The Father's Son Series

[From an email – Peter Steicke (30 January 2010): “ … Not only that but when I left Uganda I remember looking out the window of the plane thinking, ‘I never want to see this God-forsaken place again.’ I was full of despair. Upon receiving the impartation of the Father heart of God, not only did the despair lift instantly and miraculously, but I was also given a ‘divine download’, a vision of returning to Uganda (which four days earlier I had never wanted to see again!) to share with them the love of the Father in a country full of both physical and spiritual orphans.”]

We did have a good weekend and Peter did pray for an impartation of the Father’s heart into us but it is only now that I am beginning to grasp the greater significance of what happened. I have the feeling that – as uncomfortable as it may be to be exposed to some negative limelight – we may “take up” the blessings of Toronto in a more conscious way.

For years I had the mistaken assumption that the “Toronto Blessing” was about the Holy Spirit and in a sense it was. At the Toronto Airport church – in January 1994 – about one hundred and sixty people attended a service and then experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Numbers soon swelled to about three million visitors from all over the world in only six years – a great move of the Holy Spirit – but it was not primarily about the Holy Spirit. It was about the Father and the truth of these Bible passages – Romans 8:15: “ … you received the Spirit of sonship [daughtership]. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” Galatians 4:6: “ … God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’”

And this may be bigger and far more significant than I first suspected. Our own small history is swallowed up in something bigger. So much what is going on in the Christian world right now (at least in the West) has been touched by Toronto or walks in partnership with Toronto. Pastor Bill Johnson – impacting the world himself – writes: “One of the great privileges in my life is to speak at Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF). I am always amazed at their ability to steward the greatest move of God of our lifetime. The grace and wisdom they carry is very inspiring” (Fred & Sharon Wright: The World’s Greatest Revivals, Shippensburg: Destiny Image 2007, p17). He has, tongue in cheek, called TACF the “Mother Ship” (Fred & Sharon Wright: The World’s Greatest Revivals, Shippensburg: Destiny Image 2007, p249).

In a book – that covers church history over the last six hundred years – the authors (Fred & Sharon Wright) identify seasons of great interventions by God – tsunami wave revivals – of which (they think) there are four. According to the authors there are a few defining characteristics of tsunami wave revivals. I quote only a few observations: