Seeking God for Another Outpouring of the Spirit
“The standard of Scripture and God’s provision is FRESH water from the throne.”
During the pandemic lockdown, I studied a number of the prophetic books, including Jeremiah. One theme of Jeremiah was the constant battle with the hardening of our hearts. God says in Jer. 2:2, “I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” So, God remembered a time when His people were in love with Him even, in the wilderness! A few verses later He asked, “What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless? 6 They did not say, ‘Where is the LORD? 8 The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who handle the law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. 9“Therefore I still contend with you . . .”
God wants all of us, especially leaders, to have soft hearts toward Him. But in this time God’s leaders, teachers of Scripture, and prophets of the day all drifted away. His own prophets received their words through another Spirit. He goes on to say in verse 13, “my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
The standard of Scripture and God’s provision is FRESH water from the throne. But it is easier to continue to draw from yesterday’s rain. When the rain stops, we begin to depend on cisterns that had filled up in the last outpouring. One question to ask now is,
“Will the Holy Spirit fall in my church?”
This is not guaranteed that a new outpouring will saturate your church. Ask the churches from the 90s that had only a trickle of outpouring. Their people had to run somewhere else to receive it because there was no fresh water or new wine at home.
In history often those who received the previous outpouring resist a new one because it does not feel the same. A new outpouring will not emphasize the same Biblical truths. So it is easy to compare it to a previous move of God and conclude, this does not feel the same and remain cautious.
So, what will our response be? Are we ready for God to do something new? Will we be aware of it? It’s our job as leaders to prepare our people to welcome God. They must be taught to not raise their own standards for what God will do above the standards of Scripture. We know that God uses a variety of means but we don’t know how much variety.
Amos 4 records God’s warning to His people in a picture of God sending rain.
Amos 4: 7-8, “I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.”
He said because you did not turn to me, I withheld rain from you. So, some people had to go somewhere else to drink. Church history shows that God entrusts His presence to a humble and desperate people. God resists the proud. Let’s prepare our hearts and our people to be open toward God in our day. I believe He is about to do some amazing things in the nations. Let’s not assume that we know everything or that we will automatically be at the center of all God does in the future. I pray for a shared outpouring for our region and for many nations where we work. But in the end, God will be God and we must turn toward Him and seek Him humbly, cultivating desperation and expectation.
