by Dale Shumaker
4spirit@gmail.com
When Jesus came to earth the first time,
the religious community was caught unawares.
They had several preconceived ideas on how this would happen.
Today there is surfacing a new face of marketplace ministers who
do a job in the marketplace to build the Body of Christ,
networking as a community there...
no names, no fanfare, no organizations, no designated buildings...
just those who love the Lord and want to see His Spirit in men
and women where they are. This will foster a new looking church,
and many may be caught unaware of what is going on... again.
So what will this new church of this new wave of Spirit be like.
It may not be about just a marketplace thing. I sense a move of God coming that will hit areas we haven't really thought of before, or least expect it to.
I sense a strong home, gathering place movement coming or little groups who get together will start talking about God and things and the Spirit of God will be poured out on the group.
It may be a youth thing within a general youth activity like the softball team, the jamming band at Dad's coffee shop, the social network they form to talk about life things.
It will be a God thing so sovereign, that He will do it in a way that it gets to the people where they are, in what they do. It will take over many common venues of activity.
I do see a shift from going-to-meetings to God taking-over-meetings of all kinds that already exist.... in diverse segments of society.
It takes one to catch the fire of Spirit and that spreads to others and before you know it the whole group's on fire in Spirit. Groups will lack a specific identity, being led by Spirit than being a formally organized group. The assembling of each other in micro-social units of Spirit is more the gist of it. And there is a lot of variety in the where, with whom, how that happens.
Music, worship, prayer, prophetic sharing, healing will be key ingredients. They will be taught directly by the Spirit, as Jesus said. Groups of the Spirit, by the Spirit and in tune with the Spirit... sharing what is going on in Spirit in their lives. Spontaneity and creativity will be highly characteristic.
Regular sales people will become evangelists who penetrate homes and businesses, unsung professionals and laborers will become ministers seeping through the cracks and crevices of a community and into special groups. They will be the rivivalists... the most unlikely but called candidates of Spirit to ignite the fires. As the Apostle Paul said in Acts 20, their job is their ministry platform, while their income from it is for supporting their real job of God's ambassadors.
So prayer, quiet unnoticed prayer, will be the power center for the move of Spirit and the foundation to all that comes about. Those who sense this new wave of Spirit will enter prayer on their own initiative and they will respond to direct prompts of Spirit, and do it quietly on their own.
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