In 1993, Hosanna! Music did a song by Dave Bankhead and Ray Goudie called ‘Great Awakening’. 22 years ago, this Great Awakening was longed for by most Christians in my circles, but it simply didn’t happen. But it is happening now, beginning with God speaking to the hearts of His people about His true nature and His love for the broken, hurting and outcasts. People like me and others I know are being changed by God to be able to see and accommodate this new wave of His Spirit.

Here’s the song – ‘Great Awakening’, by Dave Bankhead and Ray Goudie:

All down the ages, God has caused to happen many ‘Great Moves of God’, where the Christian faith undergoes great upheaval which results in huge blessings, healings, miracles and so on. These events happen periodically in God’s good timing, and many believers today feel that we are long overdue such a blessing. I have friends who pray constantly for such a move of God to happen in our time.

And I personally believe that there is another such move coming. Usually what happens is that God brings new revelation and blessing, but what He does and how He does it is completely unexpected – or nearly so. I believe that He reveals His plans in advance to those who are ready and willing to listen – ready and willing, because the move He brings is going to shake the foundations of what was previously thought to be known about God, and many will reject it as a move of the enemy. This is what happened in Jesus’s time – Jesus Himself was the new move of God, and the religious people of the day rejected Him – and even in modern times, it is no different, and it will be no different in that respect the next time either.

People who are so entrenched in procedure – based religious systems will either rail against the move of God, or they may even miss it entirely. Some will of course decry it as being ‘of the devil’, as if he has any say in what God does! (Remember that the devil is not the equal and opposite of God, he is a created being too just like we are, and as such is subject to the rule of God).

But the new thing is coming. Those who can feel it can see the stirring of the first few blades of grass moving in the wind of the Spirit. And you can guarantee that it will be nothing like most people expect. It will not be like the great revivals of the past. Because of the communications capability we have on the Internet, this one will be bigger than any before. There will be healings, miracles, people being raised from the dead, huge salvation, people being brought into the Kingdom – not a kingdom of rules and regulations, but of freedom and power. The powerless will be made powerful and mighty in God. They will realise anew, and indeed some for the first time, just what Jesus has done for us, and they will also realise the loving, calling nature of God as He seeks to draw all people to Him in His love.

This time, the emphasis will be on how much God actually likes us. In the past, there has been too much emphasis on the ‘angry god’ who is distant, cold, and just waiting for us to put a foot wrong so that he can judge us, condemn us, ‘smite’ us (whatever that means) and generally be horrible. As I’ve said in previous blog posts, that’s not the God I know. The God I know is the one exemplified by Jesus in His life and works. He’s loving, kindly, caring, tolerant, forgiving, healing – he’s friendly! People all over the world are even now being shown by Holy Spirit what is going to happen, and they are being primed, trained and set up to work alongside the Master, His Hands on theirs, as their attitudes change towards God’s intended direction for them and for the Awakening.

Maybe this looks prophetic; well maybe it is. Maybe God is showing us what He’s going to do, and it’s exciting stuff!

The harshness of modern-day religion and religious practices will be missing from the new revival, but it will of course try to resist it and brand it a ‘work of the enemy’ as we have already seen. It will be like nothing we have ever seen before. The main resistance, as in Jesus’s day, will be from those whose power structures, either in terms of money, prestige, reputation or control are threatened by the move of the Spirit. Those working in existing Christian practices may have to change the way they do things – but don’t worry, this is healthy if it’s of God.

I know there will be many people reading this that love Jesus and may well be frightened by this prospect. Maybe it will look like heresy; how do I know this is ‘safe’; how do I know it’s the Spirit that’s doing this and not a counterfeit? I would say that you need to rest in God. You need to lean right back into His arms and hear what He’s saying. You know His promises: He will never let go of you; underneath are His everlasting arms; His Spirit will lead you into all Truth. God will not lead you against your conscience, but He might just re-educate your conscience with His ideas. Please be open to that. Your process of being ‘transformed by the renewing of your mind’ never actually stops; you don’t ‘arrive’ at a place when the transformation is complete, not this side of the veil anyway. So, be open to God’s Spirit breathing His changes and His life into your spirit.

And we need to flow with the Spirit. In a previous post on this blog, ‘Learning the Lessons of History‘, I said that in order to allow the ‘next revival’ to continue, we must be careful to allow the Spirit to flow things along, not to make rules and frameworks in order to try to ‘preserve’ the blessing. That warning still stands – let the Spirit do what He wills!

So, get ready for the Great Awakening. It’s coming. And it’s going to be like nothing you’ve ever seen before!

See also my post on Don Francisco’s song ‘Vision of the Valley‘ for more on the kind of people that God will use in the upcoming Great Awakening.

The other thing is that you will most likely not hear about this on the standard news media. They tend to report only the bad news! But let’s wait and see….