It’s fun to recount what God says to a group of people. If we listen, and press in, then the typical result is that God responds to our faith, and works on our behalf. It’s kind of like a surfer catching a wave. We can’t make waves, but we sure can get in the water and watch for them.
My story starts with me sitting in my office preparing for the upcoming service. I was searching for a certain text to read during communion when I read this:
Joh 5:20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. . .
I’ve been hearing rumors about a revival breaking out in Florida. That’s like hearing about the waves being really awesome somewhere. Some surfers will get in the car and drive a long ways to catch waves. Others just wish they could be there. Others wonder if they’re really as big as they’re hearing. Well, I’m not in Florida, but I know the guy making the waves, so I was put a call in to him about it, right there in the worship service. I said something along the lines of (respectfully, mind you), “Hey, you’re welcome to break out in revival right here. Anyway, I read how you liked to show Jesus what you are doing, so I’d really like to know what you’re doing right here. I mean, if you want to do something big, just let me know, and I’ll join in the best I can.”
Listening to God at that point, with our worship band playing, I started to see things. (Does this seem weird to you? These thoughts or images are not vastly different from normal thoughts or pictures that come to your mind. Anything from God has to be embraced by faith, doesn’t it? The way you can tell that it’s God and not just your own thoughts is if they seem to ‘break in’ or are like interruptions to what you may have already been thinking). The first image to come to my mind was something a little like this:
Obviously, it didn’t look just like this, but it was a localized, small cloud, but I watched it quickly become widespread, so that the cloud cover spread from horizon to horizon, producing a steady rain. It’s hard to find a picture that matches what I saw, because most have tornadoes, or lightning, or something like that so the picture has some excitement to it, but this was just good ol’ nourishing, steady, rain. As a former farmer from West Texas, it’s my favorite kind of rain.
So we paused in the service and asked God to send his rain on us. I asked for people to share what they heard or saw, and we got ‘healing hands holding us’ – ‘an ant bed with worker ants (NOT fire ants!) who were nourished by the rain and had no need to fear it’ – ‘the idea that we were to put away our umbrellas and be willing for it to get messy’.
Afterward, one person told me that they had seen an image of the rain during worship, before I prayed that prayer. Another told me that, conversely, they had seen a clear image of rays of nourishing sunshine. For what it’s worth, here were two scriptures we read today, unaware of how God would speak to us:
. . . For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:45) (demonstrating his nature to love)
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power . . . (Hebrews 1:3)
Catch a Wave 
