3 Steps to Touch Glory
A wave of God’s Glory is coming to the Church. Why do we know this? Because He said so.
“But truly, as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num. 14:21).
God promised at least three times in Scripture that His Glory would fill the earth (see Num. 14:21; Ps. 72:19; Hab. 2:14). The meaning in all three instances is that God is going to do something so significant, so powerful, and so supernatural that the entire earth will hear the report and affirm that God did it! In the coming wave of Glory, people around the world will acknowledge, “God has visited His people.”
When Isaiah wrote about the coming Glory, he said, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isa. 40:5).
Isaiah was speaking principally about John the Baptist and how he would prepare the way for Christ. When Jesus launched His ministry, the Glory of the Lord was manifest through the many healings, signs, and wonders He performed. All flesh saw it together—that is, all the people present saw the bread and fish being multiplied. Everyone present saw the blind man healed and the dead son raised to life in his coffin. When Glory comes, everyone has the same objective experience, and they all see the same thing—together.
In the Presence realm, people receive subjective impressions and inner feelings; in the Glory realm, the spiritual realm literally breaks into the physical realm, and people see visible signs and wonders together. [1]
When God visits His Church with Glory, skeptics and unbelievers will see healings and signs just the same as believers. “All flesh shall see it together.”
Get ready for Glory!
Great Gatherings
In the coming Glory wave, prepare for meetings that are thronged with people. I see this promised in verses such as these:
Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the ends of the earth, among them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child, together; a great throng shall return there (Jeremiah 31:8).
“In that day,” says the Lord, “I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcast and those whom I have afflicted” (Micah 4:6).
The blind, lame, and infirm don’t throng to large gatherings—because they don’t fit. Their disabilities make them unwilling, in most cases, to participate in large crowds. But there’s one exception—when Jesus is healing the sick. When the sound goes forth that God is visiting His people and the blind and lame are being healed, they will suddenly flock to the meetings. In the Glory realm, the wheelchairs will line up. They’ll come confined to their wheelchairs and leave pushing their wheelchairs.
At the time of this writing, our churches have been emptied by COVID-19, and it’s difficult to imagine people gathering en masse. But the Glory that’s coming will be so explosive that the churches of the land will be unable to hold the harvest, and it will spill into the stadiums of the earth. Habakkuk prophesied, “Before Him went pestilence” (3:5). I wonder, therefore, if the Lord might use a pestilence like coronavirus to go before His face and prepare the Church for His visitation in signs and wonders.
Presence and Glory
The biblical connection between Presence and Glory is fascinating. They seem to be similar dynamics that reflect a spectrum of intensity. When God shows up at lesser levels of intensity, we experience His Presence; when He shows up in greater levels of intensity, we experience His Glory.
Presence is a subjective, intangible encounter with Jesus in which everyone has their own personal experience with Him. Glory is an objective, visible encounter in which everyone sees the same thing and experiences Jesus in an objective, identifiable manner. Miracles and healings, for example, are part of the Glory realm.
The Church was born in Glory in the upper room, which means you have Glory in your DNA (see Acts 2). You love the Presence of Jesus, but you’ll never be satisfied until you’re experiencing Glory. Presence is the earmark of the Church, and Glory is the vindication of the Church (see Exod. 33:16; Eph. 3:21).
Reaching for Glory
What can we do to touch waves of Glory? Let me suggest three things.
1) Get Into His Presence
First, get into His Presence, and then contend for more. The Presence realm is available to all of us, all the time. When you meet, even with just two or three, Jesus is present with you (see Matt. 18:20). Get in His Presence, linger there, and gently push in the Spirit for more. Churches are being planted these days on this priority. They’re Presence churches. Their purpose is to gather in His Presence, minister to Him, and watch to see what He wants to do. When you honor His Presence, you’re positioned for Glory.
Let me use a different metaphor to illustrate this first point. When Jesus visited a certain house to raise a young girl who had died, He said, “Make room, for the girl is not dead, but sleeping” (Matt. 9:24). The room had to be cleared of the clutter before Jesus could show His Glory and raise her from the dead. You have to make room for resurrection. Create space, therefore, for Jesus to demonstrate His Glory. We can do that by getting in His Presence, ministering to Him, waiting on Him, and pressing for more.
2) Sow to the Spirit
Second, sow to the Spirit. I have Hosea 8:7 in view, “‘They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.’” In context, Hosea is speaking of the Israelites who practiced idolatry. When they worshiped false gods, they were sowing to the wind and would ultimately reap a whirlwind of judgment. But I reckon the opposite must also be true. When we’re worshiping Jesus, we’re sowing to the winds of the Spirit. Is it possible that, if we’ll sow to the winds of the Spirit, we may eventually reap a whirlwind of Glory (see Job 38:1; Ezek. 1:4)?
3) Ask!
Third, ask. If you want to experience waves of Glory, ask for it. Moses is our model, who asked of the Lord, “Please, show me Your Glory” (Exod. 33:18). God’s response was basically, “I show My Glory to whomever I want, whenever I want. And I’ve decided to say yes to you.” And then God encountered Moses with His trifecta of Glory—the same trifecta experienced by Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jacob, and John.
What’s the trifecta of Glory? An encounter with God in which you see something, you hear something, and you feel something supernatural. Moses saw the Lord, heard His voice, and then the Lord placed His hand over Moses. It was Glory! To experience such Glory, sometimes all you can do is ask and then see what He says.
When Jesus visits His Church in Glory, worship leaders, get ready for a wild surf!
Note
1. I expand on this glorious topic in my book Glory: When Heaven Invades Earth.
