Calling Forth the True Family of God
by David Demian
This past Christmas my wife Ruth, I and 6 of our 7 kids, went on what we hoped would be the family vacation of a lifetime. Through a blessing we received, we were able to take 5 weeks to travel to Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. We were so excited! 2005 had been a very busy year and I had spent a lot of time traveling away from my family. Now all of our labours would be forgotten as we took time just to relax and have fun and enjoy ourselves.
But we were not prepared for what would happen next. 48 hours after arriving in Hawaii the home we were staying in was broken into and we were robbed. All our passports, airline tickets, cash, computers, DVD players – all our electronics – were stolen. It was a nightmare. As it turned out, Hawaii is the only US state without a Canadian consulate so we entered into a nerve-wracking process of re-applying for passports to Los Angeles with only a few days to spare before our flights to Australia. Never in my whole life have I seen so many things go wrong. The passport pictures we had taken in Hawaii to send with our applications were the wrong size (they were American, not Canadian sized, and yes, as I found out, it matters!) Then they weren’t notarized. Instead of spending our days frolicking on the beach, we spent hours driving to Costco with six unhappy kids three different times in two days to take photos. Then I spent the rest of my time, driving to the consulate, driving to the airport to have all the tickets re-issued (at costs of many hundreds of dollars) and driving to the courier. After a rollercoaster 3 days of our hopes rising and falling, we finally received the new passports, mere hours before we were to step onto our flight to Sydney.
But that wasn’t all. On our last day in Honolulu, Joel, who was only 10 months old at the time, became violently sick. He was vomiting and had diarrhea to the point Ruth and I had to change him 6 times every hour. This persisted through the whole 12-hour flight to Sydney and then for days afterwards. No matter what we did we couldn’t stop the diarrhea. Finally, as we were driving to the Great Ocean Road past Melbourne, we had to drop the other kids at a beach with a friend and take Joel into emergency because he had become totally unresponsive. He was dying before our eyes.
Our dream vacation had become a nightmare! And it wasn’t just the external warfare, the things that were hitting us. When we were robbed I had sought the Lord and the first thing He said to me was, “David, don’t doubt My goodness. You have to understand that the church is about to enter another phase of authority and you have to push through this as a family or you will not survive what is coming in the future.” And the Lord spoke to Ruth clearly that He wanted the kids to own the vision with us – that they could not ride on our grace any longer.
And with that, we entered into the most intense exposure I have ever seen of our hearts as a family. Everything was being uncovered and exposed in our relationships with one another. The kids were fighting incessantly and there was no chance for a break – we were together day and night – driving together, flying together, sleeping in one motel room together, eating together, playing together. It got to the point I really wondered if I could go on one more day. But even in our weaknesses, I saw how determined the Lord was not to let go. I felt He was showing me that in the new season we are entering, there will have to be a new kind of relationship that will stand the test of a kind of warfare we have never yet experienced.
After weeks of this exposure, I was a broken man. Then one morning, suddenly, the Lord spoke to me and said, “It’s over”. I knew that He wasn’t speaking of the season of exposure but that this particular time, this test, was done and we had passed it by His grace. That day, we experienced a powerful time of deep sharing. The kids and Ruth and I opened our hearts with one another, honestly sharing our hurts and frustrations. I have been amazed at the transparency and maturity even in my younger children and I knew God was doing something sovereign in our family. There was a breaking and the start of healing and a renewed commitment to walk with one another in love and transparency and respect.
The Family is the Key
Just after I returned to Canada I received an email from a man in Hawaii who said he had found my laptop and PDA that had been stolen. I was completely shocked as the police had told us that in these cases the electronics are usually in the pawn shop before they have even arrived on the scene. This man was a computer person and the individual who gave it to him (who he said was “troubled”) couldn’t figure out how to open the laptop and asked him for help. When he opened it and the screen went on, immediately he saw my family picture from last year’s Christmas card on my desktop. And he said something inside of him said, “This is a good man and a good family, I need to return this laptop to its rightful owner.” He searched through the laptop and found information concerning Watchmen and then emailed us.
When this happened the Lord spoke to me that this was a prophetic picture of something He has been trying to show His church for a long time: it was when this man saw the family that his heart was turned. Ever since One Heart the Lord has been burdening me that it is only when we become a true family as the body of Christ, when we have true love for one another, that the world will believe. The vision alone is not enough: it’s the love, the true relationships of unity that the Lord is wanting now more than anything.
A New Season of Shaking
I believe my family experienced a foretaste of a season of shaking and sifting that is now upon the body of Christ since the beginning of this year. When I was praying recently, the Lord said to me, “David, the church in Canada is about to enter into another level of authority, where because of the corporate unity, it will be able to address principalities and powers. The enemy knows the danger and he will come to sift the body to see if there is anything he can find in you (John 14:30). By the end of the year, some ministries you know won’t even exist anymore because of this shaking.”
I believe in particular what the Lord is targeting at this time is our relationships. We are now experiencing a great shaking in our “families”: our natural families, our church and ministry families and the family of the body of Christ in this nation as the Lord seeks to fashion us into the true Bride of Christ.
The Lord is jealous over His word. At One Heart, three thousand of us, representing the body of Christ from every colour and tribe and denomination in Canada, publicly declared: We make a solemn vow. We say we are Yours, Lord Jesus Christ…We determine to take up our cross and follow You. It’s time for Your promise, Lord, that we may be one as You and the Father are One…
And just as it says in Malachi 3:16
Those who feared the Lord, talked together AND THE LORD LISTENED and a scroll of remembrance was written in the sight of the Lord concerning those who feared the Lord and honored His name.”
When we covenanted and we presented the Lord the scroll of remembrance, I believe the Lord heard us and now He has decided to make good on our covenant. He will have a people who are “willing in the day of His power” (Psalm 110:3)
Fall on the Stone
Knowing the season we are in, in the fear of the Lord let us submit ourselves to God and ask Him to expose, remove, heal and bring into alignment every area of our lives and relationships that are not pleasing to Him. Let us fall on the stone, the Chief Cornerstone, willingly now so we will not be crushed later (Luke 20:18). May the Lord make us, as the Canadian church, into the family He has longed to have, so that by our love, the whole world will know that Jesus was sent from the Father.
All my love,
David