Lynn Green

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  • How I Stumbled Into a Thin Place

    How I Stumbled Into a Thin Place

    HOW I STUMBLED INTO A THIN PLACE

    I was a replacement for Loren Cunningham—which clearly did not please the congregation.  It was my first time to be the preacher for a Sunday service.  Even though it was a small church in a farming town of no more than five thousand people, I was nervous!

    Loren had invited me to travel to a few churches in the Midwest of the USA, but after little more than a week, he informed me that he had two commitments for the next Sunday, one in Chicago and one in a small town in Iowa.  He suggested that I should go to Iowa and then “see what opens up after that”.  So that was the end of my travels with Loren!

    AN APPARENT FAILURE

    I did my best to preach a good sermon that morning, but with no training and no previous experience, I knew it did not go well.  After that one Sunday meeting, I had no place to go and no money to travel, so on Monday morning, I asked the pastor if I could stay awhile.  Though he was not that thrilled about the idea, he agreed, and suggested that we have an evening meeting for the youth of his church and the Methodist church the following evening.

    SPONTANEOUS CONVERSION

    What followed was way beyond what I could have imagined.  Towards the end of that youth evening, the Holy Spirit gently fell on the dozen young people who remained, and they all came to a recognition that they needed a saviour.  That was followed by individual repentance and then a joyful awareness that they had been forgiven and that they were “clean” in God’s sight. 

    The next day, those young people returned to the small house where we had been the night before, and they brought friends.  The same thing happened again!  And so, a pattern emerged.  They would come at lunch time and again after school and then again in the evenings and each time God’s presence would apprehend them and especially the friends they brought.  The ministers of the town met with me and asked that the evening meetings be held in the churches, rotating from one to the next each evening. So, that’s what we did, but the Holy Spirit would come on the youth when they came back to the little house after the church meetings.

    MULTIPLICATION

    Over a period of three weeks, several hundred young people came to faith.  They were driving in from towns around the region as the news spread by word of mouth and through the local newspaper.

    I had stumbled upon a “thin place”, a specific location where the veil between heaven and earth has become “thin”. 

    WHY?

    I had heard about this happening before because Duncan Campbell, who was the catalyst preacher for the Hebrides Islands revival, had been a teacher in my School of Evangelism a few months earlier.  From his teaching, and subsequent reading about revivals, I knew that somewhere, someone must have prayed until the veil was thinned out.  But I never met that person.

    WHAT A COINCIDENCE!

    About 25 years later, I was reading a book on Spiritual Gifts, by C. Peter Wagner and he listed “intercessory prayer” as one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit.  He gave an example of a person who exercised that gift and mentioned that she lived in that same little Iowa town!  I was amazed at the coincidence, but also delighted to fill out the picture of what had happened there, because I knew I got to reap a harvest that I had not prepared.

    FRUIT THAT REMAINED

    After another 15 years, and with the development of social media, I received an inquiry.  “Are you the Lynn Green who was in this Iowa town 40 years ago?  If you are, would you come back for the 40-year anniversary of that move of God?” 

    Marti and I did make the journey back to Iowa and met some of the “young people”, now in their 50s and 60s.  They were people whose lives were turned right side up four decades earlier.  It was thrilling to hear the stories of those who had gone on to pioneer new Christian ministries or had been serving in local government or education or some other sphere of society.

    HEBRIDES INTERCESSORS

    I don’t think “thin places” develop in some arbitrary manner.  For example, prior to the Hebrides revival, two elderly ladies engaged in sacrificial prayer until they received assurance from heaven that a breakthrough had been secured.  Then Duncan Campbell arrived, and the presence of God grew powerful and people were spontaneously converted.  It was reported that fishermen coming into port experienced conviction of sin as they neared the island.

    CHANGING THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF HER TOWN FROM A NURSING HOME

    On that fortieth anniversary trip to Iowa, we discovered that the intercessor was a lady in a nursing home.  She suffered from multiple sclerosis, but the young people in the town knew her because she was unrelentingly encouraging and welcoming to all who would visit her.  The light of Jesus shone from her.  They told us that she instructed the nursing staff to wake her early each day so she could get through her daily prayer list.  She was the lady that Peter Wagner wrote about in his passage on intercessory prayer.

    IT CAN HAPPEN AGAIN AND AGAIN!

    Surely, we all love the idea of a “thin place”, a place where God’s presence is so strong that people’s lives are changed just by being there.  But I remain convinced that these things do not occur because of some arbitrary and mysterious divine decision.  Jesus instructed us again and again in the Gospels to keep on praying; to not give up; to cry out day and night; to fast and pray until our prayers are answered.

    Jesus instructed us to pray, “Thy kingdom come…” and what could be a clearer expression of the Kingdom than the multiplication of “thin places”?  Is it possible that some who read this article could be called to prepare the way of the Lord through sacrificial prayer until His presence saturates their town, or church, or nation?  Could that be you?

    Lynn Green.

  • Prayer Letter: May/June

    Prayer Letter: May/June

    Dear…. The first calling of YWAM is to send teams of mostly young people to take the Good News about Jesus to those who haven’t heard or understood the life-giving, life-saving message.  I am copying two testimonies from teams who are on their Discipleship Training outreach now. 

    They illustrate how the Holy Spirit works through us when we are doing what He commissioned us to do.  The first one is from Madagascar, written by Fiona, who was on staff here at Highfield Oval for several years.  The second one is from a DTS team we recently sent from here to Albania.  I will add some personal news and requests after these two encouraging stories:

    “One of the students who had been heavily involved in witchcraft shared that in the past he would gather people and he would teach, but all he shared was from the kingdom of darkness and led people to death.  On the outreach, people gathered to listen to him preach about Jesus and the result was life!  Isn’t God amazing?  Many students shared how God had healed them from past hurts; one girl said she’d had a very difficult relationship with her mother, but as she was healed and forgave her mother, she could take the first step by telling her mother she loved her.

    Their relationship is being restored. One student shared that he was addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs just to cope with traumas he had gone through as a child, but as he was healed from the inside out and delivered, he has been able to break free.  “On outreach the students were going door to door and prayed for a lady who had been bedridden for 4 years because of a stroke.  She was healed!  

    A man with a terribly swollen leg, and the pastor’s wife sick with fever were all healed, as were countless others.  One of the students who suffered from a debilitating heart condition himself was healed during the DTS.  One staff member shared that many Muslims had asked for prayer as they had gone door to door, as a result a number had given their lives to Jesus. 

    “Many of the villages were going through a drought and needed rain to plant their crops. They asked the students to pray, and when they did, it immediately started raining! Then when the DTS needed to go and do “open airs”

    they asked God to stop the rain just until they finished. Once they got home, it started raining again. What a testimony of God’s power!”  Here is the team we sent to Albania recently; their update follows.We are now 4 weeks into outreach!

    “Last week one of the trainees prayed for a 16-year-old boy, named Klejvis, who said he was a Christian. He had pain in his back which he’d had for over a year. This pain sometimes prevented him from leaving the house. After praying, the pain immediately left his body.

    Klejvis then told the team about his friend who was really depressed; she had tried to take her life 3 times; so they prayed for her. When Klejvis got home he received a message saying how happy his friend was feeling!! The trainee maintained contact with Klejvis, meeting him regularly to read the Bible.

     Klejvis bought himself a Bible and has been telling his friends in school about how Jesus healed him. In addition, he has been praying for other sick people!  He invited them to church the following Sunday and they came!  He now sends us messages telling us his favourite Bible verses that he’s read for that day (he reads it at least 3 times a day).

    His friends have now also started reading the Bible and are telling him how encouraging they’ve found the gospel of Matthew. Klejvis says he wants to live his life telling people about Jesus like we did for him. The trainee and Klejvis went for ice cream the other day and Klejvis was telling the lady behind the counter how much Jesus loved her! Kleyvis has now asked his pastor if he can meet twice a week to study the Bible with him. God is so good!”

    Downs and Ups.

    These last few weeks for YWAM Harpenden have been full of “downs and ups”, in that order.   Covid restrictions resulted in the fruits of isolation.  We stopped meeting together for worship many months ago and, at the time, there were some strained relationships that would have normally been sorted out as a by-product of regular fellowship.  Our online meetings were good, but that format is not great for repentance, confession, forgiveness, and restoration.  And a discipling missionary community cannot be healthy without the events when God convicts different ones of judging, harsh words, gossip, withdrawing or other offenses against one another. 

    When some of the restrictions were lifted, we began to get together in teams and then we had a couple of days with the entire community together.  The Holy Spirit was faithful to convict me, and others, of the ways we had fallen short of Christlike behaviour.  As we confessed to the community, forgiveness was extended and the distances between us were closed.  Those days were so fruitful and precious that the whole community decided to meet for another full day to worship and wait on God.  I am writing this as our third day together has concluded, and as we hoped, we went deeper still.  God has not finished with us and prolonged absence, along with different opinions about how Covid restrictions were applied, have left quite a lot to get sorted out.  But we are encouraged that hearts are soft and genuine; honest conversations do have their healing effect.  There have been times of repentance and then many sincere words of affirmation.  It illustrated again that we don’t expect people to be perfect, but humility paves the way for restoring trust.   

    My sin was judging others.  A couple of people had said or written things that seemed to say that Marti and I and our extended family needed to have less influence in this community.  Based upon those few comments, we began to feel unwanted and drew the conclusion that many people were feeling that way.  Once we confessed our sin of judging, it helped others to look inside too. What followed were words or notes of encouragement and acceptance.  We thank God that we are in a much better frame of mind and emotions now.

    All this illustrates that the Lord wants to get his “living stones” sorted out before we make new progress with the physical “stones”.  As I have written before, we are at a critical stage of improving this amazing property so that it can be a tool fit for God’s purposes and a “thin place” where residents and visitors experience God’s presence.  We have made good progress towards more accommodation but need to see quite a lot of money come in to finish the building, which is known as the Kinahan Lodge, after Peter Kinahan.  (Peter worked with me and others for years towards planning improvements and extensions to the capacity of this site before he died of cancer three years ago .)  Before we finish the KL, and to enable us to go on and improve the Factory building, we must install a new power supply.  That will cost about £400,000 , and without it we are woefully short of electrical energy, so it had to be done now.  The foundations have been laid, and the brickwork is starting today. 

    The last thing we did this morning was to reiterate how God has led us thus far.  Then we took up an offering, which came to over £21,000.  It was great to see a real sense of sacrificial buy-in from all who live here.  However, as of this morning we were still about £120,000 short of the money needed to pay for the new power supply.

    Would you please join us in prayer for God’s provision for the remaining £120,000 (about $200,000)?  It would be a great encouragement if you would join with us in prayer for this.  Completing it will symbolise a breakthrough for training up more ambassadors for the Kingdom of God.  If you can think of others who might want to be a part of this, feel free to pass this information along.

    Thank you!

    Lynn

  • Prayer Letter: January

    Prayer Letter: January

    Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

    The following post is a typical prayer and report letter that I send out every month.  If you would like to receive it, please send an email to lgo@oval.com.

     

    It’s early morning and I have just finished a two-hour meeting.  My, how life has changed!

    This meeting, one in a series of three this week by Zoom, started at 4 a.m.; there were 22 participants and about as many time zones and I was one who “drew the short straw” this time.  It was a meeting with the Founders’ Circle of YWAM and we were welcoming and praying over five new couples, from Central America, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and South Africa.  Yes, life has changed and YWAM has adapted!

    These new members of the group that have been drawn together around Loren and Darlene Cunningham are generally about 20 years younger than Marti and me,  but already have around 30 years of YWAM experience on average.  I also noticed that most of them spoke of their children and that several of that third generation is already pioneering and leading in missions, via YWAM.

    As they each had about 20 minutes to tell their story, we heard of many developments in the spread of the gospel!  These are things that few Christians in Europe or North America ever hear about:

    YWAM teams have planted 1500 churches amongst the Yao people in Southeast Africa.  10, 000 more churches over the past 25 years in Madagascar.

    Leadership multiplication on a massive scale.  Young Asians pioneering in difficult situations.  Africans reaching into the areas where radical Muslims are killing and kidnapping huge numbers.

    Darlene had given each of them a few questions so we could get to know them more deeply.  I could go on with even more stories and facts we heard this morning…those above are just a few.

    About two weeks from now, I will have another series of global meetings, also starting at 4 a.m. GMT, but this time it will be several thousand people convened by a group of our younger leaders mostly in their 20s and 30s, the Malachi Network, so named because of those two verses at the very end of the Old Testament:

    Malachi 4:  5 “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”

    Marti and I draw great encouragement from seeing these three generations.  Each generation is honoring the others and Darlene Cunningham and I have had the privilege of joining and advising the leaders who have catalysed this younger global network in YWAM.

    These developments are a fulfillment of a prophetic dream I had about 30 years ago.  The dream is recounted on my website at:

    Click on the picture

    I won’t include a schedule with this newsletter because, though I have quite a few commitments to online meetings, my schedule tends to fill up just a week or two in advance.   But my prayer need is that I might keep growing in Christ.  I spend such a lot of my time walking and talking with young missionaries here at Highfield Oval and on many Zoom calls each week.  Some are in great crises; some are just hungry for God and for revival and some are at turning points in their lives.  Our prayer, though, is that all of them would grow in a passionate commitment to follow Christ –wherever, whatever, and forever!

    God has clearly spoken to me to “strengthen the steel” in this massive global mission movement and the task seems overwhelming at times.  I am so concerned about the power of modern culture to warp and damage young people before they emerge from their teens.  We need a deep move of God so that young people are not only redeemed but experience a rapid and thorough change of thinking—the “renewing of their minds” by the Holy Spirit.

    Thank you again for your ongoing interest and prayers,

    Lynn

  • What is the Point of Prophecy?

    What is the Point of Prophecy?

    WHAT IS THE POINT OF PROPHECY?

    A well known Biblical verse, Amos 3:7, states “The Sovereign Lord never does anything until he reveals his plans to his servants the prophets.”

    Does that seem odd to you?  If the Sovereign Lord decides to do something doesn’t he just do it?

    I want to draw your attention to a prophecy which is well known, but to a limited number of Christians and I want to explain why more of us should know about it.  We should know about well-tested prophecies and we should believe them because that is how and why they come to pass.

    God tells his prophets to tell his people what he intends to do because he works through our faith.  Most prophetic messages are conditional. The very well-know passage from  2 Chronicles 7:14 is a perfect example:

    If my people, which are called by my name, shall ahumble themselves, and bpray, and seek my cface, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

    Here the Bible clearly states the conditions, and they are at least implied for nearly every prophetic passage.  The most common theme from the major and minor prophets is a warning about impending judgement with the prophet pleading for the people to repent and do what is right so God can relent and not bring the judgement they deserve.

    That is not to say that all prophecy is conditional, because some events are unconditionally predetermined.  An example of this would be the prophecy that Israel would be exiled in Egypt for 400 years.

    But most prophecies in the Bible, and prophetic messages today, are conditional.  This is because the Sovereign Lord has made us in his image and, as such, we are very significant.  We can create together with him!  Or as in Nazareth (Matt 13:58 or Mark 6:5), our unbelief can be a hindrance.

    God so loves us that he wants to work in partnership with us!  Therefore, he tells the prophets what he wants to do, they tell his people and we pray prayers of faith, like Daniel did in Daniel 9 or like Nehemiah did in Neh. 1

    So, it is clear that the Lord brings his word to us, often in the form of prophecies, so we can hear, believe and pray in faith.  That is how we can co-work together with God (1 Corinthians 3:9).

    That brings me to a prophecy that I think we should “lay hold of” and then pray until it happens.  It came from an unusual man, but one who was a well-proven prophet of his time.  God used him to bring thousands to faith, with signs and wonders accompanying his ministry over decades.  Smith Wigglesworth was a plumber but became a well-known evangelist.  The following prophecy and the photograph are taken from www.prophecytoday.uk.

     

    Photo: https://relevantmagazine.com/god/13-smith-wigglesworth-quotes-will-challenge-your-faith/

     

    Smith Wigglesworth was a well-known evangelist. He had humble beginnings in life, took up the trade of a plumber and was then powerfully used in a world-wide ministry of evangelism with miraculous healings and miracles accompanying the ministry of the word. He lived from 8 June 1859 to 12 March 1947.1

    Shortly before he died in 1947, he delivered the following prophecy:

     

    During the next few decades there will be two distinct moves of the Holy Spirit across the church in Great Britain. The first move will affect every church that is open to receive it and will be characterised by the restoration of the baptism and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

    The second move of the Holy Spirit will result in people leaving historic churches and planting new churches. In the duration of each of these moves, the people who are involved will say, ‘This is a great revival.’ But the Lord says, ‘No, neither is this the great revival but both are steps towards it.’

    When the new church phase is on the wane, there will be evidence in the churches of something that has not been seen before: a coming together of those with an emphasis on the word and those with an emphasis on the Spirit.

    When the word and the Spirit come together, there will be the biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the nations, and indeed, the world have ever seen. It will mark the beginning of a revival that will eclipse anything that has been witnessed within these shores, even the Wesleyan and Welsh revivals of former years.

    The outpouring of God’s Spirit will flow over from the United Kingdom to mainland Europe, and from there, will begin a missionary move to the ends of the earth.

    I believe this prophecy is from God and it is for now!

    There are many signs that we are about to see unprecedented numbers of people, especially young people, to come to faith in Jesus.  But the “biggest move of the Holy Spirit that the nations, and indeed, the wold have ever seen” is not a foregone conclusion.  Let us cling onto God’s loving intention and pray it into being!

     

    Lynn Green.