In the second book of John there exists only one chapter. What stands out in his letter is the the exhortation to love. Here is an excerpt from vs 4-8, NIV:
4 It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5 And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6 And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
7 I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8 Watch out that you do not lose what we[a] have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.
It is amazing to see the comparison to obedience and love. If we do not obey the command to love we are in turn signing our our spiritual death warrants, as “obedience is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam 15:22 – But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.). Our initial understanding is that we obey the commandments but God’s greatest desire is that we love Him and love one another. There is no way we can transgress against Him or one another if our hearts, minds, motives and actions are driven by love.
In Matthew 24, as Jesus gives an account of the end times, He notes that the love of many will grow cold and wickedness would increase. This is indeed the hour that we live in. Let us make that effort to draw nearer to Christ with the help of the Holy Spirit so that the love of God may be manifest in our lives and we indeed become the lamp that shows the way to God’s kingdom.
2022 is going to be one of the most significant years in human history. What we have gone through in the last 2 years will pale in comparison, both by natural events as well as man-made events. How we succeed to navigate the forthcoming times will depend solely on our obedience to God, and that obedience to His command to love, especially our enemies and those who will persecute us. May He stir up the desire in all of us to love Him and one another to the very end. Be blessed and be a blessing!
11 When Solomon had finished the temple of the Lord and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the Lord and in his own palace, 12 the Lord appeared to him at night and said:
“I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices.
13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people, 14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. 15 Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 2 Chron. 7:11-15 NIV
When we talk of revival or awakening, we talk of God manifesting His presence. Too often we are consumed by our desire to complete those things that either have to do with our welfare or those that have something to do with the work of God, but rarely give equal attention to both.
In verse 11 we see that God appears to Solomon (at night) and says He has heard his prayer. Remember Cornelius and his good deeds and prayers. We cannot separate those things that God has placed in our hearts to do and His presence, as obedience is better than sacrifice. What is it that is outstanding in my life today? Is there a task, no matter how simple or mundane, that I have ignored or set aside as unimportant? Is there a person I was to bless but passed by or ignored?
Holy Spirit…remind us of that which we heard from you but did not accomplish even when it was in our reach. Remind us.
Matthew 22:1-14 – The Parable of the Wedding Banquet
Matthew 22:1-14 – NIV
1Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.
4 “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’
5 “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. 6 The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.
8 “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. 9 So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ 10 So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.
11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. 12 He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.
13 “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.” The description of the events leading up to the return of Christ are illustrated in this parable very clearly. We would do well to take heed that we do not attend the feast without proper wedding clothes. Also note that the King destroys the murderers and burns the city, a reference to those persecuting and mistreating the kings servant, believers, and the burning of the city by fire, a reference to the woes of Revelation. He is coming soon.
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.
“
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
