We talk a lot about revival today, but very few of us have experienced the genuine thing.
I was reflecting upon the fact that there’s a phrase called “a courtesy fall” where somebody falls as if they were slain in the Spirit but they actually weren’t! What a sad commentary on the day that we’re in. Is it really so common for people to fake encounters with the Holy Spirit that we actually have a phrase for it?
It’s a sad commentary that people are so experientially driven that they feel the need to fake encounters with the Holy Spirit so that other people will think they’re spiritual.
I’m going to give you a couple of examples from my own life that demonstrate that you don’t have to be in pursuit of experiences in order for the Holy Spirit to show up and do things. You don’t have to hype and promote a work of God.
I was in the New Age section of a bookstore one day talking to a girl about Jesus when she suddenly collapsed to the floor! I was simply talking to her about my experience with the New Age movement and sharing my testimony when she came under the power of God and fell. I was just as surprised as she was that the power of God had fallen upon her to such an extent that she fell to the ground! I knew what it was, but I didn’t go in there expecting anything like that to happen. My goal when I went into the bookstore that day was to find people in the New Age section to witness to about Jesus. I was talking to her in the same way I would talk to anyone else. The Holy Spirit came and did what He wanted. When she fell to the ground it was a sign to her. She realized it was God and it impacted her. But it had nothing to do with me. When it happened I tried to calm her fears since it scared her. I didn’t hype the experience. I just kept talking to her about Jesus.
During that season in my life I would often go to the mall and witness with the result that many people received the Lord, but she was the only one that ever fell to the ground like that. Having something dramatic happen is not the important thing. People were getting saved and none of them were falling to the ground. We make a big mistake when we put too much emphasis on people having experiences and thinking that’s proof that God is working. God was working with the girl who was slain in the Spirit and God was working with all the other people that got saved who never fell to the ground.
We can’t manufacture or control the power and presence of God. No amount of shouting and singing and dancing can “bring the power down”. I was at a meeting a few years ago and I had the distinct impression that we were trying to whip ourselves up into a frenzy. I kept thinking of Elijah at Mount Carmel. The false prophets are whooping themselves up, lacerating themselves, creating quite a commotion. But the fire never fell until Elijah stood up and called upon the Living God. He didn’t have to dance around the altar to do it, or cut himself, or anything like that.
When God actually shows up people will know it, you don’t have to tell them. I go to so many meetings and the preacher’s up there telling the people that the Holy Spirit just came into the room. Does the Holy Spirit need a frontman to tell everybody that He’s arrived? Look, if the Holy Spirit’s in the room and He wants you to know it, you don’t need anybody to tell you, He’s quite capable of letting you know! We actually don’t need anybody to announce His entrance, He does that just fine by Himself.
[For those of you who are uncomfortable with me speaking of the Holy Spirit “entering the room”, I want you to know that I know that He’s always there. It’s not like He actually just showed up some place! I’m speaking of Him making His presence known. Although God is always omnipresent, He is not always experienced. So when I speak of the Holy Spirit entering the room, I’m simply describing what we as His children would describe as the tangible presence of God in our midst.]
There was a time I was standing in front of a Publix grocery store in Clearwater, Florida, and a guy came out and walked up to me and said, “You convict me!” I didn’t know the person from Adam and had no idea what he was talking about. He was holding a brown bag and he explained that he had just purchased beer and when he saw me he came under the conviction of the Lord! He was overwhelmed by the Spirit of God. I had nothing to do with it, I was just standing there enjoying the sunshine. I didn’t feel like Elijah, I wasn’t trying to convict anybody of anything. The only thing I felt that morning was the joy of the Lord. I was just enjoying Jesus. He simply came under the power of God! A total stranger in front of a grocery store repenting when I had said absolutely nothing to him.
“This is that!!!”, as Peter exclaimed when the Spirit of God was being poured out and he referenced Joel. This is that!!!!!
This doesn’t need to be worked up! This is the power of God.
When I was baptized in the Holy Spirit it was exactly the same. As I stood at the altar I told God, “I’m not going to fake it, I’m not going to make something happen.” It looked like everybody around me was experiencing something that was absolutely amazing and there I was experiencing nothing! But I wasn’t about to fake it and I told God so.
I was up there at the altar waiting so long that I was beginning to wonder how much longer the music was going to last. I thought maybe they were going to stop singing and the whole thing would be over with and I was going to walk away from that place exactly the way I came in.
I was just standing there as dry as a bone for what seemed like an eternity. Then suddenly the power of God fell upon me and I had the most supernatural experience that I’ve ever had in my life. Transported into the heavens! Transported into the very glory of God! The Divine Hand passed through a human hand right through my back and into my spirit! I felt it! I experienced it! Suddenly I was flooded with the Holy Spirit and the glories of Heaven!!! Like Paul, I didn’t know whether I was here or there, in the body or out of it!! I’ll never forget it all the days that I live!
God came down, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
It just seems to me that there’s so much hype going on in the church today. We’re so desperate for an experience that we’ll call anything that happens to us “revival”. Some of the manifestations that are happening are probably not even from God but we’re so desperate to experience something that we allow it straight into our lives. My point in this post is that if God wants you to have some kind of supernatural experience He’s able to give you that. You don’t have to go seeking it out!
There’s not only a famine of the Word of God today, there’s a famine of the Spirit of God!
The Spirit of God or just pretending?
We desperately need to stop acting like we’re walking in something when we know we’re not. Some of the things that are being passed off as miraculous today are nothing more than parlor tricks that have been done for a very long time. Most of us can see right through it, but almost nobody says anything.
The revival culture we see in the Prophetic Movement today is mostly built on hype.
There’s honestly times when I wonder if churches think the volume control is connected to the anointing. I actually really love loud music but in the context of worship there’s a point where it just gets ridiculous! I actually want to hear the people around me singing to the Lord. When the music is so loud that I can’t even hear myself something’s off.
This point was driven home one Sunday after a gathering that I go to had to meet in another location without the big sound system and the awesome band. There was just a keyboardist up there and a couple people on vocals. I actually thought it was beautiful and the presence of the Lord was sweet that morning. But I noticed almost nobody in the room was singing. Or if they were, it was so soft you could barely hear it. I could hear a couple voices here and there but there were hundreds in the room. Where were they? Why couldn’t I hear them? It actually disturbed me to realize that without the loud music the “worship” seemed to disappear. I left that day wondering if we were depending on the awesomeness of the band and the loudness of the music to give us a sense of “presence”? If so, I think that’s very sad.
This is by no means an isolated incident. I find it quite common for volume levels to be similar to that which you’d encounter at a concert. I’ve been up at the altar area on many occasions praying for people when I can barely hear what their request is and I have to shout so that they can hear me praying for them! How is this conducive to connecting with people in ministry?
This is just one example of many that I could give that speaks of a hyped atmosphere. The Holy Spirit actually doesn’t need the lights, the fog machine, or the loud music. He also doesn’t need us shouting in tongues at the top of our voice.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s times when the Holy Spirit moves upon us and the atmosphere gets charged and it’s quite normal for the music to be loud and the people shouting out. Some of you reading this may have never been in a church like this, but it’s quite scriptural to worship the Lord with our entire being, and that’s going to manifest in excitement and volume.
Praise him with sounding cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals! Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD! -Psalm 150:5
My step dad used to pound the living room chair and let a shout out when the Green Bay Packers made a touchdown! If he was excited about the game he’d also turn the TV up pretty loud and lean out of his chair toward the television set. There were even a couple of times he choked on my mom’s popcorn balls because he got so excited and he was practically inhaling them!!
If we can get excited about a sporting event or something else we love there’s no reason in the world why we should be held back in our worship of God!
Please understand me, I’m not speaking against this kind of thing. You’ll actually find me acting like this! But hype is something totally out of place in any spiritual gathering. There’s absolutely no need for it.
If volume is something we’re using to create atmosphere rather than something that happens naturally because the presence of God has come in our midst, then all we’re really doing is acting out of our flesh. There’s nothing spiritual about that. I believe that most Christians can tell the difference between hype and a real visitation from God.
We need to humble ourselves before the Living God and pray for His power once again to be poured out through the Holy Spirit. We must admit our need and stop pretending!
The real thing
I encourage you to read the accounts of what real revival has looked like throughout the history of the church.
We’re not walking in what former saints walked in during seasons of revival. When will we cry out to God from our place of need? When will we see the wretchedness of our spiritual condition as compared to saints who went before us who actually walked and lived and breathed the glory of God?
“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence!” -Isa 64:1
When will we stop being content with manufacturing experiences? I hear people talking about “the swirl in the atmosphere”. Maybe you better be careful with that!
There might be a swirl, but I want to tell you the Holy Spirit is a person, not a mystical swirl!
The idea of being drunk and woozy in a spiritual atmosphere is absolutely contrary to how scripture portrays a real relationship with God.
There’s a huge difference between enjoying a relationship with God and mysticism.
Talking about portals and frequencies and hanging out with angels is fine if you want to become part of the New Age Movement. Is that what you’re looking to do? Because I don’t see people hanging out with angels in the New Testament. There were times that people were visited by angels, but this was not an ordinary thing. The Epistle to the Hebrews begins by pointing Christians away from angels to Jesus Himself.
And to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? -Hebrews 1;13
Jesus Christ is the Glorious One, we should be seeking Him, not angels.
The Prophetic Movement has been overrun by stories about angel encounters. If you’re enticed by this sort of thing I encourage you to consider the following verse from Colossians.
Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, -Colossians 2:18
If there was ever a verse that we need to hear today, this is it!
Angels, and visions, and “realms of glory”- these are the things that the Prophetic Movement is all about. And yet, the Apostle Paul had his focus on something completely different than that.
For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. -1 Corinthians 2:2
Jesus and the cross, was the central focus of the early church- NOT angels and visions and dreams and “glory realms”.
In fact, Paul told the Colossians that people who focus on this kind of stuff lose their “connection with the Head”. In other words, When we caught up in gnosticism and mystical experiences it might seem really spiritual to us, but in fact, we’re out there spinning into some kind of spiritual experience that has nothing to do with Christ at all!
You might think it’s really cool to be into “spiritual realms” but there’s stuff out there that’s just waiting to get a hold of you and bring you into deception. We need to be wise and not foolish.
I can speak of these things because I actually gave myself over to this kind of stuff for a season. What a delusion it is!
During this time in my life I actually journaled about being in a “Spiritual Wonderland”. I was experiencing every kind of manifestation imaginable! I was drunk on experiences and many of them turned out to be absolutely false.
I was reading a book at the time by Smith Wigglesworth. This man was known for the supernatural outworking of God in his life. I was reading his book because I had an insatiable appetite for spiritual experiences. The fact is, Wigglesworth actually rebuked those in his day who were chasing after experiences and manifestations. He warned people not to seek after them. Wigglesworth told people to seek Jesus Christ, not spiritual experiences.
One of the greatest errors the Prophetic Movement is making is overemphasizing spiritual experiences.
I’ve had many authentic manifestations of the Spirit of God over the 40 years that I’ve been a Christian, but it was not until I got involved with the Prophetic Movement that I fell into the error of seeking after the supernatural. I must warn you! When you seek after experiences you will probably get them, but that does not mean they’re coming from God. I have personally never had a time in my life where I came under such spiritual deception as the time that I was involved with the Prophetic Movement. The reason for that is clear in my mind. Rather than waiting on God to give me an experience if He wanted to as I had previously done throughout my entire christian life, I was now running after manifestations. When we do that we’re giving the enemy a wide open door to deceive us!
We don’t need an experience, we need God, and if God wants us to have an experience for some reason, we don’t need to go out looking for it, He’s completely capable of giving it to us if He wants to.
There’s a famine of the Word of God and a famine of the Spirit of God because we’re seeking the wrong things!
You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13