Recently I and some friends have been talking about movements of God, and revivals. We were specifically talking about the ones that did a great work of the Lord at one point and still exist, in some form, today trying to keep going on their own way, the way God revealed to them 200-400 years ago.
What follows is the story of the Puritan movement in England and then the 'New World' you may choose to read it or you may skip further down to the section entitled 'the point'
Take, for example, the Puritan movement:
This movement emerges around the time of King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I. It is in this period that the Church of England (today more commonly known as the Anglican Communion) was founded. In England at the time there were people the likes of Oliver Cromwell (not the murderous one, one that served under Henry VIII, the other Cromwell came after the Tudor period), Catherine Parr, William Tyndall, Thomas Cramner, Anne Boleyn, (the executed Queen, yes she was probably an Evangelical Christian) and others, who wanted a break away from the Catholic Church. Many ploys were used to get King Henry to make this break a reality. Henry, however, was a Catholic at heart, a self-centered one, but a Catholic nonetheless. So he created a new church, one in which he was the head (Elizabeth later changed the role of the English monarch to governor) but was, in almost all its beliefs, Catholic.
Many people did not believe this went far enough, Elizabeth (the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn) tried to bring both the radical Protestants and the Catholics under one English Church. This caused some Protestants to break away completely. They are the Puritans. These people basically wanted the control of the King removed from the Church, the priesthood of all believers recognised and thought that the lives of people professing Christianity should match up to that stated in the Bible ("Be pure as He is pure" idea).
These, you can no doubt agree, are good, biblically based desires and things that the Christian Church should profess to. So the Puritan movement was a movement of God.
England banned people who held Puritan ideas from being involved in Church and public life in England which resulted in the migration of many of the Puritans to the New World. In America they thrived for a while; establishing a true Christian community where women were valued and God was held high.
Over time the story changes though and the Puritan leaders begin to violently persecute and execute non-Puritan Christian leaders. This, as well as the Salem Witch Trials, led to their influential demise in America as new colonists left Puritan colonies for their own.
Nowadays there are a few groups/denominations that hold up the Puritan model as the correct model to live by. They look back to the past in order to learn how God would have them live. They look to a group that started well, but finished far out of God's plan. They don't look back far enough (to Jesus).
The point:
The above story illustrates a point I want to make and that is this,
"Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19 ESV)
I read once that God was once put in a box, the Ark of the Covenant, and once He got out He decided that He was never going back in a box again.
As Christians we have the tendency to look at a movement of God in the past and try and emulate it. We look on these revivals with rose-tinted glasses and we fail to see that God is now doing a new thing. He has moved on and we are standing there with our rallies and our evangelistic methods and our pure lifestyles and our religious trappings, basically, waiting for Him to show up because He did once, in this way, 200 years ago (or 400 in the Puritans case).
Why do we limit God? Why do we think we can control God? Why are we so stupid that we think God doesn't use new methods and exciting ways at winning people for His Kingdom every time? Why do we sit there, looking like idiots and dishonouring our God to the shame of His name in front of the world when He has a plan and a purpose and has moved on from our silly models and methods.
He is God. We are to 'take up (our) crosses and follow (Him)" not the other way around. If we keep following our 200AD, 1600AD, 1800AD, even 1900AD models nothing will happen except the world will laugh at us, and worse, mock God.
We need to listen for 'a new thing' and work with God. He promises that His Word will not return onto Him void, but how much more could we do if we went looking for the Holy Spirit instead of inviting Him to come into manmade models and stupidity.
God is doing a new thing, He always is, let's commit to looking for it, letting go of the past and our methods and models and find the new thing, get on board with God and watch Him 'BOOM' in our situations, nations and the lives of all those around us.
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