Just Imagine . . .

In 2010 I was a leader on one of the traveling Summit teams of Life Action Ministries (OneCry’s parent organization). We would go into local churches and hold meetings for close to two weeks at a time.Near the end of our training time, I was asked to give a ten-minute message to the teams before they headed out for a year of local church ministry. The topic was “Imagine Our Destiny.”It was fun! I was able to share things I had often prayed for over the previous years but had, at best, rarely seen or heard about. But because they were described in many of the books about revival I had read, I thought about them quite a lot.This is what I said to our ministry teams that day:

Imagine spending two or three hours one morning in your quiet time—one of those extended times when your leadership asks you to really seek the Lord. Maybe you don’t even approach it with much excitement. After all, it’s been a long week and you’re tired, but down deep you really do want God to speak to you. And He does! In fact, when the team gets back together later, you begin to share what God burdened your heart with; God in turn uses that to deal with others, and your time together turns into a prayer meeting. Everyone ends up missing lunch, but no one cares because God is there. Just imagine!Imagine being in a host home and choosing to have spiritual conversation with your host or hostess instead of going to “veg out” in your room or get on your cell phone or computer. Imagine that conversation getting pretty deep, until they begin to pour out their heart to you in tears about their marriage or a wayward child. They had seen something different in you that invited them to open up, and it gives you an opportunity to be like Jesus to them. Perhaps your conversation leads to reconciliation in their marriage, or their going to seek forgiveness from their son or daughter, or maybe even to their salvation. Just imagine!Imagine working with the children in their groups one night. It seems like a normal night, the children noisy and disruptive, but you sense the need to stop and pray and gather up the troops instead of just trying to get through your normal two-hour service. So you pray, but it’s different than times before. It seems as though the Spirit of God settles in, and the peace of God leads to a stillness and soberness. You decide to forgo the games and skits, and you proceed to teach the lesson, all eyes fixed intently on you. Afterward, several children come up to you, as do the other teachers, in tears because God has convicted them of lying, or of disobeying their parents, or of their need for a Savior. Just imagine!Imagine being up front as a musician, and noticing your sound man on his face in the aisle, and then three people over on one side standing with their hands lifted up to heaven. Others, one by one or two by two, begin coming down to the altar to pray. Your own teammates around you begin to drop to their knees, some in prayer, others in tears as God deals with their hearts. You stop singing and go to your knees. When you open your eyes 45 minutes later, you see the entire congregation scattered about the sanctuary, some on their faces, some sitting, some bowing; some crying, some laughing and rejoicing; some alone, some in small groups. You go join one of those groups that is praying and confessing their sins to one another, and by the time you’re done, you realize that it’s past midnight, yet it seems like no more than a few minutes have passed. Just imagine!

The things we saw God do over the next nine months were awesome—even beyond what I was imagining when I spoke to the teams. I began to keep a running list in my diary, entitled “Things I’ve Never Seen Before.” (Next week I’ll share that list with you.)God took our team deep in prayer. And then we watched His glory unfold!What are you believing God for? What are you asking Him for that would certainly be an act of God and not of man? ... for His glory and not for yours?I don’t know what your life context is, but ask God to increase your faith and to give you the mind of Christ. Pray and watch! Don’t be blinded by the limits of the temporal.“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think [or imagine], according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21 NASB).