August 14, 2008 – 2:46 pm
If you’ve never heard of the “Florida outpouring” or “Lakeland revival”, then you probably can skim though this post. Don’t skip it though, because there’s some good stuff at the end. If you have, then you may be feeling very confused, disappointed, lost, even betrayed right now. It started out so unassuming…another conference at a church in Lakeland, Florida that took place a few months ago — April 3 to be exact. Such things happen all the time…people come hungry for God, God shows up and does some amazing and awesome things, and people go home — hopefully! — filled with the love of God the Father and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Only this time, nobody wanted to go home. They wanted to come back. And they wanted everyone else to come too. And so this little conference grew and grew and grew until it was being broadcasted from a stadium into nations around the world, with churches across America heralding it as the nexus of a fresh, never-ending revival fire that would usher in the next Great Awakening.
Only four months later…the Florida “outpouring” has dwindled to a few hundred people at the original starting church, and the leader of the revival, Todd Bentley, is now in the midst of a marital crisis and fierce doctrinal controversy that has left the broader charismatic movement reeling. Charisma Magazine wrote up in good detail the latest news as we know it.
I want to be very clear: I have been personally blessed by Todd Bentley’s ministry in the past, and some of his closest friends in ministry are people I know and trust (not personally, but in terms of spiritual fruit and teaching). So I don’t want to make light of this tragedy in any way, and I am praying for him and his family’s recovery and healing.
But something is going on in the Body of Christ right now, and we need to discern what is happening and not give way to doubt and hardness of heart. The first question we need to ask is: is the Lakeland revival over? I believe it is. But that’s the wrong question. The real question is: is revival over? And the answer to that is an emphatic NO!
I spent the last several days very distressed about this sequence of events, and as I’ve been seeking the Lord for answers, I’ve begun to sense some things that I think are important to remember and understand. I’ll just walk through some of my thoughts in bullet-point form:
- True revival is not about a person, a place, or a thing. It is about the sovereign move of Almighty God in response to Jesus followers crying out to Him from the depths of their souls.
- True revival is not about angles, visions, prophecies, miracles, visitations, glory clouds, gemstones, gold dust, oil, and other signs and wonders. It is about Jesus Christ. It is about His power to restore all the that enemy has stolen. It is about transformation. “I once was lost, but now I’m found. I once was blind, but now I see.” That’s revival.
- True revival cannot be beamed across a TV screen or performed on the platform. It cannot be told, it cannot be explained, and it cannot be contained. Because, you see, revival is the violent move of God in glory and power, and God — last time I looked — is not a video feed or a worship band or a talking head with a microphone up on stage.
- True revival is not a church, or a conference, or a tent, or a style, or a method, or a format, or a culture, or a tradition. True revival is timeless and transcendent, because God is outside of time and beyond this universe.
- When true revival comes, it will convict people to go out. All eyes will not be on any person, place, or thing. It will be on Jesus Christ. People will not wait for the “fire” to come to their city in pomp and circumstance before they go out and minister to people in the name of Jesus. They will go out and minister to people in the name of Jesus in order to bring the fire of God down to their city.
- When true revival comes, it will be messy, but it will not be flabby. It will not be frayed around the edges. It will not focus on the biggest and brightest and best and ignore the details. The devil is NOT in the details. God is in the details. The first shall be last, and the last first. When true revival comes, it will not be about flash, it will be about substance. It will be about meeting people’s needs where they are. It will be about speaking to people in a language they can understand. It will be about being all things to all men in order to preach the good news of Jesus Christ.
- Oh how arrogant to think that only the superficial gloss of “charismania” heralds the arrival of revival. Lord, forgive us of our pride, our presumption. Forgive us of our need for hype and attention instead of conviction and consecration. Forgive us for looking to men to bring us into your Holy Presence when all we need is a spirit willing to yield itself to you.
There is a shift going on…a shift in the Body of Christ right now where people are beginning to realize that the hallmark of every true revival is a gripping fear of the Lord and a powerful, irresistible yearning for holiness and purification. I felt this already when I was up at the JesusCulture conference a couple of weeks ago. More on that another time. Suffice it to say, it was an incredible, life-changing time, but not because of signs and wonders but because of God’s holy presence and the palpable feeling of intense spiritual hunger in the room that demanded a transformational response from heaven. We got down on our knees and we gave our all to Jesus, everything, without reservation, without hesitation. The conviction of the Holy Spirit was so strong that I was ready to repent of sins I haven’t even committed yet. That was a joke, in case you missed it.
So is the revival over? No! It’s just now truly beginning! Some people are saying the Lakeland “revival” was false and of the devil. I believe it was of God when it initially started. Other people are saying that the revival was real all along and the devil is now trying his best to shut it down. No, I believe that too is of God, although the devil is certainly on the offensive.
I believe God used Lakeland as a catalyst for radical spiritual hunger and has now shut down what was quickly turning into a quagmire in order for real revival to break out spontaneously, earnestly, sincerely, and sustainably across this dry land we call America. This time revival won’t be about Todd Bentley, or Lakeland, or God TV, or apostles, or miracles, or media, or glory clouds, or angelic hosts, or worship music, or prophecies, or anything else. It will be about one thing and one thing only: Jesus Christ. We will encounter Jesus, be saved by Jesus, be delivered by Jesus, be changed by Jesus, be loved by Jesus, be equipped by Jesus, and be sent out by Jesus to go do the compassionate works of Jesus in order for the world to hear about Jesus and see Jesus and be set free by Jesus.
If revival isn’t about Jesus, and Him alone, then somehow, somewhere, we’ve lost the plot.
“On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” — Matthew 7:22-23
August 12, 2008 – 9:15 am
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” — Matthew 5:5
“But the meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.” — Psalms 37:11
 We’re on a mini-series discussing the different metaphors for trust. When I was thinking about the theme of today’s message, I started out musing on the obvious words that people routinely employ when talking about trust: humility, vulnerability, openness, etc. But then I remembered a curious word that is used in most Bible translations yet isn’t regularly used in common speech: meekness. We don’t like to think of ourselves as meek. When I picture someone who’s meek, I think of some old dowdy milquetoast minister who’d rather play an organ and arrange flowers for Mrs. McGillicutty than charge forth boldly to storm the gates of hell and change the world. But maybe I’m wrong, because there is someone who perfectly fits the image of meekness: Jesus. Come to me, He says, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Jesus…meek? Jesus, the man who violently chased the moneychangers out of the temple? Jesus, the man who cast demons into pigs and damned the religious leaders to hell? Jesus, the man who walked on water, healed the sick, raised the dead, and traveled around the countryside preaching to crowds of thousands?
Jesus was meek because Jesus walked in complete submission to the Father. He trusted His Father in Heaven so completely and depended on Him so absolutely that Jesus only did what He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). Jesus didn’t one day decide to go do his own “thang” and see how that shakes out. He knew that there was an eternal plan, a destiny, a reward greater than any earthly reward, and He had complete confidence that as long as He was walking in that path, everything would turn out for the ultimate good.
So if that’s what being meek is all about, I’ll be proud to call myself meek. (Hmm, isn’t that an oxymoron?) I want to trust and lean on God so completely that everything I do or say flows out of that intimate relationship with the Father. I tried going my own way and forging ahead on my own path, and all I got was a lot of running in place and frustration. Yet when I hide under the shadow of His wing, I am at peace. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
August 11, 2008 – 10:35 am
Taken at Lake Fairfax Park outside of Reston, VA
Visit photo gallery
August 9, 2008 – 10:06 am
 I’ve been eating up a book I recently bought called Pagan Christianity, which has been making waves in the Christian community since its release at the beginning of this year. Basically, the book makes the outrageous claim that virtually everything that happens in a typical church service, whether Evangelical, Pentecostal, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or what have you, is based on extra-biblical practices largely borrowed from pagan religions, cults, and Greco-Roman institutions. And it backs up the claim with reams of historical data.
I haven’t yet finished the book, so I’ll refrain from judgement until I do, but given my past experience with American “churchianity”, I’m not exactly ready to go burn the authors at the stake. Frankly, I once thought that it was time to take the church out back and shoot it. Stick a fork in it, it’s done. So I find it highly fascinating to discover that all the things I thought were bizarre about church practices actually have little-to-nothing to do with the original Church planted by Jesus Christ and the first-century Apostles.
That being said, I fully admit I love the church I am a part of, Grace Fellowship. I play recorders and whistles in the worship band on Sunday mornings, and I think we have been blessed with amazing, Spirit-led leadership and preaching that has brought forth real transformation in our community. So I’m not ready to give up on the whole kit and caboodle just yet. Although, truth be told, I personally have experienced more spiritual growth and prophetic blessing in our small group meetings and one-to-one interactions than I have in the Sunday services. But I see Sunday as the time when the people of the church can gather corporately to praise God and be challenged in their walk, and it’s a wonderful highlight to look forward to during the work week. Good stuff.
To answer my post title, I don’t think it’s time to kill the typical American church just yet. But it’s very much time to kneel face-down before Almighty God and humbly beg Him to show us where we’ve screwed up in our traditions and how we can move into a new era of Christ-centered, Spirit-led, transformation-focused, empowered, glory-filled, Kingdom-of-God Church!
Last week I mentioned that we would be embarking on a mini-series regarding the issue of trust. Trust is a hard thing to come by. Faith is a word we have watered down in the English language — some people even define it as belief in the absence of any evidence. Quite frankly, that definition is sheer nonsense, but I won’t go into that here. Suffice it to say, when we talk about faith, people get a very airy-fairy notion in their heads of some kind of otherworldly, abstract spiritual state.
Trust, thankfully, is still a concrete word rooted in our everyday lives. When a parent grabs ahold of their little kid’s hand and walks across a busy street, that child is trusting its parent to avoid being killed by an oncoming car. When someone signs a business deal with me, I am trusting that person not to be a scam artist and a crook who’s out to rip me off. When Jane is at the altar ready to exchange vows of holy matrimony with John, she is trusting him to be a person of character who will not dump her and run off with the office secretary a month down the road. You could define trust in this manner: I have experienced enough of you in my life to put my faith in you and believe that you will do right by me.
Once you give out trust, you become vulnerable to one of two reactions when that trust is broken — and unfortunately, you will never live your life without experiencing the sharp stab of betrayal or loss at some point. The first reaction is to become angry, bitter, to withdraw into your little dark abyss of grief and horror and never come back out. People like that may look like they’re functioning normally in society, but scratch the surface and you won’t find a heart, you’ll find a brick wall fortified with heavy artillery.
The second reaction is to realize that trust is too valuable a thing to lose, and that disillusionment only serves to clarify and bring into crystal-clear focus the things that really matter the most. And thus my metaphor: trust as a form of disillusionment — you lose faith in something foundational and therefore resolve to spend the rest of your life seeking out that which is truly worthy of trust and faith.
I went through this experience, and my source of disillusionment was…me. Even though I grew up in a Christian home with a Christian worldview, and I loved God and Jesus as best I knew how, my ultimate trust was placed in my own person. I was my own best judge, my own best source of ideas, my own perfect arbiter of what my life would be all about. Yeah, God was there, and He was my King, but frankly I was off building my own little kingdom and only giving him some of the proceeds here and there.
It took a long and painful process — one that is still ongoing! — to bring me to the point where I realized how undeserving of faith and how untrustworthy I really am. We love to pride ourselves as being “good people” — but the fact is that, given different circumstances in different times, all of us are capable of committing the most horrendous evils. I had to become deeply disillusioned with myself in order to become aware of my deep need to trust and believe in something wholly good, something worthy, something holy, something pure, something powerful and mighty — something or Someone who had the ability to do a transformative work in me I could never do myself.
Some people live in the shame and despair of their own sin and never learn to trust. I pray God can use me to help people emerge from that dark shadow and learn how to trust again. When you trust and put your faith in Jesus, it’s not just a religious devotion — it’s a cry of a heart yearning for Someone who is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). My heart’s cry is that I will give all of my trust completely to God, every day, no matter what the cost, no matter what the circumstances, knowing with every fiber of my being that I serve a trustworthy God. What is your heart’s cry?
August 4, 2008 – 11:13 am
Buster the Cat. The neighbor’s cat. He thinks he’s my cat. He sneaks into my house. He jumps up on my car. He stares at me every time I open my door. He’s hecka annoying. But one thing I like about him is, he’s there. And he’s ready for action.
Visit photo gallery
I want to talk about something I discovered about myself a while back. After several months of mounting frustration and heartache over faltering projects and withering plans (this has been a rather difficult year in many ways), I was just about at my wits end when I realized something. I think God probably nudged me in the right direction, but my conclusion was very simple and very common sense. I needed to chill.
Chilling is hard for me. I’m not the kind of guy that just goes and hangs out to yak it up, have a few laughs, have a good time, do the work, get paid, go home. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly know how to enjoy myself, but my normal tendency is to be always living in tomorrow, planning, pondering, thinking about the future, wondering if I’m actually accomplishing anything I’ve set out to do. Some people worry, worry, worry about everything that could go wrong. Not me — I worry about not doing anything at all. Nothing stresses me out more than inaction on the things I care about.
Mark Batterson talks about sins of “omission” — the right things that we fail to do, as opposed to sins of “commission” which are the wrong things that we do. Sins of omission frighten me. There’s a riveting scene in The Two Towers where Aragorn asks Eowyn: “what do you fear, my lady?” Her reply: “A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.”
My grandfather on my mom’s side died before I was born, so I never got to know him. One thing I know about him, however, is that he never finished anything. He married multiple times, he made and lost several fortunes, and then he died. His legacy? Nothing, expect for the fact that he did love my mom, his daughter, and was a much better authority figure for her than her dysfunctional mother. Aside from that, though, it was largely a waste of effort all those years. Every time he “conquered” a mountain, he moved on to the next one. He never learned how to occupy the territory he had taken.
In my quest to chase after my dreams, nothing scares me more than to imagine myself at the end of my life looking upon an empty legacy. But there’s a subtle lie that creeps in when you are driven by this kind of fear-based motivation. The lie is that you are defined by what you accomplish. In the past, my identity always lay in my artistry, which meant that I was unfulfilled and unsuccessful unless I was making art and being recognized for my talent.
But as I’ve come to understand more about who God says I am and how he values me and defines me, I’ve come to realize that my identity lies in my relationship with God. I may be an artist, but first and foremost I am a child of God. And therefore, as long as I am loving on Daddy and listening to His voice, I am successful, and I am fulfilled.
Which brings me back to my original topic. I need to chill. I need to stop striving so hard, always looking towards the “next big thing” that I need to accomplish. I need to learn how to be content just…being. Being at one with God and my fellow man. What I do is a by-product of who I am, which actually means the less I try doing the right thing and the more I try being the right me, the more likely it is that the right things will get done.
There are times for fighting and times for looking ahead, but sometimes, it’s time to stop fighting and just, well, chill. And believe me, whenever I am able to get into that zone and chill out, it’s the best way to live. So, dude? Chill.
I’ve been wanting to do a mini-series on the subject of trust for some time now, so I’m excited to be embarking on this. I think sometimes that as “people of faith” and believers in unseen realms and powers, Christians are expected by society to have some kind of strange propensity towards trusting in anything that sounds religious-y or divine destiny-y. Yeah, I just mangled the English language real bad. Oops, there I go again.
The point I want to make is that Christians struggle with the issue of trust just as much as anyone else. In some ways, I think we have it harder. The easy way out is to say “I’m not going to trust in something I can’t hold in my hand and understand.” It’s hard to trust in something so much bigger, so much more mysterious, so much more profound than anything we can grasp in the natural world. Sometimes it’s so difficult that’s it’s tempting to give up. But the wise man understands the limits of his understanding. Only a fool thinks it’s possible to obtain all knowledge through human reason alone. There are certain things that can only be grasped through personal experience and spiritual awareness.
In this sometimes glorious, sometimes dizzying, sometimes dangerous quest to entrust ourselves to the God we serve, it is helpful to consider the ways of trust and the facets of faith made manifest by our actions. As this series unfolds, I hope to relay some of the metaphors that come to my mind when I think about trust. The first one may be a surprising one: trust as disillusionment. What, you say? What on earth does trust have to do with disillusionment? Well, you’ll just have to tune in next week to find out. 
Where were you on the night of July the 18th at 5:45 PM?
Visit photo gallery
- Taking a few days off:
I’ve been taking some time off the last few days, and though I return to work later this week, I’ll probably resume my normal blogging next week — although part-way through I’ll be heading up to Redding, CA for the JesusCulture conference once again. I’m sure that’ll probably grab the bulk of my attention, but I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
(0)
|
About the Author
 JARED WHITE is a musician, a Web developer, a photographer, and a Charismatic Christian who believes that the Spirit of God is moving dramatically across the world today and impacting entire nations with the Gospel of the Kingdom. He writes frequently about living as a disciple of Jesus Christ in the 21st Century and isn't afraid to ask the hard questions — of himself more than anyone.
Regular topics include the intersection of postmodern culture and spirituality, creative and prophetic arts, miraculous signs and wonders, the emerging future of the Church, and the occasional dive into the shark-infested waters of scientific and political commentary.
Jared lives in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California, and calls Grace Fellowship his spiritual home.
View Jared's Facebook Profile
Read Jared's Blogging Manifesto
Blog Talk
Pownce 
See all Pownce messages
Syndication
 Subscribe to blog feed
View blog reactions
More options below...scroll to footer...
|
