Responding to Revelation
We believe in a God who reveals. Revelation is God’s self-disclosure to us – he reveals himself to us so we may know him, love him and serve him.
When we think about ‘revelation’ we need to have in mind an image of a veil being drawn back to reveal hidden things – things we wouldn’t otherwise know unless God himself grants us a glimpse of them…. and he does.
In Luke’s gospel (Luke 10:17-24) in the narrative after the 72 return telling Jesus about all that has happened when they were sent out his response is firstly a correction for the disciples regarding what they were getting excited about (be more happy about your names written in heaven than in demons submitting to your authority). Secondly he prays publicly – and his prayer has to do with God’s revelation.
Jesus is described as being “full of joy through the Holy Spirit” – he is joyful that his disciples have had things revealed to them – I can’t see anything else in the passage that suggests another reason for his joy. His response suggests to me that we can cause Jesus joy by responding to revelation. He loves it when we discover things that have been hidden. There is a great joy in finding hidden things – it’s a great feeling when we discover something. I think he wants us to rediscover our childlike joy and sense of adventure in the revealing of things that are hidden from “the wise and learned” – God is big and there are some big things to discover. He wants us to have less focus on the possible and more on the impossible – what we can do isn’t where the adventure is, what we can’t do is – because this is the place where he reveals what is hidden.
We tend to make it more complex than it actually is: God wants to self-disclose to us. He truly loves to show us his way, guide us and help us. This is our God.
Furthermore Jesus says that revealing things to us is God’s “good pleasure” – other translations talk about it being God’s good will. God gets pleasure out of revealing things to us just as Jesus get’s joy from it. This is good, isn’t it?
Come one everyone! Let’s get excited about this.
Revelation is for everyone.
All we have to do is respond…… well not quite……. interpretation has to happen.
John Wimber had a simple mathematical formula he used to explain revelation:
A + I = R
Action plus Interpretation equals Revelation.
God’s revelation is more than just simply his actions – the reason that Jesus was able to do what he saw the Father doing – God’s action – was because he interpreted it correctly. We are not Jesus, however he is in us and for us and by the power of the Spirit will enable us to interpret the Father’s actions correctly. I know that the times when I have seen breakthroughs have been as a result of correctly interpreting what God is doing – for instance in starting Allsorts we began to detect God’s action in our hearts, amongst some friendships, we received confirmation through the Bible and some prophetic words – we found revelation that we could respond to. I am watching quite a lot of people doing the same thing at the moment – it’s exciting!
The revelation of God’s action should always be interpreted and there are three ways in which this happens:
through the prophets “The Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to the prophets” Amos 3:7 Be open to the prophets amongst us.
through Jesus – “anyone has seen me has seen the Father” John 14:9 Make sure we keep returning to and focusing on Jesus – he is the one we can learn from (Matt 11:28-9).
through the Bible – “All scripture is God-breathed…” 2 Tim 3:16-17 Lets ensure we are engaging with the Bible – let’s breathe what God has breathed upon.
In our daily lives, in our communities, we need to put this formula to work. Let’s respond to God’s action through the interpretation provided by the prophets, the Bible and the witness of Jesus himself. God is revealing – I want to encourage you all to be attentive to God’s revelatory activity. He’s at work. We believe in responding to kairos moments, examining and exploring what God is doing and making decisions on what to do about it. I’m already observing in the lives of Kairos people an increase in sensitivity to God’s revelation – keep going! Some big plans are going to be birthed in our hearts, God is going to increase our expectation of the impossible being possible but I believe that this can only come by revelation of the Father’s heart in our lives.