CATCH THE WAVE

CATCH THE WAVE

John 1:16 ¶ And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.

It was early summer of 1994 when I received this prophetic phone call from Dick Mills. Now receiving a phone call from Brother Mills was not that unusual, he would often call me and talk about his latest treasures he had discovered. His treasures were old books that he would come across in his travels. It would be a set of Bishop Ellicott’s commentary he found somewhere in England or the discovery of a reprint of John Trappe’s commentary. He loved those books but that is not what this conversation was about. He was asking me what I thought the next move of God would look like. At the time I didn’t really understand the question (I thought I did). To me, it was irrelevant. I didn’t really know what a move of God would look like. Brother Mills was seeing through different eyes. He had been a teen at Sister Aimee Semple MacPhaerson’s church, he had witnessed much of the healing revival, and he had been a key player in the charismatic revival of the sixties and seventies. He had tasted the different streams and had an anticipation that something great was about to hit again. Thus the question, “What do you think the next move of the Spirit will look like?”
Several months passed until I heard from Dick again. This time he called me with the excitement of a teenager in his voice (in 1994 Brother Mills was in his seventies). He was calling from Toronto and wanted to know if I had heard of the Toronto blessing. Suddenly I remembered our last phone conversation and I finally understood his question. “What will the next move of God look like?” You see by this time our church had been swept into a fresh move of the Holy Spirit. We were experiencing waves of supernatural joy, people falling under the power and going into trance like states for hours, healings, deliverances, salvations; God had come down in a very unusual way. The most outstanding and common trait of this move of the Spirit was the joy, the kind of joy that was accompanied by laughter. You know the kind, that deep belly laughter that goes all throughout your being. Peter called it joy unspeakable. Now the question was making sense, before now I had no way of knowing what a new revival would look like. Sometimes our preconceived ideas just get in the way.
Looking back on these events, I want to learn again from Brother Mills example. Too many older Christians get stuck on the proverbial good old days, I don’t want to be like that. Brother Mills had tasted of the afterglow of Azusa as a child in Sister Aimee’s meetings, he had tasted the power of the healing revival, he had been involved in the charismatic renewal; he still wasn’t satisfied. There had to be one more wave. That’s where I am today; Lord, just one more wave. Are you ready for a new move of the Spirit. If so, let me ask you a question. What do you think the next move of God will look like?