When a Movement Looks Different Than Expected

"What if its already happening?"

After a busy, happy summer back home, I returned to Vienna just under a month ago, and at a recent event called "Apostolic Revival Fire", this thought hit to me. "What if the movement is already happening?"

I came to Europe pursuing large-scale movements of faith- awakening and revival. I went the way I felt God directing me: first to the Pioneering School in Norway, then into the Austria team, starting a base and a discipleship school. I knew this was how my adventure would begin, and that somehow in this path I would transition more directly into the pursuit of revival that burned in my heart for so many years. But when, how? I came back to Vienna this round with new impressions strong in my heart: that transition was coming, that my focus would be shifting, and that I was going to find out what that looked like on the two trips I intended to make this year- one to an event called AwakeningEurope in Stockholm, Sweden in October, and one to an Awakening ministry in England in the spring. I felt God saying, "There is where I will tell you".

He's a man of his word. I got so much from God in Sweden last week- clarity, conviction, ideas... so much flooded into my heart and head that I could scarcely find time to write it all down. My motives were convicted. My rebellion confronted. For the hundredth time, I remembered how good it can feel when God cleans your heart.

But that process didn't start in Sweden. It started the week before, when my staff team helped out at that smaller, local outreach weekend in Vienna, called "Apostolic Revival Fire":

One day, after ministering on the streets- after miracles of healing and a teenage gang member coming to Christ (whoop! Go God!), I looked around the room at the 200-400 Austrians worshiping their hearts out, and realization dawned on me:

"What if its already happening?"

What if Austria has already been in awakening, and I just didn't recognize it, either because it was right under my nose, or because it looked different than I'd imagined? That's so possible. Something very similar happened at "AwakeningEurope"- an evangelistic, revival-ish event in Sweden the following weekend. I listened to speakers confront sin and hypocrisy- and watched hundreds, maybe thousands, of believers go forward to repent. I watched us flood the streets of Stockholm to show the love of Jesus and share the gospel, and commit to making that a lifestyle. I watched hundreds of Scandinavians come forward, in response to a few testimonies and the simple gospel, and trust Jesus with their lives. HUNDREDS! May I point out how that is supposed to "never happen" in Europe?!

Unlike the event in Vienna, this weekend in Sweden DID look exactly like the kind of movement I'd envisioned. And its one of several planned across Europe over the next ten years, with a goal of reaching a hundred million people. My 'one million' goal seems like peanuts compared to that.

What if the revival is happening? Awakening seems to be.

It seems to be a theme for me this season that things should look different than the conventional way. Different than I expect.

So, what if??