Revival Occurs When the Church Offers the World Encounters with God

I, along with millions of others, have discovered that we experience a personal revival as we learn how to easily commune with God in our daily devotions. It is a restoration to the Garden of Eden experience as we walk and talk with Jesus in the cool of the day.

Learning how to hear God's voice, see Him, and record our dialogue with Him is the key to these personal spiritual revivals. A living encounter with Almighty God is what our souls hunger for. The response of just about everyone who learns to easily dialogue with God is to share these how-to keys with friends so they can experience the same. Thus the fire of revival spreads. We currently have students in 127 nations using these keys, experiencing revival and spreading it.

The heart of this revival...

This revival focuses on a restoration of all the spiritual encounters we find in the Bible. Spiritual encounters abound from Genesis to Revelation. Fifty-one percent of the Bible contains records related to spiritual encounters. It is time to provide practical training and opportunities for such things as hearing God’s voice, seeing visions, interpreting dreams, sensing the moving of the Holy Spirit, ministering healing (both physical and emotional), casting out demons, angelic encounters, and any other such experiences found in Scripture that I may have missed. This is the banquet table that God is offering. This is the kind of spiritual reality people are hungering for!

Young people may be turning away from religion, but they are going to Schools of Ministry where spiritual encounter is offered. Such schools include: Catch the Fire SOM, birthed by John Arnott, Randy Clark's School of Supernatural Ministry, Bill Johnson's Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, Shawn Bolz' Spiritual Growth Academy, Steve Schultz' ElijahForce, YWAM in Kona, founded by Loren Cunningham, among many others. I list these as I know them best having taught hearing God's voice at all of them (except Bethel SOSM). In addition, we have our own CLU School of the Spirit. 

There are many more that could be mentioned. The hunger is evident, and many schools are rising to meet this need and offer Spirit-infused training and experience which I would call "whole brain and heart" training. The biblical word "meditation" includes whole brain and heart learning, as opposed to limited, rational-only Christianity which is what I was exposed to in my childhood. Christianity is so much bigger than left-brain rationalism. From Genesis to Revelation the Bible demonstrates this to be true.

In the past month, I have had the honor of leading two lifelong Assembly of God church members into the gift of speaking in tongues. This shows the need we have to be able to train on how one has spiritual encounters. They hungered for this spiritual experience for years but had never been provided the clear instructions as to how to step into this miracle. It is good to believe that biblical spiritual experiences are available, but it is even better to know and teach how one enters into such experiences. "The Church owes the world an encounter with God" (Bill Johnson). People want this. God wants this. Christianity must offer this!

There are many ways to lead people into a living encounter with God. One way Bill Johnson does this is through Throne Room Worship. John Arnott accomplishes it through Soaking. We achieve it through Two-Way Journaling. Randy Clark offers Miracles and Words of Knowledge. YWAM produces it through Evangelism.

As we bring God's banquet table to the hungering souls of today, we will see revival sweep across our lands!

Action steps

• Get prepared to offer training on how one enters into spiritual encounters and couple this with opportunities to experience these various kinds of supernatural encounters that are recorded throughout Scripture. We can live the Bible! The upcoming generation WANTS to! Let's guide them as shepherds into this Promised Land.
• If it's simple, why do we need teaching on it? The teaching is about how to separate oneself from the false god of rationalism and be restored to childlikeness so we can enter in (Matt. 18:3).
• Click here for a blog which 1) Shows that the majority of the Bible was written by people who used these four keys to hearing God's voice, and also points you to 2) Training resources available to teach Hearing God’s Voice (and more) in churches, home groups and Zoom groups.
• Blog: Surveying 100 individuals from Catch the Fire Church who experienced "Soaking in God's Presence." It answers the question, "How did soaking benefit them spiritually?"

A bit of my history

Having taught four keys to hearing God's voice to 1400 students in 29 School of Ministry groups at Catch the Fire in Toronto, I have been able to tally up some interesting statistics about how God has designed these individuals. God makes each of us unique. One way of noting our differences is that we generally tend to fall into one of two camps: intuitive/visionary (right-brain) or analytical/reasoning (left-brain). In the charts below you find that the majority of my students were right-brain, especially when we look specifically at the younger generation. They were attracted like a magnet to the Catch the Fire SOM because they hungered for spiritual experiences and that is what the Catch the Fire church in Toronto was famous for. This church was the number one attraction in Toronto during the heyday of their revival. Talk about spiritual hunger being radically demonstrated by the numbers who flock to your city! How many churches do you know that are the number one attraction in their cities, and receive visitors from around the world?

Reflections on left and right hemisphere scores from 1400 students I surveyed in 29 schools I have taught

1. Everyone uses both hemispheres of their brains. They simply favor one hemisphere slightly more than the other. After 12 years of education in a Western school, the left hemisphere weights slightly more than the right hemisphere. When I poll people in an average church setting, I see half to two-thirds of the attendees raise their hands as preferring logic and reasoning over intuition and vision.   
2. Younger people are drawn to attend experiential spiritual encounter training and services, as there was more than double the number of right-brainers in the 21 SOM classes I taught at Catch the Fire (see charts below).
3. Older leaders (Leadership Schools) who are seeking to understand and pastor and cultivate right-brain faculties tend to be closely balanced when divided into left and right brain groupings, according to the charts below.
4. The validity of the test was checked as I asked about 4 students in each class, “Do you feel the score you received accurately describes your leanings, loves, and giftings?” This was asked of a total of approximately 100 students, and 100% of them answered "yes."

Left/Right-Brain Hemisphere Scores

The test I had them take as part of these 8-hour seminars can be freely downloaded and easily taken and scored by yourself. It is here: https://www.cwgministries.org/sites/default/files/files/left_brain_right_brain_test.pdf

School of Ministry at Catch the Fire Toronto (i.e. younger students. There are more than twice as many right-brain students as left-brain students): Left-Brain (4.9 or less) vs. Right-Brain (5.0 or more) 

       21 SOM          Left Brain   Right Brain

1. 2/1999                 13           37
2. 9/1999                 19           38
3. 3/2000                 9             38
4. 9/2000                 15           36
5. 3/2001                 10           35
6. 9/2001                 17           44
7. 3/2002                 20           28
8. 9/2002                 18           43
9. 3/2003                 10           43
10. 9/2003                 27           44
11. 3/2004                 16           43
12. 9/2004                 14           38
13. 3/2005                 16           29
14. 9/2005                 13           37
15. 9/2006                 12           36
16. 3/2007                 16           32
17. 9/2007                 15           49
18. 3/2008                 12           23
19. 9/2008                 23           44
20. 3/2009                 6             30
21. 9/2009                 7             17

      Totals                    308        764

Leadership Schools at Catch the Fire Toronto (i.e. older students. There are slightly more right-brain leaders): Left-Brain (4.9 or less) vs. Right-Brain (5.0 or more)

       8 Schools        Left Brain   Right Brain

1. 7/2000                   13           24
2. 7/2001                   25           34
3. 7/2002                   21           20
4. 1/2004                   17           27
5. 7/2004                   24           31
6. 2005                       28           29
7. 2007                       20           12
8. 2009                       6              9

       Totals                      154         186

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