IT’S TIME TO HANG UP A TWENTY-YEAR MANTLE

While messy awakening is shaking the world stage, there is something more personal taking place that the Lord keeps speaking to me about.

Right now, the personal process many are going through is the hanging up of a twenty-year mantle.

Yes, this is that specific. Trace back your years. Look at your timeline.

But when the Lord said this to me, He said, “Will you hang up your twenty-year mantle?”

Instantly, in my spirit, I had the name “Laban” come to mind, and we know the story of Jacob serving Laban.

He served him for 7 years for Rachel, but was deceived and was given Leah instead.

So he served another 7 years and received Rachel.

Then he served a final 6 years to get the flocks he wanted and the ability to COME OUT FROM UNDER HIM.

These timelines are key to this and prophetic for what many have been through. Here’s a prophetic snapshot to give you more insight.

The first seven years - The Saul years

Genesis 29:18–25

• It’s the years you gave your strength and best years expecting a reward, but woke up to disappointment and deception.

• You were faithfully serving leaders who appeared godly, but manipulated, controlled, and gaslit you.

• Your loyalty was met with betrayal, often by Christian brothers you trusted deeply.

• These years felt stolen, like your youth and energy were cast like pearls.

• The labor was intense, but bore no lasting fruit because the soil was defiled with spiritual abuse.

• You began to question your own discernment, wondering if your sacrifice was in vain.

• Years of being in the atmosphere of leaders and brothers who were insecure and jealous of your anointing.

• This was a season of invisible warfare, disguised in spiritual language, yet marked by internal suppression over time.

• The betrayal cut deep because it was from those closest to you - even family.

• You were building something you thought was righteous, but you were actually building man’s kingdom.

Second 7 years - wilderness and pressing into obedience.

Genesis 29:27–30

• You stepped out in obedience to God’s voice, leaving behind the old system, but walked into a wilderness of the unknown.

• These were lonely years marked by deep consecration, where the motives of your heart were tested in fire.

• You chose purity over platform and hiddenness over hype, and it cost you relationships, reputation, and comfort.

• The fruit you saw felt significant but foundational but not yet the fullness of what was promised.

• People you expected to stand with you slowly withdrew as the refining fire exposed them and your path with the Lord.

• These were the years where survival and obedience coexisted, pushing forward in passion and worship.

• Your reward was not recognition, but closeness with God in secret, and the oil of intimacy produced isolation to protect you.

It was years of good fruit, but still felt limited.

Final 6 years - the years of preparation and impending exodus

Genesis 30:25–43

• You began to see visible fruit and multiplication but it came within a system that couldn’t steward your calling so God started preparing you to break free.

• Your labor was blessed by God, but the structure you were under placed a ceiling on your destiny.

• You were still under someone else’s authority, building something that could not carry your future, so God started showing you how to dream.

• But then the warfare started because the enemy could see what was coming.

• There was an internal stirring that you couldn’t ignore, the sense that this wasn’t your final destination and something drastic was coming.

• There was clarity that this season was transitional, a place of survival, not legacy.

• God began to whisper to you to step out and leave everything you have known behind.

I believe these three seasons can speak so much into the periods of time we have been through. So, whether you see the full twenty years or not, do you relate to any of these?

This is not just personal but corporate. We have been at a threshold, and God wants to lead us out from under the religious era we have been groomed in and in bondage to.

Think about the name Laban, which means “white,” which can symbolize purity on the outside, but represents false systems, hidden motives, and casting your pearls to build man’s kingdoms. It’s a picture of man-made systems that look holy but are built on control and drain you of your pure anointing.

And right now, that is why God is delivering you. Leaving Laban is about more than leaving a person or place; it’s about leaving behind performative Christianity, people-pleasing, and the systems that use your anointing but never recognize or allow you to step into your fullness.

Much like the Church, which has been held back and going around the mountain and not advancing.

But it’s all led us here—a very messy and chaotic threshold moment. People feel lost because they have let go of the old mantle, season, and even people. But they feel vulnerable. What is this? This makes no sense. Where do I go?

You see, Jacob’s true destiny wasn’t activated until he crossed the Jabbok brook.

And that’s what the 20 years of training were for. Wilderness and battling for the promise, but then finally coming into FULFILLMENT.

But to even get there, Jacob had to leave Laban behind and spiritually detach from everything - the manipulation, control, and performance.

He had to deal with his head. His mindsets. His hurt/pain. His trauma. He even had to deal with his deeper wound - betraying his brother.

You see, this is a deliverance moment for you and me, and the corporate body of Christ.

Messy doesn’t even cut it.

Moments of crossing aren’t easy. They are painful, risky, and lonely.

It’s endless warfare. In Jacob’s story, he was wrestling with the angel of the Lord until daybreak. What if that’s your dark night of the soul? Your wrestle? Your Gethsemane?

It either takes you out or makes you.

This is the moment where identity shifts. Where we are no longer Jacob, the striver and survivor, and we have become Israel, the one who wrestles with God and overcomes and inherits the full promise.

This is where many are standing right now: at the banks of Jabbok, in between who they were and who they’re called to become.

The Laban years are behind you.

The pain, the waiting, the obedience, the shaping, and the warfare. But now, you’re at the place of wrestling and un-mantling so much you have been carrying.

And you are being recommissioned.

You can’t take old names into this next season. You can’t take the striving, the labels, or the lies. It’s deeper than just a spring clean. It’s a death.

Let me say that again. It’s a death.

Because the kingdom many of us have been serving has been compromised. It’s man’s system that has come with heavy yokes.

Your mantle has been graffiti-ed with man’s labels for so long it’s even hard to recognise what it once looked like.

And right now God is dealing with more than you can see.

Cracks and chasms. Deep ravines and massive cancers of the soul.

Demonic assignments that have been choking you and holding your voice and calling ransom.

Robbing your home. Your marriage. Your kids. It’s been a subtle yet murderous spirit sent to take you out slowly.

The remedy? Take off the old. Face it. Cast it off. Cross over.

You see, God sees that these mantles that we are wearing are carrying bondage with them.

Authority mixed with error and chaos. Truth with tainted ointment.

And so, when God is removing an old mantle from you, it also removes the snakes.

Let me say that again. God is exposing the snakes.

He is exposing the faults of your foundations.

When God removes an old jacket from your shoulders, He's also removing pain and trauma, all in one movement.

And I kept seeing that this Rosh Hashanah was a massive trajectory shift for so many people of an era's worth of bondage being released, but also authority and unction, stepping out of one thing into another.

A limited anointing into a double portion.

And lastly, just yesterday on the 22nd of September in Australian time, I was up watching the memorial when I saw 4:14 on my phone and heard the Lord say, “You have pierced through the veil.”

What did this mean?

Instantly, I saw a vision of people breaking through this film of sorts. An invisible barrier. They looked ferocious and were breaking past so much religiousity and lies that had held them back.

The veil? It’s the veil torn in the temple when Jesus died. It represents the finished work.

John the Baptist caused the Church to take heaven by force, and that’s what I was seeing.

We have been in another season where God is awakening the Church to what is available through the finished work.

And it’s led us here—an unshackling moment.

So, throw off the mantle of the past two decades and let’s cross over with the Rock of Ages. There’s a new mantle waiting for you.