God told me in the middle of the night while I was in Tulsa, do not be distracted by the trumpets sounding in the world. I have carried that ever since, because it names something the church keeps getting wrong.
We are expecting trumpets in the sky. We hear about seven of them in Revelation, and every time something shakes we start counting. Meanwhile there is another trumpet, and almost nobody is talking about it. Joel says blow the trumpet in Zion. Sound the alarm in My holy mountain. That mountain is not real estate. It is a people, and the sound is not judgment. It is jubilee.
Read Joel 2 slowly and you will see two things happening in the same day. Verse one and two describe darkness, gloominess, clouds, thick darkness, blackness spreading over the mountains. Then in the same breath, a great and mighty people from antiquity, the like of which has never been and will never be again. Same day. Same hour. Two entirely different experiences.
That is the pattern of God, and it is older than Joel. In the days of Noah, He dealt with the ones inside the ark and the ones outside the ark at the same time. In Eden, there was a garden and there was a company of people beyond its border, which is how Cain found a wife. God has never needed to remove one people in order to bless another. He deals with the saved and the unsaved simultaneously, because judgment in the earth always requires a witness in the earth.
So when you hear a trumpet, the honest question is not whether judgment is real. It is real. The question is which sound you were assigned to. If you spend your prayer life monitoring the seven trumpets that are not yours, you will miss the one that is. And the one that is yours carries deliverance. When the trumpet blows in Zion there is jubilee. Debts release. Land returns. People come home.
Look at how Joel describes this company. They run like mighty men. They climb the wall like men of war. They march in line and never break rank. One does not crowd another. Each one marches on his own highway. They plunge through the weapons and are not cut off. Before them the land quakes.
I want you to sit with that last line. Before them the land quakes. We keep watching for earthquakes in various places as if they are the event. Scripture points at a people who are the event. When the body of Christ finally agrees on who it is, the ground responds. You are not bracing for the shaking. You are the shaking.
And notice the discipline in the description. They never crowd one another. Every one of them stays on their own highway. There is no competition in this company, because assignment removes the need for it. Your lane is not threatened by someone else's lane. That is one of the marks of a people who are actually ready.
Now, hear the mercy in this chapter, because it is easy to miss. Verse twelve says even now, turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping. Rend your hearts and not your garments. Turn to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in mercy, relenting about calamity. Who knows, He may turn and leave a blessing behind Him.
That invitation is not for the people already in the ark. It is for the ones in the gloom. And here is the uncomfortable part. How will they turn to a God they cannot see? They see Him in a people. Your steadiness in an unstable season is the argument. Your peace is the evidence. Your provision when the numbers do not add up is the sermon.
So blow the trumpet in Zion. Not because the world is fine, but because it is not, and someone has to carry the other sound. There are trumpets of alarm all over the earth right now. Be the one that says come, all you who are burdened and heavy laden, and He will give you rest.
What sound are the people around you hearing when they hear you?
Dr. Connie Williams is the founder of Connie Williams Ministries, Inc., a prophetic teaching and coaching ministry of over 35 years. Join the prophetic community at https://community.drconniewilliams.org
