Riding the Wave

Have you ever experienced a service in church when worship got so intense and so intimate with the Holy Spirit that you didn’t want it to stop? I have, a number of times. Most of the time, the leader would do something to end it, or the worship leader didn’t know what to do to continue and take it up to the next level. Probably one of the hardest things to do as a leader is to know when to stop worship when God seems to be moving, or when to let it continue. IF you stop it. then you take the chance of missing what the Holy Spirit was tying to do. If you continue, you risk staying with it longer than God wanted you to. In either of these cases, the whole congregation can feel the tension of the Spirit in the air.

What you are looking for as a leader is to catch the wave of the presence of the Holy Spirit and ride that wave as far as it will take you, then getting off before it leaves you fry in the sand. It really is a good surfing analogy. That’s why when we were praying for a worship leader back at RiverStone, the intercessors were praying for a “surfer dude”. There are not many times in my life that I can remember being able to ride the wave like that in a service. I can probably count them on one hand. We had one of these this mornings at Bethel Atlanta. Worship was amazing and then it just went to a whole new realm. The congregation was totally involved. There was dancing and singing. The drums were amazing as well as the flute and the rest of the instruments. The vocals were very good too. But the best part was that you knew that Holy Spirit was there.

As in any good worship there were periods where we could have stopped and had a “regular” service. It would have been a nice day and people would have gone home happy. But thank goodness our leadership is more interested on following the lead of Holy Spirit and actually riding the wave no matter what the cost than having a “regular” service. So Scott and Ben, or leader and worship leader for the service, took the risk. They risk taking a good service to one that was messed up or great. Today, they heard correctly and rode the wave of the Holy Spirit to new breakthroughs for Bethel Atlanta. It’s great to be in a church where you have leaders and not managers. It’s great to be in a place where the presence of the Holy Spirit is sought after to the degree that they are willing to take the chance and ride the wave, even when it doesn’t look like it will stand up.

Yes, today was a great day for Bethel Atlanta, and it was a great day for the Kingdom. I believe that when the Holy Spirit is not quenched, then the Kingdom has opportunity to advance. Today, the Holy Spirit was given free reign and there was a breakthrough in Atlanta because of it. That breakthrough will be manifested in the weeks and months to come, but it happened today. And I was a part of the body that allowed it to happen. Yes, it was a great day!!