Time To Wake Up!
After several remarkable visions of God’s glory in 1996 I became fascinated with the verses and stories of the fulness of God through the pages of the Bible and in Church history. Stories of the times God seemed to leap from the hidden spiritual realms into the obvious, tangible realms where us humans more easily live.
In scripture the invisible God has turned up in clouds, fires, a bush, a thundering voice or even the voice box of an Ass! Throughout Church history this same Unseen One has appeared to millions of Muslims in dreams, revealed His Hand in countless verified miracles, raised the dead and even rested His glory upon entire nations; the UK newspapers reporting during the Welsh Revival that “Something from another world is at work in Wales!” They said you could feel God’s presence across the land like “Divine debris in the air!”
And as I have studied these times of past glory, I have a growing belief that God stepping from the invisible to the visible, from the unseen to the seen, is an integral and increasing part of His end-time purposes in the earth.
We know from scripture that God’s planned “end game” is that the “knowledge of the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea”(Habakkuk 2:14) – that God’s fulness would eventually be seen and known globally in some future era.
Interestingly, when Isaiah met the glory of Jesus, the worshipping beings used a slightly different phrase, crying out that “The whole earth is full of His glory”. (Isaiah 6:3) To these heavenly beings 2800 years ago, God’s glory was already circumnavigating and bathing our fragile planet, yet to the prophet Habakkuk, the knowledge of that glory was still a thing of future promise.
Well, which is it? Is it here now, or yet to come?
I wonder if God’s glory is with us all now, but hidden to us; resting, hovering, waiting for us in a realm we cannot see because of our dullness. Does the heavy-weight goodness of God surround us, but He is simply waiting for us to wake up to the knowledge of the potency and power of heaven just out of sight? I believe so.
Awakening to His Glory
In Luke’s account of the glorious transfiguration of Jesus, complete with dense engulfing clouds, audible voice and the appearing of long dead heroes, Luke says of the disciples sleeping nearby, “When they awoke they saw His glory” (Luke 9:32).
I find this fascinating! Is it possible to sleep in the presence of divine glory and never know it’s there? Is it possible to slumber through life, while great power, promise, authority and life changing encounters swirl invisibly around us, just out of sight from our drowsy, hooded human eyes? Even more important, is it possible to “wake up” and encounter the fulness of God?
I believe it is?! We may be asleep in the glory, ignorant of the fact that “God is in this place and I was unaware of it” (Genesis 28:16) but we can awake to a new day in God!
As Peter slumbered in his prison cell “An angel appeared and kicked him!” (Acts 12:7) Ha! I love that! Sometimes our journey to full liberation requires a divine and kindly kick up the backside!
May God provoke you today, towards a brighter future, fully awake, fully present, fully empowered by your loving Heavenly Father. If we awake, great days and great adventures await us!