Morning Prayer Summary for Thursday, June 14, 2018
[Note: The first half of today’s session did not get recorded.]
Mary led group in worship…
Mary shared…
I want to read a few excerpts from a book entitled, “Taking Action: Receiving and Operating in the Gifts and Power of the Holy Spirit” by Reinhard Bonnke.
Fire—The Most Vivid Attraction
The only fireless religion in Scripture is false religion with its false fire. Some are obsessed with religion only. Frenzy is not fire, nor is fanaticism, a hothead, or an overheated mind. At the opposite extreme, scholars and human opinion form the basis of many churches. Critical scholars are often rather like fire brigades—adept at putting the fire out. Their interests are academic, coolheadedly devoid of passion for the gospel. Their gospel does not have the intensity of Paul’s messages. Theologians, teachers, and preachers like that never stir anyone’s heart and never create eagerness for God or the gospel. Major churches in medieval times were called after their patron saint. For a church to be named after a saint often meant that it was in possession of a relic or two, usually a bone from the saint’s body. The name rested on a dead man or woman. Their faith and hopes of help rested on a bone! Imagine: blessing by bones, faith by relics!
I was thinking of Peter and John at the tomb examining the grave clothes of the risen Christ. It never even crossed their minds that they might display the blood-marked wrappings as evidence of His death, like holy relics to be kissed and touched. They had better things to do! In fact, they spent their time waiting in the Upper Room until the fire fell. Pentecost is not a token of death but a trophy of life and victory. The true sign of a living Lord is living fire from heaven. As they looked at the disciples, even enemies could tell that they had been with Jesus. We need scholarship like we need every kind of help from one another, but how much better it is when it came from “flame people,” the Spirit kindling their thoughts.
In a Spanish village they had a saint—alive. The people were worried in case he left them, so they killed him and kept his bones to ensure that his blessing did not go away! Relics only prove death. Pieces of the cross signified only that Jesus had died. People are not drawn by symbols of death but of life. The true “relics” of Christ are flame people, not a piece of cloth, not the canonized dead, but living, Spirit-baptized people. The proof, signs, and evidence that Jesus rose from death are living people with the abounding life that He promised. Because He lives, we live too—by the power of immortal life.
This year is the centenary anniversary of the Welsh revival. In a matter of months some one hundred thousand people were converted and joined the chapels. The chapels were like fireplaces. Little of them is left today. Those fireplaces are full of cold ash and cinders. Chapels where strong men on their knees repented in tears are now used as bingo halls or warehouses. The glory and the fire have gone, “Ichabod” is written across church doors, chapels are empty, but the prisons are full again. Revival completely eliminated crime, but apostasy has produced the highest crime rate ever recorded. God wants furnaces; He doesn’t want freezers.
Theology of Pentecost
The divided tongues of Holy Ghost fire are the assurance that He is with us. Two of the greatest spiritual crises were inaugurated by divine fire, namely the Exodus and Pentecost. Yet for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ there was no fire. It was not needed. The baptizer in fire was present Himself—infinitely greater than the fire symbolizing His presence. Fire, you might say, is His logo…and so much more! When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, the fire fell on ordinary human beings. It enables us to witness for Jesus, to show Him to be as He is. Any fire that does not bring Him close and generate love for Him is not His fire. The promised Holy Spirit is dedicated to the task of revealing the things of Christ to us. Where the fire is, there is Jesus.
The theology of the Ascension is the theology of Pentecost. When Christ ascended to heaven, it was to a special place: “The right hand of God.” The right hand is the hand of power and authority. Scripture always speaks of the right hand or right arm. Jesus was God’s right hand. In fact, we never read of God’s left hand. The left hand was the place of shame and failure. (See Matt. 25:33) Only once do we read about the arms of the Lord (Deut. 33:27). It is otherwise always the arm or hand of the Lord. The arm of the Lord is the Lord, the Son of God. A father’s right arm was always his son. God broke Pharaoh’s arm when his firstborn son died (Eze. 30:21). Psalm 89:13 tells us that God’s arm “Is endued with power.” When the world and the devil launched their attacks against Christ, it was against the right hand of God, which could never be broken.
“The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God” (Isa. 52:10). That prophecy was fulfilled when Christ came to earth. The aged man Simeon saw the child Jesus when He was taken to the temple for the first time. He blessed Him, saying, “Lord… my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples” (Luke 2:29-31). Jesus is salvation, our salvation, the mighty arm of God made bare to save us. Rather than to destroy enemies, for God to bare His arm is salvation. When Christ rose to be the right hand of God, the first thing He did was to send the fire of Pentecost.
Simulated Fires
There are false fires. The fire in which the voice of Jesus is heard, that is the real one. In chilly Britain, homes are warmed by simulated coal fires. People used to burn real coal in their fireplaces and houses had chimneys. The fireplaces and chimneys are still there, but the fire comes from gas jets—no burning coals, no faces in the fire, no toast at the bars, no kettle singing on the hob. Some houses, like most apartments in continental Europe, have no gas fire and are heated by central heating radiators, with circulated hot water. Radiators are deadpan, unsmiling, never glowing, never radiant—just a lot of hot water. Jesus, however, did not come to baptize in water—hot or cold—but in fire, real fire, not simulated.
Fireplaces
The human heart is a fireplace made to hold fire. There are too many cold grates, many of them ash cans, like dustbins, full of rubbish. Years ago when fireplaces were made of iron, housewives used to spend a considerable amount of time and effort polishing the grates. In the hungry 1930s they had no coal and no fire, but they polished away. Could churches be described as “1930s style”—polished sermons but no fire?
God took an ordinary bush and set it ablaze. He made it extraordinary before He spoke from it. God does not normally speak out of bushes, however beautiful they may be. Until He visited the wilderness, the bush was unremarkable. Moses had seen it before but hardly noticed it. Yet when the flames of heaven were kindles in it, it was no longer unremarkable. The same goes for churches. The world has no respect for a church of sanctimonious mild-and-water sentiments, wishy-washy philosophy, pretty thoughts, and uncertainties. If a church at least burns for God, it will attract notice. When churches are models of decency, decorum, conformity, and correctness, nobody says, “I will not turn aside and see this great sight” (Ex. 3:3). When there is a spiritual blaze, people stop and stare.
Fire Makes Famous
Bushes should not burn, and many supposed churches should not burn either! If they do, somebody will look for a fire extinguisher. A church that burns is not normal. It is spectacular, and people stop to look. Some who stop will be like Moses and hear the voice of God, though others will be deaf. However, that is where God separates the people of the past from the people of the future. The past spelled Egypt, bondage. The fire spelled freedom, adventure, and life. People are not seeking perfection but fire, warmth, and passion. Churches may look opulent, popular, and successful, but I think of Peter and John. They had to confess, “Silver or gold I do not have” (Acts 3:6). They were both too shabby to attract admiration, but they could continue, “But what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” They did not have any cash, but they did have God.
Fire made the bush the most famous bush that ever grew. Only Moses saw it, but nobody can forget it. Fire made it what it was, and it made Moses who he was. He was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, but for all that he would have died a nobody, a dusty mummy in Egypt. Yet he met the God of fire in the wilderness, and he matters today very much. Similarly, the disciples were unknowns, fishing workers, until the tongues of flame rested upon them, and soon, they had turned the world upside down. They did not know themselves until the fire transformed them. Their fervor brought them persecution and plenty of verbal abuse, but they are remembered and their persecutors are lost in oblivion. If any preacher hopes to be noted and remembered, let him be a burning bush.
Fire Ends Division
The divided tongues brought an end to division. Even when they were following Jesus, the disciples vied with one another to see who should be greatest. After Pentecost, however, we read that they “devoted themselves … to the fellowship … All the believers were together and had everything in common… They broke bread in their homes and ate together” (Acts 2:42 –46). One fire was divided into many flames, yet each was the fire of God. They did not need two flames for double power. Those divided flames created a new breed of men—not clones of one another but one new race, a new people. One flame represented the entire fire of God. Andrew’s flame burned with a different color than James’s fire. John was still John, but he became a flame called John. Thomas became an on-fire Thomas. Flame people! People who have dwelt with the everlasting burnings cannot stand smoldering smoke. The disciples were called when they were like black candlewicks, but the love of Christ lit them. Candles in a box, tossed into a corner—but taken out and set alight, they lit up the world!
More of God?
Our real self, our true personality, is dead until lit by the fire of God. Then we become what God meant us to be, each one blessed and filled with the same fullness. We are all made to drink the same blessing, and yet each of us represent the whole. O this glorious fullness of the Spirit, joy, fire, glory! To be baptized in the Spirit means that the Spirit is in us and we are in the Spirit. Like a cloth in dye, the dye is in the cloth. When it is dipped into the color, it takes on the nature of the dye.
People talk about getting more of God, more Holy Spirit. More? If we are in the ocean, we are wet and cannot get more wet. We are wet with the whole Pacific, the whole Atlantic of the Spirit, not dampened by a drop from a child’s seaside bucket. The wetness, the water that clings to us stretches to the shoreless reaches of God. We are one in the Spirit with all who bathe in those waters. “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body…and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:13).
Prayed…
The wind blowing… the wind of the Spirit blowing… the flames, the flames, the flames… fire… turn… there’s a turn there… take that turn there… turn there… that’s the way to go in… the name… that name… speak that name… the name, the name, the name… separate now… coming in… send them in… come in… that’s it… come on in… so many, so many, so many… talk it out… words, words… those words… Holy Ghost words… words from heaven… that will break it down… it’ll break it down… in the nation… the nation operates in the gifts… shining out… by the Spirit of the living God… now is the time… celebrating the goodness of the living God.. thank you, thank you… operations of the Spirit… flowing… rivers, rivers… shine all the way… that’s the way… Holy Ghost way… signs, signs… busting out… that’s it…out into the new… (Holy Ghost laughter)… shekinah glory… ha, ha, ha, ha…
Mary asked Danny to join her in leading prayer…
Seeing… seeing… open… see out clear… eyes to see it… open… supernatural… Holy Ghost revealing… showing… displaying… actively pursuing… going, moving, shaking…
I see Your glory, Lord… we see… I see Your glory, Lord… I see Your glory coming down… let Your glory come down… see it… we see it… we see Your glory, Lord… we see it coming down… I see Your glory… open the eyes, Lord… open our eyes to see Your glory… coming down… open our eyes to see… I see, I see Your glory, Lord… we see…
Days and days and days of it… shining… seeing… see it… the glory, the glory… flooding… rolling… the shekinah glory… shining… displayed… Your goodness… seeing it…
Mary led group in worship…
♪ We see Your glory… coming down… we see Your glory… ♪
