Strike the Ground is a powerful prophetic word by Graham Cooke spoken at Bethel Church. Every now and again, I receive a prophetic word that rocks and shifts everything. This is one of those messages. It is so crucial to my life until I transcribed it. The recording is not the best so if you can listen past the noise, it is the content of the word you need. In addition, I have transcribed it for you below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0VIufaa-lw&t=126s
2 kings 13:14-19
14 Now Elisha had been suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. “My father! My father!” he cried. “The chariots and horsemen of Israel!”
15 Elisha said, “Get a bow and some arrows,” and he did so.
16 “Take the bow in your hands,” he said to the king of Israel. When he had taken it, Elisha put his hands on the king’s hands.
17 “Open the east window,” he said, and he opened it. “Shoot!” Elisha said, and he shot. “The LORD’s arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Aram!” Elisha declared. “You will completely destroy the Arameans at Aphek.”
18 Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and the king took them. Elisha told him, “Strike the ground.” He struck it three times and stopped.
19 The man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck the ground five or six times; then you would have defeated Aram and completely destroyed it. But now you will defeat it only three times.”
The Symbolic Prophetic Codes
- The bow represents the power of the Holy Spirit in your life
- The arrows represent the specific word of God to you Personally
- When it talks about your hand, it is talking about you taking responsibility to let God move in your life. Responsibility is your response to God‘s ability
- Elisha’s hand represents the hand of God that is coming up on you at this time.
- The window is literally a window or a season of opportunity. Windows do not open permanently. Windows are prophetic and they are seasonal. They represented a certain space of time within which something must occur.
- The east represents a new day. It represents a new dawn were everything changes.
- The Word shoot represents your obedience to believe God and to cooperate within this time.
- The arrow of the Lord’s deliverance is literally the freedom to become what God wants you to be next
- The arrow of deliverance from Syria or Aram is literally the freedom from enemy activity in your life
- Aphek represents the place of enemy superiority that’s going to get turned over.
- The word STRIKE means to apply God’s specific word with his express permission
- The ground represents the ground of your current circumstances and your life
5:29
There is a series of battles coming to the church, coming to us as a people. However, this is a different type of battle; one that many of us have never seen before. This is not a battle initiated by the enemy. He is not responsible.
This is a war whose origin is in the heart of God. He is coming to fight for us. And whatever is in your circumstances right now that is contrary to him, to his kingdom, who he is, and to the call of God over your life; he is going to make a war against it.
God is about to launch a first strike over the enemy. He is starting trouble and he is going to Jolly well finish it. He is giving us now a certainty of victory. And we are going to learn how to stand in the power and in the substance of that victory. Our lives are in trouble now and God is going to trouble the one who has been troubling us.
In our lives right now he is looking for enemy activity. He is looking for evidence of our inability to change. And he is going to disarm the enemy and in the process he will re-arm the church with the weapons of warfare that will cause us to have breakthroughs on the left and on the right. God is setting foot in our lives to reclaim the territory.
He will produce in us in the process and anointing to break out of the trap of the enemy, out of our circumstances; out of our bad habits and everything else; In order that the Lordship of Christ may be fully evident in your life and mine.
In this process, the Lord will also be laying the foundation for a warfare-ing, community to rise up in this region and police the heavens. The Lord is moving and we must rise up and move with him. The Lord is declaring war.
There are battles over health, employment, family, finances, sin, bad habits, immorality, mental health, depression, ministry, business, leadership, revelation. The church has been held back from claiming and realizing her supernatural inheritance. These battles that God will wage in us and through us will become the making of us. They will serve us. They will be our training ground and our proving ground.
And the Lord will teach obedience, authority, and power in these days. And he will literally train or hands for war. Every attack of God on your circumstances will see you come to a place of increase and prosperity within that situation. Every weapon of God will release us and prosper us to thrive in the kingdom.
Men and women will rise up in this place. There will be a breakthrough in intercession we will see a worship anointing that will touch the throne of God. And I had a sensed I heard it in my spirit that the church here in the worship will write a new album a prophetic praise for warfare that will have an impact upon the region in the nation and on the nations.
In this place the river of encouragement will rise up and touch the state and the nations. The prophetic community will rise that would know how to fight. An army would emerge of the audience in the current church. We may feel like we are in the trenches now suffering, Because God is going to go over the top to take on the enemy. And we must go with him Secure in his power to protect us.
In these battles God is establishing us in our rightful place and we will discover that these battles will in effect become the place of our enlargement. In these battles a window of opportunity is open for something new to happen in this church. We are coming into the ending of an age. And the church must be positioned to receive all that God is releasing.
There will be some easy fights and some hard fights. But the Lord wants you to know the harder the fight the bigger the breakthrough. Remember this, the lord said I will fight for you. You must learn to fight with me. Stand with me and faith and you will see the salvation of God and his awesome power to deliver and set free. We will fight for each other from house to house. They will be season and times of extraordinary meetings being called. And God will break through In power in those corporate gatherings.
11:30
We will see homes that are under attack being filled with Warriors and believing people. Because we will send out a message to the enemy if you attacking one of us, we all are going to come after you. God is going to bring us to a place as a warfare community, but we will take an enemy attack as a personal and corporate insult to the person of Jesus Christ.
12:03
There is a warning here. The Lord says do not let your response be limited by your vision but let it be expanded it by a child like faith. It is a child like faith and it looks at the enemy and says my God is bigger than you. And we will learn how to be out raged and Indignant at the enemy. We are in the process of losing all of our passivity because the Lord is looking at you and saying it is time for a change of regime. We don’t realize how much we live under, how much we put up with; How much we cope with; how much we accommodate! Well the day of accommodation is over!
And we’re going to understand that battles are only designed for breakthrough. That’s why it’s important for us to learn how to strike the ground. So let me unpack that prophetic word. There are a series of instructions here that we need to learn how to comply with. Any strategy around the prophetic alway speaks of a process. A process is a series of steps to achieve the purpose of God. Let me explain the strategy and the process that we need to adopt in order for that word to come to pass.
The bow and arrow represent the spirit and the word come binding together in our lives. It is the ability of God to speak and move in power. Our part is to take seriously both the word and the promise of fulfillment of that word. And also take seriously the power in the ministry of the Holy Spirit to achieve it. The word and the Holy Spirit must combine in our lives for the rest of our lives.
14:00
The reason I think why many of us are so poverty stricken at times is because the spirit in the word do not combine when they need to. And that’s changing. We are going to learn never again to be casual about the word of God. This is really vital beloved. God is giving you something to put in your hand. In this process you must identify the word of the Lord to you right now in this season. What is it that God wants to attack first in your life that the enemy has hold of? What problem? what difficulty? Because I can sense God in the spirit rolling up his sleeves, saying OK what’s first?
Maybe you have a previous promise prophetic word over your life that you have let drop. Now it’s time for you to pick it back up again; because the answer is still yes. It could be a new word that God wants to give you. Let’s really look. Let’s examine closely. Let’s look at all the things God has been saying to us. Let’s really look. Let’s make a list of all the things that we would love for God to attack. I understand the mind of the Lord right now behind this word. He is really serious in a happy kind of way. There are times when you deliver a prophetic word when you know that this word has been in the heart of God or a while. He has just been looking for us to get to a point of desperation.
15:33
And when you get to a point of desperation, what happens is is David says earlier, all the ground of your life gets plowed up. when you get desperate enough to do it God‘s way in gods time. I don’t know about you, but I am in a place of desperation right now. I like who I am, but there is more about me that is coming and I want to see discover what that is. I feel that my life is good, but good is the enemy of the best.
And I’m desperate for the totality and the fullness. I don’t want to walk in measure, when there is the measure the stature and the fullness that is available. I feel pretty desperate right now. I don’t feel like I’m in a bad place, I don’t feel like I’m in a good place, but I want to be in a better place and I’m desperate for something better.
The hands represent your submission to God in this next season if you reach out and take the word, his hand will be upon you in power and you will grow in that word. Beloved it is important to understand don’t just touch the word. Take it, grab it and put it in your fist and don’t let it go.
16:40
This double handed, Elisha putting his hands on Jehoash she is hands, it speaks to share cooperation in church. we are going to be finding ourselves working together. In families, and sell groups, in our contact groups, in our relationships and in our friendships. we’re going to be working together double handed. None of us will just be working through by ourselves. We are going to creative ways to double-team together for the purposes of God. We are going to discover what it really means to cooperate with Holy Spirit. What is important here though is that you obey the word regardless of past experiences.
Beloved, we all know that there have been times in our past when we have received words but we have not fully followed those words through to the end results. We have done it for a little while but some of us have the attention span of a nat. and we need to kind of increase that. We’ve been half hearted in our approach to the general word of God and scripture and also the specific word of God in prophecy.
There is a danger in only going halfway. The promise must be obeyed. There was a time in Luke chapter 5 when Jesus went to the disciples, around verse three. He had been using their boat for ministry. So while he was using their boat for ministry, they were not earning a living. Jesus said in the boat preaching to people on the shore. So he said to the apostles, take the boats out there and let’s launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. Simmons said master we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing. But nevertheless I will do as you say and let down the nets.
It’s time for us to launch out into the deep. We may feel that we have launched out into the deep before. I don’t know that we’ve ever launched out whole heartedly into the deep. Maybe we have, maybe we haven’t. But that’s for you to determine.
18:45
Do not to be a prisoner of what you know that has never helped you. I’ve done this all night long and nothing happened. I think I’ve been here before and nothing works. Your previous experience of failure has nothing to do with the current word of success. Get it into your head. Your previous experiences of failure have nothing to do with the current words about your success.
There is always a nevertheless—at your word—I will. That’s the response that should define who we are as a company of people. Nevertheless, Lord, at your word, I will. Interesting, later on in John chapter 21: 4 verse eight when the same Lord Jesus came after the resurrection, and they see him on the shore with the fire going. And he’s cooking breakfast. The boys are all out there and Jesus shouts out, cast your net over the other side of the boat. And suddenly there begin this weight of fish. Peter looks up because he remembers. It’s the Lord. So he dives fully clothes into the water. He swims to the shore. Interestingly though, this time there was no hesitation when would the word came. They immediately did it. Maybe they learned something.
I feel like the Lord is saying to us, we must be prepared to be astonished. We must prepare ourselves to be astonished. Because your astonishment is going to be part of your testimony in this next season. And everyone that you connect with across the region, cost the state across the nation and around the nations. Everyone who comes in contact with your fresh ability to be astonished by what God is going to do. Our whole persona in the spirit is going to change. We are going to become astonished. And because we are astonished in our ministry, God will do astonishing things.
21:09
Right now, we need to open the east window. How many of us have been praying in the last year or two, God open the window in the heavens. Why have we been praying then? Because something in your heart says Lord open a window. We have open a window in heaven. I believe God is saying to us today the window is not opening. It is open. It is already opened. This is not a word where something is going to come. This is a word that says something is here. The window is open. There is a window of opportunity. Understand windows do not open for long. They are seasonal. East Literally means the dawn of a new day. Window is the opportunity. Put together it signifies an opportunity to come to a place of renewal and transformation. The renewal is permanent. The opportunity is seasonal. Therefore we have a short season to become permanently changed. The principal is this; When the opportunity of a lifetime comes, make sure you act within the lifetime of that opportunity. Again when the opportunity of a lifetime comes, make sure you actually within the lifetime of that opportunity.
22:35
You know whenever drama and the prophetic combine, an event is happening that has huge significance. It’s a powerful combination to release something and we have to learn to obey prophetic instruction in these days; because it will determine the difference between success and failure. When we are learning to obey prophetic instructions some of the things that God will ask us to do will be embarrassing. And he will ask us to do something that’s not really me. I don’t think God gives a hoot about what is really you or not. He is saying this is what I want, this therefore, is what you must give me.
When Prophecy comes in power a window of opportunity opens in the heavens. What have you been praying for? What are your current frustrations about your life and walk with God? What are the size of the longings currently in your heart about you and the Holy Spirit? What are your present problems and your current barriers?
23:46
Good news is a window has opened. God will fight for you. But you have to learn to shoot. Remember shoot means the power of obedience. In basketball there’s no need to be on the floor if you can’t shoot. You have got to shoot. You only win if you shoot. if you don’t shoot you get nothing. It’s really important that at this time, we are going to need to learn obedience. We need to become a obedient. We need to continue to obey. This is a season and not just of power not just of breakthrough, not just of warfare success. It is a season of obedience. We are going to learn something and comply with something and submit to something that will be there for the rest of my life. We are learning how to cooperate with the word and the spirit.
24:56
I know I love being in this church. Proud to be in this church. I’m proud that this is my American home. I love being in this country. I have loved his country for 29 years. I prayed for 17 years before the Lord would let me come. I love this place. But guys I need to rebuke you.
it is time to stop being lazy with the promises of God. We must learn to use the promises of God more effectively. Our whole future depends on it. And of course I include myself in that rebuke.
Let me just step outside of myself, and then talk to myself for just a minute.
25:39
There is one part of that code that is actually hidden. It talks about the bow and the arrow. The part that is hidden is the Bowstring. The arrow is the promise of God, remember. the bow is the power of the Holy Spirit. the bowstring represents your capacity and willingness to be stretched. because unless you and allow yourself to be stretched, that arrow is not going to have any power. The flight of the arrow depends on the tensile strength of the bow and the bowstring working together. Without that tensile strength, nothing is going to happen. What does that speak of? It speaks about your relationship with Holy Spirit. Your relationship with the Holy Spirit is designed to actually stretch your faith; to stretch your anointing. To stretch you so that you increase your power to overcome. God doesn’t just drop things on us. He gives things to us in the process of our learning how to walk with him. As God stretches you there is an increase that comes behind that. He increases your anointing. He increases your faith. He increases your understanding. When we allow ourselves to be stretched, we are also allowing ourselves to become enlarged. So that we can become bigger and bolder in the power and the purposes of God.
27:06
So we are going to be in a season of stretching and growth. A time of tension in the church here. It is necessary valuable tension-Creative tension. remember you had heard me saying the number of times; tension does not mean something is wrong it means that something is happening. There is no movement without tension.
When you sit in your lazy boy chair at home, watching the Kings trash the Lakers, when you when you reach out to take you a cup of coffee; the part of you that is reaching out is in tension. You can’t take a hold of anything unless your hand is in tension. Tension is about gripping something. It’s about taking hold of something. Tension in the spirit enables us to take hold of God and take hold of one another. Question is what is it right now that God wants you to grip in his name? So this is a promised time of breakthrough. it is also a time when we are gone to learn to get tough with our situations. It’s also a time when we’re going to learn how to be strong in the word. It’s also a time for us to get ready to grow as a soldier.
28:30
The tougher your circumstances are to change, the stronger your anointing will develop. But God is going to fight for us. the weaker you feel in yourself, the more confident you can become in the Lord. Because confidence in God is the only antidote to human weakness. Sometimes, God doesn’t want to make us strong. He wants to keep us weak but give us his overwhelming confidence.
Here am I in my vulnerability and God is going to be to me everything that he is. I am confident. I want to say to us this season, I believe some situations will resist us initially. as an issue but those difficulties Are designed to give the opportunity to learn how to press into the Lord. Remember the partnership between word and spirit? With in those difficulties we are going to be stretched.
Prepare to be stretched because the power you will gain is going to be huge. Understand everything must fall because God is fighting for us. he does not want a partial victory. He wants a total annihilation.
In activity in the Spirit leads to sterility. it leads to a staleness of life. It leads to stale faith, low expectations in Christ. and sometimes it’s our inactivity to cooperate with word and spirit that causes bandages to take hold of us through our own unbelief. Unbelief always creates a vacuum that the devil is more than pleased to fill. The question — what is the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance for you in this season?
30:22
Remember we said it represents your freedom to become what the Lord sees for you. What does he see unfolding in your life in this next season? Truth is God wants to break you in to the vision that he has for you.
30:30
In order for Moses to really do the job that God wanted for him, in order for him to go down and speak to the most despotic ruler on the planet in the most occult nation on earth. In order for him to go down there and demand over 1 million people to be set free, He had to see himself as God saw him. So check out Exodus chapter 7 verse one. It is an incredible theological statement from God. Most theologians I know cannot explain it. Because God looks at Moses and says, Moses, “See I have made you as God to pharaoh and Aaron shall be your prophet.”
What an amazing statement. But I need you to see it, because If you don’t see it, you can’t become it. Beloved there’s something for you to see about yourself in this season. God is going to show you who you really are in the Spirit. he’s going to show you what he is making you into. And I think it will be astonishing for us.
31:40
What me? You are kidding! No I’m not kidding. When I look at you —that what I see. Gideon was hiding away in the wine press making bread like you do when you are depressed. He was full of questions and angry at so many things. He had a low self image and he was from the youngest and the poorest tribe in Manasseh. And God comes along and says Gideon you are a mighty man. Before that statement he didn’t feel at all like he was mighty. He couldn’t see anything. But God spoke to him in such a way that suddenly, he saw it. You mighty man of valor. The very same day he pulls down an occult stronghold in his own home town.
You have to see something in the spirit before you can become it. And the arrow of the Lord’s deliverance is that God is going to break right through your mindsets about yourself and say this is who you are in the spirit, see it.
32:40
Prophecy and warfare must combine to produce a breakthrough. Most prophecy is usually fulfilled in a fight. Most prophecy brings us to the point of fighting. That’s why Paul’s advice to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18 was —this charge I commit to you, Son Timothy, according to the prophecy made previously made concerning you that by those words you may wage the good warfare. When God gives you Prophecy it’s like your own personal sword in your hand. There is always a violence around the prophetic. That’s why the enemy seeks to kill the prophet. Prophetic people teach us to fight and we have to learn what a good fight is. A good fight is one that you don’t lose. Otherwise it is not a good fight. The important question to ask is this, it is the arrow of the Lords delivered. What will God develop in me in this season of change? What is he going to put into me in terms of ministry and anointing? What anointing am I supposed to experience and enjoy in this next season? What is that about?
Do you know the two questions you should always ask in a move of God? Find them in acts chapter 2. The first one is in Acts 2:12. What does this mean. The second question is in Acts 2:37. This prophecy is from God. What does it mean and what must we do?In between those two questions there is a response that is required.
34:16
There was also the aero of deliverance from Syria. And that represents our freedom to break out of the grid of enemy activity. It is the freedom to break out of besetting sin. The sin that always trips us up. Freedom to move away from bondages and mindsets that are about ourselves or about God it’s really important in this window of opportunity that you name your current problems, that you write them down that you named him because we need to kill these suckers one by one. It doesn’t matter if you have 100 things that are on your list. This just means that you’re going to get 100 breakthroughs.
35:06
I am the British guy. British people are always reticent. While American people are usually bold. For goodness sake don’t be British! Don’t go British on God right now. It’s not a pretty sight. Name everything! Why? Because this is the season of revenge. You cannot ask for favor of God without vengeance against the enemy. The two things go together always. Strike the enemy it at Aphek.
Let us digress for a moment. In one kings chapter 20 in verse 23. Let me read you something here.This is the arrogance of the enemy. They always think that they have us worked out.
23 Meanwhile, the officials of the king of Aram advised him, “Their gods are gods of the hills. That is why they were too strong for us. But if we fight them on the plains, surely we will be stronger than they.
24 Do this: Remove all the kings from their commands and replace them with other officers.
So there advice was, let us muster together an army as big as the one that we just lost. And let’s fight these guys in the valley not where they think they are strong. I tell you I really sense in my spirit that this word is not just for us as a church. I think it is a word for our entire valley. I think it is a word for all the churches in the valley. I believe it is a word for everybody who lives in the valley. Whether they are a Christian or pre-Christian.
If we fight against him in the valley, we win. The valley they thought, was the place of weakness. If we fight against them in the valley we will win.
It’s interesting that in verse 27 and the sons of Israel were mustar and were provisioned And went to meet them. And the sons of Israel camped before them like two little flocks of goats. But the Syrians filled the country. This is a very graphic pictorial illustration.
Picture that everything was against us. apex represent an enemy who was over confident because he thinks was numerically superior. He doesn’t understand the enemy. One person plus God is always in the majority. Israel was vastly outnumbered. But God came with a word.
Verse 28 and the man of God came near and then spoke to the king of Israel and said thus says the Lord, the Syrians has said The Lord is The god of the mountains but he is not a god of the valleys.Therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hands. and you shall know that I am the Lord. So they camped one over against the other seven days on the seventh day battle was drawn and Israel killed 100,000 foot soldiers of the Syrian army. The rest of them fled to Aphek into the city where a wall fell on another 27,000 of them.
That is what you know is a bad hair day. And israel won.
37:52
Aphek was a place of enemy superiority and our inferiority. Aphek now becomes a place of breakthrough where the tables are turned. So Aphek represents the place of turnover. Those of us who are sports fans, we know that the number of turnovers you get in a basketball game can determine the platform of victory you are you going to achieve.
But we must avoid it is a short clock violation we have a window of opportunity and we must act within the lifetime of that window of opportunity. We must strike the ground and apply the word of God now to the ground of our circumstances. strike within this season and until you have destroyed what is trying to destroy you.
And the word of God demands a continuous Response. And I tell you if you don’t do it l, it is because you don’t believe it. there is this gap between the hearing of the word and our doing it. In that gap must close. God wants us to go over the top. To be whole hearted, to be zealous for what God is saying to us to strike the ground to take every opportunity to get revenge on the enemy.
39:10
Time out here. This is a sober moment. I want you to think about something right now that is not pleasant. In this account we see the outcome of a poor response. You see between the word of Elisha in the action of Jehoash. There is an incompatibility therefore there is only a partial fulfillment.
there is a danger in only going halfway. A half hearted respond will only get a partial breaking through. And ELisha is rightly angry at Joeash the king. Because Joeash did not enter into the spirit of the response. Maybe, I kind of think he had a British moment. Because sometimes in my country, we are the worst at responding to something. Especially when something dramatic is required. Also we are all so reticent. So Joeash came forward thinking well.
He didn’t understand anything of the importance of the situation he was in. So ELisha said strike the ground Elisha was so angry because Joeash didn’t enter in the spirit of it. He said you should have struck the ground five or six times. Then you would have victory over the enemy fully. But because you only struck the ground three times You will only have three victories. I wonder how how Joeash felt on the morning of the fourth battle? And he is standing there realizing that the power has run out. You should have then you would have.
41:00
I tell you beloved, in this window, we are either going to obey fully the word of God or we will live with regret for many years to come. A moment of honesty here. How many times in the past have we known that a window of opportunity was there and we didn’t go for it. And we bitterly regretted it. Don’t let it happen again.
You should have — then you would have.
These must be the hardest words in the whole of scripture. You should have –– then you would have. Our contemporary version is,
This is your big chance don’t blow it. It is time to be zealous. a window is open. Five years from today what will you wish that you will have done In this time?
41:56
Sometimes beloved, the difference between fulfillment of the promise And total breakthrough and only receiving a partial release is literally your attitude and your approach to the season of God that you are on. I think we are living in days of high drama. But we are going to learn to live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. I want to say to you that this is your time. Don’t hold back. Maybe it’s time to get rid of the limit of your embarrassment or your unbelief. Whatever it might be. We are going to do something symbolic now to represent our willingness to respond to God fully In the window that is open to us. If you have an area in your life.
Maybe the holy spirit right now has just been saying to you I want to deal with this problem, or that problem this and this. Maybe you’re feeling that right now your future, or your inheritance is going to open up.And the Lord is going to start showing you who you are going to be in the next season. I want us all to do something symbolic this morning. I want us to come forward and strike the ground together. And remember, you are not responding to me. This is your moment to do something with God. And for the next five minutes we are going to strike the ground.