The Beginning of Revival: The Release of the Testimony of God's Mercy
Deliverance and Emotional Healing (Colorado Springs, CO)
I had plans to go out for a friend’s birthday but felt the Holy Spirit leading me to stay home. I turned on the webstream, hoping for good music for my devotional time with the Lord. While the woman who grew up as a pastor’s kid was sharing her story, my heart began to ache as I realized the dryness of my heart and my slavery to performance and the fear of man. I fell on the floor and wept and wept. Tonight, I had an encounter with the Holy Spirit unlike anything I have ever experienced, and I have been commissioned to proclaim the gospel boldly. My heart had been dry for so long, but I was delivered tonight! I have been delivered from the bondage of performance and from the fear of man. I feel as though my heart has been made new.[1]
This is but one of countless similar testimonies that have poured in since the beginning of the IHOPU Student Awakening in November of 2009. The Lord is releasing healing to the hearts of His people so that they might be commissioned to proclaim the gospel with all boldness.
In Acts 2 Peter declared that the wine poured out at Pentecost was, in fact, the spirit of prophecy promised in the book of Joel.
14 But Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, “Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words. 15 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. 16 But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 17 ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions, your old men shall dream dreams. 18 And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; and they shall prophesy. 19 I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath: blood and fire and vapor of smoke. 20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD. 21 And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.’ (Acts 2:14-21, emphasis added)
In the beginning of the book of Acts, Luke records that Jesus instructed His disciples to wait for the promise of the Father, for through the promise they would receive power (Acts 1:4-8). When the Holy Spirit fell on the disciples in the upper room at Pentecost, Peter discerned that though the company appeared drunk they were in fact receiving the power of the promised Holy Spirit. Peter himself evidenced this reality as he boldly called Jerusalem to repent for crucifying Jesus and to flee the coming judgment of God (Acts 2:36-39). Such a message would require supernatural boldness under any circumstance – but the work of the Holy Spirit in Peter is even more evident when one considers that it was Peter who denied Jesus three times when confronted by a small gathering of servants during Jesus’ trial, and that he now delivered this scathing sermon in the very city where his master was brutally and unjustly killed not long before.
Peter and his companions tasted the wine of the Spirit in that upper room. In that first outpouring of the Spirit, God was at work to join the disciples to Himself in love so that they could bear His heart, pray His prayers, proclaim His words and warn their generation of the coming judgment. God wanted His messengers to be rooted and grounded in love – filled with love and therefore able to declare the judgment of God and to confirm it through the power of the Spirit with signs and wonders.
And so, just decades before the Lord released His judgment upon the city of Jerusalem, Peter stood up, drunk with the marriage wine and proclaiming the wonderful works of God – filled with the Spirit and laughing as he declared and rejoiced in the good work of God and felt the movements of God’s love in his heart. Gone was the shame of his past failures: just as his heart was restored in John 21:15-19, so now his spirit was restored as he was filled with the wine of the Holy Spirit. Peter stood before the men of Jerusalem secure in his identity and thoroughly filled with the Spirit of holiness and love. And what did that Spirit prompt him to do? Peter boldly proclaimed, “Men of Jerusalem, you must repent. Flee the coming wrath. You killed the Lord of glory; you crucified Him. This city is under judgment and you must flee the coming wrath. You must turn.” He exhorted them to come out of their wicked and perverse generation and to believe in Christ for the forgiveness of sins.
Revival is coming to America; the Spirit of prophecy is about to be released as it was in the days of the First and Second Great Awakenings. At Pentecost, Peter used the prophecy of Joel to interpret what was taking place. However, Peter never claimed that the fullness of Joel 2:28-32 was fulfilled in that upper room. Rather, he related the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost to the outpouring of the Spirit prophesied in Joel and declared that the inauguration of the last days had begun. He also reaffirmed that the Spirit will one day be poured out on “all flesh” when he quoted the passage. 120 disciples in an upper room hardly constitute “all flesh.” The outpouring of the Spirit that day was the beginning of the move of God that will climax at the end of the age. Joel was staring at the climax. Peter was staring at the beginning.
If Joel’s prophecy was not fulfilled at Pentecost, this means that the earth is still waiting for that final generation who will experience the global outpouring that precedes the second coming. Yet today, God is speaking to our generation: revival is coming to America. I believe we’re living in the days – the beginning of the beginning – of that worldwide outpouring of the Holy Spirit, where the fire of God will move in the heart of every believer, every church and every Christian home; and it will release revival on a scale that the world has never known and that Peter prophesied of when he quoted Joel. “In the last days it shall come to pass” – in the last days it will be the common experience of the global body of Christ to be baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire.
As with Peter and the disciples in the upper room, the first manifestation of the Spirit of prophecy and the fire of God is the release of the marriage wine. Another Great Awakening is coming to our nation. We can state this with confidence because, as it was at Pentecost, the wine of the Spirit is being released across the body of Christ in America. We are being filled with the love of God and His power is touching our hearts. Historically, the awakening of the heart is followed by the release of power on the hands and on the preaching of the gospel. Jonathan Edwards, the famed preacher of the First Great Awakening, recounted his experience with the Holy Spirit in the years preceding the outpouring of the Spirit in his Personal Narrative. Like Peter, he experienced the sweetness of the wine of the Spirit and the love of God before he received fire from heaven to preach with a boldness and power that transformed his generation.
From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words (Song of Solomon 2:1) used to be abundantly with me: "I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys." The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent, the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ. And the whole book of Canticles used to be pleasant to me; and I used to be much in reading it, about that time. And found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that used, as it were, to carry me away in my contemplations; in what I know not how to express otherwise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns off] this world; and a kind of vision, or fixed ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of my soul, that I know not how to express.[2]
We must understand the divine order God has established when it comes to awakening and empowering His people. To say we can receive either the wine or the fire in the midst of an outpouring is to set up a false dichotomy. It is not the wine or the fire; it’s the wine before the fire, for it is the marriage wine that enables our hearts to prophesy with zeal and power.
The prophecy that Peter referenced from the book of Joel was given in the context of judgment. Time and again scripture reveals that God pours out His Spirit so that peoples and nations can receive the news of coming judgment and the proper interpretation of such news. It is always the heart of God to prepare messengers in seasons of judgment that will proclaim the message of salvation and repentance and teach the nations how to avert judgment. This is the consistent purpose behind any outpouring of the Spirit. And it is the wine of God’s love that best equips His messengers.
God is freeing our hearts from shame and fear; He is ridding the church of unbelief and compromise so that we might receive the Holy Spirit and testify with the boldness of Peter. The awakening of our nation must begin with an awakening in the hearts of God’s people. As the wine of the Spirit is released, our hearts are restored to belief in the power of the Holy Spirit. We are shaken out of religion and dead works and unbelief; we cast ourselves on Christ alone because we cannot do without His intoxicating love and presence. The more we experience the love of God, the more our belief in the power of Jesus and His blood will be revived.
The Lord knows that the swiftest way to root unbelief out of the church is to display the power of the Spirit against every chain that binds the hearts of the people. Our generation has yet to see a mighty move of God, and this fact has taken its toll on our faith – as has the spirit of the age. We don’t believe that the Almighty God Himself, who fills us, has power over every besetting sin. In fact, much of the church has subscribed to a theology of barrenness. We hold to doctrines and beliefs that are not biblical concerning the power of God because we cannot face the pain of our own barrenness and brokenness.
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. 8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God (2 Timothy 1:7-8)
Paul understood that the spirit of power and the spirit of love are one and the same – as we receive the love of God we receive the promise of power. It is this power and this love working together that break the bondage of fear and shame that prevents us from testifying of our Lord and suffering for the sake of the gospel. As we allow the love of God and the wine of the Spirit to touch those places of barrenness and brokenness, we join the company of saints in the upper room and receive the fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sins that empowers our hearts to prophesy to America in this season.
When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we will again see the power of God transform this nation. In seasons of judgment God prepares a Joel 2 company of people who will dedicate themselves to gather and fast and pray. Upon such a company He will pour out His Spirit; and when He pours out His Spirit they will drink of the marriage wine, their hearts will receive freedom from shame and fear and unbelief, they will meet the Lord in His glory, and they will feel their hearts awakened in love. After this, they will prophesy and preach with great boldness and power. This outpouring is the beginning of the beginning: He is massaging the heart of the church with the marriage wine, that we might wake up and embrace the ways of the Lord and begin to warn a perverse generation of the judgment that is coming.
[1] “Deliverance and Emotional Healing” www.ihop.org. IHOPU Student Awakening Testimonies. Web. 23 Mar. 2010
[2] Edwards, Jonathan. Letters and Personal Writings (WJE Online Vol. 16). Ed. George S. Claghorn. Web. 23 Mar. 2010
