It's Beginning to Rain - Part 2

By Iverna Tompkins
Transcribed by Jane Vaughn

We’re talking about how the Word of God is vitally important for us – it’s like the fresh rains on newly planted seeds.  The acceptance of the rain when it comes is…  Deuteronomy 32, verse 3, (and you thought I forgot where we were! :-) )  It’s in the I will.  “I will proclaim the name of the Lord.  O praise the greatness of God.”  Praise the greatness of our Lord. 

Now I’m going to say something that you may not like and I forgive you ahead of time! :-)  It is very easy to applaud or clap.  Applauding for something does not put me on the line at all.  It requires very little effort.  So, when someone says, “Let’s just praise the Lord!” and we clap    – “Yea!  Yea God!” ::clap-clap-clap::    That’s okay, it doesn’t take much out of us – besides, applause is such an accepted thing.  It’s acceptable in our world – applauding at sports events or for famous personalities.  But perhaps we need to remember when it is we should applaud.  We applaud when someone we esteem as important enters a room – or when someone does something especially good – or afterwards, when they depart or leave the platform.  (It’s awful when that applause is louder than the former… :-) )

So  ::clap-clap-clap-clap::  we applaud for the Lord and that is good.  But we need to know - is this clapping because He came in visitation and we have just recognized His presence… then what?  Well,  let’s get rid of Him?   ::clap-clap::  You see, we need to be careful to know what and why we’re applauding.  When the applause is over, is He here now?  So, what will we do next?  Think about this: you don’t walk up to someone and ::clap-clap-clap:: in his (His) face!  :-)  There must be another acceptable way to praise the Lord while in His Presence.

So now the demand is on.  Now it is for you to endeavor to find appropriate words that fit your emotions, and words that exemplify or are taken from His Word that can be spoken back to THE Word!  “You are altogether lovely! (Sol.5:16).  You are the Great I Am! (Ex.3:14).  You are Alpha and Omega – the Beginning and the End! (Rev.1:8).  You are what You say You are! (Num.23:19; Heb.6:18; Tit.1:2).  You are Creator of all! (Isa.40:28; Col.1:16).  You are Magnificent! (Ps.24; 145; 150).  I exalt You, O God! (Ps.118:28).  I love You, Lord!”  Now, that’s vulnerability – when it comes from the heart!

But it’s easier to sing it than say it.  “I love You, Lord, and I lift my voice…”  That not so hard.  It may be hard to listen to some voices   :-)  but it’s not hard to sing the songs.  Yet, it is a whole other thing to have to say it to Someone who, by faith, you first have to believe is there! 

A leader could come to the platform and say, “Let’s just all say, ‘We love you, Iverna.’”  And because I visibly stand in front of you, you would say it whether you did or not.   :-)  “We – love – you.”  Or out of respect, you might applaud.  But when the opportunity comes for us to accept the rain that is falling, we must direct ourselves beyond applause and say or sing to Him, “I love You, Lord!” 

Now men, it’s harder for you than it is for us.  That is just a fact – because you’re thinking of “Him” as male.  It’s embarrassing for many men to address Him – “Sweet Jesus.”  :-)  “I love Him!”  That’s easy for women – “I love You – Sweet Jesus – Beautiful Savior – You are altogether lovely!”  But we all have to speak our praises to Him.  You must, men, if you have breath (Ps.150:6).  You must get beyond that thought of   “He is a man!”  and see that He is God-man!  He is all-together lovely. 

Oh, read the Book, my Friends.  It’s true!  All of us are coming to that wonderful wedding we’re invited to attend (Rev.19:7ff), but it’s the Church – it’s people – it’s us – who do the separating.  We make the separations (discriminations?) like gender distinctions: “This is a lesson for women” and “This is a class for men.”  The Word of the Lord is speaking today saying, “It’s raining on all of you!”  It’s raining on each one of us – the newly planted as well as those who have been mowed down. 

Those who will accept that rain ought to say: “I proclaim the name of the Lord!  He is the Rock – His works are perfect – all His ways are just – a faithful God who does no wrong – upright and just is He” (Deut.32:3,4).  Now, I have to pause right here because we must admit that just is not what every Christian believes this day.

When we look at what has just taken place in the world recently – 2005 USA Gulf Coast Hurricane season, with 4 major hits in about 8 weeks: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma – and, what was it?  70,000 or more, many more people were killed in the earthquake in Pakistan? (October 2005).  But if we only look at the disaster in our own country (particularly Hurricane Katrina) and see all those people that lost their homes, were displaced, transported, and re-placed in some other geography – and we want to know: “What is this?”  I was informed that 40% of them will never go back to New Orleans and rebuild.  They will choose to relocate elsewhere. 

Do you ever stop to think about these kinds of disasters?  “What kind of God would allow that to happen?”  You might as well think about it soon because people are going to ask you.  “If your God is in charge of the rain and the wind, how come He let that happen to them?”  Well, I don’t have all the answers, but sometimes I make them up.  :-)  Or, I try to release my informed imagination – because the bottom-line is – listen now – God is not (here’s an antiquated word for you) beholden to me, to tell me why He does – anything!  He expects me to accept whatever happens as ultimately being a good thing – because it came from Him and because I trust Him for everything, regardless if I can figure out any “good” results.

Having said that, here’s my reasoning about the tragedies in New Orleans in particular: All of these years, these poor people have been living and giving birth in stark poverty in their city, being ignored as though unseen in a part of our world that has so much mixture of religious traditions with witchcraft and voodoo and all those other things.  They are just born into that environment.  They haven’t chosen to leave Christianity to go into that other – they were simply born into the squalor and know nothing else.  Hello.  Moreover, they are just inches away (maybe a single block) from people like you and me, who have, in comparison, wealth and means, education and – Christ!  They have been merely inches away, generation after generation, and yet they are untouched – by the lovely ones.  And I can imagine God declaring, “I have to do something to uproot this thing… to change his cycle.” 

I’ve preached in New Orleans.  I could tell you about a number of churches that have had thousands of real believers there in attendance.  And bonafide Revivals were taking place in the area just shortly before the big rains came.  A great Revival Meeting, if you will, took place near there just last June and the prophetic word was clear at the time that “a water-cleansing” was going to come to the whole area!  Who believed that?  Who could possibly have imagined the magnitude of the floods?  Well, those who did believe it spiritualized it to such an extent so as to say, “Hallelujah!  It will cleanse! It will purge out the mixture!  We do need a cleansing!”

Here’s the problem with that kind of rain.  When it rains that heavily – nothing can prevent the overflow.  If we could only get hold of this…  I know some of you do – the church within the church is always right on the cutting edge!  You see – if you could really understand this, you’d stop worrying about the devil and the people you live with and those all around you who are bent on their evil ways.  If God really moved like these floods did, no one could stop the flow of God – no matter how hard they tried!  Oh, my Friends, when God really rains upon the Church, there’s nothing anyone can build that will stop His flow!  It is going to overwhelm us – the believers!  It is going to take us over!  And that’s the Good News!

Here’s the bad news: when a flood comes – it goes down into the depths of all our foundations and stirs up anything (and everything!) that is there.  All those left-over “before Christ” things that never were dealt with and have been hidden and well-concealed begin to rise – putridly – to the surface.  And anyone that steps around in all that loses any purification they have had.  Are you there?  That kind of flood demands a total displacement of the past and a replacement elsewhere.  Oh, bless you for reaching to understand this!  It may be things we’ve forgotten were even there… or things we tried to put away, but should have discarded long ago.  God’s cleansing floods will bring them out of hiding!

I am so sure of this message.  I’ve never preached it before, but I am so certain of this message – that this is exactly where the Church is right now!  There are so many putrid things in individual lives that have remained hidden there as we’ve preached above them – as we’ve talked over them – as we’ve ignored them.  And we gave birth to new people, right in the midst of all that.  People who have not yet developed a sensitivity to the Holy Spirit to see it for what it is. 

God’s been listening to our prayers for rain – and songs for rain – “Rain, rain, rain, Lord.  Rain, Lord, rain.”  And He’s said, “I’m starting to rain.”  That’s my message to you today – “It’s beginning to rain!”  And Church, we’d better get ready for it!  Because it is going to be a deluge!  He is going to move!  The power of His Spirit is going to come – because rain typifies that – in that it is a cleansing of all that old “stuff.”  God want s a purity in our worship – and no mixture with the old.

The Holy Spirit, promised long ago, that came in Acts 2, verse 4 – that many of us claim to be filled with when we really have only a drop or two!  Hello!  Because we’re so full of – ahem! :-) – other things :-)  – and we’re still sitting in the Valley of Baca (re-read Part 1).  Other things: hurts, or disgruntlements or bitternesses, or unforgiveness, or blah-blah – “I’m at this church because I’ve tried all the others and…” – and all those “other things” that have never been dealt with – I promise you – you’re going to be swimming in them – and SOON!  Because the move of the Spirit is starting to rain!  Oh, it is!  And it isn’t just going to be this church or that church or the other church!  Even God’s people are going to be amazed!  It’s going to happen everywhere – because God wants to reveal the failure of this section to that section!

What happens when we reject – the move of God?  When God does something abundantly… (we love that word, but we don’t always love the action of it) – when God overrules our limitations… Are you there?  You see – I want the rain – on the day I choose – in the place I want it – and to the extent and degree for which I think I’m ready – in Jesus’ name! (of course!   :-) )  But it just doesn’t happen that way.  He says, “Do you want My rain – or not?  You’ve had years without it – you’ve become very good at preaching about it – you’ve gotten very good at listening about it…” (and we also lie about it!  I’m sorry – I shouldn’t say “we” – I should say another word, but I can’t think of one.  :-) )

We pretend Revival – and we pretend Rain.  I’ve been in some of the driest places that exist (churches) and have heard the leader declare: “Oh!  I feel God is here!  Don’t you just feel God here?”  And I think ::whew:: “Not!”  Then I’d look around at everybody else.  They had their hands up in agreement with his declaration – and so I lied too!   :-)  Have you ever been there?  Ever done that?   What the leader was actually saying is, “Ohhh!  I wish I felt God!”    :-)     “Ohhh!  I sure wish God was here!  Let’s declare Him here! – He’s here!  He’s here!  He’s here!  He is – here!"  :-)    Not so funny, actually.

Do you think God is unfair – in some of the things He allows to happen?  Look at this – Deuteronomy 32, verse 5: “They…”  Listen carefully, because He precedes this verse with: “A faithful God who does no wrong, a God who is upright and just” (vs.4).  Now go on to verse 5: “They have acted corruptly toward Him to their shame – they’re no longer His children but a warped and crooked generation.”  That’s fairly straightforward and doesn’t need much amplification or explanation, does it?  “O foolish and unwise people, is this the way you repay the Lord?  Is He not your Father, your Creator who made you and formed you?” (vs.6). 

Now, if I put that into today’s vernacular, here’s what it would say: “Who do you think you are?!  I brought you into this world, and I can take you out!” :-)  He just words it a little differently in the King James.  :-)   These are people who deserve to die!  They’re not even His children anymore – they’re no longer acting like His children – but mercifully He doesn’t kill them!  He just floods them.  Can you see this?

God says, “First, I have to reveal you to you – and I’ll also reveal you to the others through exposure.  And then I’m going to mix things up.”  Oh, if you don’t know what I’m saying, you don’t read the newspapers!  He has taken different cultures and different generations and different nations and He’s removing some from this place and putting them over here and…  Look at our own nation!  I don’t even understand people in the airport anymore!  I don’t know what they’re saying!  They speak a different language!   :-)  So, I just follow the crowd!  They take off their shoes – Hey!  I take off mine. :-)   We have people from all over the world running this place now!  Instead of saying, “We need to shut our borders…”  Are you kidding?  You cannot barricade against God’s move!  They’re going to come.  The ones you don’t like – they are going to come!   :-)

“Well, what will we do?  What will we do when that happens?”  It’s already happening!  Here’s what we do: we recognize our foundations.  Remember the story Jesus told?  People that read the Word – and heed the Word – and do the Word – build on the Rock for their foundation (Mt.7:24,25).  They don’t have to worry when the storms come!  The rains can come; the winds can blow and beat against the house!  Do you think you’re the only one that the wind beats against?  ::whine:: “Well, I tell you, Pastor.  You don’t know what I’ve been through this year!”  “Good!  I don’t want to!” :-)

I, Iverna, could tell you stories all day long – personal stories – about the wind and the rain beating against my house!  If the devil could – he would destroy everything I ever built!  But, he can’t!  So, he huffs and he puffs… and he threatens.   :-)  But I’m not built of straw – and I’m not built on sand (Mt.7:26,27).  This building didn’t go up that fast!  It has taken my whole lifetime! :-)  First, I found the foundation (Jesus, the Rock) and then the Holy Spirit began to sink my feet in, deeper and deeper: “What do you really believe?”  “Oh, God show me Your Word!”  “What are you standing on?”  “‘My hope is built on nothing less…’  ‘Oh, the blood of Jesus!’  Thank God for His Word!  ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee!’ (Heb.13:5b; Dt.31:6)  Thou art My child!  ‘I know My plans that I have for thee!  They’re plans for your good!’” (Jer.29:11).

And I go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper… into the things of God until there’s not much left of me!  I’m so deep in the Rock!  Oh, come on, Saints!  When the house goes up, it’s as if it’s made of glass bricks.  Are you there?  You’re safe – but everyone can see in.

“Fear thou not for I am with thee.  I am thy God.  I will comfort thee.” (Isa.41:10; Jer.31:13

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