Day 2 – The Spirit of God Breaks Out at the Wednesday Evening Service in Seattle!

[Update: You can now view the main session videos HERE!]

The FCA USA Convention has been going great. I encourage you to follow along on the blog, social media and on the Livestream if you are not able to be present…and join the conversation online if you ARE present.

We are using the hashtags #fcaconvention and #theanointing throughout the week so that we can all be part of what God is doing in us as a fellowship and as ministers.

Here is a glimpse of what happened on Wednesday night brought to you by Roger Armbruster:

We had a great second evening together after a powerful day of workshops and connecting! The focus of the Wednesday evening service at the National FCA Convention in Seattle was on missions and on the intergenerational connection that God is raising up between the younger generation of spiritual sons and the older generation of spiritual fathers who have prepared the way for a new generation to go further in church planting and world missions.

The date of Sunday, May 15, 2016, was designated as FCA Church Planting Sunday, and before the service was even over, some 15 churches had already signed up to participate with that focus in their Sunday service on that date.

There are some 40 missionaries that are registered at this Convention, and they were introduced during the evening service.  They come from mission fields as diverse as intercultural ministry within the United States of America, as well as from nations as diverse as Uganda, Mexico, Tanzania, Liberia, Japan, the Philippines, Nigeria, France, Haiti, Mongolia, China, Indonesia, Spain, Columbia and Taiwan.

 

The evening featured two special speakers from the younger generation that God is raising up from among us in Tori Rasmussen and John Hammer.  It was a powerful “one-two punch” that was delivered as they ignited a fire in the heart of the delegates and guests who attended the evening service.

First, Tori Rasmussen shared on God’s purpose and plan to make the church into a nation of priests so that no one can disqualify themselves from God’s Kingdom purposes.  He shared from Malachi 1:11 how that God is raising up a people who will make His Name great among the nations, and through whom His Kingdom will come, and His will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven, even as Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew 6:9, 10.

 

God wants to anoint every human being with the power of the Holy Spirit.  We need to stop being “entertainers” and start being “ministers.”  Youth need Jesus, not entertainers.

God will not anoint you to do what you want to do.  He will anoint you to do what He has called you to do.  We can get so used to ministry that we don’t need the Holy Spirit to actually do the work of the ministry.

Do you see yourself as pastoring a small flock in a local congregation, or are you pastoring a community?  I want God’s Name to become great in all the earth!

I didn’t come here to speak an elaborate message.  Are you hungry for God?  Do you want to entertain people, or do you want to entertain God?  The more time I spend with God, the more anointed I become.

The anointing is God’s manifest presence inside of us.  With the anointing you are given boldness and courage to do the will of the Father.  What we want to be about is the will of the Father.

The anointing is not for in the church.  It is for outside of the church.  We are to teach people to obey the things that Jesus Christ has commanded, and to teach others to teach others how to obey Jesus in doing the will of the Father.

The anointing cares nothing for our own personal safety.  We know that we must act in doing the will of the Father, no matter what the danger is.

You don’t need much to plant a church.  In the United States, we spend up to $1,000,000.00 to plant a local church so that we will have a local church with all aspects of church life as already developed as the parent congregation.  I have planted churches in Africa living on $200.00 a month, eating whatever food was offered to me.

You don’t need much to plant a church, but you need somebody who loves God enough to cry out on behalf of the community for a people in that community who will love God as they ought to love.  In what communities would God have you as His minister to bring new life into?

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After Tori Rasmussen finished, there was a time of intimate worship, followed by Dan Hammer introducing his son John Hammer to bring the final message of the evening.  It turned out that God had changed the topic on Ellie Lofaro the previous evening at the last minute to speak from II Kings 6:1-7, on the axe-head that floated during the ministry of Elisha.

It turned out that this was exactly the same passage that God had given to John Hammer for this evening as well!  However, John Hammer developed it from the standpoint of Elisha moving in a “double portion anointing” as a son of his spiritual father Elijah.

Without the anointing, we have nothing to offer.  In the early church, there was an anointing that was recognized upon those who had been with Jesus.  They knew it, and everybody recognized that they were anointed.

Elisha gave up everything, and gave his all in order to follow Elijah.  I Kings 19:19-21.  He knew that the anointing was worth going after.

The anointing is intergenerational, and flows through the young and old, upon the old men as well as on the young men, the sons and the daughters.  Joel 2:28, 29.  The anointing is intergenerational, and is to increase with each generation.  Elisha wanted a “double portion” of the anointing that was upon Elijah.

God used this example as a role model for my father, Dan Hammer, to pass along his anointing to me in order to reach my generation with the gospel message.

We need a stronger anointing because the bigger your church grows, the more devils you will have to deal with.  The anointing gives us an appetite to invade impossible situations.  We are called to invade the realms of brokenness by the power of God.

I am not interested in bringing the Bible down to the level of my experience.  I am interested in bringing my experience up to the level of the word of God!

Sometimes we go through experiences where we feel like a failure.  We have prayed for people who had cancer, and they believed right up to their dying day, and yet they died in faith without receiving everything that was promised.  Yet we are seeing others get healed in a way that is an undeniable testimony to the power of God in our generation.

There is not more THAN the gospel, but there is more IN the gospel than what we have experienced.  Jesus’ Kingdom is for real!

We don’t need some new anointing, but we need Jesus, the Messiah, the Head of the Church, the Anointed One to flow in and through us, and we need to be in love with Him.  Our failures do not deny that He can heal us, but they show us more of our need for Him!

We want to be a part of a movement that blesses the young and honours the old!

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The service ended with a strong sense of a heavy weight of God’s Presence as many were prayed for, as others simply lingered in the manifest presence or stood in the glory!  It was an awesome time that continued for a considerable time afterwards, and hearts were transformed by the working of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  To God be the glory!!!