Mission 2:17

  I once had an interesting experience while on vacation at the beach with my wife. We had reserved a room ahead of time, but then we decided to go a day early. We called the hotel where we had the reservation but they were all booked for the night so we found another hotel where we could spend one night then go to the one we had reserved the next day. The first hotel wasn’t very big and not many rooms and for some reason the room number stood out to me. Then the next day we had some fun at the beach then went and checked into the new hotel. This one was larger with more rooms. As we were going to our room I noticed we had the exact same room number. I thought this was interesting but not that unusual. Then the next day we went to a popular spa and checked into a private hot tub. As we were going in, the number was the exact same as the two hotel rooms. I knew this was not just coincidence, God was showing me something. I felt impressed to look up this number in the book of John. I won’t say what it was exactly because it was private and meaningful to us, this was our wedding anniversary trip.

  Several years later we were headed to the beach again and I prayed asking God to do this again. We checked into a hotel that we’d never been to and I took note of the room number hoping for the same thing to happen again. It didn’t. The number didn’t come up again. We enjoyed the rest of the trip and went home. A month or so later I was praying, feeling discouraged and looking for direction. I knew that I was called to ministry and I knew that it was more than I was currently doing but the lack of direction was frustrating. Then I felt reminded by the Lord about that hotel room number. I thought it was nothing because it wasn’t confirmed three times. The room number was 2:17 and again I felt impressed  to look it up in the book of John. Here is what it says.

  John 2:17 His disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

  I already knew that I was called to start some kind of Church, but that was all I knew. I didn’t understand what our purpose or vision would be or why another one is even necessary in a city already saturated with some really good churches. So the moment I read this I knew I was being shown something about my future ministry. Jesus is zealous for His Church!

  Before I dig into John 2:17 I will explain what happened next. I felt like I should keep looking, So I got to Acts 2:17

   “And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.”

  This is an obvious clue to how Jesus wants to run His Church, but we will get into that later. I continued my journey through the 2;17s and the pattern continued to reveal a picture of the Bride that Jesus is longing for. The 2:17 pattern is not perfect of course. There are several books that don’t fit with it. Some books chapter 2 does not even go up to verse 17. Heck, Jude doesn’t even have a chapter 2. But the Lord spoke to me through this. I am not claiming that this is a pattern placed into the Word of God for such a time as this or anything like that. I am not claiming that it was intentionally put there by the original authors, I am just saying that it was a really fun way that God showed me some things. I also try to not take verses out of their context to make a point. Context and proper bible application is very important to me.

  So anyway, the plan here is to write a small article for each one that fits anyway, starting with John 2:17 and hopefully by the end we will have a good picture of what God is doing in the Church today.