and raising up a standard of righteousness in the Church. Perhaps the greatest earmark of a generation chasing the supernatural with no biblical foundation is the fact that they categorically reject the message of repentance and wholeheartedly embrace various so called forms of “love” that embraces people in their sin, but fails to call them out of it.

Revival History

With a generation so desperate for revival and awakening, the power of consecration and holiness is absolutely necessary to see heaven come to earth. We must continue to pray for the miraculous and engage in prayer and worship, but the call to holiness and consecration must not and cannot be ignored any longer.

Loren Sandford, commenting on the history of revival in the Church, says, “Every past revival in Christian history has been based on a foundational cultural agreement concerning right and wrong, sin and morality. When society departed from that foundation, everyone knew it. As a result, people could respond to great preaching, feel guilt over their sin, turn to God and repent. Revival grew and spread on the basis of repentance and the forgiveness that flows from the cross and the blood, in large part because everyone understood the baseline from which they had departed and to which they could return. No such cultural agreement now exists. Even in much of the contemporary Church we have lost the sense of sin and with it, any need to repent. Without a sense of sin, repentance cannot come, and without repentance, revival in the fullest sense can never happen.”

There has been a continual and systematic erasing of a baseline or plumb line in our generation. The truth is that our lifestyle choices are either highlighting or erasing a clear standard of holiness and righteousness in land. Moral relativism denies absolute truth and leaves what is right and wrong conduct up to however we feel. We must reject this deception. Moral absolutism says there is a clear standard of what it means to be consecrated and there are right and wrong ways of doing things. The standard determines what is right and wrong.

Sexual immorality is at the top of almost every list of sins in the New Testament. It is emphasized in the book of Revelation as one of Satan’s primary weapons against the Church in the end times (Rev. 2:20; 9:21; 14:8; 17:1–4). If someone is continually and habitually engaging in sexual immorality and calling themselves a Christian, they are deceived (Romans 6).

Lifting our hands up on Sunday morning and pulling our pants down on Friday night is not okay. Heterosexual, homosexual, bi-sexual, and however else sexual you want to get, but if it’s not in covenant as defined by the Word, then God doesn’t bless it. He condemns it. It doesn’t matter if someone attends a supernatural school of ministry, speaks in tongues and prophesies, their daddy’s a preacher, or their under some false grace teaching. If we are not saving ourselves for marriage, we are selling ourselves to the devil!

A Prophetic Warning

When churches/church leaders no longer confront sin in their midst, the glory of God will depart from among them and many don’t even know it! If you are attending a church/ministry where sin is not being confronted on a regular basis, you are in danger of fellowshipping with Ichabod.

Be on alert for a modern day spirit of Eli that is breeding a generation of Hophni’s and Phinehas’s in the Church because of it. We cannot afford to mix the holy with the profane any longer. Saints, please beware of Ichabod churches, ministries, and leaders! They are easy to spot because they do not confront sin or call people to repentance and consecration. You must get out now! Their spiritual blindness and lack of anointing to stand before the Lord (Eli) is going to cost you everything so long as you sit underneath their teaching and connect to their churches/ministries. Yes, to miracles, prophecy, prayer, and worship BUT we must also embrace the lost art of holiness and consecration in this hour. Jesus Christ is coming back for a pure and spotless Bride, not a harlot called Babylon.

Marked for Eternity,