Whether we refer to a need for “revival” or an “awakening” or a “move of God” today, rather than looking back historically at what has been done in past moves of God, and seeking to see Him do the same thing in the same way, we need to trust that He who is the same yesterday, today and forever can do a new thing.

However, before we look more at our story, I promised a look at examples of biblical phenomena as God encounters men and women.

Why don’t we start with the bedrock of our faith and the central Person of history: the time of Jesus’ resurrection. Scripture says that when the angels rolled the stone away from the Garden Tomb, the guards “fell like dead men”. We would understand this to mean that by all appearances they looked like they were dead. Sounds like a power encounter to me!

At the time of Jesus’ arrest there is that odd passage where, when Jesus declared His identity (“I am He”), a mob with clubs and fully armed soldiers moved backwards and fell down! This happened twice! So they got up, asked who was Jesus again, and, again, fell backwards and over when He told them who He was. Hmm!

Then there were the disciples with Jesus on Transfiguration Mount—Peter, James and John. After seeing Jesus transfigured and Elijah and Moses appearing, a bright cloud overshadowed them and a Voice spoke from the cloud declaring who Jesus was. The disciples were scared out of their minds and hit the deck in fear.

The same was true of Saul (Paul) at his conversion. He hears a voice, sees a bright light, falls off his horse and is blinded by the encounter with Jesus, the Risen LORD whom he was persecuting!

Space does not permit me to give all the other incidents of people encountering God and angels, but think of John (in Revelation) falling before the vision of Jesus, the people of Israel when Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments and the mountain was quaking, smoking and on fire! Then there was Joshua before the “Captain of the LORD’s host”—face down again!

Other unusual works of God. How about a donkey talking to a stubborn prophet with the Angel of the LORD with drawn sword standing in the way? Prophets smiting a river and it parting for them to cross over. Remember that these and many other Old Testament phenomena occurred for men who did not yet have the Holy Spirit as He has come upon those of us now in the New Covenant. .

Do you think that an encounter with God today would be any less dramatic? Or noisy, like those demons screaming when they faced Jesus in the synagogues?

When I was recently saved, the man who taught me a lot in my first year told the story of when he was a child and taken to the big city (Belfast) by his father for the first time. As a boy he remembers being paralysed with fear when he saw this massive noisy object lumbering towards him because he did not know what a tram was. He had never seen one nor did he understand it. But when his father took his hand and he got on board, that object of his fear took him places and he learned about it things he did not know. His source of fear became a form of transport to make his life easier and his journey faster. It could be trusted and was not to be feared despite its size and power.

When God moves today in people’s lives around us will it be scary sometimes, even unnerving?

Next up I will begin the story of these recent months …