“In the eighth year of his reign…he began to seek the God of his father David, and…purge Judah and Jerusalem.” 2 Chr 34:3

Before it became the world’s most popular dating app, tinder was associated with flammable material that could easily combust and ignite a fire. Spiritually speaking, as God prepares to set His people ablaze, His eyes run to and fro throughout the earth looking for tinder among us. 2650 years ago in Judah, God’s eyes fell upon a young king named Josiah who would usher in one of the greatest renewals the nation ever saw. Josiah reinstituted the Passover, something no King of Israel had done before him, and he purged “all the abominations in all the country…and made all who were present in Israel diligently serve the Lord their God” (2 Chr 34:33). Simply put, God raised up Josiah as a catalyst of revival.

God is about to move again. As He does, His eyes are scanning the earth for tinder! What exactly was it about Josiah that caught God’s attention?

First, he began to diligently pursue the Lord. This was deliberate and focused seeking. He came to a point where he set distractions aside. Important matters paled compared to the sense of urgency he felt as he pressed into God. Desperation is necessary kindling for every move of God.

A central feature of Josiah’s seeking was to know how “the God of his father David” had moved in the past. Finney studied Edwards. Seymore and Roberts studied Finney and Edwards. The Latter Rain leaders of 1948 researched the early Pentecostal outpourings, and subsequent revivals have always sought diligently to unstop the wells of revival opened by the awakenings of past generations. They knew that the treasures of wise householders mined from the old even as they are run after the new.

I’ve been extraordinarily blessed to come from a rich revival tradition. Some of my spiritual mothers and fathers were central figures in that Latter Rain Movement. I was saved and filled with the Holy Spirit at the height of the Charismatic Renewal. I personally drank from the sweet waters of the Toronto Blessing and the Brownsville Revival. I laughed for hours at Rodney Howard-Brown meetings. As good as each of these were, none can compare with the miracle- and presence-filled revival I experienced intensely and first-hand in China. Talk about power-encounters! Those days defy description. Heaven came down. Souls were saved in droves. The blind saw, the deaf heard, the lame walked.

Josiah’s hunger was rewarded. He “discovered” the Book of the Law. It had been there in the temple all along, but as is always the case whenever God’s Spirit is poured out, Josiah trembled as he was confronted with the Word of God. “Thus it happened, when the king heard the words of the Law, that he tore his clothes” (34:19). The Word broke him and called into account everything he had been doing. Worship practices were reformed across the land. A national Passover was instituted. God’s Word brought transformative change. Whenever God pours out His Spirit on a people, you’ll know it because they won’t be able to get enough of the Law of God.

Enter the Prophetess Huldah. She had most certainly been interceding for this day! The wife of a wardrobe-keeper who lived in an obscure part of the city in a male dominated age, Huldah had been promoted in the eyes of the people. Everyone knew…this woman has the Word of the Lord! Her voice pierced like a sharpened sword directing all eyes and ears to the key that had opened the heart of this sixteen-year-old king now responsible for a great visitation in Israel. Huldah says:
“Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God…” (34:27)

God is about to do a new thing. People around the world are talking about it. Many are devouring books and articles about the Evan Roberts and Wigglesworth, about Azusa Street and the legacies left by the awakenings of past generations. Expectations are reaching a boiling point. Watchmen are taking their places upon the walls. A cry is ascending. Bones are rattling.

Our forests bare the scars of scorched woods from ancient burnings. To walk here is to be struck by the cracking sounds of dry branches snapping underfoot. God walks here as in the Garden of old, His to-and-fro gaze searching for Josiahs. These have cast all other cares aside, bent on witnessing the God who has moved so gloriously in past times to do it again. They are no longer content to snack on the Word; the are discovering anew that they live by every Word that comes from this Law.

If Huldah was here, her unsheathed words would be pointing at those who are diligently humbling themselves before the Father–whose hearts, like Josiah, are being tenderized in order to embrace the next mighty move of the God of fire and a God on fire. This forest will burn again to become a mighty torrent of flames across the lands. Tender is tinder. May He find the combustibles He needs to set this forest ablaze in your heart and mine.