T'WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE...

T’was the night before Pentecost and all through God’s House
All the people were praying, they were all crying out.
Expectancy hung in the heavenly air,
With assurance God’s Power soon would be there.

Have you ever asked yourself what the saints were thinking the night before Pentecost? They had just been through a major roller coaster ride with Jesus betrayed, beaten crucified and buried. Then on the third day rumors began to circulate that he was ALIVE. He then appeared over forty days to hundreds of people and then He ascended to heaven after telling them to wait in Jerusalem for Power.

They had no timeline and no specifics of how this would look. As far as they knew they could be waiting in Jerusalem for 10 days or 10 months. All they had was a PROMISE and that promise was enough.

Yet, I sometimes wonder, what would have happened if they had stopped praying on the night before Pentecost?

Golden Gate Outpouring began over fourteen weeks ago with a PROMISE. God spoke to me that if we would dedicate ourselves to seeking His Face and hosting His presence, that He would pour out His Spirit in our city and our region and give birth to a Revival Movement that would impact the nations. Throughout this time of waiting we have experienced a greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit than I have seen in over thirty years of ministry in San Francisco. We have been joined by over a thousand different people and hundreds have experienced a sense of personal revival. We have witnessed scores of healings and deliverances. We have had many people give their lives to Jesus in our meetings and on the streets.

We are so grateful for all these wonderful blessings, yet the full promise remains unfulfilled. So we continue to wait in San Francisco for power and the FULLfillment of God’s promise to us. We encourage you to continue to stand with us for this outcome.

Consider making a commitment to come ONE NIGHT A WEEK for the next few months. We could use more participation on Thursday and Saturday nights. Let’s go for it!

THE FAST OF AGREEMENT

Fasting is perhaps one of the most misunderstood practices of our faith. The primary reason for this misunderstanding is rooted in the many ways in which we misunderstand God.

Many see fasting as:

• Our pathetic appeasement of a frustrated and angry God
• Our aggressive arm-twisting of a reluctant and unwilling God
• Our amplified demands to a remote and unresponsive God

Whereas, in reality, true fasting is our humble and sacrificial agreement with a good and loving God who faithfully fulfills His promises and desires His Kingdom to prevail on earth more than we ever possibly could. God is looking for partners with whom he can collaborate, sons and daughters who have taken ownership of the family business and are willing to put father’s purposes above all things. The foundation of this kind of relationship is AGREEMENT.

When Jesus was baptized by John, the Heavens were opened and Father affirmed His love for Jesus and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him like a dove. Immediately, Jesus was led into the wilderness for 40 days, to fast, pray and be tested by the wicked one. This was a testing of agreement. Would Jesus budge at all in His absolute agreement with the Father? Would he ever so slightly compromise the Word of God? Would he yield to the seduction of the enemy and drift from full agreement?

Fortunately for us, in spite of the enemy’s best efforts, Jesus passed the test with flying colors and the frustrated enemy departed from Him. It was in this agreement that Jesus launched His ministry to bring all things back into agreement with the Father.

When we engage a season of CONTENDING PRAYER AND FASTING, we are not contending AGAINST God. Rather we are contending with God against the forces of complacency, compromise and evil that exist within us and within the world around us. We are standing in prayerful and sacrificial agreement with a loving and willing God and in partnership with the perfect prayer, “Let Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I invite you to join with tens of thousands of believers around the globe who will be dedicating the next forty days to fasting and prayer. Some will be fasting completely from food. Others will be doing a partial fast or fasting other pleasures of life. As we fast, let’s AGREE with God for Revival in the Church, Righteousness in our Land and a Great Awakening throughout the World.

PUZZLES AND PIECES: CELEBRATING KINGDOM DIVERSITY

One of my favorite holiday pastimes is doing jigsaw puzzles with my family. Every year, we average a half-dozen 1000 piece puzzles depicting everything from nature scenes to fantasy illustrations. Very few things are as rewarding to us than to fit the last few pieces into their places and see the full picture.

This reminds me of our journey over these last 12 weeks of outpouring. For over 80 nights now, we’ve been laying down different kinds of pieces into a massive puzzle. Some of these pieces have been put in place by everyone who’s been a part of GGO as the Holy Spirit leads us. Other pieces have been brought in by guest ministries from around the Body of Christ.

It’s a lot like a jigsaw puzzle. No one piece shows the whole picture. In fact, some pieces don’t look like they belong in the puzzle at all. Some seem to be the wrong shape or the wrong color, while others seem so fuzzy, you’d think they belonged in a different picture entirely. It’s only after they’re all fit together that you can see the unique contribution they made to the overall piece.

Some people have asked me why we’ve invited such a wide variety of guests from around the Body. We’ve had intercessors come such as Lou Engle and Cindy Jacobs, theologians like Jim Garlow, evangelistic strategists like Ed Silvoso and Chris Overstreet from Bethel Church. We’ve also enjoyed a wide range of prophetic ministers like Georgian Banov, Jill Austin and the Firestorm Teams. In fact, we’ve been blessed by over a dozen leaders with different backgrounds and emphases as they’ve joined us for the Golden Gate Outpouring. I don’t necessarily agree 100% with their theologies or methodologies, but I do agree fully with the Jesus they’re seeking to serve. More than this, I believe that each one of them has a piece of the GGO puzzle and when the final pieces are laid, the picture of Jesus will be complete.

As a holiday puzzle-doer, I would be remiss to allow my initial impression of any one piece to cause me to reject it entirely. In the same way, I encourage everyone involved with GGO to celebrate the diversity of the Kingdom of God. If you aren’t sure about the ideas or practices of any one minister, don’t let it bug you too much. Eat the meat and spit out the bones. Embrace each piece of the puzzle, even if you’re not quite sure how it fits. God has promised us that He’s building a Revival Movement that will shake our region and bless the nations. Let’s continue to work together until each piece has found its place in the puzzle so the picture of Jesus can be fully revealed in the Bay Area.

WHY WE FIGHT

Many of you have heard of a television series called the “Band Of Brothers”, about courageous men of the 101st Airborne Division who has experienced tremendous victories and extreme challenges while fighting the Nazi forces during World War II. In one of the later episodes entitled, “Why We Fight”, a group of soldiers on patrol discovered the first Nazi Concentration Camp ever viewed by the Allied Forces. The Nazi’s had retreated and left hundreds of prisoners caged without food and supplies. The US Army was horrified by the death and devastation of this camp. It was this revelation of the evil of the enemy and the suffering of the captives that they remembered why they were fighting.

In the same sense, after 73 days of pressing into revival in the San Francisco Bay Area, it could be easy for us lose perspective and forget why we are doing this. Yet all it takes is Kingdom eyes to see beyond the façade of our city to remember why we fight. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are wasting away in this spiritual concentration camp called San Francisco. The liberation has begun and the enemy forces are in retreat, but unless we come and break the chains and bring the bread of life, these captives will perish without hope.

This last Saturday, three members of our outreach team received three specific pictures of a woman in the nearby Safeway, in a purple shirt with dark hair. When they went to the back isle of the store, they found her just as the Lord had directed. After sharing the gospel with her, she received the Lord and told them that she had prayed that very morning for a breakthrough or she would be forced to take her own life. The next day, she joined us at church and was touched deeply by the Holy Spirit.

We are so grateful for all the healings, deliverances and salvations that we have been enjoying throughout the Golden Gate Outpouring. But we know there’s more. As long as one captive remains bound by sin; as long as one person remains ill, as long as one person is tormented and oppressed, we must fight. Jesus is the great liberator and we are his liberation army, anointed by God to set the captives free. Let’s continue to seek Him for the sake of those who are still bound.