Today, I saw the image of a large colorful bounce house. A
bounce house is one of those inflatable rubber devices that are brought
to life by a motorized air pump. Kids jump and bounce around in them at
birthday parties.

When I first saw the image, I simply thought it was a random
thought. I saw it a few more times during the day. Tonight, the image appeared
once again and this time it carried a message. When the image appeared, I saw
the Lord walk over and pull the plug. The structure slowly deflated and lay on
the ground in an unrecognizable pile of plastic. People started crawling out
from beneath the deflated bounce house with shocked looks on their faces.

I said, “Lord, talk to me.” I really wanted to understand
what He was saying. Immediately, He took me back to the image and I saw the
bounce house disappear. The people who had crawled out from under the deflated bounce
house had been transformed. No longer was gravity inhibiting them. They began
to bounce, but there was no bounce house in the scene. They looked like the
astronauts jumping on the moon taking exaggerated leaps of faith flying ahead in
large bouncing steps of Kingdom advancement.

The Lord said, “I am deflating religious structures that
have falsely promised life to My people.” As I tried to unpack what I thought I
heard the Lord say, I understood His words to mean He was coming after our
methods of fellowship and even our preferred styles of worship. He will deflate
what we have used to fill us at the expense of hosting His presence. God is
deflating those things because they will not be able carry us into the future.
They have kept us isolated in religious bounce houses not engaging culture in a
significant way.

When the collapse takes place people will crawl out from underneath
the weight of what no longer works to receive a fresh personal infilling and inflating
of God’s Spirit.

As the word came to
an end, I saw thousands upon thousand of believers bouncing to the tops
of each mountain of cultural influence. When they landed at the summit they
would deposit their footprints at altitudes previously thought to be
unattainable.  That is why He is
deflating what is no longer working.