Beholding the Glory of God

The "beholding and becoming" principle is the process by which believers are transformed into the image of Jesus [2 Cor. 3:18].  Beholding the Lord means to study His heart until we understand it more and thus encounter Him.  Paul prayed in Eph. 3 that we might be transformed by encountering the height of God's beauty and affection for us.  When we feel His affection for us, it impacts our hearts in significant ways.  Feeling God's affection brings pleasure and exhilaration to our hearts. Feeling God's affection equips us for our full destiny by anchoring our soul in God.  Feeling God's affection gives us confidence in His grace so that we run TO God instead of AWAY from Him when faced with our sin and weakness.  Experiencing God's love makes us ravenously hungry for more so that we go hard after His heart to experience more of His love - and in the process are changed into His very image.  We truly become what we behold, "from glory to glory," experiencing the transforming power of His unchanging love. Beholding His glory, we are little by little changed into that very same glory.

Intimacy and Urgency

The two great themes that the Holy Spirit is emphasizing across the earth in this hour are "Intimacy" and "Urgency."  Both of these are intended to prepare the church for the difficult days ahead. Intimacy is related to themes around passionate love for the man Christ Jesus.  Urgency deals with the reality of the Second Coming during this generation.  Understanding both of these subjects is necessary to correctly navigate through the times in which we live.  Only hearts deeply grounded in passionate love for Jesus and propelled by the urgency of the times will properly walk out the final period of natural history.
Having a heart that's alive on the inside is what passion for Jesus is all about.  It's all about loving God first and foremost - before everything else.  It's about feeling God's emotions for us and feeling love for Him in return.  This is the fire of holy love - a heart alive with holy passion.
Love is the greatest motivator there is.  It far surpasses mental assent or commitment to a cause.  [A person in love will attempt anything - even to death.]  Before the Lord returns He will have a Bride passionately on fire with love for Him, and this fiery love will so empower believers that they will follow the Lamb wherever He goes - even into martyrdom at the end of the age.  Anything less will be insufficient to keep the heat alive without offense through the intensity and turmoil of the end times.
Urgency is also necessary to a proper preparation for the end of the age, for urgency propels us into wholeheartedness.  The desperateness of the hour energizes us to embrace the radical lifestyle required for the hour that is coming upon the earth.  Urgency awakens us from slumber.  It stirs us to shake free of complacency and compromise and to pursue God with fervency and desire.  Urgency's fruit is a life of wholehearted abandonment to God and His great end-time purpose in which all things are being summed up in Jesus [Eph. 1:9].  It produces people with hearts on fire in intimate partnership with Jesus as He draws natural history to a close.
These two great themes, intimacy and urgency, will bring forth the Bridal cry that agrees with the Spirit, "Come, Lord Jesus, come."