There are times in our life, that without the least expectation, God suddenly comes and with one single action does amazing works of transformation. At times what we had been struggling for, for years together He solves it in just a wink of an eye. One example of this is the rare visitation of God upon some group of people, cities, villages or even the nation as a whole. The longed for visitation we call Revival.
But the question is this. Do we have to wait for such rare moments of revival to be transformed? My state of Meghalaya has experienced such revivals twice and they were a hundred years apart from each other. The first one was during 1905-06 and the second one was just two years ago i.e. 2006. Revival accounts that I used to read and hear from others I was privileged to witness it first hand. It’s so awesome and sacred to see God working at such times. However, initially I was frustrated during this time of revival. The reason was because I never saw a vision of either Jesus or the angels or other similar supernatural sightings that people everywhere were claiming to have seen. Even non-Christian people like Hindus and Muslims were seeing such visions. I had begun to wonder if I wasn’t worthy enough for such experiences. But the Lord comforted me by saying that the living does not need to be revived. It’s the dead who needs to be revived. In my opinion a Christian who’s alive spiritually is one who has an ongoing personal and intimate relationship with the Lord – one who breathes of His Spirit.
So to repeat the question again, do we have to wait for such rare moments of revival to be transformed or to simply experience the tangible presence of God? What we often fail to realize is that such visitation from God in our lives is not only possible but it’s something that can occur on a regular basis. Did I say regular basis? Yes, since individually as His children we can communicate with Him and experience His working in and through our lives daily. Simply put, it’s learning to live in His Presence 24x7. We ought to experience the “I’m in the Father and the Father is in me” experience of Jesus in our lives. Jesus also said that He and the Father would come and make their home in us. In short, we live together. We move and have our beings in Him.
I need the Scripture. It’s my daily bread. But I’m also beginning to see the fact that Scripture alone without a living relationship with the God of the Scripture is insufficient to live the life I’m called to live and to accomplishing the Father’s purpose in my life. How can I be like Him if I don’t see Him? It’s not sufficient for me to only read about Him. I need to see Him, hear Him, feel Him, and know Him. I ought to know the Father’s heart. I ought to see what the Father is doing and do likewise. “I do what I see my Father doing”, Jesus said. Whenever Jesus communicated to His disciples about His relationship with the Father, I guess, He was motivating and inviting them to experience it themselves. His goal was always to reconcile and to connect people to the Father.
Jesus lived and served in and through the revelation He had from and of the Father. “I do what I see My Father doing”. Every time I read this particular phrase I used to imagine the Father showing Jesus what He should do throughout the day by enacting the whole event that would take place. That’s probably possible. But I now realize more and more what Jesus meant when He said, “I do what I see my Father doing”. In His daily walk with the Father He saw how the Father dealt and related with Him. How and what the Father said to Him, how He strengthen and empowered Him, how He encouraged Him, how He loved Him. He saw what the Father was doing in His life and that’s exactly what He was doing in His relationship with His disciples and others.
Unless we are conscious about the Father’s dealing in our lives, unless we live in His presence and see how He relates to us and feel His heartbeat for us, it’ll not be possible for us to imitate Him and do likewise unto others. 
In fact, if I may say, adherence to Scripture alone without a living relationship with the God of the Scripture could birth a Pharisee in us. Weren’t they strictly following the Scripture of their day, striving to faithfully fulfill even the iota of the Scripture? And yet they were spiritually blind to such an extreme that they crucified the very Lord of the Scripture. But when such a Pharisee had a revelation of Christ and came into His living relationship, he turned the world upside down. We see that in apostle Paul whose revelation of Christ rendered everything else he had achieved but dung in its comparison.
To reiterate, that revelation of the Father in our lives is so vital – a reality in which the Son lived daily. We ought to experience the truth in our lives that the Scripture tells us about the Father. For instance, I can teach brilliantly on the agape love of God for us. But I’ll not be in a position to give others that same love if I haven’t received and experience it from the Father. “There’s joy in the presence of the Lord”. You see the Scripture tells me where to find joy. Not in the Scripture itself but in His presence. So when I live and have my beings in the Lord I’m living in His fullness. God never comes to us in portion. He doesn’t live behind a certain aspect or characteristics of Himself up there in Heaven and come to us with the rest. He comes with His fullness, with His entirety, with who He is and that’s what we have and experience in His presence. And that’s what we give unto others.
It’s this relationship that we’re privileged to enjoy daily which transforms us into His likeness. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit”. (NASB 2nd Cor 3:18)
Phillip asked Jesus to show the Father. Jesus simply said, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father”. Jesus daily beheld the glory of the Father and He became like Him. Paul reminds us that this is what happens to us too as we live in His presence daily beholding His glory. We're transformed into His image, into His likeness.
Like Father like son!
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