How Shall These Things Be?

Today as I did my prayer walk around Westfield Shopping Town in Brandon, FL (see Prayer-Walking at Westfield), I found myself asking these questions:

• How shall Your church emerge at Westfield?
• How shall Your kingdom come here?
• How shall Your will be done at Westfield as it is being done in heaven?
• How shall Your name be hallowed here?
• How shall Your glory be revealed here at Westfield?
• Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil—how shall that be manifested here?
• How shall these things be?
  

I’m reminded that Mary asked a similar question when the angel visited her and announced that she, a virgin, would bring forth a Son. “How shall this be,” she said, “since I do not know a man?” (Luke 1:34).

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you” (v.35).

The Greek word for “overshadow” is found only a few times in the New Testament: here, the Transfiguration accounts in three of the Gospels, and in Act 5. Acts 5 tells how the people brought their sick out into the streets and laid the along the way where Peter would pass, so that his shadow might “fall on” some of them (v. 15). The Greek for “fall on” is the word for “overshadow.” The next verse tells us that they were all healed!

How shall these things be? The Holy Spirit must come upon us, and the power of God must overshadow us, even at Westfield — or wherever God has placed you and me.

(See also The Shadow of Glory — Part 1, Part 2)