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Catching and Surviving Every Wave |
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The ebb and flow of revival throughout church history has often been compared to that of the tidal flow of the ocean. The tide comes in and out with subsequent waves of activity in between. Such it is with God’s manifested presence and this wonderful thing called “revival”, “the move of God’s Spirit” and even “city transformation”.
We don’t want to settle in and passively become the stewards of the “best of the past.” We must press into the heart of God and cry out for a fresh outpouring of His grace in our time! The question then can be asked, “What does it take to catch the next wave?” To begin answering that question, let’s do a review by glancing at some of the classic characteristics of historic revivals of the past to learn some lessons in order to progressively move on.
Five Historic Characteristics of Revival
Let’s start this journey by considering five over all characteristics of classic revival.
1. Passionate Denunciation of Sin
2. Revelation of God’s Holiness
3. Deep Awareness of the Love and Mercy of God
4. Heightened Consciousness of Eternity
5. Experiential Conviction of Sin
Three Preliminary Stages
There are oftenthree simple preliminary stages of revival.
1. An Intense Hunger for Change
2. Prayer to God to Change Things
3. Networking towards Unity
We can miss the major moves of God by not appreciating and participating in the little things in God. Do not over look the days of small beginnings. Give yourself to the Lord and to His purposes in your generation.
Making It Personal – How Did It All Begin for You Anyway?
Do you remember what things were like when you first met Jesus? Or perhaps your new page came when you were baptized into or filled with the Holy Spirit or when you stepped into the river for the first time. Everything was new. Your Bible was new. Your heart was new. Worship was electric (even with guitars out of tune!). You saw nature through God’s eyes. People were your moving targets for displays of the lavish love of God. All things were new….
Then you grew up. Perhaps you began to become hardened. Perhaps a spiritual leader hurt you. Perhaps you were a part of group that went into excess or even error. Maybe you have become a good observer today who sits and watches others at play and you give score cards on the latest sermon, prayer meeting, emphasis of the Holy Ghost or worship CD. And now, perhaps, you now sit on the sidelines and warm the seat of the scoffer.
The primary issue is the condition of one’s heart. Yes, we must fight to maintain a child like heart that trusts and believes and is awed by the moves of God’s delightful presence. In the natural, in between the ocean’s waves, there is often debris that is washed upon the shores. Then it becomes clean up time. Often it is that way in “moves of the Spirit” as well. It is fun riding the waves, but in between there can be a lot of junk to deal with. But I have learned that is necessary to have both the delightful times and the mundane times as well. We do move from glory to glory, as He becomes the prize of our life and the object of our true heart’s devotion.
As I have studied historic moves of God and even gotten out my spiritual surfboard to catch a few waves myself, I have found some common traits and cycles in Catching and Surviving Every Wave. So let me share a few of these survival skills with you to aid you in your journey.
The Beginning Is Characterized By:
Zeal
Fresh Faith
Counting the Cost and Not Looking Back
Then In Between the Waves We Need to Walk In:
Forgiveness
Worship, Prayer and Devotion to the Word
Possible Re-alignment
To Be Able to Move On into That Which Is New We Must:
Have an Awakened Heart
Cultivate a Love for Adventure
Have Anticipation
As we Posture Ourselves Properly the Cycle Begins Again:
Zeal with Wisdom
Tried and Tested Faith
Looking Forward and not over the Shoulder
Let’s lift our Vision Higher!
I challenge leaders around the world, wherever I go - to get God’s view of their assignment. Pastor a city - not just your flock! Come shoulder to shoulder with others in your area and just see what the Lord will do! Come lock arms with other pastors, intercessors and marketplace leaders and do something together for Jesus sake!
The whole context of the teaching of I Corinthians 12 on the body of Christ is not set in the context of one congregation in a city. Remember, it says something like, “Can the eye say to the hand, I have no need of you?” Can Charismatic hands of healing say to the Evangelical shoes of the gospel of peace, “I have no need of you?” The Calvinist needs the Armenian and the Pentecostal needs the Liturgical! We really do need one another to exhibit the fullness of God’s love.
Heaven help us to identify the redemptive gifts of God found in each of the tribes of the Lord’s body and learn to cooperate with one another! And let us learn to catch and survive every wave of God’s amazing Spirit in Jesus Name!
We need You Holy Spirit to teach us Your ways. Guide us in the path of ever increasing faith, hope and love for Jesus Christ sake. Help us to learn from the past and yet receive the next crashing wave of Your great presence today. Thank you for teaching us and guiding us into some of the lessons on how to catch and survive every wave in Christ’s name! Glory to God! Amen and Amen!
Thanks!
James W. Goll in Pasadena
President of Encounters Network |
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What does it mean to be a seer? |
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Many Stir the Water users come to the site with a basic understanding of what it means to be a seer or how the seer gifting functions. However, we also get some users and visitors who aren’t sure if they’re seers and don’t know how the gifting generally works.
In order to begin to understand the seer gifting, we need to start with the basics. A seer is any person who has the ability to receive sensory input from the spiritual realm. This can happen at any level; we don’t have to have experiences like Ezekiel in order to be a seer. In fact, many people are seers and don’t realize it, usually because of one or more of three reasons:
No one’s ever told them. Maybe they could relate some odd things that have happened to them, but no one has ever told them that what they’re experiencing may not be “just their imagination.” A lot of seers would say they have active imaginations and that’s all. They don’t realize it’s more than that. For example, they may see brief flashes of light or something move in their peripheral vision and assume it’s just their eyes playing tricks on them, when they’re actually seeing real flashes of light and real movement. They don’t understand that these may be authentic.
Along similar lines, seers often don’t realize that what they’ve been experiencing their entire lives is unique; they think everybody can do it. Or perhaps they suspect they are gifted in certain areas, but they don’t realize that all the little things they keep dismissing are actually God trying to communicate with them and through them. For example, they may have always had detailed, extensive dreams; perhaps they’ve “known” things about people they just met or have been able to produce astounding works of art or make sound business decisions that have greatly impacted others. I’m just good at what I do, they may think. Or, Can’t everybody do this?
Finally, some seers don’t realize they’re seers because as far back as they can remember, they seemingly have never done or experienced anything of a spiritual nature. Something shut the gifting down in them a long time ago, and at this point, they couldn’t name even just one incident in which they knew God was talking to them. “He talks to other people,” they say, “but He doesn’t talk to me.” Simply because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t.
What Is Spiritual Sensory Input?
Here is what I mean by the term “sensory input.” In the natural realm, we have our five senses that help us relate to the world and atmosphere around us. Through them we learn what things are, how they work, what’s real, what something feels like, what it looks or tastes like, etc. These five senses allow us to experience what is going on around us, and without them, we wouldn’t be able to function. These form our physical sensory perceptions.
What are spiritual sensory perceptions? The Bible says that this world is a type of the world to come (1 Corinthians 15:44; Colossians 2:16–17; Romans 5:14). If what surrounds us now is just a reflection of the real, then imagine what the real must be like! Our five senses, therefore, reflect a higher order — an order that is, by its very nature, better and stronger than what we know on Earth because it is the real order: the one that will continue to exist when this one has ended.
When we take the time to think this through, we will be amazed at the implications. If we have any senses on Earth, we also have them in the spiritual realm, because that realm is the foundation of this one. As spiritual beings (Galatians 6:1; 1 Peter 2:5), we should be able to see, taste, smell, touch, and hear what is going on in the spiritual realm around us just as we can in the natural realm. As seers, at times we may be able to smell what’s in the spiritual air around us. We may be able to see it, touch it, even taste it. We can describe it to others. We can experience it just as we can experience the natural realm.
These are our spiritual sensory perceptions, and we pick up on them in different ways. Sometimes, this information will come to us physically. For example, we may feel cold or hot when the natural temperature hasn’t shifted a degree. This is happening because we’re picking up on the changes happening in the spiritual “temperature” around us. At other times, we will receive spiritual information through our spiritual senses, which often feels like “just our imagination” and hence the reason many people don’t realize God is trying to communicate with them this way. Everyone has the capacity to experience the spiritual realm through the seer gifting, just as everyone has the capacity to hear God’s voice.
When Stir the Water talks about the seer gifting, we mean picking up on spiritual sensory data, whether that be seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling.
Why Is This Important?
So how does this affect us, and why is it important to study this gifting? The writer of Hebrews says that the mature in Christ train their senses to discern what is God and what isn’t (Hebrews 5:14). You’ll see this verse all over the Stir the Water site. As we practice and study our giftings, we mature in Him. We grow in our knowledge of Him and His ways.
Again, this world is not our home; our home is Heaven — the spiritual realm — which automatically insinuates it is more important, more real and concrete, than this one. Because that’s true, wouldn’t we want to study it? Wouldn’t we want to know more about it and see if there was any way we could learn to walk in it and be affected by it now?
Hand in hand with this is another reason that is even more important. As we study and grow in this gifting, we will be amazed at who God is, how intimate He desires to be with us and how often He wants to communicate with us. We will fall in love. We will be changed forever.
That is a very good reason.
God is with us, and studying our giftings and training ourselves in them will increase our faith for greater things. It will help us see His presence more and more.
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What happens when a prophecy doesn’t come true? |
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Have you ever been given a prophetic word that never came to pass? It can leave a lot of questions: Was the word false? Does God really speak this way? Can a word be accurate and from God — and yet not come to pass? How can we know when God has promised us something and when it was just the speaker’s nice idea?
Here are four things I believe we need to keep in mind whenever someone gives us a revelatory or prophetic word.
Seek confirmation from God
First of all, we need to hear from God for ourselves on a consistent basis. Depending on what we’re going through, this can be difficult. We can go through days or seasons of turmoil, when it’s very difficult to hear from God because we don’t have enough peace. But here’s the reason this is important: If we’re consistently hearing from God for ourselves, then what He has told us in our alone times with Him will confirm what we’re hearing from other people.
This doesn’t require high, clear, awesome revelation; we just need to go to God on a daily basis. Even if all we “hear” or sense is vague, and we’re not quite sure what He said or if He said anything, over time this builds up within us a fairly high level of confirmation. We will sense our spirits bearing witness to the word. It isn’t just our minds saying, Oh, I like that. That would be nice. Instead, it feels as if our spirits are saying, Yes! Yes!
Every time we receive a word, we should seek God for confirmation. Always. The confirmation may come beforehand, right afterward, in one clear moment or subtly over time. It may happen consecutively or be spread out over several days.
Distinguish between potential and established outcomes
Now, that being said, there may be times when we know a word has been confirmed, but it still doesn’t come to pass. The probable reason for this is that the word was about a potential outcome and not an established-by-God outcome. There’s a difference.
For example, let’s say that Alice is called to live in Africa as a missionary, but she chooses not to go. The potential is there, but she doesn’t step into it, so it doesn’t happen. Or perhaps she wants to go, but her husband doesn’t, and so the word doesn’t come to pass because of someone else’s choice. In some cases, a word that does or doesn’t come to pass may not have anything to do with the person who received it. It may be solely dependent on outside sources.
Revelatory words can be about something that has potential and is later realized, or they can be about something that God has already established. The latter is a high-level revelation about what God is going to do. He has chosen for such-and-such to happen. The choices involved have already been made; the cost has already been paid, and it’s going to happen. A revelatory word about something with potential isn’t a false word; it is simply an outcome that may or may not be realized.
This agrees with what Jesus said in Matthew 22:14: Many are called, but few are chosen. I think that statement is true of almost every potentiality in creation. Many things are called to come to pass, but few things are actually chosen to come to pass.
Distinguishing between a potential outcome and a chosen outcome can be difficult for revelatory people, especially if they don’t understand the dynamic or don’t have clarity or discernment. It can also be hard if they’re trying to sound more certain than they feel. God could be saying, “I am calling this to happen,” and the person assumes that means, “God says this is going to happen.”
Again, connecting this with the previous point, we need to pray about every word we receive, from anyone. We need to ask God, “Is this established? Or is this still just a possibility?” That dynamic is huge.
Recognize issues of timing and metaphor
Long before they come to pass, many prophecies seem like they’re never going to. Some of us wait months and years and then conclude all of those words must have been false. But then another 10 years go by, and we start realizing, “Wait a second. They’re all happening.”
Timing is vital. Revelatory words are often given without a clear sense of timing, and we tend to assume that if God said something today, it must be about today. But often, that is not the case. When we seek God for confirmation about a word, we should also seek confirmation about the timing.
Finally, a revelatory word can be so metaphoric that it seems to mean one thing but actually means something else. It was a good word, but we assumed it must have been false because the way it played out didn’t look the way we expected. That is often the case as well.
What can we do?
All of the above can be issues. In summation, we first need to be in the habit of spending time with God, because then, when someone gives us a genuine word from Him, we will have an internal witness.
Second, we should ask God if the word is about an established or potential outcome. Maybe we need to pray into it. Maybe we need to wait. Maybe we just need to know that it could happen, but it’s based on other people’s faith and choices.
Finally, there is also the issue of waiting for God’s perfect timing, as well as understanding the metaphor and being certain we really do know what He means.
At any given time, we could be dealing with one or several of these four issues. We could be in a season in which nothing seems to be working, and we’re tempted to think all our revelatory words are false. But that may not be the case. It could be that they just didn’t happen the way we expected them to happen. It could be that they haven’t happened yet.
If you’re in a season like that and feel discouraged, know that it won’t last forever. You will also go through seasons in which all the words you receive are right on. All the timing is right. Your understanding is right, and the words aren’t potential outcomes that could happen — they are established by God, and you are able to watch them unfold.
All these things require discernment, experience, patience and grace. We need to keep them in mind and seek God on them whenever we are given a prophetic word.
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the 'LOST AND FOUND' Department. |
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"Your Unsaved Children, City and Nation Are Now Waiting in the 'LOST AND FOUND' Department... Come and Get Them!"
2 Peter 3:9 ...(God) is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
Isaiah 40:9 Say to the cities of Judah, "Behold your God!"
I remember when I was a little boy and my mother would take me shopping with her. Time and again, I would keep getting lost from her in big department stores. Many times someone in the store would find me and take me to the customer service desk, where the "lost and found" department was, and they would call out over the intercom that they have found a little, lost boy. My mother quickly would come and get me. After a while she knew where she could find me if I got lost.
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