First off, an introduction must happen! Meet John the Baptist. We find him in the early days of the New Testament, on the scene before Jesus comes in. I think he was a pretty awesome dude. His conception was a miracle - his mom, Elizabeth, had been barren and both of his parents were well along in years (Luke 1:7). Zechariah, his dad, was visited by the angel Gabriel who announced that his son would be "great in the sight of the Lord" and that he would "be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb" (Luke 1:15)! It gets better - the angel said some more, pretty radical stuff for that time:
"Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous - to make ready a people prepared for the Lord."
How cool is that?! It's not everyday that an angel shows up prophesying about your kid's destiny! This guy was destined for greatness! His life was the fulfillment of a prophecy when Isaiah foretold of the "voice of one calling in the desert." Everything that John did was to point towards Jesus. I love these verses from Mark 1:7-8: "And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." He got that it wasn't about him. He understood that his life was to be like a trumpet blast, getting people ready for the Greater One who would soon come. He had no interest in hype or in garnering the affections of the people for himself. Jesus talked about John the Baptist and described him as the greatest man in history (Side note and brief rabbit trail: look at Jesus' words in Luke 7:28. Notice that He says, "The one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he." That excites me! It seems to echo Jesus' promise in John 14:12...EXCITING truth that we should take hold of!). Jesus asked John to baptize him, which I think rocked John. He answered Jesus, arguing that he should be the one being baptized by Jesus, and not the other way around! John's life was marked by humility. He got it.
What some people don't know about John's life is that he spent twenty years of his life in the wilderness, wearing clothes made out of camel's hair tied with a leather belt, and living off of locusts and wild honey, getting prepared, inevitably living a life of prayer and fasting, for only two years of public ministry. Two years!
So how does this all relate to me? I believe that God put a similar "forerunner" spirit in me that He put in John. I have grown up feeling like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole and, a lot of the time, feeling like I'm on one page and everyone else is on a different one. A lot of that is because that's just how God made me: I am a trailblazer; a pioneer; a forerunner; an influencer; a trumpet-blaster! I can relate to John and how he must have felt. Often, I feel like one voice crying out in the wilderness. Thankfully, God has surrounded me with a few fellow "forerunners" in this season, because, after all, God never intended for us to do this alone! If you're interested in studying the idea of the forerunner spirit and John the Baptist further, check out these awesome resources on Mike Bickle's site: (http://mikebickle.org/resources/series/forerunners-with-holy-violent-love)
