Chapter 4
His Manifest Presence

One of the greatest promises in Scripture is that the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon all of mankind in the last days. This promise is most memorably stated in Joel 2:28: “And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh” (NKJV). We can recognize this promise elsewhere in Scripture by paying attention to biblical prophetic imagery. The primary image associated with the Holy Spirit in the prophetic books of the Old Testament is water. We find this metaphor in such verses as Psalm 72:6: “He shall come down like rain upon the grass before mowing, like showers that water the earth” (NKJV). In a similar way, Hosea 6:3 says, “He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rain to the earth” (NKJV). And the parallelism is perhaps most clearly seen in Isaiah 44:3: “For I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring” (NKJV, emphasis added).

At times the prophets refer to “rivers,” “streams,” “springs,” or “pools,” and at other times they use the terms “rain” or “outpouring.” But the most interesting part of studying the image of water in the prophetic books of the Bible is the fact that no matter the problem the people of God were having, water seemed to be the answer. In other words, whether they were facing a military conflict, a moral collapse, or even a natural drought, the answer was always the same—they needed the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of the Spirit really is the Bible’s cure-all. It’s not that there aren’t things we are supposed to do in the natural; it’s just that in the end we need more of Him than anything else. And He comes like rain—in heavenly downpours!

The Last Days

On the Day of Pentecost, Peter declared that the promise of Joel 2 was fulfilled.1 The remarkable events of that morning were all part of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Yet, that day was only the initial fulfillment of the promise—the Spirit was poured out on that day, but there is a day coming in which He will truly be poured out on all flesh. This is a fulfillment of the promise of the Spirit being poured as the early and latter rain. The early rain was the first century, and the latter is now.

The outpouring of the Spirit really is the Bible’s cure-all.

This ultimate fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy will take place as the church enters her finest hour of impact in the world. Tragedy comes when the church skims over the great exploits in history and assumes that our finest hour is in the past. This misreading of history derives from a misunderstanding of God’s nature. He always saves the best for last—so much so that Jesus even saved the best wine for the end of the wedding celebration.2 And when He restores things that are destroyed or broken, He restores them to a place greater than before. For example, Job lost everything in the devil’s assault on his life. But when God restored him, he was given twice what he lost. It is God’s way. To expect anything less of Him for the last days is at best pure ignorance or at worst unbelief.

The church is destined by God to fulfill a particular assignment in the last days, and the promised outpouring of the Spirit is directly connected with that assignment. We have been commissioned to do what Jesus did and teach what Jesus taught so that we might be able to fulfill the assignment to disciple nations. The outpouring of the Spirit comes to anoint the church with the same Christ anointing that rested upon Jesus in His ministry so that we might be imitators of Him. Only when Jesus Christ, who is called the Desire of the Nations, actually lives through His people can we be successful in His command to disciple nations.3

It is in the heart of God for His people to actually represent (or “re-present”) the aspects of His nature that people hunger for. He must be expressed through us. God has set us up to be successful at representing Christ by giving us the promise of His Spirit who would come upon us in power. Peter expressed this wonderfully when he said that we “have been given . . . exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these [we] may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4, NKJV).

Before we look at what the outpouring of the Spirit is, I want to clarify how it is different from the indwelling presence of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Scripture teaches us that every believer receives the Spirit as the seal and down payment of our full inheritance, which is God Himself.4 We are heirs of God and have the wonderful privilege and joy of being His dwelling place. The indwelling presence of the Spirit comes about at our conversion, when the Spirit of resurrection brings our spirits to life, just as He breathed into Adam’s nostrils in the garden and he became a living being. In the lives of Christ’s disciples, we see this take place in John 20:22, when Jesus met with them, “breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” But at His ascension, Jesus told these same people that the Holy Spirit was going to come upon them. The Holy Spirit was already in them, but He was going to come upon them with power in order to make them witnesses.

As the word outpouring suggests, this promise is fulfilled as the Spirit of God comes upon His people like rain. In such seasons God permeates all we are and do with deluges of Himself. This heavenly invasion of God into our lives is God’s first answer to the prayer Jesus taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Paul taught us that “the kingdom of God is . . . righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17). That is, the kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit. When He is poured out on us, the King’s domain becomes manifested in our lives. This kingdom first creates heaven on earth in the “earth” of our lives, which enables us to mature as co-laborers with heaven in order to bring transformation to the earth around us. Thus, the outpouring of the Spirit deals directly with God’s destiny for humanity. The purpose for which Christ accomplished salvation for mankind was just this, to put us right with God so that He could rest upon us, creating a people who could co-labor with Him to bring heaven on earth.

As we first see in the events of Acts 2, the outpouring of the Spirit is intrinsically linked to the baptism in the Holy Spirit. This experience has been the subject of debate for decades. But there was no debate when it was given to the church two thousand years ago. It was so essential to the believer’s life that Jesus warned the disciples not to leave Jerusalem before they received it. What’s even more important to notice is that some time after that initial experience, we find the disciples getting another level of that same outpouring in Acts 4:30. If the baptism of the Spirit was promised for the last days, and if it was the key to the disciples’ success when they began to obey Christ’s command to disciple nations, then it seems clear that it is the key for every believer and every generation in the last of the last days. As the church, we must continue with that assignment until it is fulfilled.

The kingdom of God is in the Holy Spirit. When He is poured out on us, the King’s domain becomes manifested in our lives.

The best ground for us to stand on when considering the baptism of the Spirit is the Scriptures. Much of the confusion and debate that has arisen over this issue derives from people evaluating it on the basis of their experience, or lack of experience, rather than inviting the Holy Spirit to bring their level of experience into alignment with what He has already declared. Those who intentionally ignore elements of Scripture that are outside of their experience betray a lack of trust in the God who wrote it. And because faith is essential to please God and know Him, those who resist such experiences and teach others to do the same rarely have the profound encounters with God and the corresponding miracles taking place in their lives. In fact, those who, because of their fear and unbelief, are satisfied with their lack of experience work the hardest to justify their stance by opposing those who teach and pursue encounters with God. A simple examination of Scriptures and the lives of those who teach and experience the baptism of the Spirit will provide overwhelming evidence that this promise of the Father was given to “you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2:39, NKJV). All who are called to salvation are in line to receive this promise of the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

I was raised with the teaching that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That’s not a point I’m willing to go to war over, though I will go so far as to say that this gift of praying in tongues is available to every believer who receives this baptism. As the apostle Paul said, “Do not forbid to speak in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39). I personally feel that the baptism itself and its purpose are infinitely more important than the question of what is or is not the initial evidence of the experience. This profound encounter with God is given to us so that we might be filled with His power and be enabled to authentically demonstrate the life of Jesus before this world.

Unfortunately, many can pray in tongues but have little power in their lives. Their example has hurt those who are looking for evidence that this is still a promise of the Lord that is for us today. Somewhere along the line they have bought into the lie that once they can pray in tongues they have all that was promised. Such a response is akin to Israel crossing the river into the Promised Land, camping on the banks of the Jordan, and never going in to take possession of the actual land that was promised. While the gift of tongues is one I take great delight in every single day of my life, there must be more about the ultimate experience in life than to be given a tool to use for personal edification. That is the purpose for that gift. All the other gifts are to be used so that I might be able to represent Jesus in power to the world and affect the course of world history. Therein lies the purpose for such a baptism—power!

God’s ultimate provision for the believer in the outpouring of the Spirit is for us to become “filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:19, NKJV). For the apostle Paul, it was so obvious that we were to be filled with the Spirit that he actually commanded it.5 It is one thing to get accustomed to the idea of God actually wanting to live in us. But it’s quite another to realize that God intends to fill us with His fullness. I cannot comprehend such a promise. But I know that His purpose in filling us is so that He can overflow through us to the world around us. A glass of water is not really full until it overflows. Similarly, the fullness of the Spirit in our lives is measured by the overflow of the Spirit through us in order to touch the world around us.

Why Power?

It would be incorrect for me to say that everything we experience is for the sake of others. That simply isn’t true. Some think that God will heal them so that a relative or friend will get saved. Of course it is a great side benefit of a miracle that others are touched by God’s goodness. But it distorts the issue.

God delights in us and showers us with blessings just because we belong to Him. He delights over us and gives us access to realms of God simply for our pleasure. Yet there is also an overriding principle in this kingdom: it is nearly impossible to experience more of God and keep it to ourselves. As stated by Peter and John: “For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20, emphasis added). This is the nature of a life with God—giving is the most natural thing to do.

A glass of water is not really full until it overflows. Similarly, the fullness of the Spirit in our lives is measured by the overflow of the Spirit through us in order to touch the world around us.

The kingdom of God must never be reduced to talk, ideas, and principles. The kingdom of God is power.6 Unlimited power has been granted to those who encounter Him over and over again. Each encounter works deeper in our hearts, bringing about the needed transformation so that we might be entrusted with more of Him. The more profound the work of the Spirit is within us, the more profound the manifestation of the Spirit flowing through us. That in essence is the purpose behind the promise found in Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” (emphasis added).

Notice that what goes on around us is according to what goes on inside of us. That qualifier is all too often overlooked. This power enables us to present Jesus to others in a way that meets every human need. This lifestyle thrives on the impossible. Our delight is seeing the impossibilities of life bend their knee to the name of Jesus over and over again. Those who encounter Him on this level are much more prone to take risks so that miracles would happen. The absence of the supernatural is intolerable. When you consider the amazing provision of the Lord for those who surrender all, powerlessness becomes inexcusable.

This purpose was announced by the psalmist: “God be gracious to us and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us—that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations” (Psalm 67:1–2, emphasis added). Once again there is a profound connection that must not be ignored between the face of God shining upon His people and the salvation of souls among the nations. There is a connection between the two that must not be ignored. Many resist the blessing of the Lord because they don’t want to be selfish. Yet it is His blessing upon His people that is supposed to turn the hearts of the unbeliever to the discovery of the goodness of God.

The Ultimate Promise

God made a promise that combined two of the greatest experiences for the believer contained in the whole Bible—the outpouring of the Spirit and the encounter with His face. As we will see, they are in essence one and the same. He put it this way, “‘I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 39:29). In this declaration, this extraordinary promise has been linked together with fulfillment of the ultimate quest.

This is stunning news—God’s face is revealed in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit! When the Holy Spirit comes in power to transform lives, churches, and cities, the face of God is within reach. His face expresses the heart of who He is and what He is like.

God’s face is revealed in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

But not all can recognize God’s face in the outpouring of His Spirit. When the rain of the Spirit comes, most people fixate on the effects of the storm and miss the One revealed in the cloud. The extreme joy, the weeping, the shaking and trembling, the visions and dreams, the healing, the deliverance, and the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit, including tongues and prophecy, all are revelations of His face. Some people love these manifestations, and some people reject them. But the sobering thing to realize is that our response to the move of the Spirit is not a response to manifestations. Rather, it is a response to the face of God. To reject the move of the Spirit of God is to reject the face of God.

Moses Saw What Others Couldn’t

The degree to which we perceive the face of God through the manifestations of His presence is largely determined by what is in our hearts. As we explored in the previous chapter, there is a great contrast in the way Moses experienced God and the way the people of Israel experienced Him. Moses’s heart to know God gave him access to revelation that the people of Israel never perceived. Moses was allowed to see God’s form, and Israel wasn’t. Also, Psalm 103:7 states that Moses knew the ways of God, and Israel knew His acts.

The ways of God are discovered through the acts of God, but they are only recognized by those who are hungry for Him. For example, whenever we see an instance of God’s provision, that provision is a sign. A sign points to something greater than itself. In this case the sign of provision points to God, the provider. Taking time to recognize where a sign points to is not that complicated. However, our value system, which grows from the affections of our hearts, determines whether we will be motivated to take that time. If our value system places more importance on what God does than who He is—if we are religiously motivated rather than relationally motivated—we will not be drawn to recognize the greater revelation behind God’s acts. The sad reality is that some are satisfied with what God can do and have little concern for who God is. Such a preference is costly in the long run. Many have missed out on the purpose for their creation by settling for the acts of God, thus failing to come under the influence of the face of God—the ultimate quest and our ultimate destiny.

We need to pay a price to see more clearly. Moses’s whole life groomed him to see God. His success as Israel’s leader depended entirely on his ability, moment by moment, to perceive and follow the presence and voice of the Lord. But at one point God gave him the opportunity to be successful as Israel’s leader in a different way. He offered to assign an angel to take the people of Israel into the Promised Land. This angel would have made sure that every success came to Moses as God promised.7 But Moses was hungry for God alone, not merely for what God could do to make him successful. He insisted on following the presence of God Himself, saying, “If Your presence does not go with us, do not lead us up from here” (Exodus 33:15).

Moses was the great leader he was because he was not focused on personal success but on the God who could be known. Moses preferred the wilderness with God to the Promised Land without God, a noble choice for sure. Many in our ranks have failed that test. They have chosen the gratification of fulfilled dreams over the realms of God that seem so costly. They chose the inferior and lost out on the heavenly realities that were at hand, yet unseen. Heavenly realms are made available to us in this lifetime. They are not reserved just for eternity.

Now Israel was also given multiple opportunities to pursue and encounter the manifest presence of God as Moses did. Their entire life was built around the tabernacle, which was set in the middle of the camp of Israel. The presence of the Lord was manifested before them day and night. Interestingly, God manifested Himself to them according to their surroundings—at night there was the pillar of fire, and in the day there was a cloud. In the passages below we see that God also spoke to them face-to-face. But they did not recognize the day of His appearing:

So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the LORD spoke to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, so that you do not act corruptly and make a graven image for yourselves in the form of any figure.

—Deuteronomy 4:15–16, emphasis added

The LORD spoke to you face to face at the mountain from the midst of the fire.

—Deuteronomy 5:4, emphasis added

These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire, of the cloud and of the thick gloom, with a great voice.

—Deuteronomy 5:22, emphasis added

He spoke to them face-to-face from the cloud. In other words, there was a revelation of His face in the cloud. But His unwillingness to allow them to see any form of His likeness was because they were prone to idolatry and would most likely create an image to represent His form. Today we fall into the same trap when we create formulas to represent kingdom revelations. People are often tempted to look for shortcuts to kingdom benefits, resulting in Ishmaels instead of Isaacs—counterfeits instead of the real thing.

However, as I mentioned, God did allow Moses to see His form. God could trust Moses with this level of revelation because his heart had been tested. In His mercy, God gives us the level of revelation that our character is prepared to handle. At the same time, He continues to reveal Himself in order to expose our character and invite us to know Him more. We see this in the following fascinating encounter in John 12:

“Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.” Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake.”

—John 12:27–30, NKJV

This encounter reveals the primary responses that people have to the manifest presence and voice of God. Some who heard the voice thought it had thundered. In other words, they classed the experience as a natural phenomenon. Others believed that an angel had spoken to Jesus. These people recognized that something spiritual or supernatural was going on, but they believed it wasn’t for them. Jesus, on the other hand, heard the voice clearly and knew that it was for them. He had the heart of His Father, which made Him capable of perceiving not only His Father’s voice but also the purpose behind it—to communicate His heart to His people. The Father spoke to make something known to all who could hear. But in doing so, He exposed the level of perception that all those standing by actually possessed.

All Can Perceive

Through Christ, God has made it possible for every person to see the kingdom. Our conversion experience gives us access to that realm, as Jesus explained to Nicodemus, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, NKJV). However, it is our responsibility to develop this capacity, to train our senses to perceive God through renewing our minds and feeding the affections of our hearts on the truth. Otherwise, we will have no internal paradigm to keep us in tune with the truth amid the prevailing cultural attitudes that surround us.

In the Western world this is a challenge, because we live in a culture that has embraced an almost entirely materialistic worldview. This worldview rules out spiritual reality and makes the physical, material realm the definition of reality. When a materialist encounters spiritual things, he has no box in which to put them. He either has to ignore them completely or explain them by natural means, like the bystanders who said God’s voice was simply thunder. Unfortunately, this paradigm influences many believers, leaving them crippled in their ability to perceive and understand the truth of Scripture and the spiritual dimensions of their own lives, let alone supernatural encounters with God.

The conflict between a materialistic worldview and a biblical one is apparent in the inability or refusal of some Western doctors to acknowledge that their patients have been healed by a miracle of God. We know of many people who have gone to their doctors after being healed in order to have a test that would show that they are no longer in the same condition. Though these doctors were the ones who best know the condition that the person was in and they have personally administered these tests, we often hear that many of them will insist that the problem is in remission, or hiding, rather than acknowledging that the person has been healed. Their rationale is that because it is impossible for AIDS or hepatitis C to go away, it must be in hiding. In their field, that’s what it looks like to be realistic. But that realism ignores a superior reality—that of the kingdom of God. There are people who have had no evidence of a particular disease for many years whose medical records still declare that they have it, simply because the doctor will not, or is unable to, acknowledge that the person has been miraculously healed. Without that element in their thinking they will constantly fight against the acknowledgment of God acting on behalf of mankind. Thankfully there are a growing number of doctors who not only acknowledge miracles but also personally pray for their patients to experience a much-needed miracle.

One of our own doctors from Bethel Church was working with another doctor and several nurses on a patient who was in a medical crisis. When the patient began to manifest a demon, the others didn’t know what to do. Our doctor leaned over that person and quietly bound the devil and commanded it to leave. It did, and the person on the stretcher was filled with peace. The others in the room were stunned at the manifestation of a demon and the ease at which the name of Jesus solved such a problem. They now know there is a spirit world, and they know who to call if demons manifest! They also know that there is another influence in people’s lives besides the physical body and the soul (mind, will, and emotions).

The sobering thing to realize is that every time we are exposed to the miraculous—to the acts of God—we are responsible. That is, power forces us to respond. And our responses, either of faith or unbelief, shape who we are. Unbelief hardens us to God, while faith makes us more alive to Him, more capable of knowing and perceiving Him.

Positioning Ourselves for Encounters

Jacob’s conclusion to his first encounter with God is remarkable. After wakening from the dream in which he saw a ladder standing between Earth and heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it, he said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it” (Genesis 28:16).

It’s possible to be right next to God and not know it! I often see this truth played out in life. It never ceases to amaze me that in the same meeting one person can be experiencing a powerful touch from the Lord, and at the same moment the person next to him is wondering when the meeting will be over so he can go to lunch.

There are two things that we should learn from this fact. The first thing to realize is that it is possible to position ourselves to encounter God by learning to recognize the signs of His presence, not only as we experience them but also as others experience them. My hunting dog is trained to “honor the point” of the other dogs he is hunting with. That means that he “points,” even when he has not yet picked up a scent of his prey. He assumes the same posture to give me a signal that he has found something. He takes the same posture that the other dogs have. As a result, he eventually picks up the same scent that they have picked up. Likewise, when we recognize that others around us are connecting with the presence of God, even when we are not yet aware of Him ourselves, we set ourselves up to become aware of Him by acknowledging His presence on the basis of others’ experience.

The disciples learned a challenging lesson in Mark 16:14 in this regard. Jesus rebuked them because “they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen.” Learning to believe God through another person’s experience is one of the most difficult, yet important, lessons in life. Because the Holy Spirit lives within us, we are required to recognize when someone is telling us the truth even when we don’t understand.

The second thing to realize is that when God does lift the veil of our senses to perceive what is going on in the spiritual realm, we are not spectators who have stumbled upon something that has nothing to do with us. God is communicating with us and allowing us to see what He sees in order to invite us to know Him and partner with what He is doing.

It is a mistake to think that only certain people with unique gifts can hear and see God. If I think that it’s only for others, then I will disqualify myself because I know I’m nothing special. In doing so I remove myself from active faith. One of the essential gestures of faith is to live with the expectation that the God who said that His sheep hear His voice and who gave His life to restore relationship with each of us would like to communicate with us. This faith leads us to lean into His voice—to learn as the prophet Samuel did to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Significantly, it was as soon as he learned to take this posture that he gained access to the greater revelation that God had been inviting him into.

He Is Looking for Those He Can Trust

God has combined the ultimate quest with the promised outpouring of the Spirit because the ones He intends to clothe with the same anointing that rested upon His Son are those who have the same heart for the face of God that Jesus possessed. Only those with His heart can be trusted to use His power for its intended purpose—to represent Him in all His glory and goodness. This is our challenge—and our destiny.