We have gotten away from having extended meetings in the church today. Dad Hagin used to have extended meetings all the time. He had some that even stretched longer than a year. You know that things happened in those meetings. I attended many of those and was greatly blessed and received a special anointing during each meeting. I remember hearing him say that miracles didn’t start happening until the third or fourth week into these meetings. That is because you had enough time to start building faith up in the people as they came. And you know the people that were coming to these meetings were hungry for more of God.
Jesus Christ told Dad Hagin that He was grieved with this generation because they would not take time to wait upon Him. Jesus went on to say that this generation gives God a few minutes of their time and if He doesn’t move on their schedule they leave, and He was grieved with that also. Many in this generation are so caught up in their schedules that they seek the world system more than the Kingdom of Heaven.
“And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount. And the glory of the LORD abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.” – Exodus 24:15-16
Moses waited on God, and God spoke to him. He positioned himself in a place where he could hear from God and he waited on God. What if Moses had left a day earlier though. What if he decided there were more important things to do than wait on God? He would have missed God. That’s what is going on today in this generation. We have lost the understanding that God demands our time. He wants us to spend time with Him, to wait on Him, to fellowship with Him. And that takes time.
We ran some extended meetings of our own a few years back, running three weeks with a total of 42 services. In that time, we proved something out. We proved the myth or theory WRONG that the people won’t come. People got there early and were excited about the meeting, service after service after service! They grumbled and complained because they wanted the meeting to continue, not for it to be over! Once the people started attending they kept coming to almost every service. I believe some preachers think people won’t attend, but when the Glory is there, they don’t want to leave, and can’t wait to come back! People are starving spiritually to know the true God of the Bible and balanced doctrine. A few snacks of the Word and Spirit are not enough to satisfy the spiritual hunger of the church. I believe that we preachers baby the people too much. They actually want to grow up beyond where they are. That takes more time and effort, and sometimes we deprive them of that environment because of our own preconceived ideas and thoughts.
Extended meetings bring people out of websites, text messages, cell phones, facebook and twitter, games, carnal schedules and the world system in general, into an environment that is conducive to spiritual growth. Extended meetings become more than an evangelistic outreach, and are for ministering to the church. I believe that extended meetings are one of the greatest needs of the Body of Christ today. In the extended meetings we had, I casted out devils, people rededicated their lives and some were filled with the Holy Spirit. Every Christian was ministered to in a supernatural way and drew closer to the Lord.
The size of the church does not matter. People will come who are hungry for God. During the extended meeting that we had, the church where it was held had the largest attendance in their history. This happened during this extended meeting. Many local non-church members attended also, and the church received a lot of exposure. Some people drove 16 hours one-way to be there and some drove about two hours consistently, to be there. The church was blessed greatly! Jesus Christ was very pleased!
Jesus wants us to get back to these extended meetings because these kinds of meetings create an atmosphere where the Holy Spirit can move and things happen.
