Saturday, February 25, 2006

Where the Spirit of the Lord is....

I'm writing now in sheer amazement of Him.

I feel as if I'm being overtaken by a tidal wave of sorts.

Right now I"m sitting in a room of people being swept away by the glory of the Lord. We are actually in between sessions(the morning one lasted for 2 hours and the afternoon one lasted for 3), but people just don't want to leave the presence of the Lord. I brought my computer in here just so I could sit in it. And how can I describe it in words? How can you express the power of God in the small words that we have?

I have truly been in awe. Oh how we think we know what it means for His glory to manifest. We were in the afternoon session having a Q & A time and a lady stood up and said she had a heart for the deaf community. After she shared and the speaker answered her question, he spoke out and asked if anyone in the place had hearing problems. A man sitting in front of me raised his hand. The whole place soon erupted in prayer and praise. The speaker spoke to the man and said "be healed." I watched the man as he turned to the right and the left in amazement. The Lord had opened up his ear. And yes it surprised me. It surprised me. Why? In His presence is healing. Even now this place is thick with the presence of the Lord. There is healing here, there is deliverence here. God is healing. That's who HE IS. He said "I am the Lord who healeth thee..." Oh what a testimony to His glory! Oh I pray that we would all taste and see that He is good! Things HAPPEN when we are in HIS PRESENCE!

Oh what places we have gone in prayer this weekend. There are actual places in the Spirit the Lord wants to take us in prayer. Things happen in prayer. Revival happens in prayer, not just when you see it. And it takes pressing in. Paul said to "pray without ceasing." The Lord has placed such a purpose in me to spend more time in prayer. Prayer for Auburn. Prayer for His glory to fall. Prayer for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation. I'm looking at possibly starting a prayer meeting in the middle of the week for anyone who is interested. Pray about it....

Well its almost time for the next service.... and the music is still playing.....

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Dispensers of Glory

Well I am sitting here with a lovely genetics test awaiting my attention, but there is something I must release off of my spirit before I do anything else.

I unfortunately had to leave Encounter after worship in order to study, but in that time of worship the Lord illuminated something so powerful in my heart that all I could do was stand there and breathe. At the very beginning, as I began to silently meditate and fix my gaze on Him He began to speak to me about glory. This proved very timely as the next few choruses were filled with praises of His glory. But in standing there just praying in the Spirit and letting Him guide my spirit He began to unfold something. Now when I say "guide" and "unfold" I am referring to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as someONE who "leads us and guides us into all truth" and who "shows us things to come." So I began to listen to Him as He spoke to me about GLORY.

First of all, He reminded me again of the uniformity of focus in the body concerning His glory. It has been talked about almost everywhere I go. It has excited an anticipation in the hearts of many including myself. He confirmed the certainty that I have inside of me that His glory is about to be poured out in greater measure upon His church. Now this usually excites me and gets me rejoicing but this time my response was marked with almost a heaviness. This heaviness was actually more like a burden in that instead of feeling incredibly joyful I felt an overwhelming urgency. It is that same urgency that you get when you know someone is coming over and you aren't prepared. And that is exactly what He began to tell me.

What then began to rise in my spirit was a vision of the role we will play in this outpouring. The word He gave me was "dispense." We are to be dispensers of His glory on this earth. We aren't just vessels for our own satisfaction. The burden of this came from a realization that we as a church are not ready for this. Yes, the Lord is the author and finisher of our faith, and yes, He is the potter and we are the clay. But all over scripture that truth is complemented by a charge for us to press on, to renew our minds, to build ourselves up on our faith, to speak right, to put action to our faith, to seek Him, to ask Him, to consecrate ourselves, to walk in the light, to put on Christ, to put on the same mind as Christ, to humble ourselves, and to be led by the spirit of God. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." It is time that we realize that the decisions we make or don't make impact our ability to conduct His glory. And we do all of this by His grace and for His glory, not out of our own strength. WE MUST PRESS INTO HIM. We must grow in intimacy with Him! We must learn to be led. We must expand our minds and begin to think about His glory and expect His glory. We must stretch our thinking to expect what His glory can do in our lives. What are you expecting? How big is God to you? How big is His glory to you? How much can His glory do in your life right now?

So that is what the Lord impressed upon me tonight. I didn't hear anything in an audible voice but my spirit bears witness that it was the voice of the Lord. So what are we thinking? What are we believing? How big do we make His glory in our lives? Jesus, when He healed people frequently said, "your faith has made you whole," and "according to your faith be it done unto you." According to your faith. He is looking for faith ("without faith it is impossible to please Him"). Just begin to fathom the implications of you being a dispenser of HIS GLORY on this earth. Jesus was a dispenser of His glory and even He said, "these things I do you shall do also, and greater [in quantity] works than these."

dispense