Windstorm IV: Fresh Worship & Enlivened Effects - Windstorm: A Study In Revival

Well, for some of you that are a little bit older, you may have recognized some of those songs.

Those go back a ways.

Thank you, Philip, for doing something like that.

When I was um in the eighth grade, I believe it was around the eighth grade, dad moved to um Atlanta, Georgia.

We had been in Batesburg, Leesville on my grandfather's ranch and farm for two years, sixth and seventh grade, and eighth grade we went, and um, I didn't know the spiritual journey that my dad was on, but he was really open to the power and the work of the Holy Spirit in his life.

He had been through really, really successful ministries up to that point, but it always gotten super depressed.

He was always struggling with depression.

And I didn't know that he went and got another, I mean, I knew he was getting a graduate degree in clinical counseling at University of South Carolina, which would be like his third or fourth master's degree.

But I didn't know why he was doing it.

I just thought it was kind of just an interest of his.

And he wasn't going to be sharing it with me because it really was related to his own journey, his own struggle, his own uh hurt and pain.

He grew up without a dad.

His father was an alcoholic, divorced his mom when he was about six years old, so barely knew his dad.

And then his dad had come back into his life after he graduated from Duke.

He graduated from Duke, and then dad, uh Pops, we called him Pops, came into his life.

This is all in the 50s, this is before I was born.

Um, but he had the great majority of his life, from six to twenty two, he had had a stepdad in there who was a good man.

But he uh there's there's the effects of that, the impact of that.

Some of you, that's kind of your story.

So he struggled with depression his whole life, and then he had this experience with the Holy Spirit in the late 60s, and we'll hit on kind of this time period a little bit today, but it really changed his life.

He he uh there was a guy, by the way, it's none of this is in my notes, so it just kind of came to me when I heard the songs tonight.

Um, there was a priest, episcopal priest, named Sam Shoemaker.

Now, Sam Shoemaker was key in the early development of Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, and in his journey with AA, he had also had a baptism, as it were, a filling of the Holy Spirit, kind of an epi experience, like we talked about last night.

And so he began to travel some and speak some about what God had done in his life.

So dad was in seminary up in Philadelphia, and he went and saw Sam Shoemaker, and Sam prayed for him, and something happened.

Um, and so when he went to Atlanta in the 70s, now you've got to remember this is like 72, the Jesus movement began around 67 in Haight Ashbury in the Bay Area, had moved down into the Southern California area uh by about 68, 69.

And that's really where Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa, uh, and Chuck Smith really uh were mightily used of God to, in a sense, kind of corral and father a young man named Lonnie Frisbee, who was really key in what happened in Southern California in many ways.

Not totally, but part partially.

Um But then it started to move toward the East Coast, and what happened is communal houses and stuff like that began to spread.

And so it had come into the Atlanta area.

It was called the Charismatic Movement.

So there's a difference between Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement.

And the charismatic movement came out of mainline churches like Episcopal, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Baptist, who had been touched by the Holy Spirit, who didn't necessarily consider themselves Pentecostals, like Assembly of God or some of the Holiness Movement people, but they were more in that mainline denominational background.

And many of them didn't even leave, like in the case of uh Dennis Bennett and Sam Schumaker, they stayed in their denomination.

So Dad starts, dad never even thought of leaving the Lutheran church.

He just started a prayer group, okay?

And so when we sang I love you, Lord, I can remember going in one time in the in it wasn't in the sanctuary, it was actually kind of like they have over here.

It was sort of an auxiliary chapel, uh, a little bit smaller than that, but they were all in there and everybody had their hands raised, and I can hear people speaking in tongues and stuff.

And I've just, I mean, I wasn't even saved yet, you guys.

So I'm just a I'm just a high school kid, and I just go and I'm like, whoa, I mean, this is I remember there was this really, really good looking girl there.

It's the one thing I do remember.

Um, but that's the only, I mean, but I just like I was looking, I said, and then everybody's like, they're singing, but I can't understand anything they're saying, saying.

But it's it's in that same tone as I love you, Lord.

So there's they're keeping the same tune, but they're all singing in tongues.

And so I look at my mom, and she looks at me and she goes, honey, it's holy chaos.

And I just remembered that when I was coming up.

So uh that that was the beginnings of me understanding and actually appreciating that kind of praise and worship, which was not happening, and that's the only time I experienced it was whenever I went to those prayer meetings because dad didn't do that, anything like that in the services.

It was still organ, pipe organ.

The biggest pipe organ in Atlanta at that time was at his church, so it was massive.

That pipe organ was probably almost as high as from the floor here up to that cross, all the pipes.

It was unbelievable.

And so that there was no way in that church with my dad there, you weren't you weren't gonna use the pipe organ for every song.

So he had no options.

But um, so we're gonna talk a little bit about that tonight.

Um, we are in this journey, um windstorm journey of Acts 1 and 2.

Let me just go back real quickly over what we've covered.

First, we talked about in Acts 1.14 a burning desire leading to unity and prayer.

And then we looked at that when the Spirit comes, he comes with a divine disruption.

Acts 2.1.

Just like in the book of Acts, we see that in awakenings and revivals, that the Spirit shows up in ways that surprise us.

Thirdly, when the Holy Spirit comes, people get filled with the Spirit.

They get filled and then they get spilled by the Spirit.

And then there's this mission magnetism that occurs.

God draws people into this movement, this work of the Spirit.

And we're gonna talk about tomorrow night, we're gonna talk about the last few points, and I'm gonna make it a part of the road, the regular service, but we're gonna see what I would call just abundant blessings, where just countless lives are changed in a work of God.

So we're in Acts chapter 2, verse 11 tonight.

Acts 2:11

If you look at Acts 2, 11.

So the Spirit has come.

The 120 are experiencing this filling of the Spirit, they're speaking in other languages.

But I like this one phrase, and I've just chosen this for this first point.

We hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.

Now, that's really, really important the way Luke wrote that under the inspiration of Scripture, because my feeling in reading that again and again over the years is that's worship.

So here's my fifth point: fresh worship.

When the Spirit of God comes, there's fresh worship.

God does something at that time in that group with those people that's fresh.

It's fresh and it's new.

And it's not just that the worship we currently do is enlivened by the Spirit, but it's actually that there's something that happens in the hearts of the creative and the artistic and the musician and the minstrel, that they start writing songs, they start writing poetry, they start putting down on paper what's happening in their heart.

Always happens.

Every move of God, there's a new kind of worship.

We could point to all the different styles of worship today, and if we could trace it back, we'll find someone was touched mightily by the Spirit of God, and under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, they began to do a new thing.

They began to write a new thing.

It's almost like God gets tired of our worship.

And I don't mean that he doesn't love the hymns and he doesn't love the even Gregorian chants of a thousand years ago.

I think God loves it all.

I love it all.

I know that, I know God does.

But what I'm saying is that God seems to do fresh new things with different generations of young people that we need to always be open to, you guys.

We need to be aware that this is God's MO.

This is what he does.

And so and so they're speaking now of the wonderful works of God, and as they do so, I think it's a picture of the heart and the tongue.

There's a close association with the heart and the tongue.

When God touches your heart, he will touch your tongue.

He will.

And sometimes that's what we call glossalalia.

That's speaking in tongues.

For some of us, it is a new ability to love people with our tongue.

Where we were angry before, there's a gentleness.

Where we were bitter before, there's a forgiveness.

And God eventually gets a hold of your tongue.

When you think about the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control, those are all tongue, those are heart-tongue connectivity.

You can't have joy with something not coming forth from your tongue.

And so, and so there's always this connection, and there's even research today that seems to indicate that really, unless you say it, oftentimes you don't really believe it.

And so there's something about saying I love you.

There's something about worship that says to the Lord that I worship you.

And obviously, the direction of your heart is to worship the Lord.

You don't have to say that because there's worship in silence too.

But generally speaking, the way God wired us is to say it.

And when we say it, it lines up our heart.

And so there's this symbiotic relationship between our tongues and our heart.

Well, there's so many angles I could have gone tonight, but I want to I want to camp on, first of all, the Reformation period with Calvin and Luther, and then I'm gonna jump into a little bit of Wesley, but then I want to jump into the Jesus movement, which happened starting in 1967.

During the Reformation, worship changed dramatically.

How many of you come out of Catholic backgrounds?

Okay.

During the Reformation, out went Latin services.

All the services at that point in the Catholic Church were in Latin.

They were not in the vernacular of the people, so nobody understood what was going on unless you could speak Latin.

Altars and unleavened wafers, the cult of Mary and the saints, holy days and feast days and prayers for the dead, and belief in purgatory and crucifixes and elaborate ritual were out during the Reformation.

What came in was a simple service based on preaching, Bible study, prayer, and metrical psalms sung to common tunes.

The people were no longer passive spectators.

This is important.

This is what one author said.

The people were no longer passive spectators, but were actively encouraged to sing God's praise as part of their worship.

Church, there was no congregational worship.

There was no congregational singing up to this point.

So you had choirs, but the people just stood.

In many cases, they stood because they didn't have seats.

In the Orthodox Church, they still stand, you stand the whole service.

You stood or you sat and you and you listened to a choir sing.

So when the when Reformation came, it the choir became the people.

That's why at the road, we've toned down the music.

Some of you may have noticed this, some of you may not, but I'll just let you know so you'll now notice it.

And that is that we have we've worked hard back here on the sound team to not overpower you with too loud of a sound because we want to hear each other singing.

Because we want, we we I want a choir feel to our worship, and you're the choir.

I want a choir feel to our worship and you're the choir.

I want to feel like I'm joining in a heavenly choir where I can hear your voice.

And that's one of the ways we gauge our sound levels.

Martin Luther became known in particular for three things: the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, the belief that scripture should be translated into the people's language, and the birth of congregational singing.

He felt that music was of God, not of man, and he was determined to restore congregational singing in the German language to the church.

So strong were his beliefs about music and worship that he wrote these fiery words.

Listen to this.

Next to the word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

It controls our hearts, minds, and spirits.

A person who does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God does not deserve to be called a human being.

Now that's this is Martin Luther.

He's always doing stuff like this.

He's not done yet.

He should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.

That's vintage Martin Luther.

Okay.

He further remarks that the songs in this collection, and so I'm I'm pulling this from a preface of hymns that is in the Lutheran church, were to, quote, give the young who should at any rate be trained in music and other fine arts something to wean them away from love ballads and carnal songs and to teach them something of value in their place.

So he really believed that some of the songs that were being sung in the taverns, some of the songs that were carnal, that were love ballads, that probably had innuendas toward sexual things.

He felt like the only way to pull young people away from that kind of music was to produce better music in the church.

And so he was he was all about this more than really anyone had ever been since the time of Christ, this vision for worship.

Luther once wrote these words Music is an outstanding gift of God and next to theology.

That's pretty, I mean, one of the greatest, greatest theologians of all time says music is right next to theology.

I would not give up my slight knowledge of music for a great consideration.

And you should be taught this art, for it makes fine, skillful people.

And, you know, like in our family, we've made ever we've made everybody learn the piano.

So everybody's had to do at least a minimum of three years in the piano.

And our reasoning behind that is the left-right brain connectivity makes them better athletes, makes them better students.

Uh specifically, the piano is good for that, but the discipline of it and all of that.

He's saying a similar thing, and I would say I'd encourage you that if you have young people in your home and they're still young enough, I mean, don't lay it on them when they're 16 and they have no interest or they'll kill you.

But if they're young enough and if you're having kids, encourage you to encourage them in music.

The fluid, one author writes this about this time period.

The fluid boundary between the sacred, this is really important, you guys, because um it's different now.

It's different today, but at this time in the 15th and 16th century, this writer says, the fluid boundary between the sacred and secular spheres made popular music welcome in the Christian churches of Germany, either as part of the liturgy or in a paraliturgical religious activity.

Religious song was also at home in the non-sacred world, sung as devotion or as entertainment in the same homes and streets where secular peace is predominated.

What they're saying in the context of what she's what I'm quoting here is that really the sacred, the sacred and the secular, we'll just we'll call it that, we'll call it sacred and secular, wasn't a big divide at that time.

Because at that time the church predominated over so much.

So songs that you might hear that would not be considered church songs, those tunes could be easily incorporated into the sacred in the church because everybody on the secular side was aware of the sacred.

I mean, that the center of a town was the cathedral or was the church, and you came to that.

But it's different now because the secular is huge, there's a huge divide now, especially with the advent of rock music since the late 50s and where it's gone.

I mean, it's the church, the sacred, the secular, the rock and roll has been a huge divide between the two.

But at that time they were very similar.

Now, how many have you you may have even heard me say this?

That some of the tunes in the Reformation came from the bars or from bar room singing.

Who's heard?

Have you heard that before?

It's not true.

So I have spent the last three days researching this, and I think I've gone to every website and every book I can get my hands on.

It's not true.

As far as I can tell, Luther and others never took songs that were from like um the bars and stuff like that.

But it's really popular to say he did because it seems to feed into what happened with rock music in the 60s and Christian music.

Here's what happened.

Here's the truth.

You heard it first here.

Let me read to you what I wrote.

The truth is that the Wesleys and Luther never made such use of saloon songs, nor would they have condoned such use.

The misconception stems from confusion over a musical term bar form, B-A-R, bar form.

In German literature and music of the Middle Ages, bar was a poem consisting of three or more stanzas.

Each stanza was divided into two stolen or section A's and one obsang, that's in German, section Bs, which yielded a form of AAB.

The term bar form is commonly used today to refer to any poem or musical composition in this AAB form or any variation of bar form such as A A B A.

A number of Luther's hymns and tunes use this form, including A Mighty Fortress is Our God, other chorals, Praise the Lord the Almighty, and hymns, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

Come Christians join to sing when I survey the wondrous cross and rescue the perishing.

Also use bar form.

It is not difficult to understand how the musical term bar form also sometimes, listen, is referred to as bar tune, can become confused in an uninformed person's mind with bar room tune.

Drinking song.

It's not true.

Okay?

So just thought I would just throw that one out there for you because I just found that fascinating.

So at least at the road, we're going to be somewhat informed on this soon.

But during the prize of the Reformation, Martin Luther brought in new kinds of music, new kinds of tunes.

He wrote, his most famous is A Mighty Fortress is Our God, and he once said the devil should not be allowed to keep all the best tunes to himself.

So he did say that.

Charles Spurgeon, writing about the emergence of new music, said, in Luther's day, his translation of the Psalms and his chorals did more to make the Reformation popular than even his preaching.

For the plowman in the field and the housewife at the cradle would sing one of Luther's Psalms.

In Wycliffe's day, fresh psalms and hymns are scattered all over the land.

And so we could go on and on with that.

Speaking of John Calvin, Evelyn Underhill in her 1937 book on worship said this: God's unspeakable majesty and otherness and the nothingness and simplicity of man characterize Calvin's worship.

No ceremonial acts or gestures were permitted.

No hymns were sung, but those derived from a biblical source.

The bleak, stripped interior of the real Calvinist church is itself sacramental.

Great point.

Here's what she's saying.

She's saying that the kind of worship that John Calvin condoned, and this is more of the work in the southern part of Europe, which was different than Lutheran and Anglican, was that of a stripped-down form of church.

And so, whereas you'd go in a Catholic church before and and there's relics everywhere.

I mean, you might walk in and you might have this is the tooth of Saint Paul that we know this is his tooth.

And this is the hair of Mary Magdalene.

And over here is the bone of Peter right after he was crucified.

And you would come and you'd lay your hands on that and you'd pray for healing and stuff like that.

And then you would have a crucifix, massive crucifix, and you had stained glass windows.

And what you recognize when you go to Geneva or places like Geneva and spaces, especially in Switzerland today, is in a reformed church, there's nothing of that.

It's very bleak, it's very non-ornamental.

But what you'll see in the center of the, of whatever is that front part of the church is a podium.

And sometimes you'll see a massive, massive podium because the focus is not the saints, it's not angels, it's not ornamentals, it's not the crucifix, it's the preached word of God.

And so they believed, and it's still come down to us today, and I would say the road is impacted by this in our own ministry, is that we want songs that are from God's word, that are the use of God's word.

And so that started really with Calvin, Luther a little bit.

Luther was slightly different, but Calvin, and the difference between the Reformed and the Lutherans was that the Reformed believed if the Bible didn't expressly say it, then we would leave it out.

And in the Lutherans believed, if the Bible didn't expressly forbid it, then we could do it.

Isn't that interesting?

So kind of interesting way of looking at things.

So that's how their worship came about.

So at the time of the London Revival, this is now we're now in the 18th century, John and Charles Wesley wrote 9,000 hymns.

Can you imagine that?

Where would anybody have time to do that?

They wrote 9,000 hymns and psalms, including, and can it be, an O for a thousand tongues to sing.

During the Jesus Revolution, so if you're over 45, then you probably are familiar a little bit with the Jesus Revolution.

Maybe you were touched by it yourself.

Songwriters in groups like Barry Maguire, Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, All-Saved Freak Band, Servant, Petra, Resurrection Band, Phil Cagey, Dion DiMucci, Paul Stukey from Peter, Paul and Mary, Randy Stonehill, Randy Matthews, Andre Crouch, who died today, and the disciples, Nancy Honeytree, Keith Green, Larry Norman.

I mean, these guys came up, almost all of them coming out of drugs, almost all of them come out of hippie movement.

Many of them, like in the case of Keith Green, he was already signed with CBS.

So he was doing, he was a songwriter.

He and Mel, I think him first, and then Melody later were songwriters for CBS.

And then they would write the songs and then they'd be produced on CBS, and then he got saved.

And um, and then he was very close to uh Larry Norman and Bob Dylan.

And in one of his songs, in one of his albums, I'm thinking Bob Dylan's on one of his albums before he died in 1982.

But um Bob Dylan is interesting because he kind of tiptoed around the whole Jesus thing.

Um Keith Green, when he got saved, he got involved in the Vineyard as well as Chuck Girard.

Chuck Girard was involved in the Vineyard after first being involved in Calvary Chapel with his band.

Um and then Bob Dillon got saved through a guy named Ken Gullickson.

And Ken Gullickson came out of the Calvary Chapel movement in Costa Mesa.

And I knew Ken when I was at the Vineyard in Anaheim, he was the he was the overall coordinator of all the vineyard churches, and I went in to interview him for a paper at Fuller, and um I didn't have enough information at time to know to ask him, Well, you were the guy who led Bob Dylan to the Lord, you know.

But they he but he was the guy, he was one of the guys that was key in leading Bob Dylan to the Lord.

And then you remember he had about three albums.

I believe Bob Dylan had three albums.

He had saved Slow Train Coming.

Slow Train Coming was the first one, and then it was saved, and I believe there might have been one other one, I'm not sure.

But that's I mean, that's all the Jesus Revolution, you guys.

That was that was all this crazy stuff going on where the really the most, the most non-conformist, the most radical were the ones that were getting saved.

To the point, and I'll talk about this more tomorrow night, but in 1971, it was a cover of Time magazine.

And I believe in that cover it shows a guy just coming out of the water in uh Corona del Mar, which is where Calvary Chapel always did its baptism.

He's just coming out of the water.

You see the water going around.

I think it's Chuck Smith right there, and he's ah, like this.

And there was a guy, um, one of the one who became one of the well-known Calvary pastors, was was high in Hawaii, running around in the jungle naked.

And um, he was high on something, and then he saw that Time magazine thing and he went, I gotta go to California now, man.

I messed up.

And so then he went and then he got saved and everything.

And so um, so anyway, my point is worship music comes forth, the artists come forth, musicians come forth, men and women who've got creativity in these arts come forth.

We should always bless that, you guys.

We should bless our young people, we should encourage them in new music, we should encourage songwriting, and then we should get them up here like Anna the other night and just do it.

Even if it stinks, okay?

It's okay, you know, because it's going to from time to time.

And uh in the early, in early Calvary Chapel, early vineyard, you know, you had they took risks with people and they let them go for it.

And some of it was lousy.

Um, but then guys came out of that and women came out of that that touched the nations with their music.

So I want to encourage you, Anna.

I want to encourage you, Philip.

I want to encourage all of you in here that have sort of poetic or musical artistic abilities to go for it.

Start asking God to give you stuff, to speak to you, start writing it down.

And we'll screen you a little bit because we might put you in another classroom and you can practice there.

No promises.

But you know, that but that's how we grow in our gifts, you know, and I think this was this was characteristic of that.

But look at verse 12, because verse 12 kind of um talks about the effect that happens when God shows up this way.

So they were all amazed, perplexed, saying to one another, Whatever could this mean?

Others mockingly said, They're full of new wine.

Number six.

Number six, enlivened effects.

Enlivened effects.

With that first windstorm in Acts, there's going to be effects to the point in this case where they thought these guys are drunk with wine in the middle of the day.

So, whatever it is, there and whatever way in which they're acting when they come forth from being spirit-filled, it's weird.

It looks weird.

It looks strange.

And that happens every time the Spirit of God comes.

Now, it doesn't mean everybody's affected that way.

It just means some people are.

And I liken it to a Broncos football game.

You know, and if you watch a Broncos football game, or you're at a Broncos football game, or you're having a bunch of people over at your house at a Broncos football game, try it on Sunday.

Whether they've had a beer or not, when the touchdown comes, some just go nuts and they go flying and they throw popcorn and they're high-fiving, and others are dancing, and others are just really quiet and they're cool.

It's like, whatever.

You know?

Mostly the wives, like, man, I got I'm married a nut.

But it's okay, but you can't do that at church.

Now you can't do that at church, but you can do it at a football game.

Now, I'll just tell you, you're not gonna do that here.

Okay, I don't want people dancing in the aisles and throwing popcorn and screaming and high-fiving each other every time they hear a good message or something, okay?

I think we need some maturity to this.

But my point is this that we all respond differently to stimuli that excites us and enthuses us.

Okay, so before we kind of put it as nut cases over here, or somehow emotionally unstable people, just go to the next football game and observe a little bit and go, wow, I guess most people who follow the Broncos are emotionally unstable.

But we all react differently.

So I want to give you what I see.

How many do I have here?

Um four.

Four phenomena that seem to characterize moves of the spirit.

Number one, emotional phenomena.

Emotional phenomena.

I don't know of any revival where there's not emotional responses.

Some being touched in a very gentle way, others in very animated and excited ways.

This does not mean that either one is more valuable than the other.

It just means that in revivals there's an emotional impact.

During the Welsh Revival in 1904 and 1905, people would just weep under conviction of sin.

Whenever sin was called out by Evan Roberts or other preachers, people would begin to cry and some would even screech or cry out.

In the first Great Awakening, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, who read his sermon and was nearsighted.

So the pictures that has been that I've been taught to believe about Jonathan Edwards is he was like this.

He would get up, all you saw was the top of his head, and he would just read his sermons.

So this is not Charles Finney, this is not George Whitfield, this is not John and Charles Wesley, this is not an emotional speaker.

But people under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening would scream out, clutch the back of the pews and the stone pillars of the church so as not to fall into hell.

And he read his sermons.

And so when the Spirit of God comes, there's an emotional response, and sometimes it's it's like that.

Number two, physical phenomena.

So first emotional phenomena, second, physical phenomena.

In all moves of the spirit, there's some elements of physical responses that might be considered unusual.

Cain Ridge, Kentucky, 1801.

I talked about this a little last night.

Just, one writer says it this way just in the midst of our controversies on the subject of the powerful exercises among the people under preaching, a new exercise broke out among us called the jerks, which was overwhelming in its effect upon the bodies and minds of the people.

No matter whether they were saints or sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon and seized with a convulsing jerking all over, which they could not by any possibility avoid.

And the more they resisted, the more they jerked.

I mean, can you imagine?

This is like crazy.

People are like jerking everywhere.

If they would strive against it and pray in earnest not to jerk, the jerk would usually abate.

I've seen more than 500 persons jerking at one time in my large congregations.

Most usually persons taken with the jerks to obtain relief, as they said, would rise up and they would dance.

Some would run but could not get away.

Hilarious.

Some would resist on such jerks, were very generally severe.

So it sounds like if you resist it, it got worse.

So people are running around, just from that person's commentary, they're running around, they're trying to get away, and then they get the jerks as they're running away.

And some are dancing with the jerks.

So I thought that was, I mean, I've got a lot of examples, but I thought that was a pretty good one.

So when the Toronto blessing hit in Toronto in 1994, I'm at Anaheim, and really you could say that the epicenter of the Toronto thing was Toronto, but then the subsequent epicenter was Anaheim, and I was there when people were barking like dogs.

So we'd be having a service and people and people are barking and howling and stuff.

And I'm telling you guys, that is no way to build a church.

That is no way to build a church.

And so when I came here to plant the Mountain Springs at that time, it's like, we're not doing the barking thing.

We're not gonna do, we're not gonna do the laughter thing.

And then Rodney Howard Brown was going around and he was doing the laughter thing.

I don't know what to think of all that.

I'm just saying, though, that it's not unprecedented for these kind of things to happen.

In the revival of 1859 in Northern Ireland, they referred to it as being struck when people fell to the ground in a state of complete unconsciousness.

So people be in there and bam, they'd get struck and be out.

In the London revivals under Wesley and Whitfield, out in the fields, hardened, manly, tough coal miners would weep and fall to the ground.

They spoke of the streaks in their faces because they had all the they had all the coal on their face, and you see the streaks of the tears as they were struck by the Spirit of God.

I like this story.

This is a great one.

This is really a cool story.

There was a preacher in Wales who could hardly speak without stammering, stuttering, and coughing.

But during the Wales revival, he attended a pastor's gathering, a presbytery, and heard reports and testimonies from pastors of what God was doing and came back transformed.

He suddenly could preach and pray with eloquence.

One writer described it.

All the hesitation was gone, all the impediments had disappeared.

He spoke with freedom, with authority, and with a power such as they had never known in him before.

And I know a guy, I've got a friend who went to Toronto and he and he stammered.

He had a stuttering problem.

And he had a guy pray for him up front there and he never stammered again.

Never stuttered again.

He was just normal, eloquent speech after that, completely healed.

Thirdly, so first I would say emotional, second, physical, third, prophetic.

Prophetic phenomena.

The gift of prophecy seems to be poured out during these times where people hear things from God that they shouldn't know about other people, and you can speak that to them.

You know, I'm I'm reading a book on, which was the Christianity day book of the year, um, at home at night, came out in 2014, so it's really recent.

It's just, it's just really, really well done and well written.

But the number of prophetic leadings of the Spirit of God during the Jesus Revolution is amazing.

A lot of the guys, like Lonnie Frisbee and others that were up in the Bay Area, had dreams and visions from the Lord to go south and take the and take the movement down there, and they did that, and they set up houses, communal houses were really big at that time because they were led by the Lord.

So prophetic, prophetic guidance.

And then fourthly, healing, healing phenomena.

It's at such times that we see right here in Acts chapter 3, it almost appears to be the next day.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

We don't know that for sure, but in Acts chapter 3, it almost seems like the next day, Peter and John are going to the temple, and there's a beggar, and he let they lay hands on him and he gets healed.

Acts 3 · chapter mention

And so healing becomes a major part, especially deliverance healing.

People getting set free from demonic powers.

Well, it would be I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that alongside the effects of a windstorm on the participants, there's also the responses of the people looking in.

And we see that in verse 12.

So let's look at three responses that I think characterize moves of God.

The first is the amazed.

I would call them the amazed.

And these are those that accept the revival, they accept the windstorm, they accept the accept and receive and enter into this work of God.

And in the case in Acts, 3,000 got saved.

So, first of all, there's people who are amazed.

We'll call them the amazed.

And they're just amazed and they don't really question it.

They just want it.

They look at the impact, the effects, and the fruit of it, and they just want it, and so they go after it.

And if we see it in our day, if we see a genuine work of God, that's what I want us to be.

I want, I don't mean non-critically, but there's an amazement that by faith we'd be open to the Spirit of God and in your own life.

Because I believe revivals can happen in our lives on a regular basis our entire life.

You know, the prayers that were up here as people came for prayer last night, may God grant those prayers in your life and bring a personal reformation, a personal revival in your own life.

Secondly, we see that they were amazed and perplexed.

So the second group is the perplexed, the perplexed, and they're not sure.

They're standing back, they're unable to decide, and in many cases they remain double-minded.

For others, there's perplexion at first, and then they then they dive in.

Because not everybody can just jump into a new thing easily.

And so some of us are tend to be a little more reticent, and that's okay too.

But there's the perplexed.

But then there's the third group, which our passage says, mockingly said, they are full of new wine, and these are the mockers.

There will always be mockers.

Now I'm gonna say something, and I gotta be really careful here, because when I say it.

I I actually implicate groups that are still doing stuff today that are still in our midst, even in our city.

This has been shown to be true.

The greatest critics of a new revival are those who are a part of the last revival.

So a lot of times what happens is the people who saw a great revival almost have a mentality like theirs is the last revival.

This is the last one before Jesus comes back.

And so they become critical, they're the most critical, because they're seen sometimes as the experts on revival because they were the last revival, but they become the they become the mockers of the next revival.

So we have to be careful.

We have to remember that even though God's touched us, he can do other stuff.

The whole thing is not all about us.

And so there's churches today that were a part of the Jesus movement, and they're super critical of anything else that God does that doesn't fit into their church or into their group now.

Because he's not doing it the way he did it with them.

He's doing it differently.

So, guys, here's our struggle.

The struggle is when God touches you, you have to remain full of grace for God touching other people in different ways and other generations in a different way.

Maybe even music and stuff you don't even like.

Matter of fact, I would say if you like it, it's probably not a new move.

But if you don't like it, it's actually an indication it might be a new move of God because you don't like it because you're older now.

So, whatever's the next move of God, whether we call it the third great awakening or fourth great awakening, it's coming.

It is coming.

God will move again.

And these are principles that we learn from, but the way he's going to move will surprise us all if it's in our generation, if it's in our time.

Because God is empowering his church, and he's always empowering his church with a work of his spirit at that time.

Like we could say the Reformation was kind of a theological revival.

It could arguably be said that there was the sola scriptura of the theological revival of the Reformation, but the Jesus movement might be said it was a myssiological reformation.

In other words, the ways of that generation came into the church, which didn't happen in the first Reformation.

So the bell bottoms and the sandals and the long hair and the beards and the guitars and the drums and all that came up, which now characterizes much of our worship today, came into the church because people got saved as people in the church went out and reached them.

It's kind of a mysiological reformation.

I don't know what the next one's gonna be like.

But don't become a critic without using the book to evaluate it.

And it's always gonna be a little bit funky and a little bit crazy.

And I'd like to take the best and run with it.

Eat the meat, spit out the bones.

Eat the meat, spit out the bones.

There's always gonna be stuff that's flesh in it.

Don't become a uh too quick of a critic.

Martin Lloyd Jones writes, dislike of enthusiasm is to quench the spirit.

Those familiar with the history of the church, and in particular the history of revivals, will know this charge of enthusiasm is one always brought against people most active in a period of revival.

Author Wallace writes, God began to work, then the devil began to work in opposition, then God began to work all the harder, and then man began to work, and the revival came to an end.

So we wanna flow with the Spirit, not tell the Spirit what he's supposed to do.

So sometimes we're uncomfortable with aspects of it.

So that's a little warning to all of us as we look at some of these aspects of revival.

I've got more here about brainwashing, mass hysteria, and satanic work.

Here's what I would say: some call it brainwashing, some call it mass hysteria, and some call it satanic work.

They did in 1994, they did in 1969, they did in 1961, they did in 1906, they did in 1904, they did in 1859, they did in 1736, just the way it is.

How do you judge it?

How do you know?

Jonathan Edwards, in his writings dealing with the first great awakening, made several great points.

But one of the main things he said is you always judge it by fruit, but you can't know the fruit initially.

So you gotta wait.

You gotta wait it out.

So that's how you know the fruit.

So sometimes in the initiatory stages it looks really wild and really crazy, but over time you see God's fruit in that.

And tomorrow night we'll talk about what that fruit is the kind of fruit that indicates a move, a move, and a work of God.

So tonight we're gonna do worship.

You, Philip and Anna, if you guys want to come up and John.

And then we're also gonna take communion.

So what a perfect night for these aspects, these sacraments of worship, both communion and singing praise to the Lord.

Let me say this about communion.

Is that if you're a believer, you might even be a new believer and giving your heart to Christ, you're welcome at the table.

If you're not sure if you're a Christian, we'd ask you to refrain.

Part of communion is exactly where we get the term cononia, communion.

It relates to our relationship with each other.

We take it together.

So at any point during our worship, encourage you to come up with more than just yourself.

If you could come with others.

If you've come tonight, you're by yourself, we would encourage you to go up and say, Can I join you guys in worship?

Just come up and say that and join them.

Or if you see someone who's seated alone, maybe your family would go up and say, Hey, would you come do communion with us?

And then take communion and take the elements and then go somewhere and you guys pray together and take the bread first and then the juice after that.

So, Father, we we give you this time.

We give you this time of communion, worship.

This is your church, we are your people.

Come, Holy Spirit.

Come, Holy Spirit, and have your way in our lives.

God, have your way in our hearts.

God, we see sin in our lives.

We give you that tonight.

We give you our sin.

We give you our rebellion.

God, take it, cover it with the blood of the Lamb.

Cover it, Lord.

We don't stand on our own merits tonight.

We stand on the merits of your Son Jesus Christ and what he did, who came and lived a sinless and perfect life, went to the cross, became the substitutionary atonement, the substitutionary lamb, sacrifice on the altar, blood shed.

That when we by faith trust you, all our sins are released into the body of Christ, and we are washed whiter than snow.

We are forgiven fully, and we have been given a new heart.

We don't have that old hardened heart.

We have a new heart.

The heart that comes from the heart of Jesus into us.

We've been given a new heart, heart of flesh, a heart that's soft, a heart that can be gentle, a heart that can be full of love and patience, a heart that can forgive.

We have a new heart.

So, God, we invite you into our communion tonight to worship you and thanksgiving for who you are and for coming and living in our lives, and that we can personally and intimately know you, the creator of the universe.