God is speaking and He wants us to know that He is.
More than that, God is shouting.
How do I know, you might ask?
I know because I can feel it… and you can, too.
There is a shaking that is taking place and the shaking is the result of His voice.
God shook the earth once before with His words from Mt. Sinai when He warned the people, but this time His voice is shaking not only the earth; it is also shaking the heavens (see Hebrews 12:25-26).
Nothing and no one is exempt from its reverberation.
The echo of God’s voice is rippling through every created thing on earth and above — including evil rulers and principalities.
It’s shaking every thing to its’ core.
Sadly, not everyone is able to recognize God’s voice.
Not everyone has what the scriptures call ‘ears to hear’ what the Spirit is saying.
When Jesus prayed for the Father to glorify His own name, the Father replied to the Son and told Him that He had glorified it and would glorify it again (see John 12:28).
The Father, in a privileged and rare occurrence, spoke audibly before the gathered crowd.
But there were those who said it had merely thundered or that an angel had spoken to Jesus (see John 12:29).
In other words, they didn’t recognize the sound of God’s voice and wrote it off as something else.
We cannot afford to make that same mistake.
Now is not the time, nor is it ever the time, to refuse Him who is speaking (see Hebrews 12:25).
Make no mistake… the shaking we are all experiencing is doing many things.
It’s exposing evil and corruption at a rapid rate in so many arenas of life and it is quaking the false places of trust we often turn to.
Please know, however, that it’s easy to get distracted by all that is being shaken and miss the voice that’s present in and responsible for the trembling.
One thing is for certain, there’s a purpose in what’s happening and there is a reason why God is speaking so loudly at this moment in time.
He’s calling to us…
He’s inviting the thirsty to come to the waters and the hungry to come and buy and eat.
He’s wanting us to seize this window of grace and seek and call out to Him.
He is pleading with us to return to Him.
And He’s appealing to the wicked man to forsake His way (see Isaiah 55:1-7).
More than anything else, this shaking has revealed just how much we need to hit our knees and cry out for a greater baptism in the Holy Spirit.
It’s time for the church to get her house in order.
The alarm has gone off… the vibrations are here… and it’s time for us to wake up.
It could be that what we are experiencing are merely tremors of a larger shaking that’s coming.
This is why we need to be ready for a visitation.
We need to be prepared for a greater outpouring.
This shaking has revealed that where we are as a church isn’t enough.
And to be honest, we needed this shaking… we need to be shaken until all that we have left is God Himself.
We need a new normal.
We don’t need more entertainment or fancy gimmicks or catchy sermon titles and a clever teaching series.
It’s not about feeding into an already present consumeristic mentality that is so prevalent in many churches today.
It’s about needing and cherishing the presence of the Lord.
It’s about hungering for Him.
It’s about receiving power to be an effective and bold witness.
And it’s only going to happen if we don’t reject the One who is speaking and choose to humble ourselves and pray.
- Brian Connolly, Faith Like Birds
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