#3 - A Move Of God Cannot Be Planned…But It Must Be Prepared For - Acts 2:1-5
What happened in this section of Scripture was both unexplainable and undeniable…and it made the church unstoppable!
YET it wasn’t something that the leadership got together and put on the church calendar…(does it bother anyone besides me that churches actually schedule revivals?)
IT JUST HAPPENED…the first word in Acts 2:2 is “suddenly!”
The leadership received the vision from Jesus, began to pray and dealt with the leadership issues in chapter one…and then kept doing what they knew they should be doing until BAM…God moved in an incredible way.
When we begin to plan moves of God I believe we are walking on dangerous ground. His plans and ways are so much higher than ours - Isaiah 55:8-9
I remember seeing this with my own eyes in the fall of 2002 when we were meeting in rented facilities at Anderson University.
We had been running around 400 - 500 people that spring and summer…and on August 11th of that year we had 504 people…the next weekend 970 people showed up…and within five weeks we had 1,600 people and were in two services.
People always ask, “What did YOU do?” (Because the church in America believes that a move of God can be reduced to a formula.)
We always answer, “We have NO IDEA!”
- We didn’t launch a new series (in fact, we were in the middle of one of my least favorite series of all times!)
- We didn’t send out a direct mail invite.
- We didn’t have a special speaker.
- We didn’t have “pack a pew Sunday.”
We seriously cannot explain what happened. All we know is that from the start we were dogmatic about the vision God had given us…we knew we weren’t going to please everyone…we wanted to see people come to know Jesus…we believed the church was His idea to reach AND change the world…and we were dedicated to keeping the vision simple and only doing what we knew He had called us to do…
And He moved! It was unexpected…it can’t be explained…but I am so glad He did!
Church leader—your job is not to orchestrate a move of God…but to get ready for it!!! I believe God wants to move in awesome ways in our churches…we just need to be willing to do whatever it takes to get ready for HIS moving!!!