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.
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