In our 2023 Seattle Gathering of the Eagles, I had a vision of the nation. Hidden beneath a mountain of debris, I saw a dry and barren skeletal system. Within the chest of the skeletal system, at its core, was the heart.

Suddenly, the skeletal system began to shake violently, the debris began to fall off the land and into the sea. The bones shook so violently, I felt certain they would shatter. Then, there was a shock to the heart, the heart began to beat, and that skeletal system came to life. Muscle, tendons, sinew, tissue… all formed around the bones until a breath of life was blown into the land, and it became a living, breathing nation once again.

The nation was reborn; it arose and went forth! It was unstoppable as it ran. It reached out to this nation and then that nation, restoring or bringing life to those nations as it had been restored. It was awakening nations, as it had been awakened! I cannot express to you the beauty, the power, the anointing that rested upon this land as it went forth under the call and commission of the Lord.

Let’s look at the heart for a moment—the literal heart of the human body. The heart is about the size of a closed fist. It weighs anywhere from 8-12 ounces. It’s small but it’s an essential organ which must remain intact for a person to survive. We can live without a kidney, spleen, gallbladder, stomach, appendix, we can even have part of our brain, colon, and liver removed, but we cannot survive without the heart intact.

When the heart beats, the right side of the heart takes in the deoxygenated blood from the body, pumps it to the lungs for oxygenation at which time metabolic waste is expelled from the body. Then the newly oxygenated blood is pumped to the left side of the heart, another beat and that oxygenated blood pumps out of the left ventricle of the heart and begins its journey back through the body. With each heartbeat 2.3 ounces of blood is sent out of the heart and courses through the entire body delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell in the body. The average adult male has 10-12 cups of blood in their body, and with every heartbeat, 2.3 ounces at a time, that blood will travel through his heart and out to his body, two full cycles each minute of every hour of his lifetime. An average healthy adult heart beats about 100,000 times per day delivering nutrient-rich, oxygenated blood to every cell in our bodies to enable us to function as God created us to function.

I had the privilege of going with my dear friend while they had a color doppler echocardiogram of their heart. As I watched the heartbeat, the technician made an adjustment in the ultrasound equipment, so it demonstrated the blood flow in living color. We watched the blue blood enter the heart, become red as it was oxygenated, and then exit the heart to begin its journey back through the body. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I saw the wonder of God’s creation demonstrated right there on the screen in front of me.

In Scripture, God uses the human body to demonstrate to us the attributes of the Lord, the wonders of His ways, His children, and even the sinner. For us, the mind is to be like Christ (1 Cor 2:16). Our feet are to be shod with the Gospel of Peace (Eph 6:15). Both life and death can come from the tongue (Proverbs 15:4) When spiritual strength is lacking, it’s connected to feeble knees (Hebrews 12:12) and on and on.

What about the heart? In the natural world, the heart is key to health, strength, stamina, and survival. If the heart stops, without medical intervention, the brain dies within 9 minutes.

In Scriptures, the heart goes much deeper. It is mentioned over 800 times, yet rarely is it about the physical heart. It’s almost always in reference to the inner life of humankind. Our thoughts, our emotions, our will, our conscience, and our spiritual perceptions are all wrapped up in the heart. Without Christ, the heart is deceitfully wicked. (Jer. 17:9) With Christ, we are new creatures. (2 Cor. 5:17)

The heart, in Scripture, begins in the Old Covenant with the Hebrew “leb” and ends in the New Covenant with the Greek “kardia” yet, it carries the same concept addressing the condition of the human heart throughout Scripture. The heart is the totality of the inner life, the invisible control center from which all life’s issues proceed. On our own, the heart is a heart of stone, it is deceitfully wicked. (Gen 5:6) For those who bow the knee to Christ however, we see the climatic fulfillment of His Covenant demonstrated in the gift of our new heart, the heart of flesh, found only in Christ.

When the Lord showed me the dry and barren nation in 2023, it was covered in debris, the bones were dry, the heart was lifeless, however, the Lord is going to ignite the heart of the nation for Him.

What is the heart of the nation? The Church.

I think we forget this, in fact, I know we forget this. We think the heart is found in the White House (leadership), Government (protection), social service programs, maybe even Military (strength), but the heart of the nation is the Church. In fact, the destiny of America is wrapped up in the Church.

What is our Destiny—our Purpose?

Yet, the Destiny of America is wrapped up in the Church:

America was birthed by God as a gift to the Church, a place of refuge. The catalyst was the Luther Reformation, the fuel was the intercession of the saints, and faith was the seed that compelled the Pilgrims, the Moravians, the Founding Fathers, and the Revolutionaries to climb aboard ships, leaving their old lives behind to embrace the new life under a new land! God put this in their hearts because He was preparing a place for His people!

Our nation was dedicated by those first settlers in 1607 with the intention of this nation being a Christian nation. The first of its kind.

There was no nation really, that reflected Christ in His fullness.

The men and women who boarded the ships in faith to reach this New Land and be part of what God was doing in the earth were ignited by the Spirit of the Lord! The government was established by the People, for the People. But it was to be run and/or influenced greatly by Christians to ensure this nation could stand the test of time. Pastors and Revivalists gave fiery messages every year to call the political landscape to repentance, to righteousness, to a place of purity as they legislated on behalf of the people. In 1700, Samuel Willard warned against corruption in government. In 1747, Charles Chauncy urged civil leaders to promote virtue for national prosperity. In 1758, Gilbert Tennent frames national security as a religious duty calling the Church to pray, fast, and morally support just war efforts. Why? Because civil and sacred duties align! In 1777 John Wesley called the Church to fasting, prayer and political repentance. He wrote open letters blaming national corruption on greed and calls the Church to be salt and light in the public life! He called upon the Methodists to vote, and the Church to preach against national injustices. All of this occurred as our nation was being born!

Our origins are richly Christ-centered and Pastors, Revivalists, and our Founding Fathers recognized that for the nation to survive, to fulfill its God-given destiny, the Church had to be protected. The Church had to be present to call men to true repentance, to remain faithful in their commitment to God, and to continuously serve as a rod of righteousness influencing the nation in which we live.

The heart of the nation, our essence, is the Church!

The Call of the Lord: Church Arise!

President Trump is doing an amazing job, I know it’s been a rough year, and as I shared weeks ago, 2026, The Year of Open Books is going to have a rocky start. We, the intercessors, the ones pressing into God, should not be surprised or caught off guard over this, we need to press in and press on in the call to save this nation.

We also need the Church to arise. The heart of the Nation is the Church but the Church has lost its way, it’s become dull, lifeless, it’s no longer salt and light, it does not preserve or purify.

Did you know that the number one killer in America today is heart disease? I believe this is symbolic of the condition of the Church. The heart is sick and needs a good cleansing. When the nation falls to sin, pastors should be calling the people to repentance, intercessors should engage in identificational repentance, and the congregants should be living lives that actively influence their environment with righteousness.

We’ve been covering Paul’s journey recently. He wrote to the Churches he either planted or visited on his missionary journey. Every letter Paul wrote addressed these issues we are facing today. On Paul’s Second Missionary Journey, he was visiting the churches he planted in Galatia on his first missionary journey, when he had the vision, he was to go to Macedonia. On this journey, he’d been beaten, stoned and left for dead, chased out of town over and over, yet he left a church wherever he went. In Acts 17 the church had already escorted him out of town to protect him, but the official’s statement as they pulled Jason out of his home sums up Paul’s life:

That was the apostolic mantle on Paul’s life in action, the revivalist in his heart pouring out across the land, and the driving force of every step he took! He did everything he could to uproot idolatry and bring the people of every tribe and every tongue into the New Covenant in Christ! These Churches had no liberty in the land, here in America we do, what are we doing with it?

I believe, in a nation that grants us religious liberty; by not exercising this liberty, we are essentially thumbing our noses at our God-given liberties. Why? Paul wrote to those under the Roman government. They literally had no rights, no vote, no liberties. Add to that, the jealousy of the Jews inciting the Roman leaders convincing them that Peter, Paul and the other Apostles were trying to overthrow the government by declaring Jesus was King, what little freedoms they possessed, often were stripped as they were thrown into a Roman prison, beaten publicly, or martyred without so much as an official trial. Fear of these reprisals were meant to kept Christians quiet, manageable. Tyrannical leaders rule through fear and intimidation. American’s struggle to understand this concept. Paul told them to pray for their leaders that it would go well with them. In America, however, we do have freedoms, and failure to utilize what men and women died to provide us with, is sin. America is the last line of defense against Tyranny. We send men and women out to the mission field where they experience this tyranny. How dare we, as Christians, not do everything in our power to ensure these missionaries have a nation free from tyranny as a place of refuge to return to?

The Church has entered into such a compromised state, at a time when we have the freedom to turn the world upside down, we have allowed the world to turn us upside down. How? Because we have embraced the ways and the culture of the world instead of demanding the ways and culture of the world be ejected from our Church, our academic institutions, our media, our government, our nation!

How? We have a voice and a vote. When leadership passes legislation that supports bloodletting, the Church should call those legislatures to repentance. We should urge the public to primary any legislator who passes anti-God, anti-life legislation.

We are to be salt and light thereby influencing the nation with the purifying and preserving properties of salt and light. We must arise! We must stop the flow of that toxic sludge of compromise from entering our doors and repent and return to our God!

Earlier, I shared about the function of the heart. Understanding the importance of the heart to the body can help us see the importance of the Church to the Nation if we are willing to open our eyes and receive what He’s giving us today.

The heart serves to pump blood to the heart, eliminate waste from the blood, oxygenate it, and send that newly cleansed, oxygenated blood out to every cell of our body to give it life! It regulates hormones, delivers nutrients, stabilizes and strengthens the body.

The Church is supposed to do this for the nation. We must arise! This is our call. Heritage is important, but heritage, if not retained and maintained, will not save us from tyranny.

The Lord is about to perform CPR on the heart of this nation! He will shock the heart, then breathe His breath of life into our nostrils filling our lungs with life-giving oxygen which will then pump from the heart through the body giving it what it needs to be activated for Him and fulfill its destiny!! Then, we can arise and turn this nation—and the nations of the earth—upside down!

Remember, a line has been drawn in the sand, and the Lord Himself is opening the books in 2026, now is the time for the Church to take its place, influencing the nation, government, academia, media, finance, and so on.

Let us pray for the Church, not in judgment, but in the love of the Lord as though we planted these churches and they’ve gone astray. Let us bring the prodigal son home through prayer! Pray for a clean heart and a renewed spirit (Ps 51:10) Pray they will walk in truth and fear God (Ps 86:11) We must pray for the Church as Jesus did (John 17) Pray as Paul did for the churches he planted, as father for his children. Pray for strength (Eph 3:16), a revelation of God (Eph 1:17-19), we would walk in unity, true unity, (Rom 15:5-6) pray for cleansing, pray that we will walk in love, pray for the fullness of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 to be demonstrated through us, that our love, as the Church, the Body, the outstretched hands of our Lord, will never fail.

These are exciting times my friends, let us align ourselves with the Lord’s and get this nation across the finish line!

Blessings & love,

Ricci Johnson-Wilson