While watching the Federer/Nadal tennis match earlier this year, the commentators told a story about Steffi Graf, who won an extraordinary 22 grand slam tennis titles. Steffi’s coach would motivate her from time to time by reminding her, “Steffi, remember who you are.”
Those words stuck with me. In no part of my life am I similar in proficiency to Steffi Graf, so why would I hold on to these words? For me, it’s not who I am, but who WE are, as in members of the body of Christ, and especially what that looks like as members of the Vineyard.
You see, I recently attended a Vineyard conference in Atlanta, GA, and the main speaker was Gary Best. His goal was to remind us of who we are. In the Vineyard, we started out as a people who were experiencing lots of the Spirit’s power. He pointed out that even though many might recognize that those early days could be classified as ‘revival’, and lots of stuff happened rather easily, we still must keep pursuing God’s power as we work to extend his Kingdom. The stuff is still happening. God is still healing and delivering, and we should never give up, or move on to anything else.
I came home with fresh vision, faith, and passion. The following Sunday, we experienced a profound presence of God, several prophetic words (aka words of knowledge) were shared regarding God’s desire to heal, people were weeping and shaking, and I left church in a daze. I long for him to do more, to increase his moving, so we’re pressing in. (It should be noted that coinciding with these events, there has been an increase spiritual fervor in prayer at the Athens Vineyard over the past 6 weeks as well. I see no coincidences here.)
Let me be clear. If God moves, it is because he is desiring to move. We cannot conjur it up, make it happen, or back him into obligatory action. So the way we ‘remember who we are’ is by making space for him to move (faith) with anticipation (we assume he wants to do good, heal, deliver, and bring life and join him, which involves time, energy and focus, like catching waves, so this post partially explains the previous ). We don’t make things happen, but we watch and listen whenever we make space, and thereby determine what God is wanting to do. We can’t make him act, but we can see him and join him. On the other hand, we can keep our eyes closed and never see what he is doing. And, perhaps worse, we can quench the Spirit. IOW, we can’t make him move, but we CAN stifle what he is doing. That’s why we don’t see more of the ‘stuff’ than we do. What we can do is make the space, and learn to watch/listen. That’s when we discover just how much he is wanting to do.
C’mon, folks. Remember who you are!
Catch a Wave 
