This past weekend I attended  a conference, Ask for Rain, in our city designed to bring churches together to create relationship and community. During these sessions I believe God’s glory showed up. Pastors, intercessors, prophets and teachers from various churches in our city taught, shared, prayed and prophesied during the planned intervals between worship sets that were two to three hours long.

An hour before the two-day Ask For Rain event began, I met with a group of intercessors to pray. As I stood with them, I saw a massive wave rising up out of an ocean of waves and I saw Jesus being lifted up on the crest of this giant wave.  His arms were stretched out and He was positioned to fall upon the church. I had seen this same image many times in the past few weeks and as I stepped out and prayed what I saw, this passage came to my mind:

”Where I saw the brightness of the glory of Israel’s God coming from the east.  The sound I heard was as loud as ocean waves, and everything around was shining with the dazzling brightness of his glory. . . I immediately bowed with my face to the ground, and the Lord’s glory came through the east gate and into the temple.  The Lord’s Spirit lifted me to my feet and carried me to the inner courtyard where I saw that the Lord’s glory had filled the temple.” (Ezekiel 43:2, 4-5)

The giant wave was tied to the Glory of God that I believe He wants to release upon the church.

I am a dancer and intercessor and worship with flags and scarves. That evening, I joined fellow dancers as we spent hours worshiping during the event. At one point, I planned to leave but I decided not to as the worship and presence of God deepened with each hour.  In my mind heaven was coming down and I couldn’t leave!

But a very unique thing took place during one of the afternoon sessions the next day, that I am sure none of us had seen before. The worship leader, who was playing the piano, began to sing out beautiful words of promise, love and adoration of Jesus the Bridegroom speaking to His Bride, the church.

It took a few minutes to understand that this was a prophetic song.

Then to our surprise, another pastor in the front row stood up and prophetically as the Bride, began to sing back asking Jesus for reassurances of His love and faithfulness.

For about 10 minutes, they sang back and forth to one another and I found myself caught up in  the beauty and reverence of what was taking place before my eyes. The bride asking and needing reassurance and the Bridegroom affirming His love for her again and again.

It involved repetitive declarations of reassurances of love and adoration that like waves of the ocean crashed over her fears again and again. I was in complete awe of what I was seeing and feeling.

It was a deeply moving experience for me.  It seemed that with each worship set we were being joined together with invisible cords of love.

The Prophet Jeremiah prophetically spoke of this, when he wrote:

¹¹ the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord, saying,

“Give thanks to the Lord Almighty,
    for the Lord is good;
    his love endures forever.”

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before,’ says the Lord. (Jeremiah 33:11 NIV)

But notice the promise at the end, that all this was preparation for God to restore His church.

Every two to three hours, with the change of worship teams and speaker, another wave of the Holy Spirit washed over us, cleansing and refreshing us.  I knew that something supernatural was taking place in our lives and in the body of Christ.

At the end of the evening, we shared a meal together and I was warmed by the conversation and camaraderie between us.  We were the body of Christ eating and drinking together.

It felt like we were seated at the banquet table of the marriage feast of the Lamb mentioned in the Book of Revelation and we were enveloped in Christ’s love (Revelation 19:7-8).

From my perspective, that weekend was  a foreshadowing of the great end-times feast, when Jesus comes for His Bride. But I also wonder if this is a foretaste of God’s Holy Spirit preparing to fall upon us now.