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Gen. 25:21 “because she was barren;”  

If you are looking to pioneer a ministry or movement, begin first with barren ground.  God loves to move among the unreached, hardened, dry, and forsaken sectors of society.  When Isaac looked at Rebekah, there was no natural hope that she would conceive. However, in this place of desperation and dryness, the Lord poured out an answer to prayer.

The church of Jesus Christ is called to the dry places of the earth.  “The gates of hell” are her target, which shall not prevail against the Gospel message covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. To birth and bring to pass what God plans in these last days, we must be willing to step into the most forgotten and forsaken places to see life come forth. 

The history of the church has been to go to the unreached.  Paul said his aim was not to “build upon another man’s foundation” (Romans 15:20) but to “to preach the gospel in regions beyond you.” (2 Cor. 10:15) Jesus was compelled to go from city to city to the lost sheep of Israel and ventured to find other places that had not yet heard the message.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but the sick.” (Matt. 9:12)

Martyrdom, persecution, and rejection have forever produced the most fertile soil for the Gospel, but instead we want to plant churches where life is rich, easy, and comfortable.  Perhaps the impotency and apathy of our modern church planting movement stems from our lack of desperation without God’s intervention.

A barren situation is the most fruitful scene for the supernatural to manifest.  We have seen barren works of God that turned into the manifestation of God’s power.  One of the saints of our age, Mother Teresa, accomplished her most significant work by sowing into the outcasts of India.

If you desire to see harvest, do not find an already plowed field where a seed can easily sprout and grow.  That would be a natural pattern.  Instead, our faith like that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob calls us to find the most unlikely, impoverished, hard, and barren land and begin tilling. 

“For more are the children of the desolate and barren than the children of the married woman.”  (Isaiah 54:1)

Gen. 25:21 “Now Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife,”

The Spirit of intercession gives birth to all ministries of the Lord. When is the last time we pleaded with God in prayer for the answer only He can give? If we are to pioneer a ministry of God, the groundwork of prayer and intercession must be the preparation for any work to succeed.

If birth is to occur, it must begin with the intimacy of intercession.  When planting a church in Greensboro, in Greenville, in Chapel Hill, and in Belarus the movements always began with a small prayer meeting, a gathered few pleading with God.  Prayer is the pattern. 

Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, John Wesley, Billy Graham, and all great revivalists of the ages recognized this need for incessant petitioning God and sent prayer teams before them into any area before the evangelism began.  Whenever God is about to move on the earth, He begins by calling His people to prayer.

For many years the church has lost the need to plead to God.  But now God has raised up a concerted prayer movement unrivaled in all of history.  “This is Jacob, the generation of those who seek Him, who seek Your face.”  (Psalm 24:6)

You are a part of this historic generation that God is raising up as a forerunner for revival across the globe. We are the Jacob Generation, and God is calling us now to humble ourselves in prayer, to turn from our wicked ways, and to seek His face so that He will heal our land.

Jacob’s first calling, the circumstances of his birth, his tattered walk through the wilderness, and the legacy he left as Israel combine to make a ministry of pleading, praying, and wrestling with God for the blessing on the earth.

When is the last time you wrestled with God for His purpose to come on the earth?  If He has given you a vision and a heart to see change occur, if you are seeking to birth a movement or church, it must begin in the place in intimacy with Jesus. 

Cry out like Hannah.  Do not be restrained like Isaiah.  Continue to bow and pray like Elijah and give the Lord no rest until He establishes peace on the earth.  Jacob was birthed in response to the pleas of Isaac for his barren wife.  From the moment he was conceived, God was teaching him, and us, something about the importance of prayer. 

Gen. 26:5  “because Abraham…”

The blessing to Isaac and Jacob comes not because of his own obedience, but rather because Abraham “obeyed My voice and kept My charge.”  

Famines have a way of striping us from self-righteousness, so we realize our goodness is nothing apart from Him.  When I was successfully employed, I had the accolades of others constantly feeding my sense of self-righteousness.  When things went right, there was applause. When events occurred, a host of like-minded friends were there to celebrate my success.  A desert, however, has little room for a gallery of onlookers.

Here we are alone, and in our famine we begin to realize that we really have nothing to bring to the table to earn God’s favor or the applause of others.  Instead in our silent habitations, we are tempted to hear a voice of condemnation listing our sins and reasons for failure. We are too lazy, incompetent, unfocused, undisciplined, or too tired to put up a fight.

In this emptiness, a fresh filling is desperately needed which states anew the power of the Gospel.  God loved and loves us when we are utterly unlovable. He provides a promise of forgiveness, restoration, and provision not because we have earned it; but out of the covenant with Jesus, the seed of Abraham, our righteous One.

I am delivered and sustained in famine not because of my reserves, careful planning and prudent use of resources.  Famine scorches my self-sufficiency. I realize how desperate I am for God to send rain from above or a well from beneath.  Around me is dry, barren earth; and even the most careful cultivation of my surroundings promises no relief without the dew and water of heaven.

Isaac, Jacob, all succeeding generations from the promise to Abraham have only to look to their father of faith to trace the reasons for their hope.  God may not be moved to do it because of me—but because of Abraham and a covenant of faith, He is obliged.

Abraham’s covenant is simply the Gospel of Christ.  What one Man did in obeying the commands of God is vicariously credited to my account simply because I choose to believe.  If instead I try to conjure up my own solutions, defend my own righteousness or work my way into a blessing; I am destined to wrestle eternally with God for His hand of grace.

Instead, the desert and the famine teach me only to believe.  Nothing of my own can make the desert flourish, but because of His Promised Covenant, my dry land can become an open stream