The Fire Drill is ringing

January 10, 2005

Personal Narrations

Joel Akin

Calgary, Alberta

The Dream-I was sitting in English class when suddenly a young man rushes in and tells us that the entire school has just had a fire drill and the Principal has stated we must meet in the front.

Now there was more to this dream which I did not include as it tends to deal with personal issues dealing with my own spiritual education and physical refreshment. It is the fire drill which I want to speak of.

Over the last few years I have dreamed more and more about being in school along with many other students. I have since learned that the school represents those who are being trained in what I can only call the school of God.

Micah 4:2 And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths:

The School of God can best be represented by those who are in tune with the voice of God. This school is being taught by Christ and by the Holy Spirit. This is a school where all men, women and children are in tune with that voice to such an extent that they are being shown what their role and purpose are in the coming years. We must realize not all who call themselves Christians are but only those who do the will of the father. Many, in fact, are going to churches or Bible Studies, but their spiritual grades make them ice cold or lukewarm at best.

Now I know part of my training is the Holy Spirit has me in English class. English represents communication. In the dream I was taking a sentence which had past, present and future tenses and it was my task to take that sentence and make sense out of it. Now in the natural I never was a genius with grammatical restructuring of sentences. In a spiritual sense none of us are wise in the ways of the Holy Spirit unless the Holy Spirit is there to teach us. Only through him can we take the Bible or the teachings of Christ and restructure them in a way that is meaningful to the hearts of men. Our natural inclination is to follow patterns we are taught by men but the fact is there is little authority and almost no power in our churches today.

So thus the purpose of this school is to prepare certain people in the ways of God and show them the path they must take. But as in many cases the fact is that school can be boring or repetitious. We fall into patterns which can cause even the best of us to fall asleep at the wheel or nod off in class. To put it bluntly our humanity is weak and we fail and falter. And if one looks at the so called revivals in Western Nations such as North America there is one thing which seems to be lacking. I call these MSAW's. Miracles, Signs and Wonders... I've been in the best of churches and heard the best of speakers and heard the stories and sermons. People talk about MSAW's but the fact is they are rarer then 3 leaf clovers or polka-dotted zebras. Don't get me wrong. They happen all around us but they are selective. The best way I can describe it is the story in John.

John 5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

If you go on to read the story Jesus passed by and found a man who had been their a long, long time because he had no one to help him when the Angel placed healing in the water. Others who were quicker were the only ones healed. Were those quicker ones lucky, less sinful? Or was it the way it just happened to work? The fact is MSAW's were rare before Christ and they have become rarer in our day. Jesus seemed to indicate that these things will happen in our day but the fact is they are not. At least not to the degree I believe we must see. The crippled remain at the back of the church or at home and there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the 'lucky' few who get healed.

But getting back to the dream we find that the entire school has a fire drill. When you think of a fire drill what is its purpose? The answer is to prepare for when a real emergency happens. Why? We are left to wonder why God would have a fire drill? Does this refer to the Tsunami in Asia? Is that the fire drill? The answer is no that was not the fire drill I saw in my dream. I believe though that the fire drill is more then just a symbolic act. It is preparation for what is to come.

After the Hurricanes in Florida there was a lot of talk about emergency sirens and better preparation. Few people opposed the idea of better preparation and in fact of all the states in the USA the one that is the most prepared has to be Florida. They have suffered through four major storms one right after another. But what if these storms were meant as a wake up call? What if they were the fire drills for that state to prepare them for even greater devastation?

Part of the question we face is "How does God prepare us for true devastation?" I believe the answer is by sending us smaller events which are meant to be our wake up call. History has proved that most people don't learn very much from fire drills. I take for example of a night I spent in Edmonton on New Years eve many years ago. They had people partying and living their lives as they saw fit until 2 in the morning. Around 4 AM someone set off the fire alarm. What I found interesting is that the staff didn't know if it was real or not. The hotel guests didn't know if it was real or not. The fact is by the time we all gathered outside in the cold of night out of the hundreds of guests only about 12 of us decided it was better not to take a chance.

People ask why so many people die in such situations and one of the biggest reasons is lack of belief that anything bad is going to happen and lack of preparation for when it does. Personally I believe we are headed for the 'fire drill' of God. We are on the brink of this fire drill and its not going to be imaginary but real. Like the four hurricanes in Florida its going to hit one after another and there is not going to be a thing we can do to stop it. It will overwhelm us and terrify us and it will wake us up to the reality we have been denying for so long; that anything terrible can happen to us.

There are many reasons for it but one of the things it is meant to do is to bring together the church. There will be a period of time when the disasters are striking and God will call the leaders of the church together. For some reason I believe this bringing together will be instigated by God in a unique fashion.

The fact is in some ways the disasters we've had in 2004 are the first bell going off. But it will continue and expand and the biggest events are yet to come. And I am convinced that it is imminent and ready to strike at any moment. How we deal with this drill will determine whether or not God will use us in the years to come or weather we will remain in our rooms sleeping it off thinking, "Its just a false alarm" not realizing the flood waters are gathering around our feet.