"Yahweh gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of Yahweh is great and very terrible; who can endure it?" (Joel 2:11, NKJV).

This made me think of yesterday's prophetic warning from Yahweh especially in the light of an interesting dream I had last night in which I was taken back to my childhood and some of my earliest experiences with school.

In the dream I was struggling to understand the simplest of mathematical problems, the simplification of a fraction, but for some reason I had a mental blockage. A teacher was hovering over me nearby and the one thing I remember was the fear of getting it wrong and the shame if I did get it wrong, a pretty common experience amongst all of us who have been through the school experience. In the dream I was sitting a test in, of all places, the Psychology Department at Oxford University where I had a good friend who was completing his D.Phil (Ph.D) whom I used to visit regularly as I was helping him illustrate his thesis in the days before fancy computer graphic programs were available.

When I woke up I realised what Yahweh was telling me both personally and generally for all of you: we cannot successfully do deliverance work on others in areas where we have not had deliverance completed in ourselves first. I have seen many a deliverance minister overwhelmed by forces he either could not understand or by the same forces that were operating in himself that had never been properly taken care of which came to hinder him in his ministry. And if he does not know how to manage both himself, his clients and the invisible realm, he will eventually burn himself out in a futile struggle with both his own problems and those of those he is trying to help. A well-meaning and enthusiastic soldier will soon become a fatality if he isn't trained first.

It is for this reason that I have been on a long sabbatical from this kind of service. Like going through new or even refresher courses, ministers must sometimes get specialist training from others who know what they're doing. A believer who throws himself into this kind of ministry without knowing what he is doing is acting like cavalry attacking armoured tanks. Only grief can result for both the one seeking deliverance as well as the one doing deliverance.

Yesterday's vision is, I believe, about both this kind of deliverance ministry as well as general intercession. The opening shots in a war have been fired and armies are rapidly mobilising and streaming to the front both on earth and in the heavenlies. We have already set up our spiritual defences at home and are reinforcing the lines, as it were. But first unresolved spiritual issues have to be recognised, confronted and overcome through emunah (faith) in the blood of the Lamb.

May you be blessed as you mobilise!