Just over ten years later, people started banging on about a revival in Lakeland, Florida. (1) After having visited “revivals” twice now, I had absolutely no intention of getting back onto that bandwagon, so I closed my eyes and ears and ignored everyone who talked about it. I really cannot tell you how much I did not want to go, but then I had a dream about it. I have had maybe one or two “prophetic” dreams in my life, but this was one of them, so I felt as though I had no choice in the matter.
Fortunately, Jesus loves me, and there was a water-ski school 20 minutes away that we had stayed at a couple of years earlier. Not only that, but it was by far the cheapest place to stay, so what could I do? I had an amazing time each day, doing a bit of skiing, then walking around the lakes praying and listening to God. Then I when to the meetings, which I have to say, I could not cope with at all. Apart from the style, content, theology and hype, they were fine. At one point I went forward for ministry and the guy made several determined attempts to push me over, and then gave up. At another meeting, I just lay down and pretended it was the Holy Spirit that had put me there, just to avoid being pushed.
I remember sitting on the plane on the way home with three Brits in the row behind me, who had all developed the “Lakeland Holy Spirit tick”, which involved randomly spinning their heads back and forth, at inopportune moments, and thinking that I had really missed something. I felt terribly guilty about wasting a week.
I was reading Shane Claiborne’s excellent book, “Jesus for President” on the way home. He was talking about the parable of the mustard seed. Mustard is a weed and it was illegal to plant in your garden because it was so invasive. It would grow around everything and kill other plants and even pull down walls. You can imagine how offensive it was to hear that the Kingdom of God is like an invasive weed, that slowly crawls across the garden and takes over everything, eventually providing a home for the “fowl” of the air. The word used there is for the unclean birds. As he pointed out, they would have wanted to hear that the kingdom is like a cedar of Lebanon that grows and provides a home for the majestic eagle.
He finished off by saying how people think that the kingdom is like a firework display, but actually it is a slow, unobtrusive, persistent weed that gradually changes everything. At that moment, I turned to my fellow brits and admired their “Lakeland Revival” T-shirts, which were dominated by a picture of exploding fireworks.
When I was in Lakeland, I felt as though God told me that I needed to pray for 100 people, and then we could talk about healing. Upon my return, feeling deflated and disappointed, I began to reluctantly do this. Person no.1 worked in our office and she let slip that she was deaf in one ear; having a dug myself a hole I realised that I had to pray for her. After praying, I was about to go back to my desk and pretend that it had never happened when she started saying how something was different. “Has the photocopier always made that noise?” she asked. Unbelievably, her hearing was restored.
Over the next weeks I did, indeed, pray for 100 people, and 29 of them were healed. This included, among other things, two broken bones and a boy healed of dyslexia. I am not kidding. His mum burst into tears when he read something to her and the school asked what had happened to have brought about such a change. In reality, all I did was pray for more people to be healed, and as a result, I saw more people healed.
If you asked me about it, I would say that while I hated everything about Lakeland, I still think that, despite everything, it was God. My disappointment from it all is that, while I saw a lot of people healed, for some reason, and it was probably my own fault, we did not see others doing it and it never became a culture within the church.
I think that these revivals are exciting and sometimes transforming, but, for me, the day to day of being church with each other and trying to make a difference where you live is what it is all about. If these things do not have a lasting impact on that then I am not sure they are all they are cracked up to be.
Who knows? We live and learn.
Join me again, for the next part…
(1) We should, perhaps, pause here, and ask why God only seems to do these things in America. Hmmm.
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