Every time God gives us the word for WCO, I am excited, because I take it as my personal word for the year and it always keeps me in the place of victory. God’s word never fails. This year, God gave us Haggai 1:8a, “Go up the mountain and bring wood and build the house……” Clearly God is telling us to go back to the secret place to renew and rebuild our relationship with Him. God is telling us that this is a season of intense prayer. 

  
 We are the temple of God as 1 Corinthians 3:16 tells us. Our Father is calling us back to the secret place. This demonstrates to me the love of God because in this dark and dangerous times, the safest place to be, is in the secret place of the most high. Psalm 91 assures us that “He who dwells in the secret place of the most high, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. God’s shadow is being under the covering of our Lord. 


When God says to go up the mountain, God is telling us to again stir up ourselves and pay the price to come into His presence. Going up the mountain takes effort and hard work. It’s an uphill task, but the reward is immense. The amazing thing is, as we climb up that mountain, God has already provided a helper for us, the Holy Spirit. So we don’t embark on this journey on our own or in our power, but we do it in the power of the Holy Spirit. The bible tells us that God is Spirit and they that worship Him, must worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Our helper, advocate and intercessor is with us as we climb the mountain.

 We enter His presence by bringing our sacrifice of praise. Psalm 100:4 says we enter into His presence with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. This is the blueprint for us to go up the mountain. The ‘wood’ we carry is our praise, our worship, our thanksgiving, the lifting up of our hands, singing, dancing etc. The wood is also our ‘self’, our flesh, desires which we lay down, sacrifice and crucify before the Lord. Galatians 5:24 says “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires “. Romans 8:8 says, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God”. So we take our ‘wood’ or flesh up to the mountain and lay it down before the Lord in our secret place and then build up our spirit. 

In the place of prayer, only the spirit is built while the flesh is destroyed. So we come out with a stronger spirit, with vision with boldness and strength. It is in this place we get the pattern for our lives. Just like Moses went up the mountain and got the pattern for building the Lord’s tabernacle and he came out transformed. And so the mountain is a place of death, you go up there to kill flesh and receive life. You receive that which God has for you. When you go up sincerely, you become broken. Your surrender and brokenness cause God to move, God’s desire is never to destroy you but to destroy that which seeks to take His place in your life. God is a jealous God. 

As Abraham went up to kill his Isaac, God saw his brokenness and total surrender and provided a ram to take the place of Isaac. Our brokenness empowers God to move in our lives. Abraham’s hearing was sharpened so that he heard God clearly. On the mountain, we receive discernment and sensitivity to the Lord’s voice. God says in Jeremiah 33:3, “call on me and I will answer and tell you remarkable secrets you do not know…….” On the mountain, God reveals His secrets to you, He reveals Himself to you on a deeper level. Every time you kill the idol in your life, God replaces it with more of Himself in you. You are then built up on the inside. As the book of Ephesians says, we are strengthened with might and power by His Spirit in our inner man. Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ was a master of the secret place. He regularly went up the mountain to pray and seek the face of our father. What makes us think we don’t need to pray when Jesus could not do without praying? No wonder He performed so many exploits and fulfilled His destiny. We have to go back to the ancient paths, go up into the spirit and come out of our flesh and rebuild our temple and our prayer lives. Only then can we become a formidable abode for our Lord and do exploits in His name. May the Lord help us in Jesus mighty name. 

Lanre Kosoko.