Abundance is Coming

There is a great awakening that is happening across the land.  Revival has broken out in West Virginia and stretching across towards the Midwest.  Churches are becoming houses of prayer once more.  If there is a political revolution and upheaval this election year, it is sign of the spiritual revolution as the windstorm of the Spirit that is blowing across this land.  I was reading the Psalms this morning and the word of the Lord hit me was this:  An abundance of living water is flowing across the land to bear great fruit.

Seasons of Awakening

God's presence, power and sensing God's pleasure continually amazes and captivates me.  I have been through several seasons where God's mighty acts and mighty Spirit lead me step by step to one divine appointment after another.  This week I ministered to two demonized people, shared the gospel with one young man, married a couple at the courthouse where we met, and shared holy communion with a dying woman.  God is on the move and I am filled with wonder as each day brings holy moments God calls me to enter in and participate in.

The Awakened Self

"Wake up O Sleeper" (Ephesians 5:14)

The world has been drifting asleep for too long.  Christians claim they are awake but so many seem to be half asleep which is not fully awake.  We center life on our knowing self.  On "I" and see the world as mere objects to gaze upon with our physical eyes.  We are like spiritually blind people bumping into the world and bumping into other people without really seeing them.  How can we?  We don't even really see ourselves.

There are spiritual energies flowing out of people both good and bad but we are unaware of this mystical flow of invisible powers.   When someone starts waking up, they become conscious of another reality beyond reality and they are driven consciously to rise above the confusion of the world and put away earthly cares.

One begins to look from a higher plane and feel a distance from the world while also feeling a deeper connectedness to it in a way not experienced before.  The mindset to fit in and be well thought of by everyone else is seen as a grand deception.  The cage door has now been opened and there is no going back.  Awareness is entering, entering through a crack in reality.

Awareness is an opening.  An opening where self is annihilated and Christ as Lord is magnificently magnified.  The door is Jesus whether one is conscious or unconscious of him.  When one walks through the door, one enters and participates in sweet communion.  Everything is the same and yet everything is different all at the same time.

The distance between heaven and earth has vanished.  One begins to now see and feel heaven on earth joined together like oneness in marriage.  Two distinct people yet one.  Harmony, union, and convergence connected together like the double DNA helix bonded molecularly or like the Divine Trinity holding the universe together.  Alienation and aloneness gives way to union and mystic communion.

One's senses are elevated above worldly delights to now delight in God's eternal all embracing presence.  One no longer thinks of heaven or hell or Christ's return as some external event which is yet unknown.  Christ is always returning.  Christ is always coming as a mystical revelation of an awakened soul in a sensory world.  Christ is always present to those who wake up.

Conversion: 7 Awakenings of My Soul

The whole Christian life is like a series of conversions.  Each one takes you deeper and closer to God in some area of your life.  Here is my spiritual journey thus far.  Here are seven spiritual awakenings I have experienced in a little over fifty years of life.

1.  First Awakening:  Conversion to Christ when I was fourteen years old.  I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church and I sensed the Spirit of God pulling me so hard to give my life to Christ that I tried to resist for a month and I finally gave up, surrendered, and gave my life to Christ.  I have had many spiritual valleys and mountains in my walk with Christ but I am learning to go deeper into a life with Christ.

2.  Second Awakening:  Call to ministry at age seventeen.  Church camp was like my Bethel experiences of drawing closer to God.  It was at church camp I accepted a call to preach the gospel and it was at church camp just a few years later I baptized a close friend of mine into Christ.  I am learning to go deeper into ministry.

3.  Third Awakening:  The Unity of the Body of Christ.  I learned about the Cain-Ridge Revivals of Kentucky in the early 1800's and about the Restoration Vision of full communion between all Christians when I was in college.  The Restoration Vision was spiritual unity through a deeper understanding of God's Word.  I am learning always to go deeper and farther into God's Word and being a bridge builder for the unity of God's church.

4.  Fourth Awakening:  Reading the Bible with Jewish eyes.  It was the largest gatherings of ministers ever in the United States at a Promise Keepers stadium event.  God's reconciling reviving Spirit was so powerful during that event that I was changed instantly.  I cried with a Hasidic Jewish brother and have grown immensely in a deep love for church history and the Jewish roots of the Christian faith.  I am growing deeper in becoming the one new man in Christ where man-made traditions and ecclesial practices which separate Christians are slowly being removed.  I am learning to go deeper into the unifying symbols of the Christian faith.

5.  Fifth Awakening:  Experiencing the Power of the Holy Spirit.  It was only after I graduated from seminary that God led me into a deeper journey of fighting both demons and being overcome by the presence of God.  God took me deeper enlarging my heart with God's heart and enlarging my gifts with supernatural power.  I am learning to go deeper in the life of the Spirit and it's been a slow journey of learning to walk in the Spirit.

6.  Sixth Awakening:  The sacramental reality of all of creation and the catholicity of God's church.  It was an Emmaus Walk that led me into a deeper journey seeing God in all of creation and everything in the church as a means of God's grace to participate in the oneness of God.  I am learning to go deeper into God's good creation as well as experiencing the catholicity of God's church.

7.  Seventh Awakening:  Waking up to the mystical path.  I had a break down from ministerial burnout and physical and emotional suffering not that long ago and I still have not fully recovered.  In the midst of my pain and suffering, I discovered God is preparing me and taking me on a deeper path in Christ.  God is purifying my soul.  God is illuminating my mind.  God is erupting my spirit with His Spirit.  I am entering another world and living a very different rhythm of life in bringing mind, body, spirit all together in a more balanced lifestyle.  I am going through a mystical conversion of my soul.  I am learning to go deeper in knowing myself and in knowing God.