For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard ~ Acts iv 20

I am reluctant to put a name on what we are seeing in Fintona (N. Ireland). Some of the terms bring up different things in our minds—from our experience or maybe, from what we have read about past moves of God. As I believe I mentioned in a previous post, we worship and seek after the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever, but who tends to be excitingly creative and innovative. Just when you think you have Him ‘sorted’ in your understanding of who He is, He goes and surprises you with something else!

We have looked at some of the phenomena in past moves of God—both in the Bible and in recent centuries.

If God is to move on a gathering of people or in a person’s life, what might that look like? For some people it can be rather dramatic. The boy who led me to Christ, when I was sixteen, had experienced a very strong emotional sense of God’s holiness and his utter sinfulness. He fell to the floor in a small room where others were talking generally about God a little, and he began crying out for God’s mercy with loud cries and tears while on his knees. For me, when he prayed with me, I “felt” nothing, but that night and the following morning I knew I was different: I “saw” a sunset for the first time in my life and was fascinated by it. That to me was surprising. Now I love sunsets. The next morning I woke up desperate to find a Bible and spent hours reading it over the next weeks. These two small things told me I was a new creation.

In the meetings in Fintona we are seeing the same thing. Some people have very deep encounters with God in absolute stillness and solemnity, while others fall down, crying out and have the most “noisy” physical or audible response to the hand of God, and they may be on the floor for minutes or hours. One young woman told me recently that she could not speak properly for four days! It was only at that time that she was able to explain what God had been doing inside her to her husband!

In a recent gathering when there was a church brunch, as the group began to worship, people started dropping all over the room, and they were laid out on the floor for so long by a rich sense of God’s presence and in the sweetness of worship that the speaker (who later fell down too!) said that the prepared message would not be delivered at that time as God was working without it being preached!

So what is bringing this about? I have been in a number of meetings in other places around the world where people have been prayed for with hands laid on in response to the preaching (usually), and, as a result, those receiving prayer ministry (usually afterwards) have manifested all sorts of responses from falling over to weeping quietly to nothing much outwardly to demons being cast out and more.

What has seriously amazed me actually about the meetings in Fintona is that people are engaging with God without being touched at all! We may be quietly worshipping or the Word may be being preached and someone or some people immediately experience the power of God coming upon them and they respond in different ways according to how He comes to them. A bit like what the Bible describes (in Acts 10) as what happened when Peter was preaching to (centurion) Cornelius and those gathered in his home. His sermon was interrupted by a move of God (outpouring of the Holy Spirit and people speaking in tongues).

I have never seen this before. When people ‘hit the deck’ the meeting, worship or preaching carries on and the person is overseen by the ones leading in the meeting. No one is touching anyone in almost every case!

Why is this happening? My answer can only be that it is the thing that draws my wife and I to attend as many of these meetings as we can! It is the often tangible presence of the LORD in the room. It is the rich “meat” that is coming out of the teaching from the Word of God. And it is the incredible family or company of people with a hungry passion for God that expectantly gathers each time, believing that God will do something again in our midst. Honestly, it has been a long time since I have seen that kind of hunger for the Word of God and the things of God in a whole company of people. Every time. Every meeting. Even in a “brunch”!

My observation is that we have believers of all ages, all backgrounds and even some different nations and colours, and from the youngest to the oldest there is this same deep yearning after God. People are tired of what they have experienced in life or just hungry for more and believe that this “more” is to be found as we gather before God and the depths are plumbed in His Word.

I believe that the move of God we are seeing and experiencing in Fintona is a result of this hunger after God for more, and He is graciously meeting each individual—often in very different ways, depending what He is revealing to them or bringing into their lives.

In the next post or two I want to talk some more about what happens (inwardly) when God moves, and also tell of a couple of experiences we have witnessed that deeply touched both my wife and me. In future posts we shall also discuss what this “new thing” is doing in the transformation of lives, families, marriages and other areas of life.