30th April 2023 Celebration Service - Peter Butt - Rivers flow

Or week right. So it's really good to be here and to renew fellowship

with Dave and Julia and with the church as well. See friends who are

watching online today. The subject is brokenness but Restored, and I'm going to

speak about that subject to some degree and share with you the journey that I'm

on. In fact, I've written a book called Our Journey, which is

the story of the last fifty years of ministry that my wife and I have

been involved in, and it's about the way God has led us, the

way God has spoken about how the prophetic world has become real in our lives.

And there's two two major things that we've been involved in. One was

a youth camp work and set Dave a copy of the book, and I

was quite surprised to get a response back to say that he went to our

youth cambs. It was a few years ago, but the youth camps that

we ran where thousands of young people were touched by God in the most incredible

way. And the story of that youth camp work is in the book.

And the other story that's in there is the story of our School of Ministry,

which is teaching and training in the nations of the world, and that's

how I ended up in India, and can you believe it, I visited

the cities where our friends come from, both hydrobad and Bangalore. I've taught

in both of those Indian cities as well as many others. And the story

of how God used that work is here in the book. You can get

it on Amazon, and Dave has a few copies for those of you from

the church here who would like to take hold of a copy. But my

journey still continues. I'm in my mid seventies, but I'm on a journey

right now. And the journey I'm on is a journey to see a move

of the Holy Spirit. We're talking about brokenness. We're living in a broken

world, a chaotic broken world. It's like whatever next, you know.

This weekend, we've just been watching the pictures of this dreadful situation in the

Sedan where civil war has broken out again and they've had to evacuate all these

folks who who were frightened in the middle of this warfare. We're constantly seeing

pictures of the latest place where there is dreadful famine. We're constantly bombarded with

pictures from Ukraine of the dreadful atrocities that are taking place there, and then

we hear the stories from within our own country of brokenness, of sickness.

I just got news just yesterday. I have a really good friend of mine

whose wife has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And you go, Oh,

God, we cry out to you, We need to see you working and

moving in our land. And I am fascinating that. In January this year,

there was another awful atrocity when the earthquake in Turkey took place in that

city. You remember the pictures of that and the awfulness, the hopelessness and

helplessness of people broken left with nothing standing on the streets, not even clean

water available to drink, nowhere asleep. They'd lost everything, and you look

at the hopelessness and the chaos that's in our world. And that was on

a Monday. And on the Wednesday of that week, we started to get

reports of a move of the Holy Spirit, a different kind of earthquake taking

place in Aspury, and I found that contrast remarkable. There was this brokenness

and just this chaos, and then there's another kind of earthquake when God breaks

into a university, a Bible college in America, in Aspbury Methodist Memorial Bible

College, a few students, at the end of a service, after the

benediction has been spoken, begin to wait upon God and begin to call on

God, feeling constrained to remain in the chapel after the meeting's finished. And

this couple of dozen students sudden experience and out pouring of the Holy Spirit.

God comes among them, and they begin to worship, and they begin to

weep, and God begins to work in their lives. And then crowds begin

to come. That the word gets around, and before long the main auditorium

that I think seats six or seven hundred was absolutely full, and then the

two subsidiary halls are filled with people seeking God, meeting God. And there's

a different kind of earthquake, the kind that we read about in Acts two.

That as people come together and pray and cry out to God, people's

lives are being touched, people are being restored, Anxiety is being dealt with,

people are being set free from all kinds of stuff. People are giving

their lives afresh to God and surrendering, and twenty four hours a day worship

is going on. Thousands of people start to gather the police are so concerned

about it that half a mile out of the town they put up a sign

that says Revival full haa because there was no more room in the small town.

And you see that the hope for our world is not just more money.

The hope is not just better services. The hope is not anywhere but

in God. It's certainly not in politics or business or any other area.

It's only in a move of the Holy Spirit. And there's a passion in

my heart. My journey now is pursuing a move of the Holy Spirit.

For the last year, my wife and I have been seriously praying and believing

God for a move of the Holy Spirit, looking at the state of the

world, the state of the church, even effects of COVID and the anxiety

and mental health issues that people are suffering from, and there's a cry in

our hearts for a move of the Holy Spirit. And then I visited a

church in East London. And when I visited this church in East London,

they were dealing with some issues concerning this whole business of sexuality and whatever,

and it was causing real chaos and difficulties, and there were people taking sides

and confusion, and I came away burdened by that, and that week I

was kind of in conflict. There's one side of me saying we need to

pray and seek God for a move with the spirit. But there was another

side on the other side was saying, we need to stand up and speak

out. We need to give some biblical foundations to this whole situation. And

I was in this conflict. In fact, I lost sleep over it.

I was really quite concerned. And on the Friday of that week, I

went to visit an old guy. He's ninety two. He's been in ministry

for more than fifty years, and he's just coming to the end of his

life. He's quite feeble now and I always pray with him, and I

visited him, prayed with him, and then he said, I've got a

vision. He said I could see. I said, I see you on

a yacht, quite a large yacht. And he said, you're standing on

the deck and you're there all alone. And he said there are two things

happening. One, he said, is that there's no one on the rudder,

and the other is that there's no one at the sale, and the

sale needs attention, and the rudder needs attention, and you're like and the

boat is rocking, and you don't know what to do. And he says,

and the Lord says to you, you give attention to the sale.

If you give attention to the sale, the rudder will come back into line.

And I felt that was such a powerful word to me that what I

needed to do is actually what we need is a move of the Holy Spirit.

Nothing less than do. We can't bring conviction, we can't change people's

hearts and minds, we can't make people repent. It's a work of the

Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John sixteen. When the Holy Spirit is come,

he will convince men and women of sin, of sin because they do

not believe on me. Not a list of wrong deeds, but of the

sin of rejecting the wonderful truth about Jesus. And that's a work of the

Holy Spirit. So we've been consumed with praying for a move of the Holy

Spirit, and in our church at the turn of the year, we had

forty days of prayer and fasting and the focus of it was around a prophetic

word that we've been given. And I think we've got a PowerPoint and whatever,

and here's the prophetic word that we received it was an invitation. This

was a church in Edinburgh who'd been praying for our church and this is what

they felt. God said that an invitation is being extended to us to receive

fresh water. The highlands of Scotland are full of riverbeds, many flowing with

clean and fresh water. Father is asking, are we standing in the right

river beds for the river to flow? We need to go and stand in

new riverbeds to receive his fresh water. She's in the highlands. Some of

the mountains are clawed by crevices waiting for water to run. I don't know

if you've ever seen that, but there are places where when water has come

and there's been kind of a waterfall, and then there's no more water coming,

they dry up and there's just these kind of lines down the mountain where

the river used to run, and they're dry, like dry riverbeds. In

fact, in India, I've seen that on a number of occasions, driving

out from Mumbai up into the mountains, and I went up there several times

in the summertime, and all down the mountain sides are these like these crevices,

like these dry river beds, and they look sandy in color, and

water used to run down them. And then we drove up there in the

monsoon season and it was extraordinary. There was water cascading down these down the

gullies. And I'm sure you guys have seen the same thing. When the

river runs, then these dry riverbeds begin to flow with water. And the

invitation is to stand and call on God in these dry river beds. I

believe that we in the church in the UK have experienced a season of barrenness

and difficulty. But God is calling us to come and stand in the river

bed and invite his water to come. There's an invitation to be honest,

to go stand allowing him to flow in us, allowing God to heal us.

As we allow healing to come, we open ourselves to becoming more vulnerable

and open to His Holy Spirit. He says this is related to the temple

and the water flowing out to the east. From Ezekiel forty seven. If

you know Ezekiel forty seven, there's this wonderful picture of of a threshold of

a doorway, and the door is there, and under the door water starts

to flow, and it gets stronger and stronger as it goes further and further,

and then the river comes to a place where it's so big that there's

enough water to swim in. And then it says, the water goes to

the places that are barren, where stagnant water, where poison water, where

water that is contaminated is and wherever this river goes and touches this contamination,

it is healed. And it says, and wherever the river flowed, life

came. And it's a picture of the coming of the Holy Spirit. And

I believe that God is wanting to do that for us, that God wants

to flow again. That we should be expecting and believing and crying out to

God for the flow of His great Holy Spirit. Now, just for a

minute, I want to show you a picture of a of a river.

Okay, here it comes. Look a river. Now, what defines a

River's Why is a river a river? And why don't we call it a

sea or a lake or a pond. What's the definition of a river?

Well, a river has a bed and banks, all right, and it

starts somewhere and goes somewhere. The river has purpose. It's not just a

meaningless bit of water. It actually starts somewhere and goes somewhere. It has

a beginning and a purpose, a place to go, and it needs a

bank and beds. And the bank and beds of the river of God is

the Church. And God has instituted and initiated a church as a carrier of

the water of his Holy Spirit. Because the other thing about a river is

you can have bed and banks, but if you ain't got no water,

you ain't got a river. Ha. You need this bit of Essex there

is. That's where I come from. Yeah, you need water for a

river. And the cry of my heart is that God will come to our

bed and banks. We got meetings and pa and we've got leaders, and

we've got conferences and we've got great music and we've got all this stuff.

But it doesn't make a river. Ha. We need the Holy Spirit.

We need God to come. We need God to come and touch us.

If there's no water, there's no river. And I got this picture in

my mind and I think it's it's on here. Yeah. So the elements

of things saying, see a river without yeah, next one, a river

without without bed and banks becomes a marsh. You know. That's why the

church is so important that the foundations that are in there. The foundations of

gathering together, of prayer and fellowship and worship and and outreach and UH and

communion or are so important for us because they're the bed and the banks that

enable the river to flow. Without it, it becomes stagnant uh and barren

and and and I feel like the picture I've got is of of standing in

a dry river bed with my arms out. There's a picture on the thing

there. I don't know if it's the next one or not. Okay,

we'll come to it. You got, Yeah, this is the picture I

have of standing. It's like I'm standing in a dry riverbed welcoming the river

of God, calling on God for the Holy Spirit to come in power.

Because water and the Holy Spirit in the scriptures is so very very clear.

I've got some scriptures here that to indicate that Isaiah forty one, verse seventeen

to twenty, the poor and needy search for water, but there is none.

Their tongues are parts with thirst. But either Lord will answer them.

Either God of Israel will not forsake them. I will make rivers flow on

barren heights and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools

of water. And the parts ground into springs. I've put in the deserted

of the acacia, the myrtle and the olive. I've set junipers in the

wasteland, fur and the zippers together. God is there waiting, It says,

when the poor and needy seek water, when we come to the point

of recognizing your need, and we stand like that picture there in the in

the in the river, the drive river bed, crying out for water,

God says that he back to verse seventeen. Please yeah, God says,

I the Lord will answer them. I the God of Israel, will not

forsake them. I'm depending on that promise. I'm standing in the river bed

waiting with my arms wide open for the water. And I'm saying, God,

you said that when poor and needy people seek you, you will come

with your river. You will come with the answer. You know I love

Isaiah forty four, verse three to five. Again another scripture well known.

I will pour water on the Thursday land streams, on the dry ground.

I will pour out my spirit on your offspring and my blessing on your descendants.

We can expect God to come by his spirit the parallel of water of

rivers and the holy Spirit, and of course Jesus himself in John seven thirty

seven to thirty nine, he stands up and he said, if anyone is

thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Ha anyone who is thirsty,

come to me and drink. And then he goes on to say that

that is to do with the spirit, whoever believes in me. As the

scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. Then

the next verse, by this the spirit whom those who believed in him were

later to receive. The spirit had not been given, Pentecost hadn't come.

But Jesus was prophesying of the day when thirsty people would drink and rivers of

living water would flow from within them. And so the scripture, all those

three scriptures are very powerful, very clear about us experiencing and knowing the touch

of the Holy Spirit and God coming and working and moving powerfully in our lives.

You know, we really do need to recognize how much we need a

fresh move of the Holy Spirit. I say, I'm on this journey and

God keeps reminding me or prompting me or opening up something new and fresh to

me that keep me on this journey of expectation and anticipation that He is coming.

I love the fact you've removed some tables because there's a sense of faith

and expectation that God is going to move and God sends people from the other

side of the world to stand with you. A prophesy to you that that's

the beginning of God sending you people who are going to stand with you and

be part of what He's going to do. And the sense of anticipation.

You know, all the stories we hear are from other places. It's happened,

you know, because this thing that happened in Asbury in America broke out

in Australia as well. What it's like, they're the ends of the world.

You know. What about us here in England. Well, what I

want to say to you is I hear stories of expectation. I hear some

stories of a new sense of God's presence coming. I say, here's stories

of people living and expecting and crying out to God and expecting a visitation.

You know, I was. I was speaking in East ham Over in East

London there at a church on a Sunday, and I was praying on the

Tuesday. We had a really good time. God came Holy Spirit did some

stuff which I'm always delighted about, and I was just just praying and thanking

God, and I felt God just speak to me and drop into my heart

a book I'd read many years ago and that I should read it again and

remember on the Sunday i'd preached in east Ham and I was reminded of this

book called Pentecostal Pioneers, and it was the story of significant anointed men and

women of God who had moved in the power of the Holy Spirit. And

so I got this book out and I read it. The first person it

talked about was Smith Wigglesworth, and that was really exciting reading all these amazing

stories of this rough Yorkshire and this rough Yorkshire Bradford Plummer who moved in the

power of the Holy Spirit right into his eighties and saw the most extraordinary miracles.

And I was excited by some of the stories, but it was the

second person I read about that impacted me. The second person I read about

was Stephen Jeffries, rough old, uneducated Welsh speaking coal miner who met Jesus

and got transformed and anointed by the Holy Spirit. And in the early twenties

one hundred years ago. This was the thing that grabbed me one hundred years

ago, began to move across this nation in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I preached on the Sunday in east Ham. It's just around the corner

from Ilford, just down the road from a place called Barking, and I

read about Stephen Jefferies and how that in the nineteen twenties Stephen Jefferies had gone

to Barking. He was a Welsh guy. He was quite rough and ready.

He used to break into the Welsh language while he was preaching because it

was his first language. And the East end of London was pretty rough,

real rough, working class, tough guys, you know, dockers and you

know. And he was told that he would never make it. No one

ever made it amongst the East London guys, the Cottons as they were called,

you know, that they were rough and tough and he wouldn't be successful.

And so they took the baths in Barking that seated something like seven or

eight hundred people, and the first night there was ten or a dozen or

something like that came and everybody was saying, I told you, but he

prayed for a sick person and they were totally and instantly healed. And then

the word got around and the crowd started coming. A young girl of eight

who was born without any eyeballs, she just had sockets, and he prayed

for her and eyes appeared, beautiful blue eyes appeared in her head. I

mean, we're talking megastuff. Cancers were healed, people were throwing away their

crutches and getting out within that wheelchairs. They're the old fashioned bar chairs in

those days. And extraordinary things happened, and a church of eight hundred people

formed within six weeks. Ha And I read that, and I began to

weep, and I saw that it was exactly one hundred years ago that that

had happened, and I'd been just up the Rown. In fact, I

regularly visit Barking as well. And I began to weep because this was so

real to me, because this is not Africa or America or Australia. This

is places I know, places I visit, places I've been, and all

around London they had these crusades and it was a very much a working class

thing. The religious people of the day had nothing to do with it.

The denominational stuff they you know, they couldn't cope with it at all.

But God did the most phenomenal work by the power of his Holy Spirit.

Absolutely extraordinary miracles took place, Churches were formed, and there was a move

of the Holy Spirit all around London and up into the north of England.

I've worked with a man in Worthamstowe for four years called Norman Young, and

he'd been saved in one of those meetings in bishop Auckland. He was saved

because his mother was in a wheelchair. She've been in it for ten or

fifteen years, and she was instantly totally healed and came to the Lord.

And her five sons all gave their lives to Jesus, and four of them

ended up as leaders of churches and served God faithfully. I mean extraordinary stories,

all in the twenties, one hundred years ago, not in Africa or

whatever, but in our streets, in our town, and stirred up to

dare to believe that God can do it again. He won't do it the

same, it won't work the same, it won't be amongst the same group

of people. But God will come to us again as we try out to

hear. And then I'm not a big I shouldn't say that when we're when

we're online and you know, we're looking again people watching us on Facebook and

whatever. But I saw a thing on Facebook that I thought, oh,

that interests me in It was it was Wind. Was the title. Well,

I know a lot about wind. The older I get, the more

I learn about wind. But it wasn't the wind that I'm talking about now,

and and that didn't attract me. But what attracted me was that it

was by John Kilpatrick. John Kilpatrick was or is an American pastor of an

Assemblies of God church, and he was the leader of the work in Pensacola

that took place in the late nineties, and they saw half a million people

come to Christ. They saw it extraordinary out pouring of the Holy Spirit.

And I thought, I'm going to take notice of this, and so I

watched this video and I recommend it to everybody here. It's called Wind.

John Kilpatrick put that in YouTube and it will come up. It's about seven

minutes long. Absolutely extraordinary. And he had a dream and in the dream

he found himself on the streets of London. That really grabbed my attention.

And he found himself on the streets of London, and laying on a bed

on the pavement was a church leader, one of our network leaders, a

really significant, well known individual, who was desperately sick and ill, laying

on the bed. And he went over to them and he prayed for them.

And as he prayed for them, he felt the Lord tell him to

pray for the removal, for the lifting of the spirit of infirmity. And

so he broke the hold of this spirit of infirmity. And he said,

it was like this black cloud just lifted off of this guy, and within

minutes he was up walking totally healed. And he said, people who were

on the streets all around this black thing just went pop and lifted off people

all over the place. And he said, and then he said, I

just saw it increasing, and this spirit of infirmity was lifting off of people.

And he said, and then he said, there was this wind that

started to come. And he describes how the wind comes, and the wind

is a move of the Holy Spirit, another picture of the Holy Spirit,

just like water winds, another picture of the Holy Spirit coming. And in

the streets of London, people began to glory by God. They began to

be set free from this black cloud. Of infirmity and began to worship God

to people came out of hospitals, still in their gowns with their stuff attached,

praising God because they'd been healed, and said there was an incredible outbreak

of healing and miracles. He said, the Lond the electric was off and

the London I began to move, moved not by any electric power, but

by the power of the Holy Spirit, and said, extraordinary things began to

happen. He said, she saw this, He saw this increasing lifting of

this cloud, and he described it. He said it came with covid.

He said, a spirit of heaviness and depression. He said it was being

lifted as God came and moved by His Holy Spirit. And I just was

so excited. Began to cry. Again. I'm not a crier, you

know, I'm part of the upstiff upper upper lip brigade. You know,

real men don't cry stuff. But I've been crying a lot recently, crying

out to God for a move of the Holy Spirit and just just touch my

spirit. I So then he woke up and he said he really believes that

God is going to come. Why did God give him London? Are you

London included, Yeah, why not, God will come to our city in

the dryness, in the dry river bed in which we feel we are at

that We'll lift the hands out and we say, God, will you come,

Will you cause your river to flow? Will you cause your life to

come? God? We need you, God, We need you. So

my message this morning is simply that that the answer to our brokenness, to

the chaos, to the disorder that we see all all around us, is

not more of this or more of that. It's a move of the Holy

Spirit. The God will come. We can't do this. Only God can

do it. You know. We need to be seeking His face and reaching

out to him and allowing him to take hold of us. I'm encouraged by

what I see people beginning to seek God, people beginning to recognize their near

need of the Holy Spirit. And as together we seek the face of God,

as we together open our lives to more of the Spirit, as together

we take hold of the scriptures and the promises and open up our lives to

Him. I believe God is going to come. God is going to come,

and God is going to move, you know, and particularly where we're

touching the world, You know that Ezekiel forty seven scripture is very powerful and

it speaks of this are coming and broadening and deepening, and it says on

there were waters to swim in, you know, And there's a lovely picture

there, and I don't know, it kind of appeals to me. I

enjoy swimming and you know, the thought of waters to swim in. Yeah,

ye have a good time enjoying the water and whatever. But it's not

about that, because as it goes on, it says, and the river

goes on and it touches the stagnant, barren, contaminated waters. And the

picture is of this move of the Holy Spirit coming, not for us to

self indulgently enjoy a blessing, although we will aha there will be waters to

swim in, but actually of the water flowing on to the broken world in

which we live, to the broken lives, to the people who are in

anxious mode, who have been devastated by the world in which we live,

by COVID and by the cost of living rise, and by the struggles that

they're going through and through broken relationships and messed up lives and failed parents and

have failed system. And God, we cry out to you, We cry

out to you, because nothing less than a move of your Holy Spirit will

do. Yeah. Lord, will you come to us? Will you come

afresh? We cry out to you. We stand in in the dry river

bed. God, We've got it all in place. We're ready, we're

waiting. We open our hearts to you today, and we say, Holy

Spirit, will you come, Holy Spirit? Will you move? Holy Spirit?

Will you do what you did before? The psalmist cries out God.

He says, Oh God, summon your power, O Lord, show us

your power as you did before. Come again, Lord in power and might

and majesty. Lord. You won't do it the same you always do a

new thing. And we're standing waiting, open, listening, ready. God,

will you come by your spirit and move afresh and anew that we might

experience your Holy Spirit afresh, so that this tired of chaotic, broken world

might be touched again as you visit us in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen,

Amen. So we're going to We're going to enjoy some worship. Let's

open our hearts to God. Let's be open to the prophetic word. Let's

be open to being stirred up. I believe this is a prophetic word.

I believe the whole preaching I've done today is a prophetic encouragement for us to

seek a fresh, new move of the Holy Spirit. We desperately need God

to come. We long to see miracles, long to see some of these

horrible cancers, broken tumors shriveling up, blind eyes opening, people whose lives

are broken by mental illness to be totally completely restored and healed. As we,

under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, go forward. Yeah, Amen,

God bless you.