When Heaven Interrupts the Ordinary

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How the Holy Spirit meets us in the unexpected:

There are times in life when the Lord does not announce Himself through the familiar ways we expect. He does not always wait for the sanctuary to fill, the music to rise, or the preacher to take the microphone. Sometimes He steps into the unnoticed spaces. Sometimes He interrupts the ordinary. Sometimes He chooses a setting so natural, so unremarkable, that if we are not listening in the Spirit, we will miss entirely that heaven has just bent low over the earth.

I remember being in Jerusalem, Israel, conducting a conference. The meetings were powerful, the schedule was full, and there was much to do. Yet one morning I felt to take some time and go work out in the gym at the hotel where we were staying and where the conference was being held. It seemed like an ordinary decision. It seemed like a practical moment in the middle of ministry. But I have learned over the years that when the Spirit of God is moving, there is no such thing as a wasted place and no such thing as a neutral moment. The Lord can meet a man in a church, but He can also meet him beside a treadmill, on an airplane, on a street corner, or in the middle of an interrupted plan.

While I was in that gym, there was an older gentleman serving as a trainer. We began to talk, and the conversation turned to why I was in Israel. I told him I was there for a conference. As we spoke, something shifted. It stopped feeling like a casual exchange and started feeling like an orchestrated encounter. He began to release insight from a Jewish perspective on many Old Testament scriptures, and the depth of what came out of him was unlike anything casual conversation could produce. The revelation carried weight. It carried intelligence. It carried another realm. It was as though God had hidden a messenger in plain sight and had arranged the whole morning to get something to me.

As he spoke, I knew I was not merely listening to a knowledgeable man. I knew the Spirit of the Lord was opening something. The words were not just information. They were unveiling. They were carrying me into a deeper sense that the Lord was preparing His people for something greater than what many were presently expecting. I left that interaction with a deep inner knowing that a greater wave of the Holy Spirit was coming upon believers throughout the world. Not upon one city. Not upon one ministry stream. Not upon one denomination. But upon those, wherever they live, who have hearts open to the Lord and lives yielded enough to move with Him.

I did not come away from that encounter with the sense that God merely wanted to bless church services. I came away feeling that He was making available a grace for supernatural living. I believe we are in a time when the Holy Spirit is not only inviting the Church into deeper devotion, but into fresh manifestations of heaven’s activity among human beings. I believe supernatural encounters are not fading into the past. I believe they are increasing. I believe the Lord is drawing near in ways that will awaken, convict, heal, reveal, and propel. And I believe the Church must have eyes to see that the Spirit is up to something right now.

Genesis says that the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters before creation came into its visible order. He hovered over what looked like disorder. He moved before the form appeared. He brooded before the emergence of light and structure. That image has stayed with me. The Holy Spirit hovers before He reveals. He moves before He manifests. He overshadows before He brings forth. And I believe He is hovering again over lives, over churches, over regions, and over nations. There is a holy brooding in this hour. There is divine movement over what looks chaotic, dark, confused, and resistant. Many see the darkness, but the Spirit sees what He intends to bring forth out of it.

That is why Isaiah’s cry matters so deeply in this hour: arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Darkness may cover the earth, and deep darkness the people, but that is not the end of the story. The Lord arises upon His people. His glory is seen upon them. I believe we have spent too much time staring at the darkness and too little time discerning the glory that is rising. We have at times become better students of decline than students of divine activity. But the Spirit is summoning us to look again. He is summoning us to perceive that heaven is moving, and that the answer to increasing darkness is not retreat but radiant surrender.

The next day, I found myself back in that same gym. We had a break in the conference schedule, and I was working out on the elliptical. Beside me was a woman on another machine. She turned and began to speak to me in Hebrew. Of course, I did not understand her. When I did not respond, she spoke louder, thinking perhaps that I had not heard her. But my issue was not volume. It was language. Then she changed her approach and spoke to me in English. She said, in essence, that I should increase my stride on the elliptical.

So I did.

The effect was immediate. The workout changed. The exertion changed. The release in my body changed. I experienced a greater output and a greater release of endorphins, and the whole workout moved into another level. Yet even as I felt that in the natural, I knew the Holy Spirit was speaking in the spiritual. What happened physically was carrying prophetic instruction. The Lord was saying something to me that was larger than exercise.

Increase your stride.

That word has remained with me. I believe it is what the Spirit is saying to many believers right now. Increase your stride in prayer. Increase your stride in surrender. Increase your stride in obedience. Increase your stride in love. Increase your stride in purity. Increase your stride in expectation. Increase your stride in the realm of faith. Do not remain at the pace that keeps you comfortable while the wave of God is moving. Do not settle into a rhythm that preserves convenience while the Spirit is calling you deeper. There are moments when the Lord does not merely invite us to continue; He summons us to lengthen our step.

What struck me so strongly is that when I increased my stride, I did not diminish the outcome. I did not lose something by stretching. I discovered another level of release. I believe many Christians fear deeper surrender because they think it will diminish their lives. They think if they yield more fully, they will lose freedom, joy, vitality, or significance. But the opposite is true in God. When He calls us to deeper surrender, He is not leading us into smaller living. He is leading us into greater life. The flesh sees surrender as loss. The Spirit knows surrender is access.

I believe that is where the supernatural becomes more than a concept. The supernatural is not simply spectacle, and it is not merely an unusual event to be admired from a distance. It is the life of God making contact with human reality. It is heaven touching earth through yielded vessels. It is divine intelligence entering ordinary moments. It is the Spirit of God breaking into places that reason alone cannot govern. And I believe encounters in the supernatural are increasingly upon those who choose a lifestyle of surrender and love. Not hype. Not performance. Not ambition. Surrender and love.

Years ago, in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, we entered a season of doing prophetic Christian readings on the beach. Week after week through one summer, for six weeks in a row and about four hours each week, we set up two tables with four people at each table. The weather was hot. The days were beautiful. People came, sat down, and we ministered as the Lord led. Over that stretch, I believe there were around 170 salvations. Even now, when I think about it, I am reminded that God is not limited by location. He is not waiting for a steeple before He will save. He is not waiting for stained glass before He will reveal Christ. He will move on a beach as readily as in a building if yielded people make room for Him.

One day a man came to my table who looked very hard. His presence felt closed, guarded, almost icy. In the natural, it would have been easy to assume he was unreachable or resistant. It would have been easy to make a judgment from the exterior. But the Spirit of the Lord does not see people the way we often do. He sees beneath the surface. He sees beneath the mask. He sees beyond the defense mechanisms that life has built around a human heart.

As he sat there, the four people at the table began to minister prophetically, one after the other, for about fifteen minutes. As the Lord touched him through those words, something began to break. The hardness started to dissolve. The guardedness gave way. The mask could not hold under the weight of divine love and revelation. By the end of it, the man was crying, deeply touched, visibly transformed. And there, in that moment, he accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into his heart and life.

That encounter taught me something I have never forgotten. Hardness is often not the true condition of the heart. Hardness is frequently a cover. It is a reflex developed through pain, disappointment, betrayal, rejection, fear, confusion, and survival. Many people are not hard because they are empty. They are hard because they have been struck too many times and no longer know how to remain open. What looks like resistance is often self-protection. What looks like indifference is often injury. What looks like hostility may at times be a desperate attempt to keep one more wound from getting through.

This is why it is so vital that the Church learn again to walk in love and surrender. If we respond merely to what we see in the flesh, we will miss what the Spirit is trying to reach. If we only react to the exterior, we may fail to discern the hidden softness underneath. But when we are led by the Spirit, we begin to see people as God sees them. We stop writing off the hard ones. We stop fearing the guarded ones. We stop shrinking back from the broken ones who learned to live behind walls. And we begin to recognize that some of the people who appear the least ready may actually be closest to a divine breakthrough.

I believe this is part of the greater wave that is now upon the Church. It is a wave of supernatural grace, yes. It is a wave of revelation, yes. It is a wave of glory rising upon surrendered believers, yes. But it is also a wave of divine appointments. God is bringing His people into moments they did not schedule, with people they did not anticipate, in settings they did not plan, and He is intervening there. In a hotel gym. On a beach. In a conversation. In a glance. In a brief exchange. In what appears random, heaven is often arranging.

The Lord is breaking off hardness in this hour. He is exposing the lie that people are too far gone. He is revealing that what has looked sealed is often only scarred. He is releasing a spirit of revelation that will help believers touch lives they would once have misunderstood. He is teaching His people how to move in compassion without compromise, in boldness without harshness, and in discernment without judgment. He is bringing us into a maturity where we are not merely impressed by supernatural moments, but are actually entrusted with them.

I also believe the tidal wave of God is not always neat. Sometimes the tidal wave is muddy. Sometimes the move of God reaches into messy places, complicated places, painful places, and unresolved places. Sometimes what He does does not fit our preference for tidy spirituality. But a muddy wave can still be His wave. And when He comes, He comes with purpose. He comes to awaken. He comes to cleanse. He comes to call. He comes to bring forth what has been buried under years of darkness and self-preservation.

Psalm 42 says deep calls unto deep. I believe that is happening right now. The deep things of God are calling to the deep places in yielded believers. The Holy Spirit is summoning the Church out of shallow living and into deeper waters. He is calling us beyond admiration of the supernatural into participation with the supernatural. He is not merely asking us to talk about glory. He is asking us to carry it. He is not merely asking us to pray for revival in theory. He is asking us to live in such surrendered nearness that we become available for divine interruption anywhere He chooses.

Hebrews speaks of the need for steadfast patience and endurance so that after doing the will of God, we receive what is promised. That matters in this hour too. The greater wave is not for spectators. It is for those who endure, who remain soft before God, who do not harden under delay, who continue in love, who keep saying yes, who keep increasing their stride when lesser men would coast. There is promised release in this hour, but it requires yielded vessels. It requires people who are not just hungry for power, but surrendered to the character of Christ.

That, to me, is the heart of it all. The supernatural is safest in the hands of those who love. Encounters with heaven are most fruitful in those who are yielded. The Church does not need more fascination without formation. It needs believers who walk close enough to Jesus that when the Spirit whispers, they hear; when the Spirit points, they move; and when the Spirit reveals a hidden softness beneath a hard exterior, they respond with heaven’s heart.

I believe the Holy Spirit is up to something right now. I believe there is a greater release upon the Church. I believe supernatural encounters with human beings are increasing for those who walk in surrendered love. I believe divine appointments are ahead of us in every place we go. I believe hardness will break, masks will fall, eyes will open, and people will meet the Lord in unexpected places. And I believe the word of the Lord to many in this hour is simple: arise, shine, and increase your stride. The wave is here. The Spirit is hovering. Heaven is moving. Let those who have eyes to see, see. Let those who have ears to hear, hear. And let those who belong to Christ yield themselves afresh to the loving, holy, supernatural movement of the Spirit of God. Much love.

Peter Nash

Prophetic Declarations 

1. I declare that heaven is interrupting the ordinary places of my life with the presence, purpose, and power of God.

   
   
   
   

2. I declare that I will have eyes to see and ears to hear what the Holy Spirit is doing in this hour.

   
   
   
   
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4. I declare that I will not miss divine appointments because of familiarity, distraction, or routine.

   
   
   
   

5. I declare that the Spirit of God is increasing my stride in prayer, surrender, obedience, and love.

   
   
   
   

6. I declare that I am moving out of passivity and into yielded partnership with the Holy Spirit.

   
   
   
   

7. I declare that a greater wave of the supernatural is upon the Church, and I will move with what God is releasing.

   
   
   
   

8. I declare that the hovering Spirit of God is bringing order, light, and life over every area of chaos and darkness around me.

   
   
   
   

9. I declare that I will walk in a lifestyle of surrender that makes room for supernatural encounters with God and with people.

   
   
   
   

10. I declare that divine love is sharpening my discernment so I can see beyond hardness into the true condition of the heart.

    
    
    
    

11. I declare that hard hearts will soften, masks will fall, and hidden hunger for God will be revealed through the power of the Holy Spirit.

    
    
    
    

12. I declare that every place I go can become a place of divine visitation, revelation, and salvation.

    
    
    
    

13. I declare that I will not judge by outward appearance, but I will see people through the eyes of Christ.

    
    
    
    

14. I declare that the Lord is using my life as a vessel of glory, compassion, discernment, and supernatural grace.

    
    
    
    

15. I declare that I will arise and shine, for the glory of the Lord is rising upon me in the midst of darkness.

    
    
    
    

16. I declare that when heaven interrupts the ordinary, I will respond with faith, surrender, and immediate obedience.