Hands and Mouth Reporting for Service

Children of Destiny

My mom recommended the recent George Whitefield film. And I just got around to watching it thanks to an app subscription.

Growing up, my mom, Mary Inman, was encouraging, speaking, and praying destiny over me. She read books like Susannah Wesley by Charles Ludwig and The Cure of All Ills by Mary S. Relfe that I picked up from her. At I felt pressure to use my musical gift in the way that would make her proud, but mostly I know she has prayed prayers like the ones I am praying and for much longer. Seeking revival isn't just global, it's personal like Hannah or David in the Old Testament, or Susanna Wesley, who maybe thought,

"Lord, You can have my child. Do it in this generation, use my kids."

In my teens and early twenties I learned to pursue God and his presence and I was blessed by the opportunity to meet and experience the ministry of some great ministers. Some of them have preached to tens of thousands, some preached around the world and have seen many miracles, some planted thousands of churches, some written best selling books, some prophecy, all are obeying the call of God. not all of them are renowned. There was one prophetic word i received from my youth pastor's wife, Lori Soto. So simple but felt profound:

"He is going to use your hands and your mouth."

It was like the Holy Spirit revealed to me the dual edged sword he had put in my hands, and it was the first time someone prophesied like that to me that I remember.

A close second as far as the profound impact on me was Randy Clark's message about how revival comes through the story of Gideon. I was in a special Sunday Night service at my home church Harbor Light in Fremont, Ca. I remember seeing him kneeling face down during worship and later I shared with him how much the message that night struck me. He said he was praying which message to preach and he felt the Holy Spirit showed him that one and that it was for me.

I was honored that God wanted me to know he is going to use me.

My Pursuit

At 19 I stood at the altar and prayed:

"I'll go where you want me to go. I'll do what you want me to do."

It was full surrender.

I have done my best to be set apart for God, to say yes where I think he is calling me.

At 20 I got my first taste of missions work, evangelism, the shaping or school of the Holy Spirit on a Youth With A Mission Discipleship Training School in Blantyre, Malawi and the included outreach trip to Mozambique.

A year later I went back to Mozambique on a trip with Iris Ministries and Rolland and Heidi Baker with my parents.

Over the years I sat in many supernatural ministry conferences and revival leader meetings. Argentinian revival, Toronto revival, Brownsville Revival, Southern Africa Revival, Pineapple Revival.

I have met them, read their books, listened to sermons and podcasts, prayed, received prophecies, prayer, and impartation, obeyed, hoped, waited.

I have been seeking to glean from revivalists and be near where there seems to be breakthrough. I don't spend much of my time hunting down revival meetings, it's God's work and he is sovereign.

I have not lost hope or become callous when numerous "prophets" and leaders have fallen because of moral failures, character collapse, and fake prophecy.

I Am Not the Faithful One. Jesus Is.

The younger me definitely had thoughts and even pursued for a time:

If I prayed more.

If I attend the right conference and get prayed for by the right person.

If I just had bolder faith.

Seeking the secret to revival has only led me time and again to the probable conclusion:

There is no secret that Jesus is keeping from me.

What might seem like a secret is more something I didn't want to hear.

I have pursued the kind of renewal for decades that only Jesus can initiate.

Moses' Mirror

Moses never became the person he might have imagined himself to be while he was sitting in Pharaoh's palace, respected by everyone in the land Hebrew and Egyptian alike.

He probably had a great desire to be used by God when he defended the Hebrew slave. The crisis and following decades in the desert probably gave him a lot of time to reflect on what he really looked like.

But God did use Moses and changed him from a brash young man running from Pharaoh, to shepherd of his people and mouthpiece to Pharaoh's ear.

When I think about George Whitefield, John Wesley, Evan Roberts, modern revivalists and many other faithful men and women, I'm sure I'm seeing more of a Prince of Egypt portrait of them than a first hand account and understanding of the things they waited for years or decades, some things they never got to see in their lifetime.

Some of them had physical or mental breakdowns. Some had friends and associates that abandoned or betrayed them. There is so much I don't know because I'm not on their journey.

God Will Use Your Journey

Reading stories of great moves of God one realizes that God keeps using ordinary people to share his extraordinary love.

Jesus doesn't bypass people with flaws or just do it himself.

He's been faithful to flood the people of the earth with his presence to help us.

That help is never nearer than when we feel furthest from "the next great promise."

God may have felt nearest to Moses when he ran into the desert or when he spoke to him through the bush.

We look at the parting of the seas or the water from the rock and manna from heaven as exciting.

But what's truly exciting to me is knowing he is with me in the journey.

Him speaking to me, Him calming my fears, stilling my heart and saying,

"Sam is my son and I'm really proud of him." That's the highlights.

The Same Holy Spirit

As a pastor and parent, I don't want to lose the importance of helping people receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, learn to walk in the Spirit, understand how the gifts operate etc.

Throughout the book of Acts we see fearful disciples become courageous witnesses, strangers become family, barriers come down, the gospel spread, and ordinary believers become instruments in God's hands.

The same Holy Spirit who empowered the early church is still empowering His people today.

The Holy Spirit is like the engine that helps us journey from fearful disciples to courageous witnesses, and all those other things.

That wasn't a glorious time because of the people involved.

The Holy Spirit makes glorious use of ordinary people today the same as then.

Acts keeps confronting my assumptions about discipleship.

I often think in terms of how close I am getting to Jesus, but Acts repeatedly asks a different question:

What is Jesus doing through His people to bring others closer to Himself?

It's a journey from attempting self empowered life to living Spirit empowered ones.

The designed result is the advance of the Gospel Kingdom.

"Lord, I can only preach the Baptism of the Holy Spirit if I can fully trust You to do Your part..."

How Much Longer, Lord?

I watched the recent George Whitefield film and I'm convicted and inspired that the person God has called me to be, while I've received salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, preached, prophesied and seen healings, a part of me is yet to be born the way Whitefield and Wesley were and Moses and Peter were.

I would grieve my whole life going by without experiencing and giving away more of the true abundant life.

I long to to walk in the Spirit, not by effort but by abundance.

Lord don't let us go up from here [this life] without Your presence [here and now].

I will obey when You ask.

I know I failed yesterday to invite You into the conversation with the bee swarm couple, but You know I've put You above my career, ambitions, and family.

So how much longer Lord before You pour Yourself out on Your people again like Acts and the Great Awakenings, the Pentecostal revival, the Charismatic movement, the Jesus People movement, and the Toronto outpouring and others?

Wednesday Morning

I think everyone from biblical prophets to George Whitefield to you and me have to answer the question if Jesus answered my prayers to use me, what does it look like on Wednesday morning.

It probably would look different the next time I encounter strangers like my bee swarm call I responded to this week.

Before I went out I thought,

"Lord maybe there will be an opportunity to talk about you."

Then I got distracted by discovering the potential swarm was a willow bush full of yellow jackets.

That's right it turned out to be a wild bee chase.

Maybe I didn't bring up Jesus or pray for them because I didn't realize that might have been the main reason for the encounter.

Maybe I was caught up in my hopes to bring home a box of bees.

Maybe I just hadn't had the meeting before the meeting.

You know what I mean if you've ever lead a team meeting.

You need to get together with your assistant leader and talk some things through with key team members before you get in a room together to make decisions or solve problems.

I spend a lot of time getting my swarm catching kit together but bringing Jesus into the interaction was a possibility, a forethought.

What if I'd prepped and planned and prayed for the interaction with the people the way I did for the hopeful bee swarm?

I suppose the Holy Spirit would be happy to engage with me in helping people know how much the Father loves them one at a time on a Wednesday morning.