Lately, I’ve been putting together some video clips from my last trip to Uganda to post on my website. Watching them reminded me how great it felt to be in those services. That, and what a contrast they were to the services here back in the USA last Sunday. What a difference!
When I share these videos of wildly exuberant praise going on at these services, why is it that I don’t get more of a rise from our quietly sophisticated church brethren? Yeah, there’s some comments of approval, but few cries of desperate hunger.
Over here, it is like sipping on a glass of wine, holding the glass between your index finger and thumb while you pinky hangs gracefully in the air. You get a bit of a nice warm feeling while you discuss the discreet variances of flavor and undertones of the wine. Nice. And quite cultured. Some people really like that kind of thing.
Over in Africa, however, it’s like drinking the whole bottle … in one long upended pull. Same wine, but wow, what a difference!
Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t you want to be immersed in a deluge of the Holy Spirit, rather than sipping at the edge of the glass? I will always remember the 70’s during the Jesus Movement when the Holy Ghost would fall down on services every night so hard that you would be literally beside yourself, jumping up and down, hands raised to touch the heavens, shouting out praises to God at the top of your lungs. You couldn’t help yourself. And that was the tame ones in the crowd!
I’m seeing the same thing in Africa that I saw in the U.S. in 1970. And I am seeing the same reaction from the churches. Back then, they patronized us long-haired Jesus Freaks as just a passing fad – a little crazy from drugs, but otherwise harmless. Now, that same Holy Ghost excitement that is happening in Africa and it is being explained away as emotionalism or as something detatched that is happening “over there”. (“Don’t you know they’re just more emotional over there? After all, white men can’t dance!”) Yeah, well then explain the powerful outpouring of the Jesus Movement that we had over here. I’m white, and I was dancing.
Which do you want – the glass or the bottle? You want a nice warm buzz, or do you want to get sloppy drunk out of your mind? Are you so damned sophisticated that you can’t tell the difference? Or is it that you are so comfortable where you are that you don’t want to shake things up … or worse, turn them upside down?
I’m going to post the videos of those wild and exuberant services anyway. I want people to see that there is a very real difference between what we have and what we could have. We had it once. Why not again? Of course, that begs the question, how bad do we want it?
There is a great move of God coming – a 2nd Pentecost- but it is not coming to the churches, and if you are not careful, you might miss it.
“And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another,
What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.” Acts 2:12,13
“Awake, ye drunkards, and weep; and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine; for it is cut off from your mouth.” Joel 1:5
Brother Dale, dale@revivalfire.org

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