I was wrong. The best way to release and increase the kingdom wasn’t through a better system or open source curriculum or even people doing the ‘stuff’. This statement seems rather ridiculous when it is written out, but it was an all to real realization the other night when I had one of the craziest encounters with His consuming, furious love.
I had talked myself out of going to the prophetic conference in town, for all the ‘right’ reasons, “…we just got back from ministering in Nicaragua, I’m tired and need to rest…” etc.. So I decided, because of the subtle hints of my friend Holy Spirit, that I should go. Sometimes we need to act in the opposite spirit than that of which we are.
We arrived at the dry lake bed with parched people doing the ‘normal’ horizontal watering of their proverbial soil… it was rough. I needed more, and pushed in again, by dancing then lying on the floor to receive all He was making available… it was good, but nothing near what was about to happen.
Heidi Baker, in her tender way, declared she was going to do something different, which really isn’t that different for her. She said that the alters are open and we were going to press in to God and give Jesus a drink. This was all my friend an I needed. So along with all the chapped-lipped Christians desperate for something else, we ran up and dove face down at the apostle’s feet. For most of the duration of her message, she laid hands on my friend and I, as she soaked, prayed, preached and poured out her heart to heaven. I felt the throngs of His love physically flowing through me as I lay there face down, it was incredible, but still nothing compared to what happened next.
I think the Spirit was telling me, “Servants beg face down, but lovers lie on their back!” So I turned over and lay on my back, the whole time Heidi was laying hands on my head and chest intermittently. It ‘physically’ felt like I went from the experience of God touching me, to having Him enter me. Like another level of His love.
There is more! There is more of His love than we can imagine or dream about.
With this new encounter came the an overwhelming thought,
“I don’t ever want to leave!”
… and I mean ever… I decided I was going to hold onto this moment forever, no matter what. Well that was the beginning of the longest incoherent, trance-like state I had ever been in up until that moment. For 24hrs I couldn’t walk without staggering around and falling down. I could barely open my eyes or speak without laughing spontaneously. I was reminded of the biblical references where Peter said, “These men are not drunk as you suppose!” and when Paul said to the Ephesians, “Do not be drunk on wine but be filled with the Holy Spirit.” My friend and I were filled, and we were drunk, drunk, drunk in His intoxicating love. It was completely marvelous and yet this was only a hint of what is available.
It wasn’t till the next day in a very controlled church service that I began to sober up. It was a pity. We spent the better part of 24hrs on our backs or crawling around under the weight of His presence. This isn’t a new thing. The biblical and revivalist fathers of old experienced this all the time. It was said of Smith Wigglesworth that he could bring the anointing so strong that most people couldn’t stay in the same building under the weight of God’s presence. A physical weight, they could feel baring down on their bodies.
The point is there is more love for us hidden in God, than we can imagine or dream of. There is always more and there is always higher. The metaphor for this increase seems incredulous to me considering the salvation theology that says His presence comes to live in us. So what is this ‘more’ and why have psalmists and worship writers for generations penned the echo of our hearts over and over again? How can we have more of the ‘all’ that lives in us? Could it be that we don’t really see ‘all’ of what we have; that we don’t comprehend the height, depth and breadth of He who is in us? That somehow, we need to see more, comprehend more and experience more of Him who lives in us. And then what?
When we experience intimate, heart-to-heart, deep love we can’t help but love. It reduces the fist commandment to an overflow of the love that we already experience in our hearts. We become agents of His love, reflecting Him in the communities we live in. All over the world the agents of love are being released and are changing the world as more and more people experience the mystery of the kingdom. Love is contagious and cancerous (yes I am using this work on purpose), especially cancerous to the works of the enemy and the gates of hell which can not prevail against it.
“We love, because He first loved us.” [NASB] 1 John 4:11
The bible says you can’t love without being loved by God. I didn’t write that, it is in the word… so that means that any love we are experiencing today is a run off or an overflow of love experienced by someone who at one point was connected to God.
The word ‘Theophany’ from the Ancient Greek Θεοφάνεια – Τheophaneia(meaning “appearance of God”), refers to the appearance of a deity to a human, or to a divine disclosure.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.” [MSG] John 13:34-35
A prophetic message to the body about the process of carrying the anointing from the city of ‘idolatry, religion and confusion’ through city of ‘hype-the-father’, through the house of ‘works and sold-inheritance’ to finally rest in the city of the ‘foundation of peace’ where ‘God passionately seeks you with all His heart’. I am not sure where this fits in theologically and whether or not there is application anywhere else, but I thought that the message was interesting as a concept of how we move the presence of God back into the house. It seems like a global word for revival, learning how to return the presence to the house of Israel or a safe place for Holy Spirit to show up. Perhaps as a global church we are all at one stage or another of returning to a priority for His presence. Burning to be in His presence, to see His face. And perhaps it is time we moved from personal experiences to corporate experiences. Interesting word study Pastor Rick mentioned. In-Corporate - in the corpse or body mmm that’s a tasty encounter waiting to happen. Ray Hughs said unity is a corporate humility or a knowing of why God is visiting us. I like that. There is something about what God wants to do when He gets into a corporate setting or onto a body of unified people. Unity with Passion is essential to carrying the presence as a corporate anointing. Passion can suffice as a personal thirst for His presence, but the word we need to host His presence as a corporation is, “Come together, right now, over Him”. Both the gathering and the togetherness of our spirits is important. He can be seen by the love we have one for another. That, “Where 2 or 3 gather + together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.” Jesus