Acts 2: 1-5 is very familiar portion of scripture: "When the day of Pentecost had fully come they were with one accord in one place and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as a rushing mighty wind and filled the whole house where they were sitting." As I read that I became very excited. I thought maybe we stand up too much in church. When the Holy Spirit rushed in they were sitting. God wanted to do something so badly that the people were sitting, waiting, when a sudden a wind came through the house. A strong wind blew through and the whole house was filled. What appeared to be tongues of fire appeared above their heads as they were sitting in God’s Presence and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as God gave them utterance.
Simply put, God visited them while they waited. Pentecost is when God, by His Spirit, came down. The annual Jewish festival known as the Feast of Harvests or the day of First Fruits is a celebration of the first buds of the harvest. Jewish men were required by law to go to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate the major feasts: Passover in the spring, Pentecost which was seven weeks and a day later, exactly fifty days after Passover, and The Feast of Tabernacles at the end of the harvest in the fall. To research this further read Leviticus 23.
Those who became Christians on Pentecost actually were first fruits of a vast harvest of millions of souls. In Acts 2 God came upon the scene in a mighty, rushing wind that appeared to have tongues of fire within the Presence and there was such a dramatic, exponential harvest that three thousand people were saved in one day. Three thousand men and women were baptized that day and there was such a move of God that society was affected and culture was transformed by the radical download of the Holy Spirit of the Living God. In the book of Acts we see that once the Presence of God was manifested the early church of Jesus Christ immediately started to impact their sphere of influence.
As we read the book of Acts in its entirety we realize the impact and power of the Presence of God. Exponential fruit and supernatural happenings transpire when God’s Presence becomes the focal point of a church, people group, or a society. Dramatic results take place when we wait on God and trust that He is going to reveal another aspect of His character and sovereignty. I find that the body of Christ needs to shift our thinking in the way that we perceive the relevance of the church and what our role is in the world system and culture. The Western church in particular has to shift.
At Word Alive International Outreach God has called us to a season of hosting His Presence. In the western church culture we have become acclimated to gathering around a church service that includes announcements, praise, worship and a sermon. Our Sunday morning experience is sermon driven as opposed to Presence purposed. We gather around a message and expect that whoever is communicating that day is going to have a message. I am all for teaching the Word of God, gaining knowledge of scripture so we can build our lives on proper doctrine, but I also believe that if we are not careful we can become so focused on a sermon that we really miss out on what our gathering is supposed to accomplish.
The early church did not gather around sermons. Israel camped and gathered around the Presence of God. We need to change our understanding of attending church and consider gathering with the intention and expectation that as we gather God’s Presence will be with us. My understanding of the revelation that we read in the Bible is that there were no planned teachings before the Presence but rather the revelation came from the manifested Presence.
When Peter preached on Pentecost, he did not preach a message to get the Holy Spirit to come, the Holy Spirit came and a message came out of that and three-thousand were saved in one day. As we gather around and focus solely on the Presence of God we are expecting God’s rhema word to become the message we are hearing.
My prayer for this season is that as we begin to worship God His Presence will descend and we will hear from Him. We may stop and share the Word or we may just continue to worship. In the book of Acts His Presence was there to save, heal and deliver people
Word Alive International Outreach was founded on this philosophy. Our first service was my father’s funeral and the prophetic word for his life was that he would do more damage to the enemies’ camp in death than he did in life. We had bought, and he mortgaged the property our church is built on, and we were given the keys to the building two days before he died. His funeral service is how people found out about the church. We then preached a week of meetings people were saved, healed, delivered, we had our first food distribution and that Sunday we started the church. I believed that if I delivered a good word people would be blessed, tell their family and friends and the church would grow. I had a great word prepared but the more I preached the drier the message became and the more I struggled. Finally I closed my Bible, told the people that I had no idea what I was doing, and that without God’s Presence I was sunk. When I said that, the Presence of God became so rich and thick that we all began to weep and spontaneously worship. That is how the church started.
Throughout the years we have enjoyed many seasons of just being in His Presence. There are always going to be seasons to teach, educate, encourage, and inspire, but never to the point that we do not need and practice the Presence of God. I need Him and cannot accomplish anything without Him. However, changing the way we perceive church takes a shift in thinking. Our mentality and expectation should be that God will meet us when we gather in His Name.
Our dear friend Bobby Connors has reminded God’s people that as a whole we have become far too comfortable with a God Whom we barely know. In many churches around the world when God’s Presence does appear people really do not know understand or know how to respond, what to expect or how to we move forward. We have become so culturally conditioned to hear some music, listen to a message, pray a prayer and go home. The Lord has directed us to gather around His Presence, invite Him and come expecting Him to be with us. That means come to church no matter who is preaching. It is a shift in our thinking. As we are gathering around the Presence of God we must be in place ready to fully participate.
We are in a season that we need to gather around God’s Presence. We do not want to become trapped in a routine of going to church, singing a few songs, listening to a sermon, and then going home in the same spiritually bereft way that we came. Gathering around a message, personality, or an office of the church, whether it be a pastor or evangelists is not what God has called us to do. Worshipping our God is the highest call we can answer so we have started gathering around the Presence of God. I appreciate living a purpose driven life but I love living a Presence driven life. His Presence changes everything.
The church is changing. I received a prophecy last week that there will be a flood in Rome, Italy that will be a prophetic sign of God cleansing the church. The rest of the prophecy was that just as Greece has been shaken so would Vatican City be shaken free from the constraints of intellectual reasoning and the church would be cleansed of the legalistic pattern that we have been in held in religious bondage to. We must begin to understand and embrace the difference between living in the power of God and an intellectual knowledge of Him. God’s Presence is the difference between Spirit led lives as opposed to a religiously dictated existence. As the body of Christ purposes to gather in His Name His Presence will descend and we will hear from Him.
