Havilah Cunnington wears many hats: wife, mom, pastor, teacher, daughter and friend. She and her husband Ben were leaders at The Rock of Roseville Church for the past 15 years, but they recently made a huge transition by moving to Redding, CA to be the Directors of Moral Revolution. She will be one of the main speakers at the Heaven Come Conference in May 2016. For more information on Heaven Come, visit bethelmusic.com/heavencome
I like this quote from Joyce Meyer that says, “God is never late, but He doesn’t seem to be in a rush.” How many of us have found that with God? He doesn’t seem to miss it in our lives, but man He takes his time! And he let’s seasons hang out in our lives — the season of singleness, or the season of believing for our healing, or believing for our calling. He just let’s us sit there for a while until some of us are like, “I’m here, I’m willing, I wanna do this, come on God, trust me with it!” And His response seems to be, “I will, I will just not yet, let’s just be here for a little bit, let’s work on your heart a little bit, let’s work on your attitude a little bit.”
When we talk about the suddenlies of God – those moments when God all of a sudden breaks through in a situation – I’ve experienced those, but I’ve also experienced long seasons of waiting. Life sometimes is really a walk of faith. The Bible says in Hebrews 11 that it’s the evidence of things unseen: we believe and then we see a sign.
We sing songs like, let heaven come and let it break in, and we’re not just singing it because it’s the latest song and it sounds great and we know the harmonies to it or anything like that. We’re singing these songs because we believe it – we believe in God ripping open the Heavens, and coming down and giving us the reality of what we’ve been praying for and believing for and reading about, and He wants to come in power.
Our generation needs power, we don’t just need words or little stories of what God did or how He did it — we love the revival stories, but when is it our time? When do we get to experience it? We all have a responsibility to say God do it now. Let’s not just watch our leaders saying, “Would you believe that God could do this”, instead, let’s have an actual yes in our hearts saying, “God do it now, like you did for Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, do it now in our generation.”
So what brings about the suddenlies of God? Well, the first thing that I’ve found is that it’s God’s sovereignty that brings about His suddenlies. Which means that nothing we can say, do, be, act, pray, sing, declare, can bring it about. The suddenlies of God are an act from Him alone. The reason He allows it to be up to Him is because He doesn’t want us to have a formula, and He wants us to have an active heart that says “come when you wanna come, we want you just to come. I think that should make us excited — I think that should inspire us because when I’m putting my clothes in the dryer, God can come. When I’m on carpool and I’m picking up my kids, God can come. When I’m on the phone with the insurance company, God can come. When I’m in my cubicle at work, God can come. He doesn’t need the four corners of any building for Him to sovereignly come and awaken our hearts to the reality of who He is.
But as I was on my journey and approached Damascus, about noon a great blaze of light flashed suddenly from heaven and shone about me. Acts 22:6
Here Saul is walking around thinking he’s doing God a favor by killing Christians, and all of a sudden, he has a supernatural experience with God. Did Saul deserve having God come down and talk to him? No! He’s killing Christians, He’s persecuting the Church — but God comes! You know what that encourages me? That God’s after your prodigal child. He’s after your spouse today, He’s after your mom, He’s after your dad, He’s after your boss, your coworker, your leader, and the best part is, He doesn’t need your help to get them. He can use you, He wants to use you, but we’ve gotta know that it’s God and God alone who can get them. He is powerful and sovereign enough to make a way where there is no way.
So what else gets God’s attention? Costly worship. Another time God suddenly comes into a situation is found in Acts 16:26 Paul and Silas are in prison and they start to sing, from this dungeon surrounded by darkness and chains. The truth is that at the end of the day worship is about a decision where we say “I’m going to exalt the thought of heaven over the thoughts of earth, I’m gonna exalt the thoughts of my king and what He wants, needs and deserves over what I want, or need or deserve.”
So when we come in and begin to worship, there’s an attitude that we need to step where we say, “I’m about to have some heavenly thoughts that are gonna override my earthly way of thinking.” Because it doesn’t make sense that we’d be singing and worshiping when we should be crunching numbers, paying bills, mowing the lawn, making things work in our house — we shouldn’t be here just singing songs. But God loves costly worship. He loves it. He loves it when we don’t feel like singing a note but we still open our mouths. I don’t know why but He loves it. And so costly worship opens up doors to suddenlies of God.
Your suddenlies are being prepared even as you are worshiping God in the weakness and brokenness of your life. You don’t know if you are five or six times around the wall of Jericho, but God does, and He knows when your breakthrough is about to happen, and everything that you’ve been believing for is about to break through. So can you trust Him with the not yet, and can you begin to believe. Worship your way through the wilderness, into the promised land.
This is a transcription of one of Havilah’s messages. For more of Havilah’s sermons check out truthtotable.com