by

Bill Johnson, Tuesday February 12, 2013

Impact of Encounters

  • Divine encounters are a central issue for a faith lifestyle that has been put into the peripheries of the church.
  • We cannot do anything without a divine encounter.
  • I got married to have relationship with my wife, not to have a ring on my finger.
  • In this relationship with the Lord, you are designed to get to know God, never to fully comprehend because that’s impossible, but to know in a measurable way.
  • What I want to see happen is have a generation of revivalists who get to a place where we can actually measure the affects of presence.
  • If He’s as large as he says he is, he shouldn’t be that hard to find, and we should be able to measure his impact.
  • 2 Chronicles 5
  • You see tribes and families taking on the responsibility of experiencing the presence and the legacy that it leaves.
  • For those of you who don’t have children yet, God is calling us to have godly lineage.
  • 120 priests sounding trumpets.
  • Acts 2
  • 2 Chronicles 5 is the Old Testament equivalent of Acts 2.
  • Tongues is a language of prayer and praise.
  • The fruit of revival was that they were confused, amazed, perplexed and marveled.
  • One of the most difficult things in this present church era is that so many people come with their own agenda shaped by scripture and it’s good but in the glory you lose the agenda. You lose sight of what’s most important to you. Something happens to what brought you here.
  • Any time we come together in unity we are tuned to one master note.
  • Unity is very valuable and often misunderstood.
  • The bible doesn’t talk about unity with us separate from unity with him.
  • If we tune to each other, while we have the appearance of unity and a harmonious sound, you can still be out of the master tune and unaware of what He is doing.
  • We have this hunger and passion for the Lord even while He is here because he can always increase.
  • The presence of the Lord is the main thing and I’m never going to change the subject because that is what satisfies.
  • The Lord, when glory comes, hits the tuning fork and suddenly everyone begins to lay down their stuff. Not bad stuff, but our focuses (healing, prophetic, helping the needy…) and we become re-oriented to follow him.
  • The Lord is training us to tune into Him.
  • This has been my message for years and while it hasn’t changed although more has been revealed.
  • Jesus died so that people could be reconciled to the father.
  • Our message is the pure raw gospel of salvation out there, but in here we have been allowed to discover and pursue the kingdom.
  • I keep realizing how much I don’t know what I’m doing.
  • When you feel like you know what you are doing, there is a certain bent to your steering, and there will always be a resistance to what God is calling you to. But instead we need to realize that we are above our pay-grade and recognize the slightest whisper from God because He must be in control.
  • We’ve got a few months left in this race and even though I can’t do it for you, I endorse you that my heart for you is to experience His glory. That every other value, assignment and experience is measured compared to the manifest glory of the Lord.
  • It’s amazing to be in a crowd of 1000 people that isn’t dominated by anyone’s agenda. I’ve seen it happen twice. Once in school here and once on a sunday at worship.
  • It’s amazing when nobody is trying to turn the moment into anything but instead all be tuned to His heart.

Prayer of blessing 

Could you explain to me the difference between pursuing the truths of God and pursuing His presence?

  • Whenever I discover a truth about God it’s always to increase my experience with Him.  It’s an invitation to deepen our relationship. It’s no to make me smarter or a better theologian.
  • Sometimes I will understand a concept before I have the experience but the experience give flesh to the word.
  • What you don’t want to do is reduce your christian life to what you feel but to seek the truth about the Lord.
  • Learning to recognize the presence and honour it.
  • Sometimes we think that the Lord has come on our agenda, but instead we need to set those down and let Him pick them up if he wants to.

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