Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
A few years ago I had a dream in which the Argentine revivalist pastor, Claudio Freidzon, appeared to me on a golf course. He was standing on the most difficult green of the most difficult hole on the golf course. In the dream, Claudio was counseling me on how to build for and live in revival. Recently, I played the course and while on this particular hole the Lord reminded me of the dream.
Sometimes we lose sight of things God has shown us or spoken to us about. In those times God uses remembering as a way to re-connect us to the spiritual realm (Mark 8:18-19). The Lord will “stir up our pure minds by reminding us” (2 Peter 3:1). The word for mind here is dianoia, which is the seeing or perceiving part of your mind. On the golf course that day the Lord was stirring my mind to see again and re-connect me to what He has for us.
He was reminding me that He had called us to be a people with hearts burning for Him and revival. We should be intentional about this lest the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things take us away from our destiny (Mark 4:17). After being reminded of the dream the Lord began to allow me to see some of how He perceives the church in our nation. He dearly loves the church and His Spirit is brooding over us in these days.
In Argentina in the early 1980’s, God used Carlos Annacondia, a businessman turned evangelist, to ignite a fresh wave of revival in the nation. In mass meetings thousands of people accepted Christ. The salvations were accompanied with signs and wonders, healings and deliverances.
In 1992, God used Claudio Freidzon, pastor of a Buenos Aires church in the next wave of the revival. Claudio began to sense a need to know the person of the Holy Spirit in his own life. While he was seeking the Lord about this, the Holy Spirit touched him in a powerful way and his ministry changed dramatically. An unusual presence of the Holy Spirit accompanied him in his meetings that resulted in a renewed hunger for God, a new emphasis on personal holiness, a new desire for prayer and demonstrations of the Spirit’s power.
Speaking about the state of the church in Argentina during that time Claudio said, “Pastors were seeking methods for church growth, but methods were not the answer.” His counsel: “There is no method. We must seek the presence of God. My message is simple. I’m emphasizing the presence of the Holy Spirit.”
R. A. Torrey once said, “Before one can correctly understand the work of the Holy Spirit, he must first of all know the Spirit Himself.”
In the dream that was the counsel Claudio was giving me for revival, “get to know the Spirit Himself.” The more we know the Spirit Himself the more we will know the Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:26) and the more we know the Lord Jesus the more we will know the Father (John 14:9).
Many Blessings, BW