Aligning with Revival Part 1
In a week where our focus is ‘community growth and alignment’ it is invaluable to recognise the roots and call of FreshFire. Our community was birthed out of encounters with revival. From the revival rivers of Brownville, Toronto and Lakeland, a hunger for the manifest presence of God was imparted and has shaped much of how this community has grown.
Stepping into 2021 and responding to the call to go deeper into the heart of Jesus, I am drawn once again to the foundational call of this house: To be a people of presence and see Jesus manifest His ever-increasing government through our lives. The potential of this call can turn families, cities, and nations upside down. As a community, we benefit from a DNA that longs for a river of revival to move in and through us.
Why is this important? Revival reveals who Jesus is beyond our current revelation and experience. The Father’s desire is for us to encounter the reviving rivers of Jesus’ presence that we would become saturated by His very person. The wetter we become, the greater He manifests in our lives. That is the primary purpose of revival.
Jeremiah 13:11 puts it like this: “I made the whole house of Israel and Judah cling to me that they may be for me a people, a name, a praise and a glory.”
The word “cling” in Hebrew means to “follow hard after”, “be joined together”, “to catch by pursuit”.
The fruit of clinging is becoming identifiable as His people, manifesting His name, praise, and glory.
Where does community growth and alignment begin? It is in following hard after Jesus that we would go into new territory of revelation and experience of who He is. Alignment only comes when Jesus’ presence is the only option for every area of our lives; both individually and corporately.
Alignment requires our hearts to be abandoned to Jesus; being entirely fuelled by a trust that sees nothing of value outside of who He is.
Jeremiah 17:8-8 continues: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit”.
The release of any expression of revival begins with the overwhelming heart’s desire to “cling”. This abandonment only happens when we trust the Lord! Jeremiah does not promote trust in the works of God (though not a bad thing), he says “whose trust is the Lord”.
He is the fullness of eternal life (John 17:3) and is the eternal, reviving river of life that flows through those who “cling” and “trust”.
Aligning to this call of the Spirit in this season is the bedrock for everything Jesus desires to manifest through our lives as a community. Only through this yielded heart of love for Him, will we see His name, praise and glory manifest in our house, city and nation as fruit that never ceases.
By Luke Baldwin