Excellent piece, Mike. Personally I've experience so much of this projected hope for a "somewhere-out-there-God" that it eventually made my heart sick! Hope deferred, in other words. Even Sunday attendances became somewhat hopeless because of so much hope put out for the next conference - sincerely promoted on the one hand, though somewhat suspect of veiled commercialism. The amount of merchandise sold at promoted at these events boggles the mind and tempts one with all kinds of unnecessary thoughts about conflicts of interest. God is revealing Himself to us 24/7. It is us that are not revealing ourselves to Him! We don't need more of God. We need less of us...in a John the Baptist kind of way. Then we would find out that He is here among us all the time! A popular song years ago was "More Love, More Power" As a worship leader back then it irritated me...I wanted to change the words to "Less Me..." The Holy Spirit is abudantly generous and overflowing with mercy, love, and all the facets of God. It is US that get in the way. Do we really have ears to hear? No - not with so much distracting us. If we're not sprouting I-Pods from our ears, we've got the stereo on, the radio on, the TV on, or we're watching YouTube. We barely have time to relate to our own families because of our indulgences...how can we really hope to take the time to relate to God? While I rant about these things, of course, I'm including myself in all of this. My walk of late is simply this - to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit is with us, has never left nor forsaken us, nor will he ever! We need to have conferences to celebrate that God is with us at all times - 24/7 and praise him for that...not to insinuate by looking at another move of God, that He's not doing a very good job of being with us. We must look to ourselves if we are not realising the revealed presence of God. It's not his fault. He's not being stingy. He just wants a few minutes of our time to hang out and relate .. .. and we barely give him that. We need both wheels for sure! Let's not be exchanging the wheels on the bike - putting one on an removing another. Let's have them both on and give each the degree of importance that allows to be balanced.