Fishing with Nets (8-1-11)
Last night while ministering at a church in Birmingham, this word that had been stirring up in my heart all day long really came forth as a prophetic word. The word the Lord is saying is that we are coming in to a season where we can put up our rod and reels. When you use a rod and a reel you catch one fish at a time. We’re always thrilled when we find just one person, one on one, coming into the Kingdom of God, but if we look at a spirit of revival, and we see in the book of Acts, people coming to Christ by the household. An example would be Acts Chapter 16, when Paul and Silas are set free from the Philippian prison and the jailer and his whole household came to Christ and were baptized. We see other examples of that in the book of Acts. As we know, the early church were flowing under an open heaven, what we would call a spirit of revival, which was really just walking in the normality of Christians who were Spirit-filled and manifested the Kingdom of God. What the Lord has spoken prophetically in years past is that we are going to be coming into Acts Part 2, and that the sequel would have no equal, that what we’re going to experience as God pours out His Holy Spirit is something that exceeds the beginning, that exceeds what happened in the book of Acts. Our tendency is to always look back at the book of Acts and see that as a normal place, as the standard-bearer, as the plumb line and say we want to get back to that place, we want to see things happening at that level, we want to move under an open heaven, we want to move in the River of God at that level. Actually, God wants us to go beyond that. That was just the beginning place. The beginning should never be the end. The end should be a buildup that’s better than the beginning. What we’re going to see in Acts Part 2 is the sequel that has no equal, and we’re going to see manifested again household conversions. Even more than household conversions, we’re going to see whole neighborhoods coming to Christ as the Word goes forth and we cast nets. It is time for us to begin to believe God for people to come to Christ in bunches. It’s time to start fishing with nets. When you fish with nets, you can catch more than one at a time. We’re going to be moving into a season where ‘we are going to be putting up our rods and reels. We’re not just going to see people coming into the Kingdom of God one at a time, but there’s going to be such a great harvest that we’re going to cast our nets, and our nets are going to be so full that we’ll almost not be able to handle them. It’s time to fish with nets. We’re going to see people come to Jesus in bunches, not just one at a time.