Allow me the vanity of quoting myself:
People who have stood in God’s Presence (such as during times of genuine revival and spiritual outpouring) and who have touched and tasted the powers of the Age to Come often get “ruined” for life. What do I mean? Having drunk deeply at the well of the water of life, they find it difficult, even impossible to return to the days of artificially flavored soda pop. They have discovered the difference, and nothing less will do.
Such people also understand the meaning of genuine spiritual poverty. Having once swam in deep and great spiritual oceans they have become acutely sensitive to the changing of the tides. They know the difference between the high tide of spiritual abundance, and the low tide of spiritual poverty, for they have experienced both.
Isaiah was such a person. Early in His ministry, Isaiah had stood in the Temple in Jerusalem and had seen it fill with the very Presence of God. In that moment both Isaiah’s life and his ministry were changed . . . forever. But years had passed since then. Now, at the end of His ministry, Isaiah knew that the spiritual tide had gone out in the life of the people of God. And we know this because Isaiah reflects upon the situation starting in verse 15 of Chapter 63, which is where we will begin. (Preparing For The Coming Spiritual Outpouring, p. 127).
Having studied spiritual awakenings for over 15 years now I have come to recognize a familiar pattern which seems to characterize nearly every great outpouring of God’s Spirit. Let’s call it “The Tsunami Effect”. I have been intrigued by a phenomenon which nearly always precedes every Tsunami. It’s the phenomenon of an unprecedented receding of the tide. It occurs because of a “trough” which precedes the coming wave and of water close to the shore rushing out to fill the vacuum created by the “trough”.
Without attempting to “over spiritualize” the situation, I believe that is where much of the Church is today. As I wrote in Chapter 18 of Preparing For The Coming Spiritual Outpouring (quoted above), believers who are sensitive to the “high tide” God’s Presence are equally sensitive to the “low tide” created when He withdraws. Isaiah understood it(Isaiah 63:15-19). Do we?
I genuinely believe a “spiritual tsunami” is coming. God has been emphasizing this point to many of us over the past 18 months or so. But the evidence of its approach is NOT growing spiritual blessing. Rather, the evidence of its approach is an intense sense of spiritual poverty and need – a sense that the spiritual tide has receded, and it has receded much further than any of us expected. And in the experience of the Prophet Isaiah, it was this intense sense of spiritual poverty which gave rise to his heartfelt cry in Isaiah 64:1ff, “Oh, that Thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down, That the mountains might quake at Thy presence — As fire kindles the brushwood, as fire causes water to boil — To make Thy name known to Thine adversaries, That the nations may tremble at Thy presence!”