This Sunday during worship I felt like there was a feeling of dredge in the environment—a passive laziness and no zeal. I pressed in towards the Holy Spirit and asked Him to change the mood, but He instead asked, “But if not you, then who?” I realized that action needed to happen, but it was not action from the Holy Spirit that was required, but action from us, God’s people. There was a need for God’s people to “Press on toward the goal.”
Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Then Mercedes said that sometimes you have to do something in the physical to see it in the spiritual. I felt like everyone needed to get up and start walking around the sanctuary, creating a spiritual whirlpool effect, because—“If not you, then who?” You want to see your partner have a relationship with God, then start walking and praying. You want to see your child start making better choices, then start walking and praying. You want healing and provision, then start walking and praying! Because, “If not you, then who?”
I saw a vision of this during worship. Once everyone started walking, some even started running, it created a whirlpool effect. A stirring. A movement. So much so, that those who walked into the church were getting caught up in His movement. Even those amongst us who were too tired to walk or run were still able to move because of the heavy current of the whirlpool pushing that came from the others in the tribe, walking and running. It’s beautiful because the faster the whirlpool turns it creates a funnel and that funnel gets us closer to the center. The more we move, the closer we get to the center, the closer we get to Christ, the center of our lives.
Definition of whirlpool:
A whirlpool is a body of rotating water produced by opposing currents or a current running into an obstacle. Small whirlpools form when a bath or a sink is draining. More powerful ones in seas or oceans may be termed maelstroms. Vortex is the proper term for a whirlpool that has a downdraft.
Jesus said, “Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” (John 7:38 NIV). When the currents of the storms in your life try to discourage you and tear you apart, the currents of the living water within you will create a whirlpool, whose sole purpose is to get you closer to Jesus! When obstacles stand before you, release the living water within you, it will run into those obstacles and create a whirlpool that will get you closer to Jesus.
John 4:10-14 (NIV)
10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
-Pastor Gena Batres
