Ministries
September / October 2006
Lynne Hammond
Dearest Friend and Pray-er,
If I were to define with one word my primary role in the body of Christ, I’d say I am an igniter. I love to ignite Holy Ghost fires in the hearts of believers, to stir up the kind of divine zeal that keeps them “aglow and burning with the Spirit, serving the Lord,” (Romans 12:11 Amp.). If they’re already blazing, I like to add fuel to the flame so they can burn brighter still.
So it’s no surprise that I’m writing to ignite a fire in you today. I want to fan the flames of the one desire that flickers somewhere in the heart of every Spirit-led pray-er—the desire to see the fullness of God’s glory in the midst of the Church again.
I believe every one of us has cried out to God for that at one time or another. We’ve read the book of Acts, seen the magnificent moves and outstanding miracles of the Spirit that instantly swept thousands into the kingdom of God, and yearned to see it happen again. We’ve heard or read the prophecies declaring that such wonderful manifestations will be seen in our day, and we’ve called out fervently, “Yes, Lord! Let it be!”
But as the months pass… and then the years... without seeing the fullness of the glory we’re believing for, it’s easy to let our passion begin to wane. As distractions set in and we get busy with the practical realities of life, even those of us who are radically committed to praying for the glory can easily become passive about it. We still hope and believe for the outpouring to come, but if it doesn’t… well, we can still have happy lives and everything will be all right.
That Attitude Won’t Get the Job Done
That kind of attitude seems practical. And it’s definitely more comfortable than burning with a desire that gets you up early and keeps you up late, crying out to God for the glory. But there’s one problem with it. That attitude won’t get the job done.
It takes fiery passion and force to break through the kind of demonic resistance that’s been set up to stop us from laying hold of the promise of God for this generation. It takes desperation and determination to fight the fight of faith until every foe falls and we, as the Church, again possess fullness of God’s power that belongs to us in Christ Jesus.
To win this prayer battle, we must have the attitude the prophet Daniel had when he saw in God’s Word that the 70 years of Israel’s captivity had been completed. Daniel didn’t just assume God was going to automatically restore Jerusalem and liberate the Jews just because the prophetic time had come. He set his “face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth and ashes” (Daniel 9:3 NKJ). He took hold of God’s promise by faith and spoke, prayed, confessed, and made supplication to God about it. (v. 20)
Supplication is earnest prayer. It’s white-hot prayer that boils with passion and desire. Supplication perseveres and doesn’t stop till it gets the job done. And the job the Church must get done in this day is tremendous: We must become a body so wholly filled and flooded with God Himself that Jesus is manifested and glorified in the world. We must lift up Jesus by doing not only the works He did but greater works than these (John 14:12). We must have Jesus Himself in all His resurrected glory manifesting Himself among us so that He can draw all men to Himself.
Spectacular Moves of the Spirit
“Is such a thing possible?” someone might ask.
Oh, yes. It’s not only possible. Jesus promised to do it for us. Before He went to the cross, He said:
The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves me Me will be loved by My Father, and I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him. [I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him.] (John 14:21 Amp.)
In recent years, we’ve seen some precious manifestations of the Lord Jesus. We’ve seen some small moves and stirs of the Holy Spirit. And we’re grateful for those. We needed them.
But we can’t be satisfied with what we’ve had thus far because Jesus promised greater manifestations. He said we’d do not only what He did in His ministry but even greater things—and He had some very spectacular moves of the Spirit in His ministry.
In some of His meetings, thousands of people were healed in a short period of time. In others, every single sick person present was healed. Creative miracles took place—blind eyes were opened, the maimed were made whole, the deaf heard. Demons fled from people. Given how massive the crowds were, we can safely assume that at times many of these miracles occurred at once. (See Matthew 15:29-31 and Luke 6:17-19.)
The same kind of power and unusual manifestations of the Spirit were evident in the early Church. Acts 5:12 tells us that by the hands of the apostles “numerous and startling signs and wonders were being performed among the people” (Amp.). So great was the healing power of God that was flowing through the Church at that time that people carried the sick into the streets in hope that Peter’s shadow might fall on them as he passed by. “Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed,” (verse 16 NKJ).
The Violent Take It by Force
My, how glorious the Church was in those days! How full of the power and manifestations of the Holy Spirit!
We often read those verses and wish for those days to come again. But we must do more than wish for it. We must believe for it because Jesus said that if we would believe we would see the glory of God! (John 11:40) Our believing must not be passive, either. It must be active. It must be spiritually aggressive.
To see the glory of God in manifestation again like it was in the early Church, we must be like the people Jesus spoke about in Matthew 11:12. We must be eager, spiritually violent people who take ground for the kingdom of God by force! We must fight, not against people but against Satan and against the fleshly distractions that try to draw us off course. We must press past everything that would try to hinder us and take possession of what God has promised us—the very presence of Jesus Himself!
Recently, a friend of mine experienced in a wonderful way exactly what the manifestation of Jesus’ presence can do. My friend was on a ministry trip to southern Poland at the time, and when he arrived, he found that his interpreter was not there yet. While he waited for his interpreter to come, my friend spent three days walking the rural countryside and in the fields just talking to Jesus. As he did, Jesus’ presence became so real that my friend was constantly aware that He was there.
One afternoon, some people took him to pray for a little boy who was paralyzed. My friend touched the boy’s feet and when he did, he knew that it was Jesus’ hand touching them and not his own. Jesus’ presence completely filled that place and the boy was instantly made whole.
A day or two later, my friend went to preach in a Polish Catholic cathedral where about 7,000 people were gathered together to hear the Gospel. In the midst of the crowd was a deformed child that had been brought to the meeting by his mother. He lay next to her on the floor in a fetal position with his limbs curled and drawn.
As my friend began to preach, he sensed the same presence of Jesus filling the cathedral and suddenly the child began to move. Little by little, that child’s limbs straightened out and he rose to his feet and began to walk! When the crowd saw what had happened, all who needed healing began to rush toward my friend in an effort to touch him. He didn’t know what to do so he took his coat off, threw it into the crowd, and people all over began to be healed. Later, the priest told him that for three months people would come, touch that coat, and be healed.
I realize that’s unusual but it’s scriptural, nonetheless. (See Acts 19:12.) What’s more, we desperately need outstanding miracles like that today. We need those kinds of signs and wonders because that’s the way the world is going to see Jesus!
Could You Be in China Next Year?
As we’ve already seen, however, that kind of glory isn’t just going to fall on us like a ripe apple off a tree. Even though it’s been prophesied, even though it’s been promised, we must battle spiritually to possess it just like the Israelites had to battle to possess their Promised Land. They didn’t just go in casually and tell their enemies, “Okay, here we are. You all move out of the way now.” No, even though the Lord had already given them that land, they had to go in and fight for it.
That was all right, though, because it was a land worth fighting for. It was a land flowing with milk and honey, a land where they could have days of heaven on earth (Deuteronomy 11:21). Truly it was a wonderful place.
Yet wonderful as it was, the spiritual place of God’s glory that has been promised to the Church in our day is even better. It’s the place where we will fulfill our purpose and destiny. It’s the place the apostle Paul wrote about where the Church will be without spot or blemish. Before Jesus comes, the Church is going to arise from her sleepiness. She’s going to be fired up by resurrection power and loosed across the earth by the Spirit of glory.
Individual believers—people like you!—are going to be sent throughout the world to do the works of Jesus. You could be sitting in your living room reading this right now all nice and comfortable, and next year, you could be preaching the Gospel in China. Why would you be in China? Because Jesus Himself tapped you on the shoulder and got you moving!
“The Glory Is Coming!”
Many Christians today don’t think Jesus would ever call them to do something like that. But He will because He’s looking over this earth and seeing a world harvest that must be reaped—fast! And the whole Church all over the world must take part in gathering that harvest. Every believer has a part.
Right now, however, many are just sitting on the sidelines. They are just going to church, raising their hands when the worship leader tells them to, doing whatever the minister says to do like little puppets. They’re curious about the move of the Spirit and what God might want to do with their lives, but they don’t know much about it.
Other believers are hungry for the glory, their spirits are calling for it but because they’ve never been taught about it, they don’t know what they’re calling for. They just sense a yearning in their spirits for the presence and power of Jesus. Their inner fire has already been kindled. It may not be as hot as it needs to be, but it’s there.
What the Lord wants to do right now is to unify all of us—the faintly curious, the hungry, and the weary prayer warriors that have let their passion slip. He wants to bring everybody together and set us all on fire with fresh desire for the glory of God.
How will He do it?
With the Word. He’s going to get us doing what the Israelites did. They bound God’s promise on their hands and on their heads. They talked to each other about it day and night—and we’re going to do the same thing. We’re going to start saying, “The glory is coming!” We’re going to start believing in our hearts and confessing with our mouths, day and night, that Jesus is manifesting Himself to us and through us. We’ll say, “The glory is coming to this church. The glory is coming to this state. The glory is coming to this nation. The glory is coming to this world!”
We’ll pray for it, confess it, believe it, and fight for it until what we’ve seen in the Bible and in our hearts comes to pass before our very eyes.
Until then, keep your inner fire burning, and always remember that…
You are loved by,
Lynne
Testimonies from Around the World:
Thank you so much for all the wonderful things that you have made available to me—GPAN, Winner’s Minute, and all the rest. These things are transforming my life. The desire of my heart is to be a woman of prayer. Lynne’s books on prayer have been such a blessing and have brought me out of religious drudgery to an exciting walk and companionship with the Lord. Thank you so much for all that expression of God’s love for me through everything that you send. I love you very much.
—D.T.
