God is eager to awaken you once again to go deep in Him. “Deep calls to deep at the noise of your waterfalls; all Your waves and Your billows passed over me. Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song will be with me, a prayer to the God of my life” (Ps. 42:7-8). I believe that if we ignore the “deep calls to deep” moments, we will soon believe the shallow end of the pool is deep. If you want to go deep, take off the floaties and dive in where you cannot stand up on your own. I must warn you, though, that when you try to go deep in God, someone will always try to throw you a rope called settling. You cannot settle in the depth of God.
I have learned that the longer you are away from the place of encounter with God, the more satisfied you become with being normal according to the world’s standards. In fact, it is much like what happened to the prophet Elijah when he ran into the cave in fear for his life. God said to him, “Why are you here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9b). Remember, Jezebel had threatened Elijah after he had killed the prophets of Baal, telling him through one of her servants, “So let the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as one of them by tomorrow about this time” (1 Kings 19:2b). Elijah ran for his life and was now hiding in a cave. God was not really asking him, “What are you doing here?” Rather, He was reminding him of his mission. Leonard Ravenhill once said, “A man who is intimate with God is never intimidated by man.” We must no longer be intimidated by man or accusations or threats.
Early one morning in a hotel room in Pennsylvania, I was awakened by the voice of the Lord. He said to me, “Pat, where did your roar go? Where is the roar of my lions?” Startled, I sat up in bed. And immediately began to pray. The whisper of God had shaken me to the core, bringing to mind one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Matthew 10:27 (NIV): “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.” God will often whisper a message to you that eventually becomes a public proclamation. This was one of those times.
The Lord went on to say to me, “My people are perishing for lack of knowledge. They have lost their will to fight. Fear, exhaustion and culture have taken their roar away. They must awaken and realize they must be voices of truth that carry freedom in their hearts and fire in their spirits. Restore the roar! Tell My lions to roar once again!”
I must admit I was perplexed and confused, and I began to weep before the Lord. In fact, I stood in my hotel room that day, praying and crying out for over an hour with the realization that I too had become quiet. One of my heroes, Salvation Army general William Booth, said, “We must take the message of 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 (MSG) and make it our marching orders: “Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute and love without stopping/”
Karen and I had just spent a year in fear. The battle had been intense. Just as a parent awakens a child from sleep to get ready for school or a teacher raps a ruler on your desk to end a daydream, God was saying, “Wake up, Pat! Your mission is not over. Put your armor on once again and enter the fight.” I had been wandering a bit aimlessly since our battle, and God was calling me back to the field. Many who are reading this right now wear nothing but the helmet of salvation. The Bible tells us that God has a whole suit of armor for us (see Eph. 6:19-18.) He provides all we need for any battle we face. We just have to equip ourselves.
With God’s word ringing in my heart, I immediately began to search the Scriptures concerning lions. Proverbs 28:1 (NLT) says, “The wicked run away when no one is chasing them, but the godly are as bold as lions.” Did you hear that? We are called to be bold as lions! You and I are called to roar! Regardless of how exhausted and weary we become, we must seek the Lord once again. We must once again take our rightful place of authority. And when we do, God will provide what we need for the battle. “The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Ps. 34:10, NIV).
I believe the Lord is saying the restoration of the roar is when His Spirit arises once again from the depths of our bellies, where the roar has been caged under lock and key by low expectations, wounded spirits and lack of hunger .He desires to awaken our prophetic voices once more. Just look at Amos 3:8: “The lion has roared—who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken—who can but prophesy?”
For more on the Schaztlines’ message of restoring your roar, listen to the podcast included here.
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James Lasher 
Abby Trivett 
