Dear friends,

Hope all is well with you and your families! 

Looking forward to seeing you next Sunday 10/9/22, at our outdoor multi-church public worship and prayer gathering at the Mashpee Commons.

We will gather together as believers from different churches, denominations, ethnic backgrounds, and generations, to exalt the Lord together with one voice and pray in unity for our beloved Cape Cod!

GOGCC Public Worship and Prayer Gathering
Mashpee Village Green at the Mashpee Commons
Steeple Street across from the Mashpee Public Library
Mashpee, MA 02649
Sunday October 9, 2022
3-5 pm
(Please note the earlier start time)

Join us and invite your friends so we can all come together before the Lord in united prayer. Here is the Facebook Event page link.

This will be our last multi-church gathering for this year. We will have no gatherings in November and December due to the busy holiday season. We will resume our multi-church worship and prayer gatherings in January, God willing.

The statement below summarizes why we gather as regional leaders and churches, and why we do ALL what we do:

We gather in response to the Lord's stirring us with His desire to show His glory in our midst, and the subsequent spiritual awakening/revival on Cape Cod, with multitudes coming to Christ.

By pursuing unity/oneness, consecration (walking in the fear of the Lord), and united prayer, we prepare ourselves for what God wants to do in our midst.

"Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool, what kind of a house will  you (plural)  build for Me, or where is the place of  My rest ?" Acts 7:49

"In whom the whole building, being  fitted together  grows into a  holy temple  in the Lord, in whom  you (plural)  are also being  built together  for a  dwelling place of God  (The Manifest presence of God) in the Spirit." Ephesians 2:21,22

 
Here are some logistical points for the gathering:

1. Plan to arrive by 2:30 pm , so you can park, get settled and we can all start worshiping together promptly at 3 pm.

2. Bring your own lawn chairs and and make sure to dress warm.

3. We want to be a good witness to the community and leave the place clean.

Looking forward to seeing you Sunday!

Blessings,

The Glory of God on Cape Cod team
 
Summary of the 8 points we studied so far in the Glory of God in the Midst of His People Study:

Pastors and leaders in the GOGCC network have been looking together at Scriptures, studing this foundational subject.
We thought you would find the summary of what we studied so far edifying:
 
1. What the Scriptures say about God's desire to dwell with His people:

Throughout the Scriptures, God repeatedly expresses His desire to dwell among His people, from as early as when He commanded Moses to build the tabernacle, “And Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8), continuing throughout the Scriptures where God repeatedly says “I will dwell among them”, and ends  in the age to come, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev 21:3).
 
 
2. We looked at what the Scriptures say about the difference between the omnipresence and the manifest presence of God:

What does it mean for an omnipresent God to dwell among His people? God is present everywhere. He fills heaven and earth. So what do these verses mean about Him dwelling among His people? It means manifesting His presence among them, making them acutely aware that He is among them!
Moses realized that it was the very presence of God among the Israelites that distinguished them as His people: “If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here. For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth.” (Exodus 33:15,16)

 A.W. Tozer articulated the concept of the manifest presence of God well in his classic The Pursuit of God:

  "If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, "in the waste howling wilderness," gave the answer to that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not." Jacob had never been for one small division of a moment outside the circle of that all-pervading Presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and it is ours. Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it would make if they knew. The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are wholly unaware of it. He is manifest only when and as we are aware of His Presence."
 
3. We talked about what the Scripture says about God dwelling with His people and what does that look like: 

First, God dwelled with us (manifested Himself) through the incarnation in the first coming of Jesus Christ, Second, God dwells within each of us individually through the Holy Spirit, and third, God dwells (manifests His presence) among us corporately as His New Testament temple. All believers have the indwelling Holy Spirit within, which make us individual temples for the Lord. At the same time, we, together, corporately form a temple for the Lord where He dwells/walks among us (manifests His presence). It's not either/or, it's both/and:
 
 "For you (plural) are the temple of the living God, as God has said, I will dwell in them (individual dwelling within) and walk among them (corporate manifest presence).." (2 Cor 6:16)
 
 "In whom the whole building, being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you (plural) are also being built together for a dwelling place of God (the manifest presence of God) in the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:21,22).
 
When the glory of God (The manifest presence of God) is among His people, two things happen: The people of God become acutely aware of His presence, AND, unbelievers encounter God in our midst:
 
“Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles… And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved”
(Acts 2:43,47).
 
“So great fear came upon all the church and upon all who heard these things(Acts 5:11).
 
 A.W.Tozer articulated well what it looks like when God walks among His people (manifests His presence) in his book, The Pursuit of Man:
 
“It was this (the sense of Someone there) that filled with abiding wonder the first members of the Church of Christ. The solemn delight which those early disciples knew sprang straight from the conviction that there is One in the midst of them. They knew that the Majesty in the heavens were confronting them on earth: They were in the very Presence of God. And the power of that conviction to arrest attention and hold it for a lifetime, to elevate, to transform, to fill with uncontrollable moral happiness, to send men singing to prison and to death, has been one of the wonders in history and a marvel of the world.......
 
Some insist upon"naked" faith as the only way to know spiritual things. By this they mean a conviction of the trustworthiness of the Word of God (a conviction, it may be noted, which the devils share with them). But the man who has been taught even slightly by the Spirit of Truth will rebel at this perversion. His langu age will be ,"I have heard Him and observed Him. What have I to do anymore with idols?" For he cannot love a God who is no more than a deduction from a text. He will crave to know God with a vital awareness that goes beyond words and to live in the intimacy of personal communion. To seek our divinity merely in books and writings is to seek the living among the dead........
 
Nothing can take the place of the touch of God in the soul, and the sense of Someone there. Real faith, indeed, brings such realization, for real faith is never the operation of reason upon texts. Where true faith is , the knowledge of God will be given as a fact of consciousness, altogether apart from the conclusions of logic.
 
Whatever else it embraces, true Christian experience must always include a genuine encounter with God. Without this, religion is but a shadow, a reflection of reality, a cheap copy of the original once enjoyed by someone else of whom we have heard.”
 
 4. We looked at what the Scriptures says about what does it mean for God's manifest presence (glory) to depart from His people and what does it look like:
 
When we don't walk in the fear of the Lord, when we don't treasure His presence and like Esau, make carnal choices and easily give up the blessings/presence of God for the littlest things, we miss out on God's resting among us, and we don't experience the glory of God (His manifest presence) in our midst.
 
"Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel are committing here, to make Me  depart  from My sanctuary? " (Ezekiel 8:5)
 
When we don't experience the glory of God in our midst, we as believers can't see Him or hear Him clearly:
 
"But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor,  blind  and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes,  so you can see . Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door (outside the church) and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in (come in again into the church or manifest My Presence among you)..." (Rev 3:17-20).
 
Additionally, when we don't experience the glory of God in our midst, unbelievers do not encounter God among us, and their experience when they come in our midst is "Where is your God?" instead of "Truly God is in your midst."
 
"Why should the nations (unbelievers) say, 'Where is your God?'"
(Psalm 115:2)
 
"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." (Matthew 5:13)
 
Furthermore, continuing to refuse to obey God's will may result in chastisement/judgment:
 
"How often I wanted to gather your children TOGETHER, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but YOU WERE NOT WILLING! Behold, YOUR HOUSE IS BEING LEFT TO YOU DESOLATE."  (Matthew 23:38)
 
5. We looked at what the Scriptures say about the human agency;How God uses people and how what we do matters:

God created us in His own image (Genesis 1:27). He calls His people a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession (1 Peter 2:9-10). He has given His Body the authority to bind what He binds and loose what He looses (Matthew 16:19). God uses people and it matters what we do. :"If My people.." (2 Chron 7:14). We are here now on Cape Cod to respond to God in our generation as other people of God before us responded to Him and served Him in their generation, "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this." (Esther 4:14)
 
6. We looked at the role of illumination, awareness of our need/desperation for God in experiencing His Glory (Manifest presence)/revival:

We looked at examples of biblical figures who knew they needed the Lord desperately such as Moses (Exodus 33:16-16), David  (Psalm 63:1), the Sons of Korah (Psalm 42:1), and Paul (Philippians 3:8), and how the Lord responds to those who know they need him and manifests Himself to them (2 Chron 7:14-16), Psalm 63:1-2, James 4:8-10, Jeremiah 29:12-14).
 
We also looked at the result of not acknowledging our need/desperation for God, when the Lord does not manifest Himself and we walk in darkness (lack of revelation) as the Scriptures show us in Romans 1:21, Hosea 4:6, and Ezekiel 10:18. We were reminded of what Jesus said in John 15:5,7,8, that "Apart from Me, you can do nothing."
 
We discussed what keeps us from recognizing our desperate need from God, and we saw that complacency, and lack of humility (Psalm 138:6, James 4:6) are two main reasons, and sometimes it's misunderstanding of Scriptures in a number of ways. Among them is to misconstrue being desperate for God and praying for revival as "striving" or "works", despite the testimony of the Scriptures about biblical figures who walked with God and hungered for His presence, and the recorded prayers of the people of God for revival in the Scriptures. 
Another misunderstanding of Scriptures that keeps us from recognizing our desperate need for God and praying for revival is misunderstanding the sovereignty of God as fatalism/hyper Calvinism which is not biblical orthodoxy. Another is the erroneous belief by some streams in the body of Christ that we need to pray for revival because "we are already in revival" despite the evidence to the contrary.
 
Below is an excerpt from A.W.Tozer's book, "The Deeper Life" relevant to point#6: 
 
 "Many today stand by Paul's doctrine who will not follow him in his passionate yearning for divine reality. Can these be said to be Pauline in any but the most nominal sense ?
 With the words "That I may know Him" Paul answered the whining claims of the flesh and raced towards perfection. All gain he counted loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord, and if to know Him better meant suffering or even death, it was all one to Paul. To him, conformity to Christ was cheap at any price. he panted after God as the deer pants after the Waterbrook, and calm reason had little to do with the way he felt. Indeed a score of cautious and ignoble excuses might have been advanced to slow him down, and we have heard them all. "Watch out for your health" , a prudent friend warns. "There is a danger that yo u become mentally unbalanced" , says another. "You'll get a reputation of being an extremist" cries a third, and a sober Bible teacher with more theology than thirst, hurries t o assure him that there is nothing more to seek. "You are accepted in the beloved" he says, and  "blessed with all spiritual blessings in healingly places in Christ. What more do you want? You have only to believe and to wait for  the  days of His triumph." 

So Paul would be exhorted if he lived among us today, for so in substance have I heard the holy aspirations of the saints damped down and smothered as they leaped to meet God in an increasing degree of intimacy. But knowing Paul we we do, it is safe to assume that he would ignore this low counsel of expediency and press onward toward the mark for for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And we would do well to follow him."
 
7. We looked at the role of spiritual hunger in experiencing the glory of God in our midst/revival:
 
Just as physical hunger is a sign of physical health, and lack of appetite is a serious sign of physical illness, so is spiritual hunger or lack of it are indicators of how healthy our walk with the Lord is. (Matthew 5:6). Spiritual hunger is critical for maturity. Craving (hunger)spiritual milk leads to us growing up in our walk with the Lord (1 Peter 2:2-3). Spiritual hunger is evidence of humility, where we admit our spiritual need for more of God, as opposed to, "I have need of nothing." (Rev 3:17). We must develop hunger by not being "too filled up" with lesser things, that ruins our appetite of God. David kept His eyes on the Lord (Psalm 16:8,11) and His Word (Psalm 119:103). God rewards the hungry (Matthew 5:6, Luke 1:52-53, Psalm 107:5,6, 35-37). The currency of heaven is hunger (Rev 3:17). To buy the bread that the Lord offers all we need is hunger( Isaiah 55:1,2).

8. We looked at the role of repentence in experiencing the glory of God in our midst/revival:
 
We talked about repentance as godly sorrow recognizing that walking in sin is not honoring God and an ungrateful response to His infinite love and benevolence. It is turning away from our ways that does not please Him and returning to the Father's bosom (Isaiah 55:7, Luke 15:17, 20, ). Martin Luther said repentace is a process done throughout one's lifetime, it's not a one time act at salvation. Jesus' word to the churches in the book of Revelation was "Repent". We talked about biblical examples of repentance and revival (Joshua 3:5, 2 Chron 7:14, Psalm 51). Jesus said "Blessed ar the pure in heart, for THEY shall see God (Revival)"
(Matthew 5:8)