Winter 2009
The Revelations of Christ
Through the Movings of the Holy Spirit
Jacob Danner
(Edited and expanded)

We know little about the supernatural and have hardly begun to understand the great depths of God. Just when we feel we have them figured out, we realize we did not really perceive what He was doing. The Lord often desires to move, but seldom do we recognize or perceive this as we should. Some try to control, help, stop, or capitalize on the movings of the Spirit. This grieves the Holy Spirit, and He moves then on to another place and people. We must learn to take our hands off the moving of the Holy Spirit in our midst and learn to flow with Him. He is seeking those who are willing to become a vehicle for a further expression of this realm of the supernatural by which He reveals Himself to His people.

God’s moving among men is sovereign; that is it is not man ordered, man created, nor is it sustained by men.  His precious broodings, His glorious times of refreshing, His wondrous signs and works, His intimate manifestations of His presence, and His voice that speaks yet unto His people in this day all belong wholly unto Him which He divvies out unto His people as He wills. For Thine not mine is The Kingdom. For Thine not mine is The Power. For Thine not mine is The Glory. Forever, and ever amen.

The Lord has been trying to get our attention for so long. He is very patient and gracious. Psalm 106:7 expresses this very thought. “Our fathers understood not Thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of Thy mercies; but provoked Him at the sea, even at the Red sea.” Verse 12 tells us, “then believed they His words, they sang His praise. But they soon forgot His works; they waited not for His counsel.”

The chapter goes on to describe their murmuring, lusting, and how they tempted God. He had done so many signs and wonders before them, yet they failed to acknowledge God in all this. Many believers in this day also fail to acknowledge God in all that He has so done in their lives. How He called unto them, how he healed and delivered them, how he wrought special miracles and answered their prayers and their hearts desires that they so sought Him for and that once their bellies were full and their needs were met – they cease from their seeking, they cease from their prayers or any semblance of devotion fully demonstrating that these Christians care for themselves and seek only God for what they can get out of Him rather than having any true love and devotion for the Lord, in seeking Him for Himself.

The Children of Israel did not understand that He brought them out of Egypt in order to bring them into a relationship with Him. And neither do most Christians realize that Jesus Christ and the Father seek exactly this in those whom they have offered redemption to.  They did not wait for His counsel; the further unveiling of His plan, or the revelation of his purposes in their deliverance. Many believers in this day also fail to wait upon God so as to receive His council and revelation but rather put their trust in the doctrines and traditions of men to lead and guide them. They were not content to exercise a patient dependence upon God, Eating the manna that He so graciously provided, drinking of the water from the rock. These would not allow God to fulfill His own purposes for His chosen people that He had bought and redeemed from Egypt in His own way. But rather they continually disputed against His words and commandments and they continued in their own ways, rather than submit to His rulership. This is the exact problem in among Bible believing and Spirit-filled as a whole. Believers can not and will not bow the knee to Jesus Christ, to make Him Lord Master over their hearts, soul, mind, and bodies. “Hear O Israel thou shalt love the Lord . . .” But instead to make Jesus Christ Lord and Master over them in name only, and live instead under their own rule, and under the provision of their own hand. In truth when faced at the foot of the mount when God audibly spoke unto the children of Israel they declared that they did not want to know the Lord as Moses knew Him, they rejected any personal seeking or hearing from God for themselves and moved far away from Moses and the mount seeking only to know God from a distance. The children of Israel in rejecting to seek God and to develop a personal relationship and walk with Him, were rejecting God Himself in perhaps an even more pointed way, than when in the days of Samuel they rejected God as their king and cried out for Saul to rule over them.

Psalm 103:7 “He made known His ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel.”

Moses had something different in His life than the children of Israel. Moses had a deep abiding personal relationship with the Lord. So that he not only saw the mighty acts of God along with all of Israel, but he understood God’s heart and mind in their purpose and objective.  What set Moses apart from the children of Israel was that through this deep and abiding personal relationship with God Moses came to the place that he saw into the very heart of God.

The Lord chose Israel for Himself to be a holy people, a special people, but they missed His call. He is still moving today in our midst and the portion He set aside for the children of Israel is available to us today through our Lord Jesus Christ. As a whole, we are still missing His call despite the fact that many have seen God’s mighty acts in great revivals. Despite the fact that thousands have been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit; little depth has been produced in the lives of the many that have been involved in these things.

The problem stems from a lack of personal relationship with the Lord, the lack of a continual and progressive relationship. In these revivals, people saw all the signs and manifestation of outward things and wrongly interpreted them to be the beginnings of what God was seeking to build upon. So that the flocks raised in these revivals were then channeled into the old folds of the old traditions that they were accustomed to, and the things that God spoke and His calling unto a people to come unto Him were reinterpreted and turned inside out so as to anoint and bless the old wineskins and declare their corrupt doctrines and traditions as being the pathway to life.  So in reality what has been done is instead of letting God do a new thing, they boxed Him in and the revival eventually died out and the new wine became so indoctrinated and so encumbered by men they lost all their spiritual effervescence and died on the vine. We are so accustomed to set ways of worship, set ways of ministry, set ways of evangelizing, set ways of expression, etc., that when the Lord begins to move, we don’t wait to see what His purpose is. We use the Spirit, and the momentum of the Spirit, to further our own means and our own methods when the Lord is trying to establish something different than we have ever known. This is how we have so limited God, and we have done so at our own experience.

His effectiveness in our lives has been greatly lessened because we continually look to our own methods and forms to accomplish the purpose of God in our lives and the lives of others. The Lord wants to do a new thing today and we are seeking to limit Him and to do things our way and in our own strength. We grieve His Spirit because our concepts continually reject Him and will not allow Him the liberty to express Himself. If we were to express the real reason behind all of this it would be that all of this is a control issue. The flesh wrestling against the Spirit for control so as to usurp the Spirit’s rightful place “Now the Spirit is Lord” and the Spirit of God striving against men and their flesh so as to cry out against sin, to declare the righteousness of God, and to declare the coming judgment. The Spirit of God is far more articulate, creative and expressive to preach the kingdom, and the things of God than we could ever be, but the flesh of man ever refuses to yield. We failed to recognize that the “it” we so often call the moving of the Spirit is “He”! That the presence of the Lord, the anointing is “Him,” it is the very person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is Jesus in our midst. He is revival. He is our praise. He is our glory.

Hosea 6:3 “He shall come to us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth.”

The emphasis is on Him coming to us and not on the rain. He is behind all the signs and wonders. Through all the manifestations, God has sought to reveal His Son to us, but we have not come to know Him as we should. We have not been sensitive to His person.

In these days, the Lord is interested in our relationship to Him, in our knowing Him. He sees us as His finished product. His desire is that we might be like Him.

Deuteronomy 29:29 “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever,”

Proverbs 25:2, “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.”

There is much we will not understand about the Lord until we stand before Him. But there is a knowledge of God that has been hid in Christ and not made known in other generations, but this knowledge is presently being revealed by His Spirit to all that will hear. If we would know the movings of the Spirit, we must first know Him.

Thank the Lord for His mercy. His faithfulness is above our shortcomings. He shall do all He has promised. His purposes shall be fulfilled, and He will conform a people into His image. There will be a people that know Him, walk with Him, and partake of Him experientially. They shall recover the earth and restore God’s authority among men. His kingdom shall be established in the earth. This people the Lord has formed for Himself, and they shall show forth His praise. Today, we are to come to know Him better and learn to move in His present purpose and will.