You can read part I here.
Continuing the Awakening Series in this post we will discuss the 2nd stage of awakening. As noted previously each stage builds on top of the other and rolls over into the next. Don’t isolate these steps as thinking of a one time occurrence for they always overlap but I believe the distinction between the stages is still clear when it transitions. Some places in this country are already in the 2nd & 3rd stages but rest assured awakening is here and growing in Fayetteville!
The 2nd stage of awakening is having the Word confirmed by healings, miracles, signs and wonders. Once this stage starts remember the 1st stage is still active and strong (as long as it is given room too) but the 2nd stage is another layer to what God is working in His people. Mark 16:20 tells as the disciples went out that “the Lord was working with them confirming the Word by accompanying signs.” I can assure you God is still healing people today! You can YouTube videos like this one and see some of what He is still doing, here is one of a blind eye being healed! These of just two of countless testimonies but when the Word is mixed with faith that is when God makes the impossible into reality!
In this stage of Awakening God uses the healings, miracles, signs and wonders to solidify the faith of the new believers, (just as YouTubing for new testimonies help sustain my faith for miracles) some of who will need healing themselves, and to attract the attention of the unbelievers as a testimony to who He is (see Acts 5:12-14)! A person who may have came in during the 1st stage of the awakening and then receives healing of anything significant whether it be sleep apnea or lupus or cancer imagine all the people that would hear of God healing them. All the family members who lived with or had to deal with the circumstances and the friends and coworkers etc….now imagine the glory God would receive for it! Now just think how many might come to know Christ because of one person who got healed and they witnessed or heard of it? God will always use what the enemy meant for harm to bring people to Himself (see Genesis 50:20)!
There are numerous pockets of awakening and revival around the nation right now that have seen this stage and some well known and others not so much. For example The Bay of Holy Spirit Revival in Mobile, Alabama and The Awakening in Manteca California are just a couple of examples. I mention these two as different examples of what God is doing but I believe, these pockets are just a template of the “type” of what to expect in our cities and churches. It will be different and may vary in size at times but God will be in the focus of it all.
I hope this wets your appetite for things to come as it does me every time I get on this subject. God desires for all people to know how much He loves them and cares for them! These supernatural signs are just God getting our attention so that we may come to know Him and be in relationship with Him! The biggest plus of all awakening is that it will always lead people to know God. Don’t be fooled, the enemy will step up his attacks on the Church at this stage as well. Just as in Acts when persecution came against the early believers after Pentecost: the Church grew and we will see the same. Through our hardships and tribulations that will come our way the people around us will see our hope, our joy and our prayer is that they would come to know our God!
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April 2nd, 2012 at 1:18 am
[...] He then led me to a book I brought but never read and led me to a particular chapter which confirmed everything that was stirring within and then the Holy Ghost expanded that and showed how it applied to me. I told a friend earlier tonight that “awakening (change) was coming but it first had to happen in us.” I didn’t realize how personal that would be tonight so yet again I leave you with this as we (Fayetteville, NC) are in the second stage of Awakening: [...]