When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
11The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 1 Kings 19:11-13, NIV
When Elijah ran for his life after demonstrating God’s power by rebuilding the altar and having God answer by fire, he was instructed to go on a journey for 40 days and 40 nights to the Mountain of God, Mount Horeb, also known today as Mount Sinai.
We can learn a number of lessons from this encounter, including the fact that God is not restricted to appearing with massive displays of energy and power, as we are often tempted to think. As we wait upon God, let us all realise that it is often in the stillness that He is at His most powerful and we become able to clearly hear His voice. As we await the outpouring that is about to be released, let us not be of a mind that restricts God’s manifest presence by our expectations, but be assured that He is about to glorify Himself as He pours out His Spirit on all flesh.
Mt Sinai today.
What the Father will pour out is a desire to seek His face and fellowship and to be like Jesus rather than His hand and power and gifts. Indeed the power of love is what compelled Jesus to heal the sick, help the poor and oppressed and He will give us that same compassion and love fr one another and for Him. When the love of God overwhelms us and overruns our carnal desires, we seek nothing else but to know Jesus and to walk with Him and in His power. Then truly shall we do greater works than those that He did, as He promised us. That hour is now upon us. Be hungry and be blessed!
Following the trauma of World War II, spiritual life reached a low ebb in the Scottish Hebrides. By 1949 Peggy and Christine Smith (84 and 82) had prayed constantly for revival in their cottage near Barvas village on the Isle of Lewis, the largest of the Hebrides Islands in the bleak north west of Scotland. God showed Peggy in a dream that revival was coming. Months later, early one winter’s morning as the sisters were praying, God give them an unshakeable conviction that revival was near.
Peggy asked her minister James Murray Mackay to call the church leaders to prayer. Three nights a week the leaders prayed together for months. One night, having begun to pray at 10 pm, a young deacon from the Free Church read Psalm 24 and challenged everyone to be clean before God. As they waited on God his awesome presence swept over them in the barn at 4 am Mackay invited Duncan Campbell (1898-1972) to come and lead meetings. Within two weeks he came. God had intervened and changed Duncan’s plans and commitments. At the close of his first meeting in the Presbyterian Church in Barvas the travel weary preacher was invited to join an all night prayer meeting. Thirty people gathered for prayer in a nearby cottage. Duncan Campbell described it:
“God was beginning to move, the heavens were opening, we were there on our faces before God. Three o’clock in the morning came, and God swept in. About a dozen men and women lay prostrate on the floor, speechless. Something had happened; we knew that the forces of darkness were going to be driven back, and men were going to be delivered. We left the cottage at 3 am to discover men and women seeking God. I walked along a country road, and found three men on their faces, crying to God for mercy. There was a light in every home, no one seemed to think of sleep.”
When Duncan and his friends arrived at the church that morning it was already crowded. People had gathered from all over the island, some coming in buses and vans. No one discovered who told them to come. God led them. Large numbers were converted as God’s Spirit convicted multitudes of sin, many lying prostrate, many weeping. After that amazing day in the church, Duncan pronounced the benediction, but then a young man began to pray aloud. He prayed for 45 minutes. Once more the church filled with people repenting and the service continued till 4 am the next morning before Duncan could pronounce the benediction again.
Even then he was unable to go home to bed. As he was leaving the church a messenger told him, “Mr. Campbell, people are gathered at the police station, from the other end of the parish; they are in great spiritual distress. Can anyone here come along and pray with them?”
Campbell went and what a sight met him. Under the still starlit sky he found men and women on the road, others by the side of a cottage, and some behind a peat stack all crying to God for mercy. The revival had come.
His mission continued for five weeks. Services were held from early morning until late at night and into the early hours of the morning. The revival spread to the neighbouring parishes from Barvas with similar scenes of repentance, prayer and preaching. People sensed the awesome presence of God everywhere.
That move of God in answer to prevailing prayer continued in the area into the fifties and peaked again on the previously resistant island of North Uist in 1957. Meetings were again crowded and night after night people cried out to God for salvation.
The Hebrides revival, experienced in a Presbyterian context, illustrates how the impact of the Spirit floods and transcends any context. Campbell emphasised the importance of a baptism in the Spirit, as had been a common theme in the Welsh revival.
“I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.
2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.
5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty. Malachi 3:1-5, NIV
Was it a coincidence or did God have a purpose on pouring out His Holy Spirit in such a manner as to set of the fire that was the Pentecostal movement on Pesach weekend of 1906, also known as Easter? Here are some excerpts from the Renewal Journal that document what happened then. I am convinced that there is a pattern for the manifestation of the glory of God that we know as the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
It seems rather clear that God begins by pouring out a desire to pray which then culminates in these incidences where He shows up and does only what He can do. William Seymour was a man whom all the odds were against but had one important trait….a hunger for God. That hunger was so intense that he enrolled himself into classes that he could not sit in due to the segregation laws of the day. When the hunger overtook him he accepted a call to be a pastor at a church in Los Angeles but was immediately fired after his first sermon was made which was based on Acts chapter 2 and the infilling of the Holy Spirit.
He then began a fellowship at what is now a monument to the beginning of the outpouring in a shabby little space that again demonstrates that God is not interested in our productions and buildings and adornments but is interested in our hearts. This is a common thread in His manifestation everywhere, beginning with a child king born in a manger and sealed by the worst death possible on a cross with thieves. Revival is about to break out with a level and force that has never been experienced before. 2021 will go down in the history books, but there may not be time to write them as this is the last great outpouring. People are having dreams and visions of the Messiahs return, the bridegroom coming to get His bride, and a hunger and thirst is building that is unprecedented. The trumpet is about to sound and the bride is being prepared.
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Early in 1906 William J. Seymour (1870-1922), the Negro Holiness pastor, studied briefly at Charles Parham’s short term Bible School in Houston, Texas. Segregation laws in that state prohibited Negroes from joining the classes. Most reports indicate that he sat in the hall and listened through the doorway.
William Seymour
Julia Hutchins, the pastor of a small holiness church in Los Angeles, heard of Seymour from a friend, Luci Farrow, who had visited Houston. Hutchins invited William Seymour to preach in her church with the possibility of becoming pastor of the church. His first sermon there, from Acts 2:4, emphasized being filled with the Spirit and speaking in tongues. He soon found himself locked out of the building.
Seymour then began cottage meetings in the home of Richard Asbery at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, which still exists as a Pentecostal landmark. Many there, including Seymour, fell to the floor and began speaking in tongues at the prayer meeting on Monday, April 9. Numbers grew until the weight of the crowd broke the front verandah, so they had to move. They found an old two-story weatherboard stable and warehouse at 312 Azusa Street which had previously been an African Episcopal Methodist church.
So Seymour, now leader of The Apostolic Faith Mission, began meetings there on Easter Saturday, April 14, 1906. About 100 attended including blacks and whites. The Spirit of God moved powerfully on that little mission. Many were baptized in the Spirit with speaking in tongues and prophecies. Four days later on Wednesday, April 18, the day of the San Francisco earthquake, the Los Angeles Times began carrying articles about the weird babble of tongues and wild scenes at Azusa Street.
Not only was the racial mixture unusual, but the newspaper reports, usually critical of those noisy Pentecostal meetings, drew both Christians and unbelievers, poor and rich, to investigate. Soon crowds crammed into the building to investigate or mock. Hundreds were saved, baptized in the Spirit and ignited for apostolic style mission which included prayers for healing and outreach in evangelism and overseas mission.” – Renewal Journal
It is said the services ran non-stop for three years, if at all you would call them services, as there was generally no order. Frank Bartelman gives the following account of his first hand experience there:
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Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there. The services ran almost continuously. Seeking souls could be found under the power almost any hour, night and day. The place was never closed nor empty. The people came to meet God. He was always there. Hence a continuous meeting. The meeting did not depend on the human leader. God’s presence became more and more wonderful. In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors, God took strong men and women to pieces, and put them together again, for His glory. It was a tremendous overhauling process. Pride and self-assertion, self-importance and self-esteem, could not survive there. The religious ego preached its own funeral sermon quickly.
No subjects or sermons were announced ahead of time, and no special speakers for such an hour. No one knew what might be coming, what God would do. All was spontaneous, ordered of the Spirit. We wanted to hear from God, through whoever he might speak. We had no “respect of persons.” The rich and educated were the same as the poor and ignorant, and found a much harder death to die. We only recognized God. All were equal. No flesh might glory in His presence. He could not use the self-opinionated. Those were Holy Ghost meetings, led of the Lord. It had to start in poor surroundings, to keep out the selfish, human element. All came down in humility together, at His feet. They all looked alike, and had all things in common in that sense at least. The rafters were low, the tall must come down. By the time they got to “Azusa” they were humbled, ready for the blessing. The fodder was thus placed for the lambs, not for giraffes. All could reach it.”
May we hunger and thirst for the outpouring that fills us with His presence and transforms the world. I do not know about you, but I am eagerly looking forward to those days that are about to come upon us, for in His presence there is fullness of joy and restoration.
1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath[a] enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”
The hunger and thirst for God always result in God turning up and transforming individuals and communities. The Welsh Revival is a prime example of how God’s manifest presence touched people’s lives in such a manner that it could only be attributed to His presence. Meetings would go on evening after evening and last until early morning every day. Like Evan Roberts, a spirit of prayer must grip us and transform us into points of fire that ignite the flames of revival.
For the director of music. According to gittith.[b] A psalm of David.
1 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory in the heavens. 2 Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger. 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?[c]
5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e] and crowned them[f] with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their[g] feet: 7 all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
If ever there was an insight into how much God values us, this Psalm by David gives us a clue as to how much the Father loves us and has endowed us with much responsibility and crowned us with glory and honor for His own sake. Indeed, Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have made us rulers yet we still do not grasp the authority you gave us and the dominion. May your Holy Spirit rekindle the fire that spurs us to take our place that you restored through the sacrifice of your son, Jesus. Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done! Amen!
Rainbow over the Indian Ocean between Zanzibar and Tanzania mainland
Luke 15:17 NIV17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
If ever there was a more astounding yet incredible description of God’s character as a father it is this one. One can read it a thousand times over and still not understand how deep the fathers love is for us. How many times have we sung songs that describe God as being far away, or up there somewhere, or hidden, yet this one account by The Son demolishes all our preconceived ideas of God’s behavior. Indeed we are told of how heaven drops everything to rejoice when a sinner returns home and accepts the redemption available in the work of the cross.
I cannot help to think that God seeing us from afar does not wait for us to draw near but literally runs towards us even before we are close to Him. In the Old Testament we see admonitions to seek His face. After the veil is torn by the work of the cross we see an admonition to open the door to allow Him in.How then can we in all earnest sing Pass, me not O gentle Saviour,Hear my humble cry.While on others Thou art calling,Do not pass me by?when He said “I will never leave you, nor forsake you”? Much as the writer meant well and the following verses elaborate further, it brings about a state in our minds that has us declaring that the Saviour is away from us and regularly calls, so as He calls on others He should not pass us by. He promised that He would not leave us as orphans but would send us a helper to always be with us and remind us of His presence and empower us to do His will and triumph over the world, sin and even death.
On the day of Penetcost the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that was promised was accompanied by a manifestation of God’s presence. The physical sound of a rushing wind. What appeared to be tongues of fire descending upon each one’s head. The speaking of languages that other people hearing could understand, and for the most part praising God. In modern days God has manifested Himself in locations with accompanying phenomena including buildings actually shaking. It is indeed a wonder that the power that is every atom and molecule and electron and matter or energy in the universe will make the decision to manifest itself in one location. (28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring. – Acts 17:28 NIV)Moses was told that no flesh could see Him and live. The paradox is that He asks the people to seek His face. And then we come to the account of a Father seeking us and running out to meet us from afar.
I refuse to believe that God is somehow so far off and so distant and that He somehow needs some manipulation or preparation or convincing to be among us. We are compelled to do but one thing and that is to believe His word and act on it. Instead of trying to prepare the table for the Father and Son to come and dine before we open the door why not open it first and let Him in? He has sanctified us by the blood and baptized us with His fire. Where there was once judgement and ruin there is reconciliation and restoration.
Every revival account is one of repentance accompanying the presence of God and every encounter we see in the Bible from Elijah, Isaiah and Daniel to John in the Revelation shows how our persons realize how weak and helpless and unclean we are in the presence of His goodness and power.It is thus clear that we cannot claim God’s manifest presence unless it is accompanied by transformation and not just goosebumps. Miracles, signs and wonders follow but they are not the drivers of the encounter…it is that incredible deep sense of love and belonging and desire to be closer to Him that bring it about and I am convinced it is HE that starts it when HE runs towards us.
We may be seeking Him earnestly and shall be rewarded for it (“Ask and you shall receive, Seek and you shall find”) but the encounter is more fruitful and satisfying when driven by His Holy Spirit showing us a mighty God so in love with us that He forsakes His throne for a cross. When we see our Father running towards us we realize how far we have kept Him away from our lives, even as we feel we are doing our best to do His will and be good children. I do not believe God is displeased with us or trying to play hide and seek. He is standing right there in front of us and we are just not able to see.
As the Holy Spirit prompts you into even more fervent prayer in this season willingly go with Him in that journey, for it is God in you speaking forth the things that are not and connecting you even closer with the love of God in Christ Jesus. Pray in the Spirit and pray in earnest. Do not take lightly the gentle waking in the late hours…I have consistently found myself being woken up at 3:00am in the middle of the night and at 5:00am. In the next few weeks the thirst for prayer will increase and many will start having dreams and visions. Some already have started. Your Father is running towards you. Hold your arms open wide. Be blessed and be a blessing!
It is interesting to note that we humankind have an affinity towards titles to the extent that we get offended if we are not recognised as having them or are addressed by them. I wonder what makes us think we are better than Mary, who replied to the angel that she was the Lord’s servant (Luke 1:38) when she got news of the great honor bestowed upon her to bear the Messiah.
Even after his birth to the end of all biblical accounts she did not give herself any titles or positions or even take any credit for anything but faded into relative obscurity as Peter and Paul took center stage in the leadership and spreading of the Gospel.
Today we are caught up with wanting to have titles instead of focusing on serving, and conveniently forget that the principle of greatness in the Kingdom is taught by Jesus in Matthew 23:8-12: “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are ALL BROTHERS. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. THE GREATEST AMONG YOU WILL BE YOUR SERVANT. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. (NIV, emphasis mine).
By this account Mary becomes great by virtue of her humility, and not by the great things she did. In this day and age of PR and marketing some use the excuse of promoting Jesus via ‘the man of God’ doing things to glorify Jesus, or ‘for God’s glory’, while obviously making poor attempts to hide the fact that they are promoting the man and his ministry and even pointing towards miracles and signs as evidence that God is there. Whilst being careful not to point fingers at servants of God, lets ask ourselves which is more important; the gifts of the Spirit or the fruits?
We are not perfect, and I certainly count myself as the least perfect person, hence I have no right to point fingers or throw stones and I urge us all to do the same; that is, refrain from touching the anointed of God. All we need do is watch ourslves lest we get caught up with self-glorification or glorifying each other with all kinds of excuses, instead of pointing the attention towards the author of our salvation. I always become cautious when I see believers constantly praising their spiritual leaders and mentors because a good teacher teaches the student to become like or better than them in the faith so that the glory always remains in God since those under the teacher exhibit the same patterns, knowledge, gifts and zeal to serve God.
Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming.It is close at hand—a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was in ancient times nor ever will be in ages to come. – Joel 2:1-2 (NIV)
For the past seven days leading up to this last day in the fast I have witnessed many things and gone through a lot of questions in my heart. It seemed as though the heavens became silent and I was hard pressed to know what God was speaking. A few moments before writing this I entered into prayer and worship and before long God began to impress upon my heart these words: Prepare for war. As I meditate upon what He is speaking I see the unfolding of great and cataclysmic events this year. The scripture above from Joel is a vision of a time to come of great turmoil as the end of days comes to dawn. We are living in what can be called ‘End Times’. Much as people have begun to mock the prophetic vision that Daniel wrote about, but most of what he wrote is unfolding before our very eyes. As Jesus wrote in Matthew 24, so it has begun to to materialize.
As a believer, or even as a person who may not necessarily ascribe to what the Bible says, be advised that the one thing that distinguishes the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel is the characteristic of making events known before they occur. This is commonly known as prophecy. The birth, life and death of the Messiah, Jesus, was written of in the book of Isaiah ( Chapter 9, from verse 6, and Chapter 53), and it came to pass that he did walk on the earth and records of his crucifixion are there in history. So be encouraged that God is mighty to save and has gathered His mighty host to do battle on His and your behalf, if you are on His side. No weapon formed against you will prosper and no stronghold will withstand His mighty arm!
There are many things that will happen this year that will have far reaching effects on human history on a scale that will make the impact of September 11 Pale in comparison. Some will be economic, others political, others natural disasters and others man- made. Be prepared for war.
Ours is not to fight, but to trust in the Lord of the battle! Whatever you will go through, or have begun to experience, just be encouraged that ‘they that are with us’ are more numerous than they that are against!
Be blessed! Be encouraged! Be strong in the Lord! Believe!
Prayer: Open my eyes to see that the armies that surround me in the heavenly realms are more powerful than those that would want to see my destruction. The Lord is my strength and my shield. His name is Jehovah Nisse, a banner over me. Bless the Lord oh, my soul!
